The Big Bang System - Chapter 42

Space: vast, mysterious, eternal. One of the most complicated forces in the universe will naturally be coupled with one of the most complicated runes. nivus, one of the largest runes and also the single most complicated one found in the arcanus; also the key rune of the teleporter.

If she was to complete it, Angela would first have to master the rune, practice it until she could create it with her eyes closed. Naturally, this would be the greatest test of her runic abilities thus far.

Reality, however, has other plans. Plans with which it slaps Angela in the face multiple times. She is completely unable to make one whit of progress, getting more and more infuriated as she goes on. Eventually, after attempt seven hundred and something (she lost count somewhere in the five hundred) she can take it no longer.

After a small mistake in one of the sub-structures of the rune, Angela groans despondently and lets her head fall, impacting the table with a bonk. No matter how hard she tried or how many different things she attempted, nothing is working, she has hit a complete dead end.

At this point, she wants to give up but she cannot. She wants to keep going but she cannot. Angela is trapped between a rock and a hard place with no clear direction in which to go. For now, she decides that it is best to take a break, her emotions were clearly causing some of her mistakes.

And so she sits there, legs dangling into the void, contemplating. In order to understand why she is making the mistakes, Angela runs through each one of them; breaking them down from a retrospective view. Now that she is not working on the runes directly, Angela finds that it is actually far easier to understand what went wrong when she takes a different viewpoint.

With each mistake she understands, Angela gets one step closer to taking her abilities to another level; gradually improving bit by bit. Frankly, the thing that confused her the most is how quickly she is progressing. In her mind she doesn’t feel like she has any sort of incredible talent and yet, compared to the speed at which the book dictates, she is finding it far too easy.

Though it might seem like she will quickly be finished, do not consider it to be a walk in the park. It must be kept in mind that the original timeframe to learn such a rune is counted in the years. Even at the incredible pace that Angela learns, it is still a gradual process, one that will take her some time. As of right now, she still only comprehends a small part of the greater whole, perhaps as little as 10%.

In the meantime, while Angela has completely forgotten about the events of the morning, Lenara is currently fraught with worry. She had run away for fear of being scolded and, due to her rather short period of contact with the kinds of emotions felt by humans, has to think long and hard about what to do next.

One part of her wants to go back and apologise, though she doesn’t know how she will word such a thing. The other part of her is rather terrified, too afraid to go back and hoping that if she waits long enough Angela will just forget which, ironically, she already has.

Eventually though, Lenara decides that sitting around will achieve nothing, and so she goes to find Angela. Upon arriving, Lenara finds that Angela is so engrossed with her runes that she doesn’t even notice Lenara’s arrival. Rather than interrupt her from what is clearly an important task, Lenara instead sits meekly at the side, a spitting image of a child that got caught misbehaving.

After a short period of time, Angela suddenly stops, blinking dazedly. Only now does she notice Lenara’s presence, jumping a little. “Ah, when did you get here…. well, whatever, I was just about to go looking for you.”

“O-oh.” Chirped Lenara, the uncharacteristic reply baffling Angela.

“Is something wrong” she responds quizzically; she honestly has no idea what is going on. This time it is Lenara’s turn to be baffled. She had completely expected to be berated but she has learned from her past mistakes and decides to not bring it up, instead trying to regain her usual demeanour. “Nothing, what was it that you wanted?”

Upon being brought back to the original topic Angela’s brain short-circuited for a moment before she remembered what she had wanted in the first place. “Oh yea, soon I will be going back to Earth for a short period of time, I wanted you to come with me.”

Lenara gasps, with all the conversation she has been having with Angela, she had heard much about ‘Earth’, this foreign place with magical things called machines. Naturally, she would jump at any opportunity to be able to go there.

“Of course, I would be delighted to.”