Ethereal Runic Force Crystals, Soul Force Crystals, And Life Runes

There are two methods to increase one's Soul Force Limit. The first method was through natural power acquisition as mentioned before, which usually occurred when one's Soul Vessel's status or rank was elevated to the next level of power. This was done through harnessing and amassing the power of runes— Ethereal Runic Force or Runic Force for short.

This method was out of the equation for Maximus as he had yet to construct his Runic Path. In other words, he doesn't have a way to amass the supernatural power of runes. This also meant that he doesn't have a superpower of his own as of yet.

As Runic Path was crucial to increasing the power status of the Soul Vessel, he couldn't use this method to increase his Soul Force, or rather the whole point of his tests and experiments was to create Runic Constructs that would work with his current Soul Force Limit, which was oddly 999 units of Soul Force.

However, each time he created Runic Constructs for a Runic Path, the requirement would always surpass his limit of 999 units of Soul Force. This was mostly due to his inflated ego and pride that wouldn't let him create inferior Runic Constructs. Regardless of the reason, he couldn't achieve his dream and acquire a superpower all these years because of his Soul Force Limit.

This was mainly because Soul Force, the power contained within the Soul Vessel, was the deciding factor in engraving a Runic Path, and since the Soul Force was also needed to activate the Runic Path, it was only logical that the amount one had would correlate with the Runic Path that they would receive. Otherwise, they wouldn't be able to activate it, much less engrave and imprint it on their Soul Vessel.

The second method to increase one's Soul Force, however, was very costly. Furthermore, this method could be said to be impossible for the current Maximus, who had less fortune and even less fortuitous encounters. This method would require him to use precious Soul Crystals.

There are two precious stones or crystals in this world of mystical runes, and they are respectively Ethereal Runic Force Crystals and Soul Force Crystals. For short, they were known as Runic Crystals and Soul Crystals.

Runic Force Crystals are precious crystals that could easily be found almost everywhere because they were mainly formed from the concentration and crystallization of Ethereal Runic Forces. In addition to their prevalence, they were necessary for Runic Reification for the Runic Combatant profession.

Other professions, such as Blacksmith and Craftsmanship also have a high demand for these Runic Force Crystals. After all, they could be used to create Runic Gear, such as Runic Weapons and Runic Armors. Because of that, they were sold in almost every store that dealt with rune-related items.

However, Runic Crystals couldn't directly help one with increasing their Soul Force since they mainly contain the energy known as Ethereal Runic Force. Instead, it could help one increase the overall Ethereal Runic Force of their Runic Path's runes when the energy within them was absorbed. It could also aid in the enlightenment of one's Runic Path, but that would be a topic for another time.

Another thing to note was that the energy known as Ethereal Runic Force could not be stored directly within the body of a human.

Whenever someone uses a method to store them inside their body, while it wouldn't cause them any harm, after a few moments of circulating within their body, the Runic Force would naturally escape the body as there was no vessel to hold or keep it inside their body.

Only manifested runic characters or symbols could hold the Ethereal Runic Force in the body. This was because they could serve as vessels once they are engraved and imprinted on the Soul Vessel.

Soul Force Crystals, however, were very rare precious crystals and could be said to be extinct as the previous generations had amassed too many of these limited crystals. For some reason, it was discovered that, unlike Runic Crystals, Soul Crystals did not have veins to mine from. Instead, they could only be found in these rare natural grottos that appear once in a while.

But the intervals at which they appeared could not be easily discerned by even renowned experts at prediction and calculation.

Furthermore, due to how unpredictable these grottos were, one could hardly predict where they would appear from, as they were spontaneous in nature. And even if they appeared, so many powerhouses would surround the site and hog all the resources for themselves.

Ordinary people were strictly forbidden entry if they were not invited. If you are found near the site without invitation, you could potentially be killed on the spot to silence your mouth from spreading the location of the grotto. Therefore, an ordinary person could only dream of touching these Soul Crystals in their lifetime.

Thus, Maximus could not obtain these precious Soul Crystals through normal means. If he wanted to obtain one of these Soul Crystals, he would have to spend a hefty amount of money. While he wasn't currently poor, he wasn't rich either.

So far, he could only afford to spend all the money he earned from his jobs on Runic Crystals. This was because they were necessary for the creation of his Runic Constructs, or any sort of creation for that matter.

One of the uses of the Runic Crystals was crafting Rune Inscription Pens or Runic Pens. On a table inside Maximus's laboratory was a Reed Pen with a small blue gemstone reminiscent of a sapphire gemstone.

The small blue gemstone was a Runic Crystal that was currently embedded inside a slot on his Runic Pen. It serves as a power source during the rune inscription and encoding process. Furthermore, it stabilizes and maintains manifested runes by providing Runic Force to the inscribed runes.

Encoding in rune inscription was the method used to add functions to an inscribed rune so that certain commands could be executed, similar to pre-programmed codes used in computer programming to ensure that a program would be complete and clean once it was completed. It was the most challenging aspect when creating Runic Constructs.

That aside, Maximus was currently feeling aggrieved from his nine hundred and ninety-ninth failure at creating an ideal Runic Path for himself and finally saying goodbye to his powerless self in this power-based world.

Even though he was blessed with immense comprehension of runes, almost godlike, and even hailed as a genius by fellow cohorts in the same field of study and his once-upon-a-time instructors, he still couldn't do anything about his current situation no matter what he tried.

There are indeed other factors to his failures besides the fact that he lacked Soul Force for the final step of engraving and imprinting of the Runic Constructs from Nini's simulation run just now. However, his Soul Force was always the main factor.

As for Nini, she was a being created and coined by Maximus as his personal Sequencer. As her title implied, she served as his assistant and arranged things for him according to his instructions. One of her functions was as a simulation runner for his various dangerous tests that he refused to test on himself as he valued his life very much.

Of course, Nini, with her spiritual body, wouldn't succumb to any physical damage, unlike Maximus, who wasn't a spiritual entity. That was the reason he allowed her to serve as a vessel for the test subjects of his plethora of tests and experiments.

Moreover, Nini was created with Ethereal Runic Force and Runic Code— a programmed entity personally inscribed by Maximus when he was feeling lonely and needed someone to talk to.

Originally, he was only intending for it to be a presence that could listen to him talk about his sad and miserable life. However, because of his perfectionist habit, he decided that it would be a waste to not bring out the maximum potential of his creation. Voila! Nini was born from both technological power and the supernatural power of runes.

Nini's existence was actualized and achieved by converting and encoding an artificial intelligence code that he wrote for a project that he had yet to finish at the time.

To create Nini, Maximus forcefully changed the entire code and every function that it served and turned it into a living organism made out of runes— a Spiritual Entity comprised of intricate runes that would leave any rune expert speechless if they found out about his godly creation.

To accomplish this feat, he resorted to establishing his own Rune Encoding Language that only he understood. This way, no one could replicate his work even if they got their hands on it.

On the other hand, according to various studies, it has been officially theorized and proven that living organisms were made out of manifested runes written and encoded by some unfathomable entity or an incomprehensible existence. Either that or they naturally existed that way.

Furthermore, after it was proven to be either of these cases, scientists around the world coined the name for these types of runes that made up the physical body of all living organisms— they were known as Life Runes.