Lab City.

Aron was in a lab, his focus on a smartphone-sized brick of metal. His fingertip was tracing back and forth on its surface, leaving behind line after line of glowing golden rune script.

"No, that's not it..." he sighed, tossing the brick over his shoulder, where it landed atop a waist-high pile of other metallic bricks of similar size and shape.

He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes, his perception turning inward in meditation until he saw his runic heart. It rhythmically pulsed, flashing a dark gold light with each cycle of contraction and expansion. Over the past ten weeks he had spent in Lab City, he'd been deciphering the trillions of lines of rune script that had been carved into his heart by the system, focusing on increasing his library of useful runes beyond those imprinted in his memory by the knowledge he'd bought from the system.

What he had discovered was... absolutely nothing. He still couldn't grasp how they worked or what they were supposed to do. Would he be forced to buy more advanced runic knowledge from his system? It wasn't something he wanted to do; his SP would be better spent right now on strengthening humanity for the inevitable conflicts to come in the future. After all, even if these first aliens were peaceful, the only guarantee was that not all aliens would be the same. Eventually, humanity would find itself in the grip of an interstellar war, and every moment until that inevitable outbreak must be spent on ensuring that they came out on top.

He sighed and opened his eyes again, pulling a new brick of metal from the neatly stacked pile in front of him. His fingertip glowed gold as he was about to repeat the process, when suddenly, the door to his lab was thrown open and a man rushed in.

"Mon dieu!" the man shouted, practically vibrating with excitement. "We have done it!" He threw his hands up in jubilation and pounced at Aron in an attempt to wrap him in a hug.

Aron dodged to the side and the man crashed face-first into the chair he had been sitting in. "You found it?" he asked.

"Oui! This material, I shall call it... hmm." The man paused, lost in thought. It was obvious he had rushed over the moment his discovery was made without even thinking about anything beyond having made it.

'Well, I guess I'd be just as crazy as him if I was a Lab City researcher,' Aron internally mused.

The man who had interrupted his work was Professor Yves Brechet, a famed French metallurgist. Aron had personally tasked him with coming up with an alloy that could act as a superconducting medium for mana, a job that he was uniquely qualified for and had been working on for the past thirty-odd years, nearly a full tenth of his time in Lab City.

Aron had been working on a type of Superconducting Mana Energy Storage device that could handle mana, but had been stuck on finding the right superconductor for it. But that was exactly what Lab City was for.

(Ed note: Superconductors make surprisingly good batteries due to their ability to conduct electricity with almost zero resistance. Superconducting Magnetic Energy Storage systems charge incredibly fast, discharge equally fast, don't lose energy like other batteries, and have no moving parts, making them incredibly durable and reliable.)

"Well, no matter what you eventually name it, professor..." Aron began, then noticed that the professor's eyes had glazed over and he was mumbling to himself. He leaned in closer and listened.

"Yvesium... no. Wait, yes! Yvesium! I... no, it's an alloy, not an element!" the professor continued droning on under his breath, having completely forgotten Aron's existence.

Aron sighed and waved his hand, sending Professor Brechet back to his own lab, then rubbed his temples and fell back into his chair. "Nova," he said.

Nova stepped out of concealment-she never actually left his side, even when he asked to be alone so he could focus-and asked, [Yes, sir?]

"Where am I going wrong? Why can't I decipher the runes on my own heart?" He grit his teeth in frustration.

[Ten weeks, sir.]

"Hmm?"

[You were insistent on figuring this out on your own and swore you'd do it without anyone else's help, sir. It's only been ten weeks-are you already giving up?]

"If I'm unable to do something, should I continue trying for years, decades, or even centuries? All I'd be doing is wasting time banging my head against an indestructible wall! I have better things to do with my time and there are people who need me," he righteously said.

[Alright, sir. Can I ask you for a favor?] Nova changed the subject.

"Oh? Of course you can, Nova. What do you need?"

[I'd like your permission to use your brain data for a secret project, and for you to not ask about it until it's ready, sir.]

"Of course, you have my full permission," Aron said, then wrenched the conversation back onto its original course. "So do you have any advice on deciphering the runes on my heart?"

[Certainly, sir. If you look at it, doesn't it look like a coding language? It isn't a lexicon, so you've been going about it entirely the wrong way, sir.]

Aron was dumbstruck. He had been so focused on deciphering the individual runes that he'd failed to pick up on the structure they were arranged in. Now that someone had pointed it out, though, he had an obvious direction to go in with his efforts.

Sometimes life was just like that.

"I need a time bubble, Nova. Crank the time dilation rate up in my lab as much as you can, I have a language to learn."

[Yes, sir,] Nova said, then generated a time bubble as requested and stood motionless, watching over Aron for any sign of instability or inability to handle the dilation. She was surprised when he easily managed to handle a time dilation of 1427:1, which was as much as she could give him with the processing power at her disposal. The empire still needed to function, after all, or she would have focused all of her quantum superclusters on his request.

Fifteen "years" later....

Aron opened his eyes, having finally deciphered 2.81% of the runes carved into his heart. It was his absolute limit, as the rest of the runes seemed shrouded in some kind of obscuring fog.

He reached out and grabbed a smartphone-sized brick of Professor Brechet's new alloy and his fingertip glowed gold as he rapidly passed it back and forth over the surface of the material, leaving trails of glowing golden rune script carved into the metal in the wake of his fingertip. Soon, the entire brick was covered in so much rune script that the whole thing glowed a dim, dark gold and it began sucking the mana out of the air in his lab.

Aron smiled at his success and tossed the brick up and down, catching and tossing it back up like an expert juggler. "I did it, Nova. It's a success!"

[Congratulations, sir!] she said. [Now all you have to do is figure out how to automate the process so you don't have to do it yourself.]

"I know just the thing," he replied, bringing up his system shop interface.

[Runic Imprinting, tier 1

They say laziness....]

He added it to his cart and checked his available SP. With a small grin, he clicked the purchase option and settled back into his chair to accept the knowledge download from the system.