The kingdom, it turned out, was unable to spare a thought to keeping a connection between its cities to keep goods flowing. Normally only doing so as an afterthought when it was almost too late.

  Kynigo was a prime example of just this, luckily through using the Chosen they were able to deal with the aftermath of such poor management.

  Poor refugees were completely forgotten unless a noble took the task of feeding and housing them on themselves. And in many cities, this was growing into a bigger and bigger problem.

  Sure, magic was normally massively used to ensure there was enough food for everyone. But all of the supply still came from the land and the farms on that land. Magic just speed everything up, it wasn't a cure-all.

  Now the kingdom had nearly lost a quarter of its farms, many abandoned out of fear. The amount of land actually lost was closer to a sixth, showing just how much people were losing hope. Something that could quickly spiral out of control.

  Eldrian was already thinking of how he could try to increase morale once he finished—— if he succeeded without complication. He hoped to ride the train of morale growth after clearing the hordes with Phoenix, to then slowly showcase the Chosen more and more.

  His hope was that it would spread faith in them, that the people of Kynigo, and Taurus even, will grow to feel more secure. If only a little. Once the trade with the dwarves kicked in, he hoped to do the same with the cannons. Certain that a village would feel far more secure if it could have even just one.

  Sofiera thought on this new discovery of runic magic more, while Eldrian's thoughts instead were all over the place. Her question brought him back to the topic at hand. "Do you think this casting method is safe? Considering everything."

  "Surprisingly, it seems that it is far more stable than normal casting. But I can't really say, however, when you consider how runes and arrays have always been used. It does appear like they are more stable than spells, certainly far more robust."

  Sofiera nodded, in the regard of how runes functioned. Indeed they were more stable, normally. There was less that could go wrong in the traditional path of usage, runes were made without filling them with mana during the process of creation. Mana only comes near the end.

  This process could still be followed to help people get used to drawing the runes before attempting to cast through them.

  After all, a rune without mana couldn't do anything bad. And unless you royally screwed up in a successful way, it should simply not active when drawn wrong.

  The question that Sofiera was more stuck on was what would happen if someone screwed up midst drawing a rune. Since there would already be mana in the half-completed rune. This was an entirely new field needing to be discovered.

  She suspected it would then be similar to what would happen if someone lost focus and their spell module slipped midst cast.

  Thus, the true question was not whether this would be safer, but whether this would require less focus. Since, outside the talent to guide one's mana, the other factor is being able to keep your focus under extreme mental pressure.

  "Right, well I want to start." Eldrian declared after giving her some time to work through all the things she had now discovered.

  Tabling? her questions, she nodded and started leaving. Wanting to test a few theories herself to confirm the difference, and find what was actually different.

  As she was about to leave Eldrian suddenly thought of something completely out of the blue.? "Sofiera!" Turning around she looked at him questioningly, "Tell Elizabeth to look into verticle farming."

  Not understanding, Sofiera nodded and left. Understanding that it must be something that only the Chosen would understand.

  Eldrian's mind still being all over the place had suddenly thought of this new style of farming and was curious if it could help Kynigo recover quicker and become stronger. As much as he wanted to dive into theory crafting of the solution, he knew he had to focus on growing stronger first.

  Eldrian sat down in the middle of the room and slowly cleared his mind, which took a couple of minutes. His mind really liked being all over the place once he found a new interest.

  Slowly recomposing himself and preparing himself for what was to come, Eldrian took out the mana crystals he had collected through Phoenix, a total of thirty nail-sized crystals, worth 750 gold. Nearly all the gold he had.

  'You're really insane.' Two commented as he looked at the thirty crystals, that was a total of 90k mana, give or take 5k. There was absolutely no way they could use it all.

  'Yeah, I don't think we will use them all. But better to have more than wish we had more.' Eldrian replied, not feeling like it would be a waste since he might just use the crystals in a pitched battle. He was curious how effective it would be with the runic casting.

  Fighting to keep his mind from wandering onto this topic, Eldrian smirked at Two's comment.

  'Rational, but still insane.' Two commented on Eldrian's thoughts.

  'Agreed, now let's start.'

  Nodding, Two turned serious as Eldrian dived into his mind space. "The blueprint?"

  "I decided that we should add more points of connect." Two commented as he waved his hand and summoned the blueprint.

  "Wait, before we go into all that. We need to figure out what our connections are going to be."

  "Yeah, I've been thinking we use the rune of mana capacity increase. It's basically just a loop, and it doesn't really store mana-"

  "Yeah, I know. It enhances the capacity of other runes or items like crystals, allowing the total effect to be greater. It is similar to the amplification rune, but more subtle. Good choice, should be safe to use in comparison."

  "Yeah, plus it's simpler."

  Eldrian nodded, for now, they didn't want to attempt anything too difficult. Though, he had decided to not rush to a finish like the last two times. This time he would take his time, experiment as he went, and reform his mana—— network- as he saw fit. The blueprint would just be a guide, not a gospel.

  "Right, then let's add the mana capacity rune to the blueprint at the connections," Eldrian said, Two and him finishing the modification in a few minutes.

  "Seems almost like a humanoid robotic skeleton mix," Eldrian commented, the circular form of the joints reminding him of the joints of robots.

  They knew now that while mana wasn't blood and rather more like electricity, it wasn't that either. It didn't need to flow back and forth like blood did via two distinct pathways, but it also didn't need a completed circulation like electricity in a single pathway. It worked perfectly fine with dead ends, whether they had a purpose or were just dead ends.

  Pausing at the shoulders, pelvis, and head, Eldrian and Two thought on their optimum form for a while.

  "I've been thinking that we should make the pelvis and shoulders mana pools—— storages of mana. We have no idea if the heart will be able to store all the mana we are planning to insert." Two commented and Eldrian nodded, on the same page.

  The question instead was how.

  AN: I hope everyone is safe with all the chaos going on in the world.