Eternal Forge: Starting with a SSS Rank talent and a Myth Rank Class

Chapter 33: Chapter 33- Trial of Comprehension.

Leo woke up to the smell of medicinal herbs. He was lying on a bed. The room looked different from his assigned quarter. It looked more like a pharmacy.

”You’re awake.”

Gandalf sat in a chair beside his bed, his arms crossed, almost looking as if he had just awoken from a sleep.

”I dozed off waiting on you, brat.” Gandalf replied, scratching his head.

”What happened?” Leo asked, his voice hoarse.

”You got your ass kicked. That’s what happened,” Gandalf said bluntly. ”That Knight Uldrick, that idiot Ulfrick’s big brother hit you pretty hard with a hammer the size of a cow. It’s a miracle you are alive.”

Leo remembered. The pain, the impact, then the darkness.

His fingers clenched.

”So it was his brother that attacked me,” Leo said with some resentment.

Gandalf shook his hands, waving it away. ”Oi oi, you don’t have to worry about that knight anymore.”

”Huh?!” Leo looked confused.

”Princess Freya already dealt with him. He is dead,” Gandalf continued, his voice lower. ”She stabbed him through the heart with her spear in a single attack in anger. She said the knight had challenged the royal throne’s authority.”

”She did?” Leo winced.

Gandalf recalled the scene from the night and chills ran through his spine.

He shook his head. ”Lad, remember, try not to get on the bad side of Princess Freya. She is just too scary when she is angered.”

He added, ”Aye. And the King approved it. Said the knight dishonored the trial by attacking a participant.” Gandalf scratched his beard. ”Ulfrick’s under house arrest. His brother’s dead. His family’s probably planning revenge, but that’s a problem for another day.”

Hearing this, Leo thought, Well I probably won’t be here much longer, so who cares about the revenge of a family from another world.

Leo sat up slowly. Pain flared through his body. Only now did he realize his chest was wrapped in layers of bandages.

”How long was I out for?”

”Three hours. The princess healed you with potions, so you survived; otherwise you’d be dead by now.” Gandalf added. He leaned forward.

”The competition resumes tomorrow. Round 3. You ready?”

Leo looked at his hands. They were steady. ”I have to be.”

....

Next morning, all the participants gathered in a sacred chamber within the palace.

The room was circular, carved from black stones that had the property of absorbing light. At the center of the room was a massive stele carved with burning runes pulsing with energy. The stele itself seemed to be made of obsidian.

”Now, let us start Round 3,” Elder Thrain announced, his voice echoing off the walls.

”This is a test of comprehension. You will study the stele for twenty-four hours. This is both a test and an opportunity for you guys. How much you comprehend depends on your talent.”

He gestured toward the stele.

”Remember, you guys have only twenty-four hours. And this is no ordinary test. The runes here contain the foundational mysteries of talisman forging from the Age of the First Inscribers. Those with weak soul power or insufficient mental fortitude... will suffer.”

A cold smile touched the elder’s lips.

”Attempting to comprehend what you cannot bear will injure your soul. Nosebleeds, coughing blood, spirit backlash, fainting, or even permanent soul damage — anything is possible. Only those with true talent and resilience may walk away unscathed.”

”Round Three — the Trial of True Comprehension — begins now.”

With that the participants moved forward.

The moment the participants moved closer, the pressure intensified.

Two young cultivators at the back immediately sat down and released their spiritual sense aggressively. Within seconds, both cried out in pain. Blood streamed from their noses as they clutched their heads. One collapsed, coughing violently, dark blood staining his robes. The judges quickly dragged them away — their trial over.

Another participant, a proud scion from a mid-tier clan, tried to force his way deeper. His face twisted in agony. Veins bulged on his forehead as invisible soul pressure crushed him.

He lasted less than ten minutes before staggering back, vomiting blood, his aura flickering weakly.

Of the 30 who started the round, three more were forced to withdraw within the first hour, their souls injured and their faces pale as paper.

The remaining 15 — including Leo — formed a loose circle around the stele, expressions grim but focused.

Leo observed everything calmly. He had some foundation in inscription, but even he could feel the stele’s terrifying pressure pressing against his sea of consciousness like an ancient mountain.

But Leo felt that the pressure wasn’t enough to injure him like the rest of them. May be it was because of his class, may be it was talents. He didn’t know for sure right now.

He tossed the thought away, took a deep breath and activated Forge Sight.

The world transformed. The runes became more clear. The carved lines became rivers of flowing energy, intricate beyond imagination. Each rune was a knot of information, dense and layered, containing more knowledge than a library.

But Forge-Sight only showed him the shape of the runes. The surface. The beginning.

He needed to go deeper.

