"Let me tell you old man. That pen has a fractures all over its tip. One more inscription and it would probably snap in half. It’s worth 250, tops. The Starvein Herb is so dried out I could use it as fuel, 80 Crowns, and that’s me being generous. The Banetin has mold, meaning its toxicity has already started breaking down, 60 Crowns if I’m feeling charitable. The stack of iron paper is the only decent thing here, I’ll give you 150 for the stack not to mention the Golden Snake Blood?"

Igris picked up the vial, held it to the light, and watched the separated layers swirl. "It’s degraded.l so badly that any inscription I draw with this will have a 40 percent failure rate. 100 Crowns. Maybe."

He set the vial down with a deliberate ’clink’.

"That brings us to 640 Crowns. I’ll round it up to 700 because I like your face."

"700?!" The old man’s voice cracked so violently that the goblin being strangled by enchanted shoelaces next door stopped struggling to stare. "You’re not haggling, boy, you’re committing highway robbery! You want to strip the flesh from my bones and sell it back to me! 1,200! Not a copper less!"

"750," Igris shot back without missing a beat.

"1,150! I still have grandchildren to feed!"

"800. And your grandchildren probably steal from you."

"1,100! May the gods strike me dead where I stand if I go lower!"

"850 last price."

"1,050! Final! I’m losing money on this!"

The old man was breathing hard now, his veiny nose pulsating and his chubby cheeks trembling with an almost theatrical mixture of rage and despair. A vein throbbed visibly at his temple.

Igris stared at him. The silence stretched between them like a taut wire.

Then he sighed, reaching into his pocket.

"Fine. You win, old man. You’re far too ruthless for your age."

The old man’s face split into a grin so wide it looked like it might split his cheeks. He rubbed his hands together greedily.

"How much?" he asked, practically salivating.

Igris pulled out a pouch and began counting. The sharp ’clink-clink-clink’ of Gold Crowns hitting the counter filled the stall.

100. 200. 500. 800. 1,000. 1,200. 𝑓𝑟𝑒𝘦𝓌𝑒𝑏𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝘭.𝒸𝘰𝑚

"1,200 Gold Crowns," Igris said flatly, placing the last crown on the stack. "Exactly what you asked for the first time."

The old man blinked. His grin froze. His brain visibly short-circuited as he realized what had just happened. Igris had anchored him at 640, dragged him through the mud, and then landed exactly where the old man had ’wanted’ to land. But now, instead of feeling like he’d won a victory, the old man felt like he’d been played. His eye twitched.

"You—" the old man sputtered. "You little—"

"Pleasure doing business with you, Grandpa," Igris said, already sweeping the items into his system storage space.

Finding a blind corner between two alleys, Igris glanced around to ensure he was alone.

"System."

’’[Ding! 10x Multiplier Activated!]’’

The items in his hand shimmered, reality warping around them for a split second before settling into their new forms.

’’[Inscription Pen Tranformed-> Iron Grade Inscription Pen (Extra Effect: +20% Success Rate)]’’

’’[Inscription Paper Transformed -> Iron Grade Inscription Paper (Extra Effect: +10% Success Rate)]’’

’’[Golden Eye Snake Blood -> Flood Dragon Blood]’’

Igris let out a low whistle. The murky yellow snake blood had transformed into a thick, iridescent liquid that glowed with a fierce, primal energy. Flood Dragon blood was a luxury item worth a small fortune.

"Powerful," he smirked, tucking the upgraded items into his bag and heading toward the Main Hall.

’’’

The Hall massive, with ceilings so high they vanished into shadows where stone gargoyles crouched.

Stained glass windows depicted the Nine Demonic Gods in horrific detail.

At the podium stood an old woman with thick glasses. She was tiny—barely five feet tall with grey hair pulled into a bun and robes like curtain.

Her eyes were sharp enough to dissect a student’s confidence from across the room. When those eyes swept across the classroom, even the Dragonkin students didn’t dare look directly at her.

"You can call me Professor Maggie," her raspy voice echoed through the Hall. "

Get it wrong once, and you’ll be scraping gum off the fortress walls for a month. Get it wrong twice, and I’ll use your bones for chalk."

