One Last System

By the time Lucius returned from the forest, I was only halfway done with my projects. Due to the massive hardships that I stumbled upon when making the pleasuring sleeve for men, I simply dropped the project into the depths of hiatus and moved on to the things I could actually progress on. 

I was working on the formation stones to upgrade my current amplification array when I saw Lucius appear beyond the trees in the distance. 

The angle of his approach was different than usual, signaling that there was something wrong with today's hunt. But as our relations started to cool off recently, I didn't even bother to ask about it. 

'I had no idea formations could be so complex and formidable,' I thought, turning my focus back to the things that mattered. 

During the entire day I spent studying and practicing formations, I learned a whole lot. But there was one thing that struck me the most. 

The nature of the formation was captured by the author of my guidebook. 

They were simply too orderly!

For a world where one just had to sit down and cultivate to get stronger, where formations were formed in a single sentence structure instead of an array of simple ones...

It just didn't fit. 

'It's as if someone who wrote this book didn't operate along with the local common sense,' i thought when the obvious possibility dawned upon me. 

'What if the author of this book is...' I thought before swallowing a gulp of my own saliva. 

No. This wasn't the thing that I should be thinking right now. 

Those thoughts could be entertained during the night when I wouldn't waste the precious daylight on them. 

But that didn't change the fact that the more I looked into the book and the more I learned about the formation... The more I felt as if this entire discipline was just a new and fancy programing language. 

A programing language that directly affected the world around me instead of just sending commands to the machines attached to the processing unit. 

The only problem with the book laid in its translation. 

While I managed to cope with only a single paragraph being translated at a time, it stopped me from using my full potential. Yet, it wasn't even the biggest problem. 

Most of the topics in the book were covered in the manner that I would expect from a programming guide. But whenever the author would near the conclusion of a topic, the ultimate answer to the topic he was tackling...

Everything he would write before would suddenly disappear, replaced by the results and assumptions one could expect from the normal books of this world.

'It's really as if someone was trying to decrease the knowledge of humans in this world,' I thought, scrolling through the pages of the guide that I saved in my brain. 

But all of that was just a small bear when compared to the discovery that I made about the more complex runes. 

Because the formation stones that I previously considered to be the pinnacle of what the formation masters could craft...

Turned out to be entire formations written within a single rune. 

My amplification array, for example, was constructed as a set of repeating sentences. And in a sense, the advanced runes represented not a single order but an entire sentence!

What was the most interesting about this topic was how the rune itself would somehow reflect the lesser runes that one could use to replicate its effects. 

To construct a rune of freezing, one would combine the marks of runes that made up the freezing formation!

"Arthur..." Lucius appeared right behind my back just as I was busy carving out the spiritual cores that I wanted to use for my next amplification formation. 

"What's wrong?" I asked, gently pulling my knife away from the stone, worried about accidentally scratching it and destroying nearly an hour of hard work. 

"The full moon is nearing," Lucius announced, his eyes directed to the sky. 

The sun has yet to come down, making it nigh impossible to spot any stars. In fact, due to some clouds, I couldn't even spot the moon.

"And?" I asked after looking right in the same direction as Lucius did. 

"We will be moving to the sect tomorrow," Lucius announced out of nowhere. 

"Huh?" I muttered, surprised to no end. "We still have three more days, don't we?"

We had three more days to submit our biweekly quotas. In other words, we were supposed to depart the day after tomorrow. 

And yet, Lucius suddenly announced that we would be moving tomorrow?

It suddenly dawned upon me. 

'Could the strange activity of those monsters be the reason?' I asked myself before moving my eyes back on Lucius' face. 

Still, that didn't explain Lucius' decision at all! If the forest was turning too dangerous for us to enter, what was wrong with spending that time in the camp? It was peaceful, wasn't it?

"Why?" I asked, refusing to elaborate any further. 

I just wanted to know the reason. While I honestly preferred the peace of the camp, I didn't mind going to the sect a little earlier either. 

"It's not only the forest that's going to be affected," Lucius explained, his eyes locked at some distant point that I couldn't see. "Do you remember the first and the last part of the road we took?" he asked out of nowhere. 

Now that I thought about...

In order to get to the sect, we had to get out of the forest first. As our camp was located right in its dead middle, the entire first part of the journey was all about leaving it. 

Then, when we would get in just three hours of walk away from the sect, the road would cut straight through another forest. And from how Lucius acted back when we traversed it, it was clear that it was as filled with monsters as our forest was. 

"Oh," I muttered when I suddenly realized what Lucius meant. 

Both the first and the last part of our journey to the sect would take us through the monsters' infested areas. And since the full moon would somehow affect them, Lucius decided to just pack up and leave in advance. 

"I will be ready," I replied in a silent voice as I took a look at my things and started to gather them. 

Crafting more formation stones could wait. Right now, I had to ensure every important bit of my possessions was safely stored within my ring!