What happened at the dining table was merely a hiccup to Benjamin. It will not impact his life much.
That was why he did not bother to think about it. Once he shut the door to his room and got to his bed, he immediately went back to the space of his consciousness.
It felt so long since he properly trained his magic.
In the darkness of his consciousness, two identical triangular magical symbols levitated in the air. There was an approximately 20-metre distance between the two, and each of them was glittering in brilliant blue.
Benjamin was very delighted when the Ice Breaking Rune materialized.
Before that, he was worried that with the huge strength difference between the first and second runes, one of it would become useless. Thankfully, his concerns were disproved when the new rune emerged.
These two runes were like reflections of each other in a mirror. Their strength was equal.
To categorize it, Benjamin decided to name them as the ‘Water Rune’ and ‘Ice Rune’ respectively. He thought about using a cooler name, such as ‘Emblem · Water’ and ‘Emblem · Ice’, but the System immediately laughed at how pompous they sounded. He had no choice but to give up after that.
After the names were chosen, Benjamin began his new experiment.
He started meditating and controlling the water particles to gather in the direction of the Water Rune. It did not take long for the water particles to come into contact with the Water Rune, and as usual, the rune glowed slightly as it absorbed the particles.
Meanwhile, the Ice Rune, which was floating 20 meters away, glowed in unison with the Water Rune.
Benjamin took note of the observation, nodding as he sunk into deep thought.
After he confirmed the strength of the two triangular symbols, he was confident of his hypothesis.
It was exactly as he thought! Benjamin was not fooled by the distance between the symbols now. He understood that the relation between the two runes was as tight as one between a human and his other self in an alternative timeline. When he commanded the Water Rune to absorb the water particles, the particle was divided into two in a split second, and was absorbed by both the Water and Ice Runes.
This will be interesting.
Could it be that this was related to the pure blue space that he was in before? If it was, then this will not be something that he could thoroughly understand in this period of time.
Benjamin was in a good mood. Even though his understanding of the runes was only preliminary, he was not anxious about it. He knew that there was no use for him to worry excessively over this, as it would be much better for him to take it slow and learn it one step at a time.
Now, there was another pressing matter that he had to attend to.
It was time for him to condense the third magical rune.
Without hesitation, he chanted the spell and summoned a little water ball. He let it levitate in the air. Then, as usual, he commanded the water particles to gather towards the water ball.
However, the water ball did not let out a ‘ding’ like it did previously.
Instead, it exploded with a ‘bang’.
Benjamin was dumbfounded. After he wiped off the water that splashed on his face, he opened his eyes and stared at the emptiness in his palms. He could sense that the water particles that he just gathered were dispersing rapidly.
What the hell?
There was a possibility of failure in this?
‘Failure’ is not a word in Benjamin’s dictionary. He immediately summoned another water ball and commanded the water particles to gather…
Bang!
Benjamin shook his hand and combed back his drenched hair. The two explosions left his heart cold.
Another failure.
If he only failed once, he could take that as a stroke of bad luck; but if it was twice, Benjamin knew that there must be a reason behind the failures.
He did not feel demotivated. Instead, he was excited as he felt the fire of curiosity light up in his heart again - he was just worrying about how he could find a new perspective to research magic!
After he gave some thought to it, Benjamin changed his methods. He used the Ice Breaking Spell to summon a transparent crystal of ice, and this time, he used the ice crystal as the core to gather the water particles.
Due to his past experiences, he distanced himself from the ice crystal before he started so that he could avoid getting injured if it exploded. Although he was not the real him when he was in his Space, but what if he could sustain an injury here? He was unwilling to take this risk.
In a blink of an eye, the water particles came in contact with the ice crystal.
Bang!
Benjamin shook his head helplessly. There was a tiny voice in his heart that was glad that he stood far enough from the crystal.
However, he was soon deep in his thoughts.
Neither the water ball nor ice crystal worked. What was the problem then? It was clearly written on Divine Arts 101 that a third magical rune can be materialized once the Zone of Prayer was unlocked. Since the divine arts and magic are essentially the same, this principle should be able to be applied here.
Why then would he face this problem when he was condensing the third magical rune?
Was it because of the new ‘nucleus condensation’ method that he came up with?
Benjamin started his fourth attempt, and this time he did not summon anything to be the nucleus. Instead, he merely gathered the water particles together and tried to condense them.
Bang!
Dumbfounded, Benjamin stared at the dispersed water particles.
Stop f*cking banging, for God’s sake, there is nothing for you to destroy with your explosion!
Now, he really ran out of ideas. Divine Arts 101 did not have much information on this particular way of training, and they did not mention whether it would be particularly difficult when one is condensing their third rune. Thus, he had no clue on what he should do to handle the present situation.
As they say, deviating from the mainstream is never easy.
Benjamin felt as if he spent the whole of his life downloading a game, but once he opened the downloaded file, an error message popped up: ‘There is an error in the application, the data cannot be read. Please click enter to stop the program.’ Previously, he could go online and surf for a patch to solve the error; but now where could he go to get a patch for the error in his Space?
What can he do?
As he brainstormed, Benjamin suddenly remembered his previous findings.
There were now two triangular symbols in his brain, namely the Water Rune and the Ice Rune. They are always synchronized. If another magical rune was added into the game, then there will be a tight relationship between the three symbols.
Was the failure in condensation caused by these two symbols?
Benjamin finally had an inkling of what was happening.
There were two possibilities he could think of: Firstly, both of the emblems were not strong enough to sustain a third one, and secondly, the bond between the two emblems was too strong that it repelled an outsider from joining in.
"What’s the point? Since they’re happy being all by themselves, why are you forcing them to go for a threesome? How could you expect them to agree?" The System popped up and said creepily.
"...Bye."
The System was extraordinarily excited like a perverted man looking at a lady, "Don’t think that way! You need to understand that a triangle is the most stable shape of all!"
"..."
Benjamin sighed.
He swore to God, he never did save anything that kinky into the System’s hard drive. The virus in it was getting more serious day by day.
Hold on.
…Triangle?
Benjamin was struck by a thought.
He turned to once again look at the two magical runes, and noticed that they were in a shape of an incomplete triangle. He once thought about the meaning behind the gap, but he never did reach a conclusion, which was why he set it aside.
Now, Benjamin suddenly felt that the third symbol must have some sort of relation to this triangle.
The problem was not the two symbols, but the position of the third one!
Maybe, the only way for the symbols to sustain their bond was to form a triangular shape with the positioning of the symbols!
Benjamin was once again ecstatic.
He immediately asked the System to measure the distance between the two magical runes. Then, he walked towards the point where there was an equal distance between his spot and the two runes.
With the accurate positioning of the symbol, Benjamin once again summoned a water ball at that point.
The water ball floated in the air. With the two magical runes, they formed three apexes for an equilateral triangle. Benjamin then guided the scattered water particle to gather around the water ball.
Alas, the long-awaited ‘Ding!’ was heard!
As Benjamin stared at the water ball that started to absorb the water particles by itself, he nearly teared up. It was like looking at the floating window of Xunlei Downloading Client that was stuck on 0KB for 24 hours and leapt to 2MB in a second.