He focused, trying to understand the runes.

Then something deep within him stirred for the first time. It felt both familiar and distant.

It was the new talent he copied from Shen.

[S+ Rank Talent: Talisman Forging Activated]

A second wave of perception hit him.

He felt like he was starting to grasp something.

If Forge Sight was like eyes that saw the runes, then this new perception was like a hand that understood how to create them. He was starting to see different views from before.

Together with this new perception from the copied talent and Forge Sight, I should be able to learn something from this stele.

He began to study the runes. As he was focusing, the runes seemed to have come alive, almost as if they were leaving the stele and floating.

He rubbed his eyes and watched again. There was no change.

Am I seeing things?

Then something happened.

His vision darkened. The chamber around him, other participants, the judges, the walls, all faded to black.

For a moment, he panicked.

Fuck! Is this another one of those darn visions?

Then, light bloomed again.

[S+ Rank Talisman Forging talent’s Mental Inscription Space Activated]

[Initiating visualization...]

Leo gasped.

He was now in a void, floating.

In the center of the void was a floating pillar. It was the same stele, only this time it seemed to be a virtual version.

[Pillar Manifested: Mental representation of stele]

[Runes: 47 patterns detected]

[Mode: Full interaction available]

”What is this place?” Leo whispered.

[Mental Inscription Space: A dimension within your consciousness, a perk provided by S+ rank Talisman Forging Talent]

[Purpose: Study, practice, and master rune inscription without physical limitations]

He read the notifications with wide eyes.

A dimension within my mind?...

He reached out with his hand; his fingers passed through the pillar. The runes responded, lifting from the surface, unfolding into three-dimensional shapes, rotating slowly.

[Runes detaching...]

[47/47 runes: Three-dimensional forms active]

He tried touching the runes and he could actually feel them and touch them. The runes looked like hologram projections, but they were actually solid.

[Rune #1 — Energy Channel]

[Properties: Foundational flow structure. Origin: Early Ancient Era]

[Difficulty: Easy]

The information about the rune appeared in his mind. Everything about its intent, its origin, and function appeared in his mind.

Without hesitation, he started carving the rune in the void using his fingers.

Lines of pure light followed his fingers with flawless obedience. In moments, the first rune was complete.

[Carving: Rune #1 — COMPLETE]

[Quality: Flawless]

[Rune #1 Mastered]

The second rune was trickier. His first attempt failed by a hair’s breadth.

[Carving: Rune #2 — FAILED]

[Error: Angle deviation 3.7 degrees]

[Correction: Adjust grip 2mm left, increase force 15%]

He adjusted. He carved again. It held.

[Carving: Rune #2 — COMPLETE]

[Quality: Flawless]

[Rune #2 learned]

He moved to the third rune. Then the fourth. Then the fifth.

Each one was harder than the last. Each one required more precision, more force, more understanding. But with each failure, Leo learned. With each success, he grew stronger.

[Carving: Rune #3 - COMPLETE]

[Carving: Rune #4 - FAILED - RETRY - COMPLETE]

[Carving: Rune #5 - COMPLETE]

By the tenth rune, he had found his rhythm. His fingers danced across the mental metal, each strike perfect, each line precise.

He kept going—rune after rune, failure folded into correction, correction folded into memory. By the tenth, he had a rhythm. But not every rune bent to repetition alone.

[Carving: Rune #10 - COMPLETE]

....

.....

[Carving: Rune #15 - COMPLETE]

He moved faster. Each one more complex than the last. Some looked deceptively similar to previous ones, only to hide deadly structural traps.

By the eighteenth rune, the Mental Inscription Space itself seemed to test him deliberately.

The rune looked almost identical to #11 — same spiral, same branching veins. Leo nearly repeated the previous technique.

[Warning: Structural Divergence Detected!]

[This is not Energy Channel. Carving it as such will trigger catastrophic backlash under real power load.]

Leo froze, then examined it with renewed focus. The spiral tightened inward rather than outward. A completely different intent — Pressure Release, not circulation.

He carved it with deliberate slowness. Perfectly.

[Rune #18 — COMPLETE]

[Quality: Flawless]

A quiet realization settled over him: Comprehension isn’t just memorization. It’s seeing through deception. Understanding the soul behind the form.

It was a small thing. But it was the first time the stele had actively tried to fool him—and he understood, with sudden clarity, why ”comprehension” and ”memorization” were being tested as separate things.

As he practiced, the space itself began to change.

[Mental Inscription Space is Evolving....]

[New feature unlocked: Rune Combination]

Runes drifted toward each other, aligning, overlapping. New patterns formed.

