From that moment on, Robert's life entered a brutal cycle of efficiency. He accelerated his studies. At night, in his room, on the holographic screen of his Tu device, he coded the theoretical infrastructure of the Mind Matrix. He calculated how a Dream Bender's mind could host multiple consciousnesses simultaneously, creating a private virtual 'room' for each without mixing them. This was an equation bordering on madness, where the quantum computing and neural network theories of his old world blended with the psychic energy laws of this new one.
By day, he led the team with Karnah's support, trying to integrate Syla and Amara, but his mind was always in that dim room. The Bending Machine was no longer a resisting foreign device, but a natural extension of his fingers. He completed every complex mechanism, every energy matrix Kefius demanded in half the expected time, with mechanical precision.
However, his project, that massive Mind Matrix, was not a hobby to be squeezed between lessons. It could not be assembled piece by piece like a watch; it was a living, organic system that needed to be 'born' in a single instance, with a massive surge of power.
For this, he needed Kefius's full permission, absolute dominion over the Machine.
One late afternoon, as Kefius headed for the door at the end of the lesson, Robert made his move.
"Sir," he said. His voice bounced off the room's stone walls. "To win the workshop, I need to build the project I will present to the Council. For this, I request full authority over the Bending Machine."
Kefius stopped. When he turned slowly, there was an expression in his aged eyes weighing Robert's audacity. "Full authority," he said in a dry voice. "This privilege has been granted to no one since Lilya Ordon. I told you how the machine's power, in the hands of a traitor, brought the Academy to the brink of destruction."
"I am not that traitor." Robert's voice trembled, but his gaze was steady. "But without authority, my project will remain on paper."
Kefius narrowed his eyes. "Spill what's on your mind."
Robert took a deep breath and explained. The Mind Matrix. A massive virtual arena where teams could experience scenarios without physically harming each other, using a Dream Bender's mind as a server.
As he spoke, the look of curiosity on Kefius's face vanished, replaced by deep disappointment. To old Malken, this "revolution" sounded like heresy.
"An illusion," Kefius said, his voice ice-cold. "A copy. A shadow play. Do you wish to turn Lilya's legacy, the purest tool of creation in the universe, into a toy?"
He approached the machine, resting his hand on the cold metal. "Bending is creating essence, Robert. The clock you created truly keeps time. If you made a sword, that sword would truly shed blood. They have an 'essence.' But this simulation of yours... Just light. Just shadow. Hollow."
He turned to Robert. "Using power to escape reality, to build fake worlds... That is how corruption begins. I reject this."
This was a philosophical wall Robert hadn't expected. But the engineer in his mind refused to accept an emotional defeat.
"Hollow?" Robert said, stepping closer to Kefius. "You know better than I how fragile and cruel 'reality' is. I will not create an illusion, but an experience. A place where a student can taste dying thousands of times without truly dying."
His voice rose with passion. "Imagine. Uhura will truly feel that psychic pain while resisting Amara's mental attack. When Karnah drives his axe into a monster, he will feel the shock of the impact in his bones. But that monster will consist only of Magic Dust and my imagination. This is not a game, sir. This is a 'Soul Forging Workshop' that trains the spirit without risking the body."
"Soul Forging Workshop..."
Kefius rolled the word around in his mouth. The emphasis on "proximity to reality" had breached the philosophical wall he had built. This was not an escape, but a hardening process. He was intrigued.
However, the old man's mind slipped away from poetic magic to practical realities, to the massive storage unit in the corner of the room, the Vault. His face grew serious.
"This 'feeling of reality'..." muttered Kefius, walking to the gauges. "To mimic pain, touch, essence..."
He tapped his finger on the glass of the largest tank. "Protocolasm. The building block of existence. For that workshop of yours, to create even a small arena for ten people would swallow tons of raw material."
His gaze shifted to the Magic Dust gauge. "Breath of Malazar... To make those monsters 'real', to simulate pain, you would push the limits of our reserves. A mere prototype would consume a month's harvest of Mount Malazar."
Kefius turned to Robert. There was neither philosophical rejection nor interest on his face anymore; only the cold realism of an accountant remained. "Your project may be a work of genius, Robert. But it is a luxury that would cost a kingdom's fortune. The Council will never permit this waste of resources. Your project is dead before it began. Impossible."
"Impossible."
