Building a System from Scratch

"Y-you... you want to learn my magic?"

What had Ciri just heard? A demon who believed in chaos and darkness actually wanted to learn the magic possessed by the God of Order.

"I don't see anything wrong with that."

Joshua had no idea why Ciri was so shocked, though the Female Mage had been in a state of frightened unease ever since earlier.

"There really isn't."

Aside from the gods of a few factions, many mages in the world believed in more than one god, using this to diversify the magic they could learn.

The strength of one's faith had nothing to do with one's own power. What the gods bestowed were merely seeds of magic power; whether they took root and flourished depended entirely on the mage's own learning.

Thus, most people in this world merely treated "gods" as tools for learning magic rather than objects of genuine worship. Ciri was one of them.

If there was anything mages truly worshipped, it was probably something called "knowledge."

Ciri took a wooden statue from the pocket of her robe and placed it on the ground. A pale white glow flickered at her fingertips.

After tracing a few lines across the floor with her fingers, a magic circle formed from pale white radiance began rotating around the wooden carving at its center.

"Just touch the wooden carving with your hand."

In Ciri's world, everyone underwent this ritual at the age of six. Regardless of talent, seeds with different magical attributes would be planted within their bodies.

It was also a necessary procedure for living in the human world, much like an ID card on Earth. Only with an ID card could one be considered a citizen.

This was also Ciri's first time presiding over such a ritual. She was an utter novice who had not even obtained a second-level magic certificate, and not only was she hosting the ritual, its subject was a demon!

If the God of Order truly existed, she hoped he would not send divine punishment down upon her.

This was Ciri's first prayer since she began believing in the God of Order.

"Like this?"

Joshua did not sense any danger from the magic circle Ciri had drawn. The magic power filling it was pitifully scarce, about the same as the Light Spell from earlier.

So Joshua followed Ciri's instructions and touched the wooden statue.

Pale white radiance began gathering at Joshua's fingertips, then flowed through the wooden statue and into his body.

More and more radiance emerged, filling the entire room with Faint Light Particles. When all of it had poured into Joshua's body, he discovered that something extra had appeared in his field of vision.

Complex written symbols. Joshua could see them the moment he opened his eyes—more than a hundred of them. The symbols did not belong to any language system Joshua knew, yet he understood their meaning.

The first symbol represented 1, the second represented 0, and there were also the meanings of a and b.

"The symbols appearing in my vision... are they Runes?"

Joshua waved his hand and found that the symbols vanished into the air. When he thought of them again, they reappeared before his eyes.

Joshua had seen these symbols before. The Third Prince's inventions had been engraved with many symbols in the same script. These Runes replaced mechanical gears, supporting the operation of those magic-powered machines.

"Runes. Runes of Order."

It had worked... Ciri had never expected a demon to successfully accept a seed of magic power.

That gave Ciri a sense of relief, along with a small feeling of accomplishment.

She was the first person in the world to make a demon accept the magic power of Order! Even her wealthy Elder Sister could never achieve something like that.

"How many Runes can you see? Two counts as passing, three counts as excellent, and four puts you at the level of a genius."

Ciri repeated what her first magic teacher—the teacher who had once helped awaken her magic power—had told her.

Back then, she had been an extraordinary genius who could see five Runes the instant her magic power awakened!

"Numbers?"

Joshua opened his eyes again and glanced over the dense mass of symbols before him. By rough estimate, there were more than two hundred.

"More than two hundred," Joshua said.

"What?!"

Ciri had only just managed to use pride and smugness to wash away her fear, but the moment she heard Joshua's answer, she froze.

There were two standards for judging whether a mage was powerful. The first was the amount of magic power contained within their body, and the second was the number of Runes they possessed.

Runes were the most fundamental elements used to construct magic. To cast a powerful spell, one not only needed a great deal of magic power, but also had to arrange and chant hundreds or even thousands of Runes.

The acquisition of Runes depended on a mage's own degree of understanding of this world—in other words, "knowledge"!

Ciri herself had only mastered a little over twenty magic Runes. She had awakened them only after spending five or six years studying all over the place, but what was going on with the demon before her?

More than two hundred?!

If he was not lying, the knowledge this guy possessed, and his understanding of this world, might be even more profound than that of the Archmages in Nolan's Council of Seven!

"This is..."

Ciri's entire worldview had suffered a violent impact. She had already forgotten that she was in the dangerous situation of being "kidnapped by a demon," and stared intently at the series of Runes floating before Joshua.

She recognized several of those Runes. Their meaning was "air." She had used those very Runes earlier to construct the magic called the Impact Spell.

"The Periodic Table of Elements," Joshua said.

"The... what?"

"Nothing."

Joshua waved his hand, and the pale white words before him vanished.

This was merely the Periodic Table of Elements Joshua had formed by arranging and combining some of those more than two hundred Runes. Runes were like the phonetics of Chinese characters: through different combinations and arrangements, they could form different meanings.

And from the experiment just now, Joshua had confirmed that these Runes could be set so that only he could see them. If he wanted, he could also let others see them.

But compared to using them to construct magic, Joshua realized that the essence of Runes bore an astonishing resemblance to something he was familiar with.

That was... computer language.

An advanced version of C language, complete with a language library!

At that thought, Joshua, who had been a game designer and part-time programmer on Earth, had a bold idea.

It seemed Joshua could use these Runes to code a system! His memory was insanely good now, and he had even worked at Microsoft for a while.

It did not matter that he had not received a system as a cheat after transmigrating! Joshua could code one himself. Whether it was Windows 98 or Windows XP, Joshua could write either system!

Though it would take a long time, Joshua believed he could manage a simplified version without much trouble.

Only then did Joshua suddenly realize how interesting magic in this world actually was.

"Ciri, are you happy learning magic?"

This new discovery prompted Joshua to ask that question.

"..."

Happy? Quite happy. Before meeting Joshua, Ciri definitely would have answered that way. After all, her talent for learning magic was one in ten thousand, but...

Ciri looked at the string of magic Runes before Joshua that she had never even seen before, and instantly felt the urge to think, Why the hell am I learning magic? I should pack up and go back to my Hometown to get married!

But that depended on whether Joshua was willing to let her go.