Re: Tales of the Rune-Tech Sage

Chapter 180: Conditional Spell

CH180 Conditional Spell

***

A wry smile tugged at Alex’s lips.

A cursory internal check confirmed his suspicion—his Mana Heart had completely shut down, and his mana pathways throbbed with dull pain.

’I won’t be able to use mana for a few days,’ he concluded.

Honestly, he’d been expecting worse. Paying a price for unleashing that kind of power was inevitable.

There was simply no way an Early Intermediate-ranked mage, even one as uniquely built as he was, could kill a Mid-Class 3 Earth Drake—a true Dragonkin—without suffering serious backlash.

Losing access to mana for just a few days? That was a blessing.

If not for his meticulous planning and flawless execution, the outcome would have been far more tragic. Maybe even fatal.

Yes, the Earth Drake had a weakness to magical attacks, but that was only when compared to its drake kin. At the end of the day, it still carried a sliver of dragon blood—one of the purest and most blessed lineages in the known world.

And with that blood came many blessings—an instinctive favour from elemental mana and heightened resistances to spells.

Alex, too, enjoyed a touch of this favour, though it was often eclipsed by his other two, more dominant bloodlines parts.

He knew full well that his current mana capacity and spell penetration wouldn’t have broken through the Drake’s defences—not quickly enough to kill it before it retaliated.

Drastic times called for drastic measures.

If he couldn’t provide the power from within, then he had to draw it from the world outside.

His first thought had been to sketch a formation—a Mana Amplification or Spell Penetration Array. But even as he considered it, he realised the plan was doomed.

Earth Drakes were notoriously sensitive to ambient mana fluctuations. The moment he began drawing the formation, it would notice the change and interfere before he could finish.

Not to mention, his current knowledge and skill in field-deployable formation drawing weren’t anywhere near fast or subtle enough.

So, he’d sought an alternative—Conditional Casting.

A forbidden fruit few mages bothered to reach for.

Conditional Casting demanded synchronicity with the world and obedience to a set of metaphysical conditions in exchange for a massive boost in spellcasting power.

There were many types, from the basic to the near-impossible due to their complexity. The boost gained usually scaled with the difficulty of the condition.

For example, Casting fire spells in hot environment like a desert or near lava flows. Channeling water magic by a lake or river. These were elementary-level tricks at foundational level difficulty.

But what Alex attempted was far more intricate.

He synchronised with the transition between Night and Day.

A fleeting moment at sunset—when the sky held equal weight of both darkness and light. That delicate balance granted him a temporary, potent alignment with the natural world.

Using Netherspark mana to link with the rising night, and Solar mana to bind with the falling day, Alex achieved a harmony that amplified both.

A moment of true equilibrium—seized, shaped, and unleashed.

For a brief window of time, Alex gained access to a vast, stabilised pool of balanced mana—mana of both day and night.

This rare synchronisation enabled him to not only cast spells that required immense reserves of either Netherspark or Solar Mana but also unleash a spell that demanded a massive infusion of both in perfect harmony.

Ordinarily, he couldn’t do this. His mana control hadn’t yet reached the level required to combine the two—Solar and Netherspark—into a unified spell.

Not even Spell Interception via OmniRune could bypass this limitation. The problem wasn’t just incompatibility. His mana natures were inherently more antithetical than even typical light and darkness. After all, both Solar and Netherspark were themselves composite mana types. Solar was formed from light and fire. Netherspark, from darkness and lightning.

Balancing light and dark was already a feat. Balancing those plus their elemental counterparts? It was far, far easier said than done.

Thus, Alex turned to conditional casting. He leveraged natural law and the world’s own balance to do what his body couldn’t.

But that came with a cost.

He was syncing himself to a power source far beyond what his Intermediate-rank physique could endure—even one enhanced by dragon blood and ancestral lineage.

To put it in perspective, what he was attempting brushed the outer edges of Legendary-tier power.

He had, at most, two seconds to cast a spell before his body began to break down. Five seconds before it shattered entirely.