The word hung in the silence of the room. This was not a philosophical rejection; this time the wall he hit was mathematics. The fundamental law of the universe had slapped Robert in the face: Creation cannot happen without paying a price. Robert looked at the Vault's gauges. They looked full, but Kefius was right; a "single arena" would drain those tanks in an hour.
The door to the Omnia Codex, to his home, remained behind a wall of trillions of tons of raw material.
Robert's shoulders slumped. But his mind was the mind of an engineer raised in that basement in Oakhaven, wrestling with impossible hardware limitations. "Impossible" was not an end, but a variable to be solved.
His old world appeared before his eyes. Damp basement. The old computer groaning with fan noise. Those sleepless nights trying to run massive, photorealistic worlds with insufficient RAM... Frames freezing on screen, the system clogging up. Then he remembered that simple solution.
Did a game draw the entire map at once? No. That would be processor suicide.
It only... drew where the player looked.
Robert raised his head. There was no defeat in his eyes, but a dangerous spark.
"Maybe..." he whispered, his thoughts falling rapidly into place. "...maybe that much raw material isn't needed."
Kefius frowned. "The numbers are plain to see."
"You are right," said Robert, walking to the Bending Machine. "I will need trillions of data points. The anatomy of monsters, the weight of the sword, the refractive index of the crystal... That is data. Things I will pull from the Omnia Codex. But material... that is another story."
He turned to Kefius with excitement. "You think of the prototype as a permanent, physical structure, an arena of stone. But what if it isn't?"
"The Mind Matrix," Robert said, shaping an invisible diagram in the air with his hands. "It will work like a 'Cyclical Generator' that manages not just minds, but raw material too."
"Generator? You cannot create matter from nothing, boy."
"Not creating from nothing. Recycling instantly." Robert began pacing the room. "We call this a closed-loop system. We won't pour the entire Vault. We will load minimal raw material, just enough to create a single room and one monster."
Kefius still seemed unconvinced. "Once Protocolasm gains 'essence', it retains its form."
"Not if you reclaim the essence. And the way to reclaim essence lies in perception itself."
Robert stopped, reaching out to the wall behind him but not touching it. "The system will work like this: The user stands in a room in the simulation. They look at the table in front of them. The table is real; they can touch it. But at that moment, the library standing right behind them... That is just data. The moment the user turns their back, the Matrix pulls the library data and uses that tiny raw material reserve to create the library."
He locked eyes with Kefius. "And while creating that library, the table the user is no longer looking at... instantly dissolves. It turns back into pure Protocolasm and flows back into the system."
Robert was no longer a student, but a creator burning with the fire of his invention. "No need for massive resources! The system will finance itself by constantly 'stealing' from where the user isn't looking. This is not a permanent world. This is the Reactive Perception Matrix. The world will exist only where you look."
The room fell into silence. Kefius was looking at the Bending Machine, not Robert. Old, dusty notes of Lilya Ordon on 'essence' and 'perception' sprang to life in his mind. This boy was not just an engineer; he had unwittingly touched upon the deepest secret of Bending philosophy, the bending of reality by perception.
It was a terrifyingly elegant solution.
"This..." Kefius said finally. His whisper echoed in the room. "This... might be possible."
The scorn was gone from old Malken's face. The master had seen the audacity of his own youth in his apprentice. "But," he added, "for this 'reactive' system to process data at that speed, it would need the fastest access in the universe. By the time the YGK-Network pulls the data of a leaf, the user would have already turned their back."
"Exactly," said Robert. "That is why the prototype's only purpose is to prove to the Council that this 'Cyclical Engine' works. If I present them a system that reduces raw material consumption by ninety-nine percent, they cannot say no when I ask for that data bank."
"Which data bank?"
"The Omnia Codex." Robert smiled. "The prototype wins the workshop. The workshop wins status. And status opens the door to my home, the Codex."
Kefius studied Robert for a long time. The boy wasn't just making an invention; he was setting a trap to checkmate the Council with their own rules. And Kefius realized he would enjoy being part of this game.
"Full authority," he said, reaching for the Mecha's screen. "No, Leader Robert. I will not give you full authority."
Robert's face fell.
"I will give you," Kefius said, entering complex passwords, "unlimited access under my personal supervision to build that 'Cyclical Engine'. This is not authority, it is a test. If you fail, this conversation never happened. But if you succeed..."
He pressed the confirmation key. The Machine awoke with a deep, resonant hum. The Vault hatches opened with a hiss.
