"Um," Travis hesitated for a moment, not that he was unsure how to respond but more of a split-second reply he could muster before composing himself after burying his eyes into numerous tomes of rune-crafting and spell linguistics for the past several hours.

Like Felix, Travis was stretching himself beyond his physical and mental limitations and it was becoming difficult to fight back the fatigue that continued to plague him. It was perhaps his exhausted dedication and numerous cups of caffeine that kept him going for this long. Solving the personal ley-line/manawell predicament of his Talent counterpart was much more tedious and mind-numbing than he had previously anticipated. While is seemed that they were hardly closer to their objective, Travis nevertheless mused over their other successes involving their research. 

Their initial studies within the first month gave them newer insight on how ley-lines worked and how they could be manipulated. This eventually lead to a breakthrough involving Travis' prototype runic spell where they had stumbled upon several of its key components that were responsible in severing the ley-lines on anything it was casted on, provided it held an aura. By reversing these components' programmed purpose and rewriting them, their newly reverse-engineered spell could promote the healing and reconstitution of ley-lines. The results were promising after they had tested it upon the disabled Paragons, Espial and Fantasia, and confirmed the spell could restore them back to their former glory. After the creation of this spell, Travis had on the side began his own project of compiling the results and effects of both his first prototype rune and this one in an effort to craft runic incantation what could undo any curse applied to a given person; namely Zuri in this case. Still, the new process created an issue of having to disable and renew the Paragons over and over again every time they wanted to use them, specifically Fantasia.

While their organization's purpose was to collect the Paragons and prevent them from following into the wrong hands, the Paragon Fantasia proved useful in many different ways they couldn't possibly pass up in utilizing. After diverting their attention to researching their recent bounty, Felix and Travis in due course figured out how they could implement Fantasia's dimensional field within a confined without bringing the entire mansion within its complex illusion. As such, a small room covered in perimeter-restricting runes was made in the back of the lab for the Paragon to create its worlds inside. Raiya had been one of Fantasia's recent users as of the past few days, doing what, Travis was unsure though he assumed it was training of sorts. During his and Felix’s conversation, Raiya had exited the small room and deposited the Paragon into the same receptacle they had used to hold and disable Espial, this time however, it used a newer spell.

After seeing his prototype rune in action several times, Travis proposed several revisions that would improve the rune and allow it to perform its original intended purpose. Through his testing, he identified a number of integrated redundancies within the original rune formula that were the main cause of any targeted ley-lines to be severed.  Adjusting these elements took almost a day to complete but the result was exactly as he hoped for. Instead of completely terminating any ley-line connections the spell came in touch with, the new result would isolate and dampen the aura of anything it interfaced with, effectively suppressing the entity in question however only within its influencing circle.

With Raiya departing the lab to leave he and Felix be, Travis resumed his reply, “I would not say I’m having a better time at this than you are. Hell, I’m not even sure if what I have will cut it,”

“So, as we know, the main deal of this plan it to allow you to leave the mansion premises unharmed and without incurring any additional issues, at least for an acceptable duration at least,” he continued, “the problem of course is developing a more mobile runic spell efficient enough to keep your mana-well degradation in check during that time away. Quite honestly, at least with the current and typical methods at hand, the best I can could produce was re-writing the existing rune into a compressed form. However, the smaller rewrite is still too large and can’t be reduced any further without losing potency.”

Travis then casted his light projection and began writing several glyphs into the air, “With that said however, I think I have two responses to this dilemma,”

“One possible solution is to divide the spell into separate sections; micronized runes essentially, each with a defining purpose. I’ve done a few preliminary checks with the theory and it does seem plausible to have some of these runes coded to act as redundant auxiliaries in which, via referencing scripting, coincide with the main body rune responsible for keeping your – what was it called again? ‘Retrograde mana-well atrophy’? Yeah, keeping that in stasis, along with a few other smaller runes to recite its purpose,” Travis explained as he illustrated a central circle with about five other runic glyphs surrounding it and connected with lines of additional scripting.

“My worry though is, well, how [i]awkward[/i] this with undoubtedly look. The design is rather specific and frankly may take up most of your body, like a weird tattoo. Of course, I could feasibly inscribe these runes via wearable objects, say like a bracelet for instance. Not sure if you’re into bling though."

Travis then began another set of drawings, this time a notably larger rune however its shape was unusual and didn't seem to match that of other runic frameworks or styles. The choice of works also seemed oddly positioned and seemingly didn't coincide with principle scripting, “My other solution is going to sound unorthodox at best. As mentioned before, the usual manner of how I would condense a spell is simply not enough to scale down the existing rune. That is of course if I change the rules a bit on how runes could be written. Bear with me as I try to explain this as it sounds like jumping down a rabbit hole.”

"Ever heard of the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis?" Travis began, "it’s a more of a popular way of saying linguistic relativity. Linguistic relativity, simply put, is the individual cognitive experience of the world through the language used. As you may know, some languages in the real world tend to lack certain aspects of other dialects and often have different ways to approach or describe base norms. For instance, the Pirahã language literally has no numbers or more specifically, no words to describe an exact quantity and instead only composes of approximates quantities like, literally, ‘small amount’ or relatively large amount’. Another example is Mandarin Chinese which utilizes a totally different tone and inflection structure compared to English in which can ultimately alter the meaning of a single word.”

Travis described this but writing several Chinese words, each displaying their own visual tones and inflections and beside them were their English translations, each with a different work or phrase, “Getting to the point, what I am seeking to do is to rewrite the existing rune using a different inflection structures in order to reduce its complexity and therefore its size, but retain effectiveness too. It’s a longshot though I don’t suppose it couldn’t hurt to try. However it may involve a ton of testing before, or if, a conceivable working miniature rune can be produced."

Travis then backed up and allowed to Felix to absorbed his proposed ideas. When he reached for his mug, he found that it was hollow and without its caffeinated substance, "Huh, I think I should make another pot..."