So, he did what he always did.

He gambled.

And he cheated.

Using OmniRune, he burned the first second executing the highest-tier, most powerful—and until now, purely theoretical—spells he could cast.

With meticulous timing, he had pre-cast two Grade 6 spells, hidden inside the formation of [Sunglow Dusk Veil], the spell that acted as the trigger for conditional casting and a container to cloak the other two.

The Spell formations of the two Grade 6 spell were akin to redundant/useless parts of the [Sunglow Dusk Veil]’s spell formation that would remain -albeit inactive- as long as the Veil remained.

This allowed Alex to later power the spells instantaneously by just channelling mana into them.

This was not a conventional casting method. It was only possible due to OmniRune’s unique ability to parse, manage, and layer spell structures at a fundamental level.

The instant the synchronisation to the dual-natured mana pool locked into place, Alex funnelled the first surge of that overwhelming power into the two dormant Grade 6 spell circles.

That gave him another second—possibly two—to attempt something even more audacious. But more importantly, the two spells softened what came next.

The Solar spell reinforced his body, shielding it against the inevitable backlash from channelling such unnatural power.

The Netherspark spell locked the Drake in place—stunned, paralysed, and bound. That meant Alex didn’t have to waste precious concentration guiding his next spell toward a moving target, saving his Spiritual Force and already-overloaded mind.

In short, it let him fire and forget.

These were especially significant because the Special Warfare spell he’d devised by combining his mana natures had turned out to be far more powerful than anticipated—so too was the backlash.

He couldn’t control the [Void LightningFire] at all. The best he could manage was to shoot it in a straight line. And even that would’ve torn him apart if not for the [Blessing of the Unyielding Sun] protecting his body from the recoil.

The Solar spell he cast had helped stabilise him, mitigating the aftershocks of [Sunglow Dust Veil]. That alone was why his mana control would only collapse for a mere few days. It could have taken a month to recover... or never, if he’d been unlucky.

It all came down to meticulous planning... and mostly, luck.

Alex chuckled at his latest dance with Lady Luck, quietly thankful he was still in her good graces.

’It is done. Begin the assault,’ Alex sent the order to Udara through their link, leaving the rest of his grand plan to them.

Then, groaning a little, he pushed himself to his feet and walked toward the Earth Drake’s corpse.

His Spirit Sight quickly locked onto the faint pulse of the Drake’s beast core.

Cling!

A dry laugh escaped him as he struck at the beast’s hide with his wristblade.

Even in death, the Drake’s scales were tougher than what his blade could pierce—especially without the Mana Burst from Dragon Kumite to empower his strike.

He was sorely tempted to call Udara over for extraction. But he stopped himself and shook his head.

He couldn’t allow a moment of greed to derail his larger plans.

A mere Elite-rank Drake’s core... in exchange for surviving a god-damned miracle? That was a worthy trade. A necessary offering to the world to balance the scales.

Speaking of fortune—

Alex frowned as he noticed the golden energy signature in his vision had disappeared.

It wasn’t like last time—back at the Subspace Sanctuary—where he had been led directly to a profound discovery before vanishing.

No, this felt different.

’The power source of the phenomenon has been used up,’ Alex realised grimly. ’I must have spent a portion of Fortune from my Providence just to survive that stunt.’

A hollow sense of loss crept up his spine.

He stiffened.

He didn’t know what exactly he’d lost, but the feeling lingered—like something valuable had slipped through his fingers. Whatever the golden energy had been guiding him toward... the window to claim it had now closed.

Alex’s jaw tightened.

He wasn’t one to accept fate lying down. Even if the opportunity was gone, he wanted to see what it had been. Just a glimpse, maybe.

His gaze drifted toward the most likely place the treasure might have been hidden—the Earth Drake’s den, nestled deep within the quarry.

With heavy steps, Alex trudged toward the dark, cracked maw of the den’s entrance.

But just as he reached it, a thunderous voice boomed directly into his mind:

”Don’t you dare covet the treasure of the Dragon Race, human boy!”

***