"...we will stand before the Council not as a student, but as the most dangerous genius this Academy has ever seen."
Kefius's grant of unrestricted, supervised access was like a key unlocking every latch in Robert's mind. Old Malken didn't realize that by offering this opportunity as a test, he had actually unleashed the monster of genius inside Robert. From that day on, Robert began to see the Bending Machine's chamber as his second home, and the machine itself as an extension of his body.
The prototype, the "Soul Forging Workshop," was his ultimate goal, but his focus snagged on the most critical problem of the "Reactive Perception Matrix": Speed. The issue wasn't Protocolasm or Magic Dust; it was time.
Robert sat motionless for hours in the chair before the Bending Machine, the Fuj attached to his head. His eyes were closed, but his mind was racing through data streams inside the quantum core at light speed. He was no longer just a user; he was a hacker trying to understand the machine's operating system. The Fuj was a perfect interface capable of taking thoughts directly from the brain and transmitting them to the Matrix. But Robert felt this flow wasn't fast enough. Perception happened in a thousandth of a second. His system had to be faster than perception.
The current schematic was built on "dissolving" the world behind a user the moment they turned their back and "creating" the world in front of them. But during this process, that millisecond delay could be noticed by the user, causing the "illusion" to break.
Terms from his old world flooded his mind. Core speed, cache memory, and RAM... The Bending Machine had immense creative power but no "memory." It pulled every piece of data from scratch each time. What if... what if he added a "memory" to the machine? Instead of completely "dissolving" the world the user wasn't seeing at that moment, what if he kept it suspended in a "buffer memory" area created by the Bending Machine at the quantum level, integrated into the machine? It wouldn't destroy the data, just compress it and keep it ready. This would speed up processing time perhaps by a thousand percent.
Filled with these thoughts, he left the machine, his mind tired but equally excited. His plan was ready. First, using the Bending Machine, he would create an upgrade part for the Bending Machine itself, a "Quantum Memory Area." This was the first, secret step he had to take before facing the Council.
As he walked wearily toward his room, louder and more tense voices than usual from the hall caught his attention. When he entered, he saw most of the team standing there. Karnah, with his massive frame, was crushing a nutrient tablet in his hand while explaining something heatedly to the new member, Syla. Vingyu was not on his perch but hovering in the middle of the room, flapping his wings angrily.
"What's happening?" Robert asked, his leader tone automatically kicking in, suppressing his fatigue.
"The Sun Tournament, Leader!" Vingyu chirped, flying quickly to his side. "The official announcement just arrived! Three weeks away! The Academy's biggest competition! And we... we are not ready in this new state!"
Syla intervened with her cold, aristocratic voice. "We have no strategy. The old order built on the brute force of Normah and Tersan is a wreck. And..." she paused, "one of our new members (referring to Amara) is unstable and the other (referring to herself) is incompatible with this team's chaotic fighting style."
Robert realized then that his plans had to change. The Mind Matrix project could wait. The Quantum Memory Area could wait. One way to impress the Council was to turn this "misfit" team into a deadly symphony in that arena, before the eyes of the entire Academy.
"Wait," Robert said. There was no fatigue in his eyes, only a burning determination.
He rushed to his room. He opened the Tu device and filled the blank schematics with his teammates' profiles. He analyzed each of their weak points, their deficits in battle. Sinf's range issue, Tina's self-immolating rage... He turned them all into equations. The prototype could wait. Now, it was time for weapons.
After saving the designs to the Tu device, he bolted from his room. He sprinted through the corridors and headed back to that dim, sacred room, the forbidden zone where the Bending Machine was located. The seal on the door recognized the mark on his palm, and the heavy doors opened just enough for him to pass before shutting quickly.
He was alone inside.
He sat in the Bending Machine's operator chair. He put on the Fuj headset and activated the Mecha screen. He emptied his mind. He would no longer shape with his hands, but with his imagination.
First, he thought of Sinf's weapon. The image in his mind appeared on the Mecha screen. The alloy of the metal, the internal gears of the mechanism, the pressure setting of the serum chamber... He designed every detail to the millimeter. When the image became clear, he pressed the "Produce" button with a mental command.
The machine worked with a deep hum. Silvery Protocolasm flowing from the Vault began to be processed by laser-like lights in the production pool. The matter was being woven and solidified in the air according to the template in Robert's mind.
When the process was finished, a matte silver cylinder stood in the production tray.
