I decided to go in the morning, Rather than the night. I did this because I wanted to be fully rested and because there would be more merchants leaving to collect things in the morning than at night. Having decided, I made my way up to my bed. 

The next morning I made my way down the hatch. I had set an alarm for earlier than any of the kids usually woke up. Once I was in the room I looked over to my desk. I had started to anticipate what Scrap would have built by the time I was awake again. 

On my desk was my cloak. This time though I found that it was decked out with runes. Looking closer I found Scrap inside messing with the fabric. “What you got for me,” I asked. Scrap popped his head out and looked up at me. He sent me some mental knowledge of what he had done to the cloak.

According to Scrap, he had refined his hastily done runes from before and Had even added some new ones. The runes he had added were defense and storage. Defense because he wanted to add a little more toughness to it. And storage for obvious reasons. Scrap sent me details on the storage rune apparently the larger the storage rune the larger the space inside. For example, Scraps was only about a meter in diameter. Where mine could fit almost 10m. It was a crazy huge space.

I thanked scrap, before grabbing my new staff. There was one thing I wanted to do before we left. Me and scrap had already added the rune for fire and enhance but I had thought there might be another rune in the book that I would want to add. I picked up the book and started to flip through its pages. Unfortunately, I couldn't find what I was looking for. But then I thought about it and checked again. This time I found what I wanted in the formation chapter. The formation in question was called Shield. It would allow me to make a barrier made of air. It was a formation that used new runes I hadn't used yet. 

The new runes were air, shape, and harden.  Air simply made air, it did the same thing as the fire rune it made it. shape was a little more complex in the sense that it directed elements like air and fire into the shape ‘wether a shield or a word’ of whatever it was directed to be. Harden turned non-solid things like air, water, fire, and the like into solids. The shield formation used these runes to make an air barrier around the target.

“Perfect,” I said. “Scrap help me put this on” we put the formation on the steel ball, being careful to leave as much space as we could for future runes and formations. Once complete, me and Scrap set off. I immediately poured mana into my cloak before leaving the room. It was a piece of cake from there. Making it to the gate I was not prepared for the line of scavengers and merchants trying to get out of the city. I had never come this close to the gate so I didn't know that these people were going to be here. 

It didnt change the plan though, I was still going to sneak past the guards and make my way to a safe and secluded spot away from the main trail that I had heard was used by merchants to travel between towns. Making my way to the gate, I was preparing myself to run just in case. It turned out I didn't need to. The light bend formation had worked once again allowing me easy access to outside the city.

I was finally outside the city. As an orphan, I never had enough value at one time to pay the exit fee or the protection that was required. But now I was surrounded by a grass field that stretched a few hundred feet out before colliding with trees as far as the eye could see. I took a deep breath in. It was different than what I was used to, it smelled fresh and unpolluted. 

Shaking myself out of my stupor, I prepared myself to head into the forest in search of a clear path to practice. Heading towards the tree line. I thought about whether there was a fly rune or not. I hadn't thought about it because I had never needed two. I was always protected by walls and had never had to travel so far in one go.

My musing was cut off when I reached a clearing that was a few hundred meters into the trees. “This will do,” I said. I turned off my cloak before pulling my Staff out of the Storage rune. That was going to be nice. 

Having the staff in hand, I decided to go with the shield spell first. I thrust my Staff outward and pumped my mana into the formation. The formation began to glow before a large amount of air was visibly pushed out of the formation. It then began to congeal together in the form of a sphere around me.

The mana drain was not as bad as I was expecting. Still, my mana had definitely grown because that same amount before would have knocked me out. Scrap started to clap on my shoulder. He turned towards me and sent me a positive feeling “thanks bud” I said

I tried walking up to the spell but it moved with me. Gripping my staff I commanded the formation to stop. Trying again it surprisingly didn't move. The spell felt odd like oobleck, thinking along those lines I tried punching it. It stopped my fist in place. “Wow, this could come in handy.

Now for the spell, I'd been waiting for. Gripping my staff once again I pointed it up willing the wall of air to move away. I pumped a large amount of mana into the spell. I had made the Flamethrower formation myself. It used a combination of the fire, enhance, and shape runes to direct a flaming stream of fire towards a directed spot. I suspected that it would act just like a real flamethrower but more tubular in motion rather than like a stream.

What I got was a tube of fire that shot a good hundred feet before dissipating. I felt the heat on my body. It was hot but not enough to do any damage to me. “Yes, we did it Scrap!” I yelled at my golem companion. We finally had something we could use to defend ourselves if we ever needed to.

I was so happy that I didn't even notice the 600-pound cat sneak up behind me. See the floods not only released echos into the world but it also changed the wildlife, At first, they were just more aggressive, but over time new creatures started popping up these were almost as bad as the echos. They usually were just overgrown animals that you could find naturally. A huge dear here, a large insect there. But occasionally you would find an animal with a different feature from normal. Like, say I don't know a 600-pound leopard with a third eye. While I had been distracted the beast had snuck up on me from behind. 

I heard the sound of air being displaced behind me. Quickly turning around, I came face to face with the biggest cat Id ever seen. It was in mid-leap. I felt my heart skip a beat, my whole body freezing in fear. “Was this it, was I going to die just like that?” I thought.

“Splat” I was momentarily confused tell I realized that my air barrier was still up, and had just saved my life for the first time. It would not be the last.

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