Chapter 107 — Jenny Perot
Blade of Dawn · Page 3 of 3
From the very beginning she had been waiting for Gao Yang to raise the matter of her "excessive treatment." Yet she had waited and waited while the conversation drifted further and further afield—until now it had veered in the completely opposite direction. She could not help wondering whether this man from ages past was planning the camp according to the standards of the old Gondor Empire. But then she reflected that Gao Yang Cecil had once carved a domain out of the wilderness from nothing, building the Kingdom of Ansu together with the founding king; His Excellency must have ample experience in such matters, and surely would not be reasoning so haphazardly...
The thoroughly bewildered runemaster began wildly spinning theories of her own.
Gao Yang, however, had no idea what this runemaster named Jenny was imagining. He had only been making small talk to ease the atmosphere, and seeing that it was not easing, he simply changed the subject: "We came today mainly to learn how you've all been settled in—to find out what needs you guests who've come from so far away might still have, and incidentally to get to know you a little."
"Get to know... me?" Jenny pointed at herself in surprise. "In what respect?"
Hedy casually drew out a sheet of paper and pushed it across to her. "I'll be blunt, then. We've looked at your records. You are a Tier-Four runemaster, but your mage rank... is that of an apprentice?"
Jenny's heart gave a sudden lurch.
So it had come after all. What was bound to come had come.
Her Tier-Four runemaster rank brought her no glory; it was the apprentice-level mage rank that was the truth. And that vast disparity in rank did not spell talent—it only made people associate her with the word "freak."
Or worse: a mage apprentice, stuffed into the company as a mid-tier professional to make up the numbers—what would that founding grand duke from seven hundred years ago think? By the usual reasoning of nobles, he would surely regard it as a deception and an insult, and might well fly into a rage. But he would not vent his anger on the king; the only target for his wrath would be her—"the lie itself."
The runemaster from the royal capital bowed her head deeply and begged forgiveness in the most humble and fearful tone: "I'm sorry, Your Grace, and Lady Hedy. I never meant to deceive you. I am willing to accept punishment for—"
But Gao Yang suddenly cut her off: "How did you manage it?"
Jenny was still struggling to find the words to extinguish the "noble fury" she had imagined, only to find that Gao Yang had not flown into a rage at all. Instead he had asked this utterly baffling question, and she was struck dumb on the spot.
Gao Yang thought the other man simply hadn't heard him clearly, so he repeated his question: "How did you complete those basic runesmith exercises as an apprentice? Can you sense the magic of multiple runes at the same time? Can you perform 'mana tuning' on runes?"
Runesmiths really were "craftsmen"—to a professional mage, their labor was no different from that of a bricklayer—yet Gao Yang knew very well that a difference did exist, and a vast one at that:
A runesmith could not merely draw magic circles according to blueprints; they also had to be able to actively modify and adjust the positions of runes, and to run tuning tests on those runes that were not quite certain. To accomplish all this, they had to master the techniques of sensing multiple runes at once and performing "mana tuning" on adjusted runes.
This was something only a first-rank mage could grasp!