Robert took off the Fuj and approached the tray. The moment he reached for the cylinder, he felt a sharp pain in his fingertips. "Ah!" He pulled his hand back with a hiss. The Magic Metal was still emitting immense heat from molecular friction as it had just come out of production.
He immediately grabbed the blue tube on the workbench, the 'Zero Point Spray'. He sprayed it liberally over the cylinder.
Hiss...
A dense, white cloud of steam filled the room. When the steam cleared, the metal was now touchable, possessing a frosted surface.
He repeated the same process for Tina's staff and talisman. As he coded the volcanic energy on the Mecha screen, the sound of the machine's cooling fans rose.
Hours later, Robert returned to the hall, holding the equipment that had cooled down but still vibrated with energy.
The waiting atmosphere in the hall turned to curiosity upon his entrance.
"Sinf," Robert said. His voice filled the room.
The healer glided silently from her corner. Her silvery hair fell over her shoulders as she looked at the object in Robert's hand, which still trailed a faint cooling mist.
"This is your new voice," Robert said, touching the hidden trigger on the cylinder.
With a mechanical hiss, the panels on the cylinder's surface bloomed like a flower, interlocking parts extending to transform into an elegant injector rifle with spiral engravings on its body. Sinf flinched.
"Phoenix Needle," Robert said. "Green mode: fires compressed healing serum. Red: neurotoxin. Blue is a gas cloud."
Sinf took the weapon. The metal was still ice-cold from that freezing spray. "Poison?"
"Protecting the team is the greatest healing, Sinf," Robert said. "You are no longer just a victim; you are a hunter."
Sinf gripped the handle. The power didn't feel frightening; it felt reassuring. She looked at Robert with gratitude, and instinctively, silvery fairy dust spilled from her fingertips. It settled on Robert, spreading a menthol-like coolness.
Robert smiled, reaching out to gently fix a stray lock of Sinf's hair. At the moment of contact, Robert's suppressed energy collided with Sinf's crystal resonance; a short, chiming melody was heard in the air. Both pulled back in surprise.
Robert turned his gaze to the other corner. "Tina. Your turn."
The fiery girl watched him with the hum of embers inside her. Robert handed her the long object wrapped in cloth.
"You said the fire inside was your prison. Not anymore."
The cloth fell away. The staff revealed looked as if carved from a single piece of volcanic obsidian; its body was pitch black and smooth, but deep inside, a vein of ember-colored light pulsed like a heartbeat. At the very top of the staff sat a perfectly spherical crystal knob in a contrasting ice-blue.
"Heat sink," Robert said. "A stabilizer to draw and focus that uncontrolled fire of yours."
The moment Tina touched the staff, her body shuddered. The eternal, scorching noise inside her... went silent. There was no pain. Only coolness.
She dropped the staff and embraced Robert in a single step. She buried her face in Robert's chest. Robert smelled the scent of embers from Tina's hair. He lowered his head and pressed his lips to hers.
This wasn't a lustful kiss. It was a thermodynamic transfer. Robert transferred the cool, white room in his mind, the absolute control, to Tina.
When they pulled apart, Tina's golden eyes held not just anger anymore, but a dangerous hunger for that coolness. Robert reached into his pocket.
"Not done yet," he said. He opened his palm.
Dangling from a silver chain was a thumb-sized, teardrop-cut transparent crystal. Inside the crystal, red and orange halos danced constantly as if a frozen flame were trapped within. The talisman glowed with its own inner fire even in the dim light.
"Protective Talisman," Robert said as he placed the necklace around Tina's neck. "Even when you put down the staff, this will maintain your balance. The flame inside is your essence. Don't let it spill out, just feel it."
Tina touched the necklace with her fingers; the crystal was warm, alive.
"My, my, my!" chirped Vingyu.
Robert maintained his seriousness. "Everyone get used to your equipment. I'm not done yet."
He didn't return to his room. He went straight back to the corridor, to the forbidden room where the Bending Machine was. When he entered, the doors locked behind him.
Sinf and Tina were done, but next were mechanical and mental limits. He sat in the chair again, put on the Fuj.
"Bellero," he whispered.
On the design screen in his mind, he opened Bellero's anatomy in 3D. How could he give the cute owl lethal power while maintaining its aerodynamics? Robert designed a brushed platinum helm in his mind. But this shouldn't be just armor. With the cursor in his mind, he opened microscopic channels inside the helm. These channels were mini-rail systems that would compress Magic Dust and fire it like bullets.
