Maturity

Closer inspection through a specially-crafted dwarven magnifying glass revealed that the two runes from Richard were not Lifesbanes. Although both had a similar effect of increasing attack speed and adding various effects to the damage, Richard’s version required fully manual activation for each strike and was not a stacking rune. It wasn’t nearly as powerful, but by extension it also needed much less carrying capacity.

Lawrence immediately understood that Richard now fully understood the essence of the Lifesbane design, and was capable of deriving a new rune out of it. This creation wasn’t as aggressive as the original, and thus not as valuable, but it was much easier and cheaper to produce. For the average powerhouse who...