Re: Tales of the Rune-Tech Sage Chapter 865: Perfect Rune Canvass

CH0865 Perfect Rune Canvass

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Alex and Udara moved their discussion to Alex’s work area within the Sanctuary space.

"Are you sure you don’t want me to give you a rundown of what I am planning to do?" Alex asked.

"I’m sure. I know you won’t do anything to harm me, plus I’m likely just going to agree to anything you want to do anyway," Udara replied.

"That’s..." Alex was speechless.

He wanted to berate her, but he didn’t even know where to begin. To make matters worse, she looked at him with a charming, innocent face that showed she truly and fully trusted his judgement.

Alex gave up any thoughts of berating her.

He had her lie on the tattoo bed, then proceeded to inject the drone serum into her body. Afterwards, they exited the Sanctuary space while the drones settled into her cells and became a permanent part of her body.

Alex and his three wives enjoyed a meal together that night.

The next day, the drones had sufficiently settled into Udara’s cells, and the data from them was uploaded to Orion, which processed the information.

’As I expected...’

Alex sighed to himself as he parsed through the results presented to him by Orion.

The information Alex received from Orion lent some credence to his previous deductions regarding Udara’s Bloodline situation. However, it also brought some changes to his plans.

He held his chin. ’Actually, this might be a good thing. I can probably do more now.’

He looked over the Rune Tattoo designs mentally with Orion. He made some last-minute adjustments, then had Orion refine the final draft.

The data had brought Alex to a realisation that necessitated significant changes to the Rune Tattoo he had planned for Udara.

’Fortunately, these changes are more beneficial to her than I originally planned, and aren’t necessarily difficult to implement,’ Alex thought to himself.

It took the entire day, but Alex managed to revamp the design into something more suitable for Udara based on the information he had.

On the third day since returning to Fonterra, Alex returned to the Sanctuary pocket dimension to prepare the ingredients for his newest Rune Tattoos.

Udara also entered the space just as Alex was bringing out a stash of materials he had kept securely away in the pocket dimension’s storage area.

The stash of materials was kept in spatial boxes with a cumbersome locking mechanism that required Alex’s biometrics, mana signature, and a specific mana flow sequence.

Udara raised an eyebrow when she saw how much effort Alex had put into securing the items in the chests.

Alex opened the chests to reveal their contents. One vial contained a brownish-red liquid, alongside a rough, sphere-like nut, an abyssal black rock, and another canister containing purple-red liquid.

"What are those?" Udara asked.

"Materials I selected specifically to make runic ink for your Rune Tattoo. A vial of Amazon war beast blood essence, a Treant heart, a rock from the Shadow Realm, and a canister of Kitsune heartblood."

Udara looked a bit stunned. Each of these materials was quite rare.

They weren’t top-class items like Dragon’s blood or Phoenix feathers. However, they were expensive because a bounty had to be specifically placed on them to obtain them. And even then, there weren’t many people who would actively seek to fulfil such a bounty.

As a result, Alex had to fork out two High-grade mana stones, worth about 1 million gold coins, to obtain these four ingredients.

And these were just a few of the expensive ingredients Alex had collected within the storage area, reserved only for his most important projects.

"Do you really need to use these expensive ingredients?" she asked, a bit overwhelmed.

"Of course. This will be my most ambitious and finest work to date!" Alex said exaggeratedly, accompanied by a smug smirk.

He intentionally made the cost of the ingredients seem more about his own ambitions and less about Udara’s rune requirements, trying to unburden her.

And for the most part, it looked like the woman bought it as she nodded obliviously.

Alex inwardly heaved a sigh of relief.

This was one of the few times he was grateful that Udara took anything he said at face value.

Alex quickly began processing the ingredients into runic ink while Udara simply watched with a faint smile on her face.

It was a simple but blissful moment for her.

While the ingredients couldn’t be compared to a mystical ingredient like a Dragon’s heart, it didn’t make Alex any less careful when processing them.

Each ingredient was processed into four different sets of runic ink, which were then divided among different rune pen cartridges for easy switching.

