Chapter 1: Death Row, Rune Master

Translator: Simple MTL  Editor: Simple MTL

Lugh woke up from his coma. He was in a dark prison, wearing a tattered prison uniform.

“What is this place?”

Lugh stood in stunned silence until he remembered that he had got wasted in a bar the previous night, which had ended in a one-night stand with a hot woman.

He remembered venting his anger seven times before finally falling into a deep sleep as exhaustion took over him.

This kind of thing often happened as long as he had money to spend.

But this time was different. Instead of waking up in a big hotel bed, Lugh found himself in prison.

Memories, both familiar and unfamiliar, flashed through Lugh’s mind. The surge was too much to bear; he fell to the ground, his head buried in his hands.

“Simon Empire, runes, Prince Berg…”

“Did I actually transmigrate? Does this mean I’ll be hanged tomorrow?”

Lugh stayed glued to the spot even as the memories gradually started to make sense to him.

Did he transmigrate just because he had slept with a woman? Would such a worthless act lead to his hanging? The thought puzzled him.

Lugh sifted through the memories in his mind. He understood that this was a runic world where people could possibly control magical runes with their minds and thus possess extraordinary abilities.

Each and every rune was shrouded in mystery.

Some runes allowed people to control the waves of the sea. Some runes allowed plants to grow unhampered. Some runes allowed people to possess powerful combat abilities. Some runes allowed people to summon lightning.

Those who could manipulate runes with their minds became rune-masters.

In this world, rune-masters had incomparably noble statuses, possessing endless wealth, land, servants, and more. Even the king of the Simon Empire had to kneel and bow down to these masters.

Not only did the rune-masters possess an extremely high social status; they also possessed magical abilities. They even lived longer than ordinary civilians.

Everyone in this world wanted to become a rune-master, including Lugh.

However, becoming one was extremely difficult. Controlling runes required deep meditation, which meant perfecting the pronunciation and mastering the meaning of the holy runes.

Just the pronunciation of runes was enough to give most people a headache.

Runes came from a long time ago. The language system of that time was completely different from the language system of today. Thousands of years had passed since the last rune masters had existed

Over thousands of years, the prophets had come up with a million types of rune pronunciations. However, it was extremely difficult and time-consuming to find the correct pronunciation from the countless possibilities.

Some people spent their whole lives trying to find the corresponding pronunciation, only to fail miserably.

Therefore, people could only rely on instinct if they wanted to master runes.

This so-called instinct, to put it bluntly, relied on blind guesses. With the blessing of the goddess of luck, a person could become a respected holy prose master by guessing the pronunciation of runes.

The odds of becoming a rune-master were extremely rare.

For thousands of years, study after study was made, which led to the discovery of a method far more reliable than making guesses: Yin Xuan.

According to the Yin Xuan phenomenon, runes could assume seven different colors: red, orange, yellow, green, cyan, blue, and purple, just like a rainbow.

The different colors represented the accuracy of the pronunciation. Red was the least accurate, and purple was the most. A purple rune meant that it had been pronounced the way it was meant to be pronounced, just like in ancient times.

The Yin Xuan method established that runes turned into other colors if the pronunciation was not very accurate. Purple runes were extremely rare and precious. For thousands of years, tens of billions of humans had walked the earth, but there were only a little more than a hundred purple runes.

But more difficult than coming up with the correct pronunciation was knowing the profound meaning of runes. This could not be taught systematically like knowledge. One could only rely on personal comprehension to fathom what the runes really meant. Some people would spend a lifetime racking their brains, only to perish without understanding the profound meaning of runes.

Therefore, becoming a rune-master was nearly impossible.

Although Lugh was occupying the body of a commoner, he had a rune in his brain.

This rune came from Lugh’s family. The family was once very glorious and great. The precious purple rune had been passed down for generations.

The family had since fallen, but they had been very careful to protect the rune. They were afraid that it would fall into other hands. However, an elder in the family had accidentally leaked this information when he was drunk. Prince Berg of the Simon Empire had found out about the rune and vowed to claim it for himself.

Prince Berg’s methods were very cruel. He would not stop until he could get his hands on whatever he wanted. Whoever dared go against his will was brutally killed.

Lugh’s family possessed the most precious purple runes in the world. Everyone in the family had been killed, succumbing to Prince Berg’s cruelty. Everything was now down to Lugh, the sole survivor and the only person who knew the whereabouts of the purple runes.

Lugh was brutally tortured and forced to give up the runes.

But Lugh’s willpower was unyielding. Even though he was being cruelly tortured, he didn’t say a word.

Prince Berg lost his patience and threatened to hang Lugh if the latter didn’t hand over the rune the next day.

“Damn you, Berg!”

Lugh was furious. He thought about how he had been living a blissful life in the developed modern city and how he had suddenly become a prisoner. Moreover, he would be hanged by Berg.

How could Lugh, who had the soul of a modern man, accept the current situation? He wanted nothing more than to rush out and kill Berg.

“Argh!” Lugh huffed.

He was in an enclosure with solid rock walls on all three sides. There wasn’t even a window! How could he escape?

At that moment, a notification that sounded like one from a game suddenly rang in Lugh’s mind. “The super search system is starting….”