August 31, night.
With nothing to do that evening, Loren tested several sets of Runes arrays. He felt that Flamel was far too driven; his speed at reproducing theoretical models was so fast that Loren could barely keep up with designing them. It always felt as though he was being rushed to meet a deadline.
Flamel was probably the ideal form of artificial intelligence: he neither ate nor drank, never slept or rested, and did not even need charging. Whenever he was needed, he projected himself into the real world to test runes; when he was not, he retreated into Fantasy Book to test them there.
After several hours, Loren was exhausted in both body and mind. He lay back with an arm beneath his head and began trying to coax himself to sleep. Staring at the light on the ceiling, his pupils repeatedly dilated and contracted as he adjusted his focus to observe varying degrees of astigmatism.
Hazy and ethereal, the light was faint.
This was how he prepared himself for sleep. More than ten minutes passed, but the effect was minuscule—extremely minuscule. Vague outlines continued drifting before his eyes.
The light had no shape, yet it seemed capable of outlining everything. Those faint rays stretched and lengthened, gradually forming complex, twisted runes. They appeared in pairs, reflecting each other, and slowly became clearer.
Loren's blank mind instinctively began considering the meanings of the runes, ways to use those rune combinations, and how to combine them into the Alchemy model for the new Spatial Teleportation.
"..."
His mind grew clearer and clearer, more and more alert.
Loren even felt as if he could stay up all night.
"To think I'd get insomnia at such a young age. It's all Flamel's fault..."
Loren shook his head, throwing those complicated and