Alex then processed a bunch of other runic ink ingredients—which were more common—to make a fifth set of runic ink, which he purified strictly with AetherKindle.

He didn’t do so for the previous four because, unfortunately, they wouldn’t fare well in the face of AetherKindle’s flames—no matter how well-suited for refining the Primal Origin Flame they were.

With all the ink sets produced and ready, Alex motioned for Udara to take a seat on the Rune Tattoo bed.

Udara stood in front of the bed and shyly dropped her clothes, baring her body before him, save for her panties.

Although he was mentally prepared this time, he was still left struck with awe by the muscular, well-toned, yet lithe and athletic body in front of him.

It didn’t help that Udara lost control and unknowingly released her Charm on him, which his mental defences didn’t designate as a threat.

Alex’s breathing became laboured, and before he knew it, he had pushed her down onto the Rune bed.

"Master...?"

Fortunately, Udara’s soft and shy voice broke him out of his trance.

His mental defences finally kicked in, and he forcibly recovered himself.

He groaned inwardly in disappointment at himself. Despite his preparations, he had still fallen prey to his baser instincts.

While he admonished himself, he failed to notice the flash of disappointment, followed by a smile, on Udara’s face.

"The bed is comfortable, right?" Alex faked a cough and asked. "Excellent, let’s begin." He quickly added, not giving Udara a chance to respond.

For the next couple of days, Alex drew the most complex Rune Tattoos he had ever created on Udara.

Udara was indeed the perfect canvas for his Rune Tattoos.

For one, he needed to do very little to prepare her Rune Slots before inscribing the Rune Tattoos into them. It was as though they were already in a ready state, waiting to accept his Rune Tattoos.

But more significant was the capacity of each Rune Slot.

A basic Strength Rune required a Rune Slot capacity of 3, while a Vitality Rune required a capacity of 5. Meanwhile, more complex runes like Alex’s own Everspring Rune and Zora’s original Siphon Rune took up a capacity of 8.

Each of Udara’s five Rune Tattoos, on the other hand, took up at least 12 units of capacity each, yet each of Udara’s Rune Slots looked like they still had more capacity to spare.

Even the actual act of drawing the rune into the Rune Slot was flawless. Alex could have sworn that Udara’s Rune Slots had an enabling effect that made drawing the runes seem more effortless than usual.

As a result, he spent half as much focus and Spiritual Force as usual, making the entire series of sessions the most pleasurable tattooing experience Alex had had since creating his first Rune Tattoo.

Alex shook his head.

’I can recall the joy of the session later. It’s time to see if the project worked,’ he thought to himself.

"Are you done, Master?" Udara asked.

Alex unconsciously swallowed a mouthful of saliva now that he had stepped back to take a full look at her.

Thanks to the tattoos—both directly and indirectly—Udara now exuded even more allure, to the point that it was taking Alex’s full concentration not to pounce on her again.

’A succubus... Succubus!’ Alex screamed to himself.

Alex had never met an actual succubus before, but he believed Udara’s charm at the moment could compete with that of any succubus.

It especially didn’t help his nether regions that he had already fallen prey to the temptation. He had designed one of the Rune Tattoos to closely resemble a Succubus Crest from some... ’niche’ literature from his previous life.

And worse, he had drawn it around her navel area, just like in those ’niche’ source materials.

Alex quickly turned his attention to the other runes on Udara’s body.

In the span of a couple of days, Udara had jumped ahead in the unofficial and undisclosed competition between Alex’s wives to now possess five Rune Tattoos.

The Succubus Queen’s Crest was drawn around her stomach and navel area, the Shadow Ruler’s Marking stretched from her forehead down her temple, a Warrior Crest extended from her right shoulder to her back, a Verdant Sigil wrapped along her left leg, and a Harmony Mark rested on her chest, between her breasts.

If it wasn’t immediately obvious, the first four runes in the group were designed or modelled after each of Udara’s four bloodlines, while the final rune was meant to combine them into a Rune Set whose function was to harmonise her four bloodlines.

The Shadow Matriarch rune tattoo set

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