CH351 The Tri-Lock Safeguard

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"You have no doubts?" Zora rose from his embrace, surprise flashing across her usually composed face.

Even for Alex, that was a bold claim.

"Given the illusion you've created—letting the major powers believe that the craftsman of the Coinage Moonstone Ring is an above-Legend powerhouse of Tier VI or higher craftsmanship—you can be sure the teams trying to crack it will include multiple Tier V Grandmasters," she said softly.

"Are you truly certain they won't succeed?"

"I know it sounds improbable… maybe even arrogant," Alex replied with a confident nod, "but yes. For this particular experiment with the Coinage Moonstone, I implemented a triple safeguard structure—the most secure system I can currently devise."

Zora arched a brow. "A triple safeguard?"

"I also call it the Tri-Lock Safeguard Protocol," Alex said, smiling faintly. "Body, Energy, and Mind. I mirrored these three paths in the creation of the Coinage Moonstone. Each represents a proprietary layer of protection—something the tri-association alliance will have to decipher collectively if they ever hope to replicate the Interspatial technology."

He leaned back slightly, preparing for a long explanation.

"Body," he began, "refers to the physical form of the Coinage Moonstone. Not the ring itself, but the gemstone—the moonstone-like core that embodies the true form of the interspatial artefact. The first challenge will be realising that the gem isn't naturally occurring at all, but an artificial construct created through a specific process.

"If they manage to figure that out—and I expect they might—the next step becomes discovering how to reproduce it. That's where the real problem begins."

He paused briefly before continuing, "The gemstone isn't made through normal physical synthesis. It's produced by converting a specific energy of a precise frequency through an exact method. If even one of those variables is out of tune, the gemstone won't form at all. Without that, they can't recreate the artefact's physical vessel—no matter how skilled they are."

Zora listened intently, her eyes narrowing as she followed his logic.

"That brings me to Energy," Alex continued. "The Coinage Moonstone relies on Spatial Energy, one of the rarest, most volatile and evasive energies in existence. To even attempt replication, they'll need a reliable method to extract Spatial Energy from raw spatial materials—and an even more sophisticated method to contain it long enough for integration."

He smirked faintly. "Ironically, I suspect this will be the easiest layer for them to overcome. The major powers are already known to dabble in spatial research to some degree. They may have come up with viable solutions.

"What they may overlook, however, is that the true key to the ring's construction lies in a deliberate control—not of space itself, but of how that energy interacts with the rune system."

Alex paused for a moment, his gaze drifting toward the floor as he gathered his thoughts. When he finally spoke, his tone carried the weight of deliberate precision.

"The third—and most important—safeguard is the Mind," he said. "In other words, the formation itself."

He continued, "The formation responsible for generating the internal space has already fragmented. These fragments have then dispersed to form the runic partitions that now mark out the boundaries of the artefact's stable internal space. It's no longer structured in a form that can be easily read by normal means—let alone replicated.

"Their first obstacle will be to extract the fragments of the formation from within the artefact's internal space in order to recompose the formation. But doing so will almost certainly cause the internal structure to collapse—a built-in, self-destructive safeguard. I doubt they'd risk destroying an artefact worth over fifty Top-grade Mana Stones just for research."

He leaned forward slightly. "But, let's assume they decide to take that risk. Even then, extracting the formation itself is a monumental task. During extraction, the internal space could collapse violently, and that collapse might drag along some of the runic components with it.

"If any of those lost components happen to be core runes—the building blocks of the formation—then—"

"Then they'll never get a complete, functioning formation," Zora interjected.

"Exactly." Alex nodded approvingly. "Even if the tri-association alliance somehow manages to extract the formation safely—whether or not they sacrifice the Coinage Moonstone in the process—they'll still face the final hurdle: the safeguard I embedded within the formation itself."

"Let me guess," Zora said with a knowing smirk. "You added some deliberate gibberish—dummy runes mixed into the real ones—so they'll have to figure out which runes are essential and which are distractions."

"Correct again." Alex's grin widened.

"Don't make it sound so revolutionary," Zora teased. "It's a standard security trick for runic formations. Not only them, even mana meditation manuals and internal energy tempering techniques include nonsensical wordings in their passages to obscure their true meaning."

Then, narrowing her eyes, she added, "But knowing you, you probably took it several notches higher."

"And you'd be right," Alex said, unabashed. "You know me too well."

Before she could respond, he leaned forward suddenly, wrapping an arm around her and playfully burying his head against her chest while tickling her side.

Zora burst into laughter, struggling to push him away. "Stop that!" she managed between laughs.

When they finally settled, Alex looked up with a nostalgic smile. "You remember how I created my first Greater Rune—by fusing multiple runes together through a compression formation?"

Zora straightened her robes and nodded. "Of course. You also mentioned that to reverse the process, one would need a corresponding decompression formation to separate the Greater Rune back into its lesser components."

"Oh, you remember that? Good—this explanation will be easier then." Alex's eyes lit up as he leaned forward, clearly excited.

"Just like the compression and decompression formations," he began, "OmniRune's current evolution allowed me to design and embed another fundamental formation into the core of the Rune-Tech platform. I call it the Encryption Formation.

"This program takes any formation I design through OmniRune and encodes it so thoroughly that no one but me—no one without the encryption key—can decipher it. And it does this without affecting the formation's function in any way.

"The encryption method varies depending on how important I deem the formation. It can be as simple as introducing harmless gibberish into the array, like most Array Masters do, or as complex as completely rearranging the runic structure itself to mo—"

"Wait!" Zora cut in, eyes wide. "You can rearrange the structural components of an array and still make it work?"

"Yes." Alex nodded firmly. "As long as I've completed the formation first and 'registered' it into OmniRune as a valid construct, the program can make structural rearrangements on a component-unit level without disrupting its actual function."

Zora stared at him in disbelief.

It was as if someone had just told her they could rearrange the words of a paragraph and somehow have it still make perfect sense.

The more she thought about it, the less it made sense.

Even Alex himself wasn't entirely sure why it worked.

It was like rewriting the order of code strings in a program and having the computer still execute it flawlessly.

His best theory was that the Rune-Tech platform, through the encryption program—or perhaps through his subconscious desire for security—granted his runic constructs two distinct states; an observable state and a functional state.

The observable state was merely the façade, the version of the runic structure visible to everyone else. But the true construct—the one that actually functioned—was the registered variant stored within the OmniRune Core itself.

He had no concrete proof of this, only deduction. But one fact stood out: the encryption formation only operated on runic constructs he had personally registered within OmniRune.

That suggested something incredible.

Perhaps the formations he inscribed on physical media weren't the real mechanisms of power running at all—just vessels or interfaces. The actual runic effect might originate directly from the formations 'registered' within the OmniRune Core.

Which made sense since the OmniRune Core in his mindspace was more than just another Greater Rune, it was the foundation of his Rune-Tech platform –the link between his creations and the very laws of the natural order itself.

**(1/70)**

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