Reincarnated as a blue dragon, he collided head-on with a wizarding civilization.

"Analyzing runes requires your mental power."

Your mental strength is currently in its raw state, without any training. Direct contact with runes might cause headaches, dizziness, or nausea. These are not the problem; the real concern is damage to your mental strength, leaving hidden injuries.

As Akino spoke, he took another drag of his cigarette.

"Therefore, before we begin the analysis, you need to learn how to protect your mental energy. This is not something you can learn overnight, but I can teach you the basic methods as a small gift."

Motu looked at her.

"Are you going to teach me mind protection?" he asked.

Akino choked on the smoke, coughed twice, and then laughed out loud.

"Mind protection?"

That's a realm only those who have mastered the Three Rings of Magic can reach. What I can teach you is the most basic, the most rudimentary mental barrier that any wizard apprentice possesses.

It's not strong; it can't withstand any deliberate attack, but it's enough to prevent you from hurting yourself when analyzing a basic rune.

She took the cigarette out of her mouth and tapped the ash on the rock.

"So? Are you going to learn or not?"

Motu didn't hesitate: "I'll learn."

Akino smiled, put the cigarette back in his mouth, and patted the rock next to him.

"Then sit down. Don't squat, it hurts my neck."

Motu changed his position, lying down on the ground next to the rock, raising his head slightly, trying to keep his eyes level with Qiuye.

The morning light surged in from the east, turning the thin mist on the river golden. The reeds swayed in the wind, and dewdrops fell softly from their leaves, like a light rain.

Akino stubbed out his cigarette, tucked it into his sleeve, straightened his posture, and his deep brown vertical pupils became serious.

"First, you need to know what mental power is."

It's not magic, not physical strength, not any kind of energy you can sense outside your body. It is…”

She thought for a moment and found a metaphor.

It is the vessel of your consciousness.

Every thought, every idea, every decision you make is driven by mental energy. You can't feel it, just as a fish can't feel water.

Because it is a part of you.

"A mental barrier is what encloses this part of consciousness, preventing external things from directly contacting it."

Akino raised his right hand, and a pale blue light shone from his fingertips.

It wasn't witchcraft, nor magic, but something more subtle and understated.

"Like this."

The light was very faint, so faint that it was almost invisible in the morning light.

But Motu could sense it.

Not with the eyes, but with some kind of more intrinsic perception.

The edge of that ball of light had a thin, soap bubble-like membrane.

"Is this your mental power?" Motu asked.

"No. This is the manifestation of spiritual power."

Akino withdrew his hand, and the light dissipated.

"Your mental strength is still too weak to materialize externally. But that's okay, you don't need to use it externally right now. You just need to build the simplest barrier inside your body, in your sea of ​​consciousness."

She began to teach him.

The method is simple.

It was so simple that Motu even thought it was somewhat rudimentary.

Close your eyes and focus your attention on the edge of your sea of ​​consciousness, imagining there is a membrane there.

The membrane doesn't need to be thick or strong; it just needs to exist.

As long as it exists, external magical fluctuations, residual power of runes, and mental scans from other people will be blocked by this membrane.

Or at least, weakened to the point that it won't harm the sea of ​​consciousness.

Motu tried it once.

It didn't work.

He could only sense his own sea of ​​consciousness, that dark space with floating panels, but he couldn't find its boundaries.

Where is the edge? What shape is it? How big is it? He had no idea.

Akino did not urge him.

She lit another herbal cigarette, sat on the rock, and waited while smoking.

Motu tried a second time.

This time he tried a different approach.

Instead of looking for the edge, feel the boundary between the sea of ​​consciousness and the outside world.

It's like standing on the riverbank, feeling the boundary between the water and the shore.

Water is the sea of ​​consciousness, the shore is the outside world, and the boundary is the line.

He found it.

The line was blurry, like a road washed by rain, with indistinct boundaries and muddy conditions.

But it does exist.

Motu focused his attention on that line, imagining there was a membrane there.

membrane.

Thin. Transparent. Fragile. Simply exist.

He imagined it three times, and on the fourth time, the membrane appeared.

It's so thin that it's almost non-existent.

He was so fragile that he didn't even dare to think about it too much.

But it did happen.

A pale white, semi-transparent membrane enveloped the outside of his consciousness, like a freshly blown soap bubble that could burst at any moment.

Motu opened his eyes.

Akino was looking at him, a hint of surprise in his deep brown vertical pupils.

"Did it work?" she asked.

"It's done," Motu said.