In the simulation on the Mecha screen, the helm didn't reduce Bellero's speed even by 0.5%. "Perfect," Robert said, and pressed the confirmation button.
The machine hummed, the production pool flared up again.
After the parts cooled, Robert took them and went outside the room, to the waiting area of the classroom. He couldn't let anyone into the forbidden room.
"Bellero!" he called out.
The mechanical owl glided from the ventilation and landed on Robert's shoulder. His lenses enlarged when he saw the metal parts in Robert's hand.
"Hoot? Leader? Are those shiny things for me? Or are you retiring me?" His voice was trembling and anxious.
Robert smiled. "Retirement? No my friend, this is a promotion."
He gently placed the helm on Bellero's head. The piece fit with a mechanical click. He stepped back after attaching the under-wing slots too.
"Scan your systems," Robert said.
Bellero shook his head. As the processor inside recognized the new hardware, that innocent blue light in his eyes slowly gave way to hunter red.
Vzzt... Click-click.
Miniature barrels emerged from the sides of the helm like the claws of a bird of prey. Bellero spread his wings; the slots under the wings were full. He didn't feel heavier, he felt empowered.
"Analysis..." Bellero said, his voice now sounding more mechanical and resonant. "Speed loss: None. Firepower increase: Three thousand percent. Threat detection: Active."
He did a sudden maneuver in the air, flipped, and locked onto an old target board hanging from the ceiling. Pew! A tiny energy shot from his helm pierced the target right in the middle.
"Hahaha! I am a dragon! A tiny, metal dragon!" As Bellero flew away screaming in victory, Robert returned to the forbidden room.
The last and most delicate piece remained. "Uhura."
His head was throbbing when he sat in the chair, but he had to focus. Uhura needed more than a physical weapon. Obsidian and purple amethyst... As he processed these stones in his mind, he coded "void" and "reflection" properties into their atomic structure. The double-headed nature of the staff was to balance the split in Uhura's mind.
When production was complete and the parts cooled, Robert went out to the front door, to the outer room again.
When Uhura was summoned, she seemed to glide through the shadows. Robert's stance at the door of the forbidden room, holding those dark purple glowing items, made Uhura pause for a moment.
Robert handed her the necklace and the staff.
"Negative energy deflectors," he said.
Uhura looked at the necklace first. It was a hexagon-cut, dark purple amethyst hanging from a matte black metal chain that swallowed light. In the center of the stone, a swirling 'void' mist seemed to exist, drawing the gaze into it.
Uhura put the necklace around her neck. The moment the metal touched her skin, she felt that invisible psychic weight on her shoulders, those whispers constantly scratching at her mind, lighten. It was like entering a silent library from a noisy room.
Then she took the staff. It was a body of pitch-black metal, pointed at both ends and wrapped in leather in the center. Larger purple crystals, matching the necklace, shone at both tips. When she took the staff in her hand, she realized her power flowed like a controlled canal, not a scattered river.
"Different," she said. Her voice was distant as always, but held deep surprise. Her eyes shone as she examined the staff. "The constant pressure... in my mind... has decreased. Clearer."
Robert took a step closer to her. He raised his hand and placed it on Uhura's shoulder.
Uhura stiffened like a statue at this contact. Her pupils trembled. Being touched... was a weakness in her world, an invitation for attack. Her body wanted to go into a defensive stance, but the necklace around her neck absorbed and destroyed this panic.
Robert didn't pull his hand away, but he didn't cross the line either. He just looked into her eyes, behind those icy walls.
"Your mind is a fortress, Uhura," Robert said, his voice like a whisper but echoing. "But even the strongest fortresses fall if not supported from the inside during a siege. The void inside that necklace is your shelter. Neel is your comrade, but I am your leader. You don't have to be alone behind those walls."
Uhura didn't look away. Her face remained expressionless, but for the first time, a crack, a microscopic opening for trust, appeared in that icy wall. The warmth of Robert's hand was balanced by the coldness of the amethyst. For the first time, a touch didn't scare her.
"Understood, Leader," she said, her voice softer than ever. "I see... the threats... and the allies... more clearly."
Robert smiled and pulled his hand back. "Good. Now go and discover what you can do with that staff."
As Uhura disappeared into the shadows, Robert took a deep breath. He had saved the heaviest weapon, the most challenging engineering for last.
As he entered the forbidden room again, the door sealed behind him.
"Karnah!"