“Oh but dear boy, we have already met. Haven’t we?”

Villin wanted to reply but was completely incapable of doing so. His entire body had frozen up as terror overwhelmed him. When he looked into Granolf’s eyes he didn’t see the eyes of a human. No, it felt as if he was looking into an endless abyss capable of engulfing him at any time.

“You’re lucky this place is considered the territory of the white tower kid.” the man said slowly as he continued staring Villin in the eyes.

Once Granolf turned around Villin slumped down, if he were standing earlier he would’ve surely fallen down but luckily he was sitting. He felt mentally drained as well as terrified of the man who just walked away from him.

Ruby looked confused, she could see the sweat on Villin’s face and the terrified expression he had a few seconds ago. “What happened?” even though she heard the words that were spoken they didn’t seem enough to get Villin in this kind of state.

Villin waited a full minute before responding, at which point he had also used a spell to get rid of the sweat “I think he wanted to kill me.” he managed to say after this time.

“Bloodthirst?” Ruby asked as she looked at Granolf who was now talking to another runemaster a dozen meters away.

Villin hesitated for a moment before nodding “I think so.”

It didn’t need to be said that Villin was no longer in the mood to exchange pointers with Ruby. 

Seeing his situation Ruby looked at him for a few seconds before reaching into her bag and taking out a translucent pill. “A hundred crystals and you can have it.” she said bluntly, throwing the small pill toward Villin.

Villin barely managed to catch the pill before looking at her with a confused expression.

“It’s a mind-gathering pill. Helps you recover some mental energy. You’ll be worse off tomorrow but I’d say today is more important.” Ruby quickly explained.

Villin nodded before throwing the pill into his mouth, a hundred crystals were nothing compared to what could be gained here.

Once he took the pill, Villin felt himself getting into a meditative state. Ten minutes later he awakened, he felt refreshed and the exhaustion and fear from earlier were mostly gone.

At this point, about twenty runemasters had already arrived, and the rest was set to arrive within the next twenty minutes. Ruby had moved from her seat and was exchanging pleasantries with two other runemasters not far away from him.

Villin got out of his seat and scoured the room for Granolf. He didn’t seem to be anywhere in sight so he should be in one of the side-rooms such as the one they had entered through.

After properly focusing himself, Villin began looking around the room and thinking back to the documents he had read, figuring out the identities of the guests close to him.

Five minutes later Villin was once more approached by an elderly man, this man, however, looked quite different. The man had a monocle and long grey hair. What was the most eye-catching though was the man’s robe. Unlike most of the people here, he wasn’t wearing a silver robe filled with enchantments, instead, his robe was a shining green. When the man approached Villin, Villin felt his mind clear up further because of the effect of the green robe the man was wearing.

“You must be the white tower’s newest find. It is quite impressive for someone of your age to have such shining achievements.” the man said in a kindred tone.

“Achievements gained solely by talent do not qualify as achievements at all. I have yet to prove myself elder Tian.” Villin responded gracefully.

It wasn’t hard to recall the name of this man as it was one of the people Villin paid special attention to the previous day. He was known as Elder Tian, one of the heads of the green tower, he was a man of great importance.

Hearing Villin’s surprisingly insightful comment, elder Tian nodded approvingly, there were few willing to downplay the importance of talent. “In that case, I shall wait for true accomplishments to form before praising you again.” the man paused for a moment before speaking on “Though perhaps, would you have a demonstration for this old man to see your talent first-hand?”

Villin was surprised by the man’s request but didn’t mind in the slightest “I would be honored to show you my newest combat puppet but I’m afraid I’ll have to wait to showcase it in the competition later.” Villin smiled politely at the man, “I do have a few other smaller objects but I’m afraid they are all quite the normal contraptions.”

As Villin said so he took out a couple of small objects, this included the disk he showed Ruby earlier and a number of different small objects.

Elder Tian smiled awkwardly, “I’m afraid I don’t know much about runologie young man. Even though I look forward to seeing your puppet’s strength in the competition.”

After another minute or so the elder took his leave to go talk to some other people. Villin couldn’t help but feel it was a shame he didn’t have anything to show the man but didn’t linger on it, it was about time for him to begin introducing himself.

And so he went around, introducing himself to a number of other runemasters. A surprising number of runemasters asked something similar compared to elder Tian but unlike the elder, these runemasters were able to properly understand the objects Villin took out.

Villin was rather happy with the situation overall, he showed off some of the objects he had made, and the runemasters he talked to generally gave him a pointer or two on how to improve his work.

But other than this, Villin had accidentally hyped up his combat puppet quite a bit. It was normal that this would happen, it was always the first thing he mentioned when someone asked him about his capabilities and yet he kept them in suspense. Other than this Villin and Ruby were a big conversation topic anyway, after all, they were the two youngest runemasters alive. 

After spending about an hour walking about and talking to a number of runemasters, Villin found out how exactly this gathering worked. This gathering wasn’t exactly for the trading of information, these people would do that all year through. Instead, there was a massive amount of gossip in this gathering.

It really was quite weird, seeing a bunch of men and women with grey hair gossiping as if they were kids in high-school, but well, Villin couldn’t blame them. Gossiping was fun and apparently being a runemaster was a rather lonely job, working at projects for months on end, and then when you finally see someone it would just be to talk about this very same job again.

The people here were, of course, extremely passionate about runology but very few runemasters were actually talking about techniques or inventions, it was mostly about the outside world or the private life of certain runemasters.

Villin actually found the atmosphere quite pleasant, he had almost forgotten that Granolf was there as well. The only thing he found a bit of a shame was the age of the people here, almost everyone was over sixty.

Nonetheless, time passed quickly and it was just about time for the dates and special guests to arrive.