Noah wasn’t sure for exactly how long he sat before the imbued wall. He’d never been the best at keeping track of time. Having a fractured mind made that even harder. But there was one benefit to having a few different versions of himself overlaid into a single, mostly cohesive being.

He had gotten pretty good at multi-tasking.

That was a particularly useful skill when one was trying to pick apart the way their rune worked. After all, utilizing a rune was a surprisingly complex process. One had to draw power from it, visualize their desire, and then apply it. The degree of success they would achieve then depended on the quality of their rune and how closely their desire fit the parameters of what that rune was actually capable of.

He had to do all of that while also trying to figure out just how he was using the rune wrong. There were a hell of a lot of ways one could misuse a rune. That went doubly so for one as complex as Unraveling Disruption.

There was only one thing he knew for certain. The problem didn’t lie within his rune itself. Unraveling Disruption was a flawless rune. There were no mistakes in its actual creation. And that meant that, on some deep level, some part of Noah understood its purpose. He had to.

After all, he wouldn’t have been able to create it if he hadn’t.

His problem was getting a conscious understanding of how Unraveling Disruption worked. Just thinking about it as chaos wasn’t sufficient. That was how he ended up throwing around uninspired magic that Og had destroyed without even blinking.

And so Noah went back to the basics.

He worked his way through the components composing his Keystone Rune. Pulled at the shards of their power like the strings of his violin, testing each one out as he repeatedly prodded and pushed at the imbuements protecting the wall before him.

Not a single one of his attempts so much as scratched the wall. He was fine with that. Noah wasn’t trying to destroy the wall right now. Its only purpose was to provide something to test his power against.

Over and over, Noah’s rune ran out of power. He waited for it to regenerate, then started again. He must have spent hours just going over the smallest parts of it, just to refamiliarize himself with the purpose of the magic.

Noah worked himself back up toward the peak of the rune’s abilities. His thoughts drifted through all the fights he’d been through — especially the most recent ones. The battle with Og. His first fight against the Night’s Shadow. The final confrontation with Father, and even his most recent combats against the Devourer.

He combed through each one of them and mentally reviewed how he’d used his runes. Tried to remember exactly what his desires had been and the ways he’d utilized his power. All the while, a question continued to linger within his mind.

What is chaos, and how does Unraveling Disruption relate to it?

It was an interesting question. There were a hell of a lot of answers as to what chaos was. A lot of them were probably right. The concept of chaos was so broad, so subjective, that ten different men probably each could have had their own belief as to its truth — and all ten of them could have been right.

Chaos was not objective. Not, at least, to Noah. It just had too many different facets. Chaos in science was not the same as chaos in other aspects of life. The same word encompassed two entirely different things. Neither of them was wrong. They were both objectively true, but that objective truth was subjective depending on the direction one looked at chaos.

Does that mean they’re subjective as a whole? Can something be objective if there’s a subjective element to it? Bah. Thank god I wasn’t a scientist. I get the feeling this wouldn’t have flown too well in a scientific paper.

It didn’t matter in the end. Chaos could have had as many definitions as it wanted. All of them could be true. Hell, they could all be false. At the end of the day, only one thing mattered.

Runes were not based off objective fact. They were based off intent and power. As long as Noah’s intent aligned properly with the rune he had created, his truth could be objectively wrong to literally everyone but himself.

The rune would still work.

That did, of course, lend some credence to the hypothetical argument that if someone were dumb enough, they could create a rune that functioned completely against the laws of reality… but that was probably a hypothetical to deal with at another time.

Noah needed to determine exactly what Chaos was. Not to everyone else, but to him.

This text was taken from NovelBin. Help the author by reading the original version there.

That was not an easy question. All of the easiest answers were wrong. They were the solution to a mathematical equation that lacked any real understanding of the equation itself. And so he sat and pondered.

At some point, the Devourer arrived.

A day must have passed. Noah didn’t even register the great monster’s arrival, but a slew chittered prayersassaulted his concentration and finally pulled him from his thoughts.

Noah looked at the wall once more. There wasn’t a single scratch upon it.

Then he rose to his feet and started back down the hall without another word. His centipede companion followed after him, and it wasn’t long before the two of them had returned to the main hall.

The Devourer’s huge body filled the majority of the space. Its crimson eyes bore into Noah, a mixture of curiosity and annoyance in the many faces covering its form.