A Werewolf student in the second row swallowed audibly.

"Now, bring out your equipment."

The shuffling of bags filled the room.

The Catgirl to Igris’s left nervously fumbled with her pen she nearly dropped it, her tail puffing up to twice its size.

Igris reached into his system inventory and materialized his items and they landed before him.

Others were using ordinary pen and ordinary blood and paper but because of his 10x system he was able to upgrade them.

"Ruins are the language of the Old Gods," Professor Maggie continued, pacing slowly across the podium.

"They communicate with the ambient energy in the air, using special ingredients and concoctions as a medium to produce physical effects."

She paused, letting her frost-bit eyes sweep across the three hundred students packed into the Hall.

"It is not art, it is not expression. It is not creativity. It is ’precision’. Every line has a purpose. Every curve has a function. Every dot, every angle, every intersection is a word in a sentence, and if you misspell even one syllable, the sentence doesn’t just fail—it ’bites back’. I have seen students lose fingers. I have seen students lose hands. I have seen one particularly talented idiot lose his entire torso because he thought he could ’improvise’ a fire rune."

She held up her left hand. Her ring finger was missing, only a stub remained.

"This," she wiggled the stub, "was my ’creative phase.’ I was 16 and thought I was a genius. I was lucky, the student standing next to me wasn’t."

The room went silent.

"Arrogance is the enemy of precision. Now, open your textbooks to page 47."

She droned on about the theory of Runic syntax for an hour. And it ’was’ agonizing as Maggie dissected the historical evolution of runic grammar, the 17 foundational strokes, the 3 laws of mana conductivity, the 5 principles of circuit closure, and the critical importance of runic symmetry. She drew diagrams, cited examples and referenced at least 12 different historical Runemasters by name and their contributions to modern inscription theory.

It was exhaustive and mind-numbingly boring.

"Enough theory."

Everyone’s eyes snapped open.

"Equip your Inscription Pens and fill it with your ink." she commanded.

The students moved in unison as they equipped their pen.

Igris uncorked his Flood Dragon Blood and slotted it into the Pen’s reservoir.

The moment the red liquid made contact with the pen’s glass tank, the three vein-like silver wires that ran along its length lit up and then went back to normal.

To Igris’s left, the Catgirl was struggling. Her pen’s wires had wrapped around her arm but were twitching and not perfectly in sync.

"Now, draw this simple Water Rune."

Professor Maggie turned to a massive whiteboard behind her and began to draw slowly.

The rune was elegant and simple, three simple curves a vertical line representing containment, and two small dots at the top representing activation nodes.

It was impossible to misunderstand. Even the students who had been struggling to stay awake during the lecture could follow the strokes.

"You have three minutes," Maggie said without turning around. "Begin."

Three hundred students bent over their papers. The Hall was filled with the scratching of pens on parchment like a thousand mice gnawing through wood.

Igris inhaled deeply and started.

His pen moved swiftly and although his wrist shook, the Flood Dragon Blood flowing perfectly from the tip as he drew the lines perfectly.

He lifted the pen.

The rune glowed a soft, watery blue light for a moment and then settled into the paper as the faint scent of rain rose from the parchment.

’Done.’

He’d finished in under forty seconds.

Igris glanced around. The Elven boy in front of him was still on his second curve, his brow furrowed in concentration. The Catgirl was on her third attempt, having smudged her first two.

"Am I a genius?"

Igris raised an eyebrow and then leaned back in his chair, resisting the urge to yawn.

Two minutes later, Maggie’s voice rang out. "Those who succeeded, raise your hands."

About 60 percent of the room raised their hands.

Igris’s arm shot up lazily.

Maggie’s eyes swept across them. Her gaze lingered on Igris for a fraction of a second then to his paper, before moving on.

"Hm. 60 percent. Acceptable for a first attempt. Barely." She turned back to the whiteboard. "Next. Fire."

The Fire Rune was more aggressive—sharp angles, a central spiral representing combustion, and three radiating lines representing heat dispersion.

Igris completed it in under a minute.

"Earth."

Done.

"Air."

Done.

The lecture progressed rapidly, and the students burned through the elemental runes like kindling. Their success rates climbed as they adapted.

Confidence swelled.