Immortality System: The Last Human's Transmigration

"I... Don't have anything?" I asked, perplexed by her words.

"Well, I scanned your body with my senses and tried to find if there were any runes on your body, ranging from cellular ones to maybe ones that you simply couldn't see. However, after finally catching nothing, I realized something was weird so I scanned your whole body..." She paused, making a tiny bit of anger flare within my eyes.

I had not come here to be constantly left on cliffhangers!

"What is it?!" I asked impatiently.

"I couldn't really find your mana circuits, or channels, depends on what you want to call them." She scratched her cheek and thought for a few more seconds and continued-

"Then I checked once more and realize that something was wrong with your mana core itself, so I went to check it out, and I'm not sure how this is possible but, I saw it in the center of your body, emanating mana and spreading it equally throughout your entire body. Honestly, I have no idea what it means to have that kind of mana core since I've never seen anything like it, but I truly doubt that there is nothing wrong with it." She firmly stated, a slight frown on her face and she thought back to the scene.

What she had chosen to leave out however had been the blood-red drop in the middle of my mostly translucent mana core. It did not release any energy, but it still sent a shiver down Blanca's spine the moment she looked at it.

It felt like the blood-red drop had been encapsulated within the mana core, like some kind of wild beast that would destroy anything within its path the moment it was released.

As she looked at it for the second time, another chill ran down her spine, but this time it was not due to its sinister nature of the sensation one would get when looking directly at it, but rather because she remembered the aura.

'Those eyes...' She thought to herself, still shuddering, something that I did not miss no matter how subtle it was.

'She's not telling me something...' I thought to myself but was forced to let the subject go. I would gain almost nothing from forcing Blanca to tell me, and it would only ruin the relationship that we had built over the last few weeks.

"Anyway, that doesn't matter anymore. I've learned all about tier 0 runes, can you teach me about tier 1 runes?" I asked, causing her to sigh and also sit down next to me.

While before she might have made sure that there was a significant area between the two of us, in the last few weeks we had grown comfortable enough around one another to sit next to each without her trying to pull any extreme stunts or me becoming uncomfortable.

While I didn't really know how she felt, I knew that I felt nothing more than companionship towards her, rather than thinking of her romantically, something she had clearly tried to bring up as a subject but eventually failed after seeing my disinterest.

It was not that I didn't think she was beautiful, it was just that I kept seeing my sister's face whenever I looked at Blanca's eyes, making me grimace as the same feeling of dread and anger filled my being to the brim every single time. I knew that I couldn't stop it from happening, but I knew that it could only get easier every time it happened so I wasn't too worried.

"Tier 0 runes are the foundation runes. They are the fundamentals of runic formations. Individually they can become powerful weapons, enchantments, or tactical circuits used to link an energy source to an object that requires energy. However, when different tier zero runes are used together, they become something much stronger." She explained.

For the next few hours, she explained the core principles underlying the difference between tier zero and tier one.

Yes, tier zero could be used to, for example, harden a leaf to become as strong as a plate of glass, or sharpen a wooden stick to slash through a normal animal, but that is its limitation.

Runes were a language of their own a bit like maths. Bring several numbers together and through a bit of algebra, you could get a number with enough digits to make most look away in fear.

Tier 0 runes are like trying to use a single word to describe something, while Tier 1 is where you make a sentence or describe the thing.

And so, for the next few days, I tried my hardest to master the use of tier 1 runes, but it was obvious that such a thing would be close to impossible to do in such a small time frame. It had taken me a month to master the use of Tier 0 runes, and while it could be argued that my comprehension should have sped up by now, I knew that it would take me another month or two to completely understand and have the capability to implement what I had learned.

At the same time, I had been making sure to not slack off with my other training. We had been moving around a lot, and while I might have reached a bottleneck when it comes to improving my martial arts, I still had other ways to strengthen my battle prowess without becoming stronger through stats.

'Maybe this is a blessing in disguise.' I mused to myself while thrusting my spear toward a hog that was trying to fight against me, but after feeling my overwhelming power, it stopped in its place and immediately went on the defensive.

"Tsk"

After having seen it was trying to defend and run away even though it was the one to attack first, I controlled some of my mana and poured it into my spear, causing many of the runes on the spear to glow a before energy exploded out of it, shocking the hog frozen.

Learning how to use runes also came with the control of mana. Every time I progressed in the use of runes, the control of my mana would skyrocket, making me finally capable of using the mana within me to fight. While this was not the same blood-red mana from before, it was still pretty powerful, my control rivaling many of the beasts in the forest while my power exceeded those who were considered realms above me, or minor realms as Blanca likes to say.

Before the hog could even understand what had happened, a spear had pierced through it with enough force to decimate everything behind it, creating a whole that spanned several dozens of meters into the distance, piercing through almost every rock and tree.

"Hmph." I sneered at the hog that dared to attack me so boldly, yet it could not hear anything I did since it was dead.

However, at this moment something caught my attention as a feeling began to enter my heart as if trying to point me in a specific direction. It was a sensation that I had felt before, and after trying to pinpoint when, I remembered the golden fruit that I had eaten, followed by the killing of multiple reptiles, a treant, and a skinwalker.

If I remembered correctly, skinwalkers with mythical witches who wore the skins of animals, but it seemed like the myths were right to a certain extent. I was more than certain that they would be able to turn into animals too in this world, so it would only mean that skinwalkers in this are more powerful than what humans tried to portray them as.

Anyway, since this feeling was close to overwhelming by now, I chose to run back to Blanca and inform her of what I was feeling.

No longer would I take risks that would risk my life for no real reason. The last time I listened to this sensation I almost died, so this time I might as well bring some back-up just in case.