Akino took the cigarette out of his mouth, stared at him for two seconds, and then shook his head.

"You really have no prior knowledge of wizardry?"

"no."

"Your talent for mental strength... is better than I expected."

She put the cigarette back in her mouth, took a drag, and exhaled a puff of smoke.

"Alright, the barrier is in place, we can begin analyzing the runes."

Motu placed the pickaxe back between his claws, the runes on the pickaxe clearly visible in the morning light.

Akino leaned closer and pointed to the starting point of the rune with his fingertip, which was a vertical line at the edge of the pickaxe.

"This rune is called 'Sharpness,' and it's the simplest of the basic runes. Its structure consists of three parts: the starting point, the path, and the ending point."

Her fingertips moved along the lines of the runes.

"The starting point is here, where the magic is injected. The path consists of these zigzag lines, the angle and length of which determine the flow rate and direction of the magic. The endpoint is at the blade's edge, where the magic is released."

"The first step in deciphering runes is to see. Not with your eyes, but with your mental power. You need to use the barrier you just built to touch the runes and sense the traces of magic remaining on them."

Motu closed his eyes.

He focused his attention on the thin membrane at the edge of his sea of ​​consciousness and then tried to push it out.

Instead of being pushed out of the body, it moved along its own claws, along the wooden handle of the pickaxe, and along the iron of the pickaxe head, little by little, towards the rune.

It's hard.

That membrane was too fragile; it could break with the slightest force. It took him three times longer than before to get a small portion of that membrane to touch the edge of the rune.

Then he felt it.

It's not words, not images, not anything that can be described in language.

It is a shape.

Each stroke of the rune, perceived by spiritual power, transforms into a groove with width, depth, and direction.

Magic once flowed through this trench, leaving extremely faint traces that were almost completely dissipated.

Motu followed those traces, walking from the starting point to the end.

The starting point, where magic is infused.

A broken line, magic accelerated.

Around the corner, the magic shifts.

The finish line, the magic is released.

He walked through it once.

We went through it again.

By the third time, the direction, depth, and width of those grooves had been etched into his memory.

He opened his eyes.

"The analysis is complete," he said.

Akino was smoking when he heard this and paused for a moment.

She glanced at Motu's expression, then at the runes on the pickaxe, and took the cigarette out of her mouth.

Are you sure?

"Sure."

"Then draw it once."

Motu put the pickaxe on the ground and began to draw on the rock with the tip of his claws.

Vertical line, broken line, corner, broken line, arc, endpoint.

Each stroke is exactly the same as the runes on the pickaxe.

Not only are the shapes the same, but the direction, spacing, and depth of each stroke are so precise that Akino has to admit it.

She stared at the rune on the rock for several seconds, then put the cigarette back in her mouth, took a deep drag, and slowly exhaled.

"Okay," she said. "You really are..."

She didn't finish speaking.

But Motu knew what she wanted to say.

In his mind, Ixtal's mission panel had already lit up.

[Rune Analysis] Successfully analyzed the Wizard Rune (Sharpness) and rendered it onto a physical object. — Completed.

Reward: Introduction to Blood Moon Meditation.

A piece of unfamiliar information suddenly flooded into my consciousness.

It is not written, it has no images, and it cannot be described in any known language.

It's more like a... forced, mold-like "shaping".

It was as if an invisible hand had seized his entire core consciousness and then steadily positioned him in a specific, fixed posture.

The moment this posture was formed, a change occurred.

Blue Dragon became aware of a flow, and his mental energy began to operate on its own.

It was drawn out from the depths of the ocean of consciousness, descending along a clear yet icy path:

It glides over the barriers of the spine, passes the heat of the heartbeat, skims the coolness of the expanding lungs, sinks into the chaos of the abdominal cavity, and then, without any hindrance, returns upwards, finally returning to the starting point of the sea of ​​consciousness.

a circle.

Slow, yet with an undeniable certainty.

Another lap.

The path is repeated, and the sense of flow gradually becomes more pronounced, like an underground river under the ice beginning to surge.

Another lap.

The speed was still not fast, but it was unusually stable and long, like an ancient riverbed that had been dried up for a long time, finally having its own regular tides.

Blood Moon Meditation Method.

getting Started.

Motu opened his eyes.

Within the vertical pupil, a dark red light flashed by, intertwining with a ghostly blue arc of electricity, flickering briefly deep within the pupil before vanishing simultaneously.

Opposite the blue dragon, Akino stared intently at him, his deep brown vertical pupils holding an indescribable expression.