[Dual Combination: Rune #7 + Rune #12 = Energy Amplification Array]

[Quality: Flawless]

[New Technique Acquired]

He had discovered something. The runes were not just individual techniques. They were a language—and like any language, they could be combined to create new meanings.

He pushed deeper.

[Triple Combination: Rune #23 + Rune #31 + Rune #45 = Soul Resonance Core]

[Quality: Transcendent]

He spent what felt like hours in the Mental Inscription Space. Testing combinations. Refining techniques. Burning every lesson into his memory.

[Combinations tested: 1,247/1,247]

[Mastery threshold approaching]

Hours — perhaps days — passed inside the Mental Space.

When he finally felt he had squeezed every drop of insight from the forty-seven runes, Leo exhaled deeply.

[All 47 Runes: Thoroughly Comprehended]

[Elementary Runes Without Laws: 38/47 Mastered]

[Law-Containing Runes: 9/47 — Full Theoretical Understanding Achieved]

[Current Soul Power & Law Comprehension: Insufficient to Carve the 9 Law Runes]

[Warning: Forcing the 9 Law Runes will result in severe soul backlash]

Leo exhaled slowly.

He now possessed complete theoretical understanding of every single rune on the stele. He could carve any of the 38 elementary runes with perfect precision and flawless quality. However, the final nine runes that contained the essence of Laws were still beyond his reach. He understood their structure and intent perfectly, but his soul power and comprehension of the deeper Laws were not yet strong enough.

The gap was clear — but so was his progress.

The void dissolved.

The pillar vanished. The floating runes collapsed back into flat carvings on the stele’s surface.

But the knowledge remained.

His fingers tingled with remembered motions. His mind held the memory of every angle, every force, every technique. He could carve any of the runes with his eyes closed.

[Mental Inscription Space: Closed]

[Rune Mastery achieved]

[S+ Talisman Forging: Full integration successful]

Leo opened his eyes.

He was back in the chamber. The stele stood before him, its runes pulsing with the same faint energy. But to Leo, it was no longer a wall of impenetrable carvings.

It was a book he had already read.

He stepped back from the stele.

Around him, other participants were still studying. Some squinted, some muttered, some looked frustrated. Kai was frowning at a particularly complex rune, his chisel hovering uncertainly over a practice tablet.

Gandalf was scratching his head, muttering, ”Forty-seven? Who needs forty-seven runes? Ten would be plenty.”

Lyra was sketching furiously in a notebook, trying to capture the patterns before they faded from memory.

None of them had seen inside the stele. None of them had held the runes in their hands. None of them had practiced until the knowledge was burned into their very souls.

The difference was absolute.

Kai glanced at him, his expression unreadable. ”You’re done already?”

Leo nodded.

Kai’s eyes narrowed. ”How?”

Leo just gave a cheeky annoying grin and pointed at himself with his thumb and stated, ”Can’t help it, I was born a genius.”

Kai was dumbfounded by his answer.

Soon 24 hours were up.

”Okay, now all of you who are still conscious, take 15 minutes rest and replenish your strength. You will have to sense the stele again for final evaluation for this round.” Elder Thrain voiced out.

With that, almost everyone started to sit in meditation position except for Leo.

Soon 15 minutes were up.

”Okay, by the sequence order of your participant number, step forward and try to sense the stele again. Try to light up all the runes you have understood.

Only the runes which you have understood will light up. If you can’t light at least 5 runes, you will be disqualified.”

Kai stepped in front.

He touched the stele and extended his sense. The runes lit up one after another. It kept lighting. Almost 50% of the runes were already lit, but it still kept increasing.

Then it stopped. The number of lit runes stopped increasing.

”Kai, 30 runes completed.”

”Qualified.”

Then Lyra stepped forward.

Similar to Kai, she also lit up almost 30 but fell one short, making it 29 runes comprehended. But the glow of the first 10 runes was very bright, showing her comprehension of these runes was far above Kai’s.

Then Gandalf stood up and walked forward.

He pressed his hands and moments later the runes shone more brightly than the previous two, but the number stopped at 25. Gandalf had high comprehension of those runes, but he comprehended only 25 of them.

One by one the others also started.

And soon it was Leo’s turn.

He stepped forward relaxed, and touched the stele.

The whole stele shone brightly. It was blinding. Every single rune on the stele lit up, signifying he had comprehended all.

All judges were dumbfounded by this scene.

Elder Thrain forgot to announce the result as he watched in a daze.

Leo looked at Elder Thrain. ”Elder, I passed, right?”

Thrain got out of his stupor and nodded.

”Leo Stone, all 47 runes comprehended. Qualified for the next round.”

But if one looked closely, even though all the runes glowed brightly, 9 of the runes were a bit dim, signifying the runes with law comprehension as requirements.