Carefully locking the door, Robb also drew the heavy curtains across the window, ensuring no one could peer into the room.
He retrieved a set of protective runes, standard-issue defenses purchased recently from the Academy's materials shop, designed to isolate mental energy fluctuations to a certain degree.
Following the instructions, he affixed the rune tiles in the four corners of the room, then lit several special incense sticks. These contained trace amounts of mind-stabilizing compounds, meant to ease discomfort during one's first encounter with an advanced meditation technique.
"Just as Madam Elena advised, make sure the environment is safe first," Robb murmured to himself, carefully drawing the final activation glyph on the edge of the formation.
A faint pulse of energy rippled outward as the formation activated, casting a subtle bluish glow that gently sealed the area off from the outside world.
With everything in place, Robb took a deep breath and sat cross-legged in the center of the formation, adjusting into a comfortable position.
"Knowledge always comes with weight..." He recalled Madam Elena's warning, a trace of caution rising in his heart.
The deeper the meditation method, the greater the risks it carried.
Just like a well-known proverb in the wizarding world: "True knowledge is a burden; wisdom always borders on madness."
Basic meditation methods merely guided one's mental energy along a safe, structured path, like swimming in a gentle stream.
But Whispers of the Star-Eater took the mind and plunged it into an uncharted ocean, endless, formless, unpredictable. The danger was self-evident. It allowed no carelessness.
"Let's start with stabilizing the mental field first..."
Closing his eyes, Robb slipped into the familiar rhythm of meditation.
The basic mental glyphs naturally formed within his consciousness, a tri-arc structure creating a stable loop.
But this time, he didn't stop there.
He began building upon that foundation, attempting to form the far more intricate glyph Madam Elena had taught him.
It was a painstaking process.
Composed of dozens of intertwined base runes, the structure proved far more difficult to manage than he had imagined.
Every time he added a new segment, the whole construct trembled and nearly collapsed.
Fortunately, thanks to the mental attribute boost from becoming a [Wizard Apprentice], Robb barely managed to keep the fragile glyph intact.
He wasn't discouraged. He kept trying, again and again.
Gradually, as time passed, he discovered subtle tricks: the key wasn't in forcing the pieces together, but in understanding how they connected, allowing them to fuse naturally.
It was like solving a complex equation, he had to find the variable that made everything click into place.
Finally, after who knows how many attempts, a rough but mostly stable version of the Whispers of the Star-Eater glyph formed within his mindscape.
The glyph thrummed with a strange power.
But its stability was fragile, like a sandcastle at the tide's edge, ready to be washed away at any moment.
Then he remembered another of Madam Elena's instructions:
"For your first attempt, you can use that vial of Artificial Stardew. It'll reduce the mental strain and improve your chances… And if anything goes wrong, it might just protect you."
Robb opened his eyes and retrieved the small bottle gifted to him by Hugo.
Inside the transparent glass, the silvery-blue liquid shimmered like something alive, glowing faintly with starlight.
"Now might be the perfect time to use it."
He carefully uncorked the bottle. A cool, mysterious scent filled the room, a smell that evoked night skies, distant stars, and the unknowable truths of the cosmos.
Robb took a deep breath and drank it in one gulp.
The cold liquid slid down his throat, spreading instantly through his body like a gentle electric current.
[Artificial Stardew Effect Activated!]
[Mental Stability Increased]
[Meditation Efficiency Slightly Boosted]
[Special Effect Triggered: Mental Shield (Effectively resists corruptive mental signals)]
Closing his eyes once more, Robb found his inner space had become unnaturally clear.
The once-shaky glyph was now much more stable. The connections between its segments became obvious.
Under the influence of the Stardew, he was able to grasp the internal logic of the glyph from a new angle.
The parts that once confused him now felt natural, like breathing.
[Skill Detected: Whispers of the Star-Eater – Skill Learned]
[Passive Trait Unlocked – Mental Flow]
[Basic Meditation EXP will now convert directly into Whispers of the Star-Eater EXP]
The effects of the Stardew had pushed him past the learning threshold at an astonishing pace.
[Current Progress: Whispers of the Star-Eater (Novice 1/100) → Whispers of the Star-Eater (Adept 1/300)]
[New Passive Trait Gained: Inspiration Surge (Chance to receive unique insights during meditation; may glimpse fragments of "truth")]
[Inspiration Triggered – Remain Extremely Cautious!]
Suddenly, his mindscape began to expand. The dark background of his inner world tore like thin paper, revealing a terrifying sight beyond.
An endless starfield unfurled before him. Countless stars pulsed like living things, constantly shifting in space as if the entire cosmos had entered a chaotic, frenzied dance.
But what unsettled him most was the sense that each of these stars had awareness.
They were watching him, each with a gaze impossible to describe. It made him feel utterly exposed, as if every thought had been stripped bare.
"So… this is the true face of Whispers of the Star-Eater?" Robb marveled, trembling inwardly at the awe and fear rising in him.
Only now did Madam Elena's warning truly hit home.
Whispers of the Star-Eater wasn't merely a meditation technique, it was a new cosmology. A redefinition of what mental energy was. A challenge to the very boundaries of human perception.
In his daze, he began to hear a strange sound, not through his ears, but directly within his mind.
It was like someone whispering directly into his brain.
This was no ordinary voice. It was not language, not music, but a blend of both, and yet something else entirely.
More precisely, it was not something meant for human hearing, for it carried concepts and data that exceeded the limits of a mortal mind. Every syllable came weighted with truths that could shatter reason.
"Whispers..." Robb suddenly understood where the technique's name had come from.
The message wasn't fully comprehensible, but it flowed with a strange rhythm, like a song of the stars, revealing secrets buried in the fabric of the universe.
As he listened, the content of the whispers slowly became more coherent.
They told a tale. A very old one.
A tale of the death of stars…
The collapse of galaxies…
And the awakening of something primordial in the darkness between them.