The Runic Artist Chapter 25: Chapter 343 - Wait of Expectation

Read chapter 25 of The Runic Artist by Ellake on NovelPedia.

From atop the Solaris, Nate watched as his painted army flowed forward like a tide in the colours of the rainbow. The world of Riverina was designed with the Concepts of the Delta, Water, and Jungle in mind. Thousands of other Concepts wafted through Nate’s senses like drifting scents. Ambush, Poison, Hunting, Mud, Stone, Stream…they all blended together but Nate could pluck out each one at a whim. With each new Concept added to his three-dimensional map of their Reality, he was awarded with Divine Energy. That same energy went towards creating more of his painted army below. Kiri stood nearby, half hanging over the railing as she kept her eyes glued to the extermination taking place below. Riverina was one of the more infested worlds, having a unique environment that suited a number of species with very high birth rates from among Belori’s horde. Nate could tell that many of the poisonous lizards and amphibians below weren’t even Mythic-tier in their Classes. Still, they made up for their lack of levels with numbers. Nate smiled at his sister when she glanced up at him, even as waves upon waves of processed mana floated up to them and were guided forcibly into the spatial aperture that he had created. Created Space let Nate make small worlds, and he wasn’t holding back on their many uses. This one held a chunk of mana crystal large enough to contain an aircraft carrier from Earth. That crystal was slowly being packed full of processed mana. After his conversation with Kali’Terra, Nate’s anger had reduced to a simmer. Like his master, Nate wanted The System gone from his Reality. By the same token, he could recognise the benefits it provided. Kali’Terra had pointed it out to Nate in no uncertain terms. It knew what Nate wanted, which was to achieve a society that had risen above scarcity, manufactured or otherwise. Mana had the power to provide that. The inner worlds of the Heartlands were proof of that. Nowhere had he seen people going hungry, suffering from backbreaking labour, or dying by preventable health concerns. Thinking about it, everything came down to energy. If you had enough cheap and reliable energy, you could do anything. Nate wasn’t calling the Heartlands perfect. Far from it. They were like a bunch of nation states, on a planetary scale, fighting over different limited resources. But the resources they fought over were those that allowed individuals and factions to move up in the stratified society that was brought about by the very same system that was providing the cheap energy. If that wasn’t a catch-22, Nate didn’t know what was. Whatever his solution was, it needed to achieve two goals. Removing The System, which in Nate’s head he separated from Kali’Terra, and retaining a cheap energy source. The question was, how? His mind had been working on the problem for days and he hadn’t gotten anywhere yet. Even with his heightened information processing powers, there were a lot of unknowns. Coupled with the fact that they need to keep pushing Belori’s hordes to maintain the initiative, he’d agreed to Grand Strategist Crastor’s plans and ventured to Riverina. Frick, Kiri, and Gwen had all elected to come. The rest were training back on the Risen Mountain, with Wulfgar starting to show very early signs of developing his Divine Vessel. Ankh had said it would likely be another half a year before the Bloodfear Executioner completed the very first step. With Kiri along, Nate had sought for a simple solution to dealing with the invaders on Riverina. They’d found that solution in a hold out of one of the native species. They were a form of amphibious lizard that seemed to specialise in camouflage and poison immunity as natural evolutionary developments that they then enhanced with Skills. The camouflage let them shift colours almost instantly. Those same skills and natural traits had allowed them to not only hide from the majority of the invaders, but actively hunt them. They’d done so in organised packs. Kiri had stole