“A day has passed,” the Devourer said. “I have come to fulfill our bargain.”

“Mm.” Noah’s thoughts felt distant, his attention still lingered upon his runes rather than the world around him. The Heart Room wasn’t going to help him right now. It wasn’t going to be of any use until he got his hands on the key inside the locked room. “I don’t need to go to the Heart Room today. You can have the day off. But… there’s somewhere else I want you to take me.”

The Devourer’s body shifted. Legs clicked against the walls, sending dust and chunks of debris raining down as it tilted its entire form in confusion.

“Where?”

A small smile pulled at Noah’s lips. There were some things he had to test — and the best way to determine the weight of one’s beliefs was to put them to practice.

“Access Point 4.”

***

Noah doubled over, gasping for breath as he dropped to one knee. His muscles burned and his mind throbbed. Fighting the golem was considerably easier when Noah had access to all of his magic.

But easy didn’t get him anywhere. He already understood Sunder. There was only one Rune he wanted to work with right now, and it was Unraveling Disruption.

Well — perhaps there were two. He’d used the Fragment of Renewal to try and patch his mind up a little more now that a day had passed, but Noah was pretty sure that one didn’t count. The only thing he was using in the actual fights against the golem was his Keystone rune.

Not his pattern. Not his violin or the Formations or any of his other Rank 5s.

There was just him, a seemingly impervious golem, and Unraveling Disruption.

Noah wiped the sweat from his brow and pushed himself to his feet. It had been hours since the Devourer had brought him here. He’d fought the golem more than a dozen times today. Some attempts had been better than others. None were noteworthy… but each one had been a step.

Whether that step was backwards or forwards was a little more up to debate.

Shaking his head, Noah gathered his thoughts and lowered his stance. Unraveling Disruption churned within him as he drew on the rune once more. It had enough power to fuel another attempt.

“Let’s go,” Noah said. “Again.”

“Primary directive activated,” the eye buzzed. “Research objective: Survival.”

The Golem, which already loomed over the platform where it had remained in wait after their last fight, whirred to life. White magic hissed across its huge limbs as it extended a huge hand for Noah.

What is chaos?

Noah darted to the side, diving out of the way and hitting the ground in a roll as it slammed down behind him. Noah shot back to his feet, drinking from Unraveling Disruption and letting its magic course through his body.

It’s not just random happenings. It isn’t just some scientific concept.

Rune Force bore down on Noah’s shoulders. The Golem thrust a palm toward Noah. A wave of wind slammed into him from the sheer force of the blow. He dove out of the way, hitting the ground in a roll and shooting back to his feet as all the power from Unraveling Disruption swelled to a creshendo within him.

To be honest, I don’t think I can define Chaos yet. Not as a whole.

But I can start. Maybe not with some grand truth of the universe, but with myself.

The Golem brought its hands down on either side of Noah, slamming them to the ground with a resounding crash. The platform bucked. It shot a foot down, leaving him suspended in the air for an instant, only to snap back up as if connected to a bungee cord.

Pain shot through Noah’s legs as the ground slammed into his feet. He stumbled, barely managing to keep his footing and grip on the magic within him.

Arcs of white energy crackled to life between the massive metal palms on either side of him, reaching out in preparation to connect with each other — and he was right in the middle of their path.

I don’t control chaos. That’s where I went wrong. I can’t believe I was so arrogant that I thought I had some degree of influence over the entirety of a core force of the universe.

I convinced myself that I had a chaos rune, so I must have understood what chaos is.

But, in truth, I don’t. Never did.

What I have is a fragment.

That fragment that is but one aspect of chaos. It’s no wonder I haven’t been able to use it at peak effectiveness for any of those other purposes. You don’t use a screwdriver to hammer in a nail just because it happens to be a tool.

Noah could have run, could have called upon a number of different options he had in his arsenal to defend himself from the coursing wave of electric magic bearing toward him from both sides, threating to swallow him whole and leave nothing behind but a smoldering pile of ash.

He didn’t so much as budge.

All the power that he’d gathered from Unraveling Disruption slipped out from his palms as a smile split his lips. Noah’s power was nothing but a tiny stream of water in the face of a roaring white sea. The strength of the white torrent swallowing the world around him engulphed his entirely.

But that was the funny thing about chaos.

It didn’t matter how strong or orderly a system or magic may have been. Even the tiniest fragment of chaos, when applied in the right way, was enough to go and completely screw everything up.