Angel froze at Kesha's answer. "The rate at which soul power dissipates has slowed?"
Kesha nodded. "Yes, I'm certain. None of the runes we tested before affected the dissipation of soul power. Only this Spirit Stream Rune slowed it down."
Standing on the Spirit Stream Rune, Kesha touched her chin and focused on what she could sense. "It's dissipating at roughly half the usual rate."
Seeing Angel fall into thought, Kesha hesitated before asking, "But slowing it down and stopping it are two different things. Is this actually useful?"
Angel shook his head. "I don't know, but I can keep exploring in this direction..."
The Spirit Stream Rune was a control-type rune.
Angel had picked it at random, simply to see what effect "control" might have.
He had held out little hope. In fact, he had thought the Spirit Stream Rune the least likely to work. Yet the only rune that affected the rate of soul-power dissipation was the one he had doubted most.
He still did not know whether a control-type rune could stop soul power from dissipating. But at the very least, it had affected soul power!
That meant "control" was a viable path!
Whether that path led somewhere or ended in a dead end, he would only know by trying it.
The Encyclopedia of Enchanting likely contained plenty of similar runes, so Angel decided to follow this path first.
After giving Kesha the five rune scrolls, Angel had her leave the classroom.
He stayed behind and opened the Encyclopedia of Enchanting again.
When Angel had searched for runes earlier, he had had no method at all. He had picked whichever ones struck him as promising, eventually ending up with those five.
This time, his search had a clear direction.
He looked only for runes that could