The walk back from the training grounds was a blur of white stone and shimmering sapphire light. My arm was still buzzing—not with power, but with the phantom heat of Akhtar's "High-Pressure" drills. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the silver-blue lines etched into my skin, glowing like fiber-optic cables under too much load.
"My theory is lacking." I thought thinking of the failed experiment.
I reached my quarters and shut the heavy oak door, the silence of the room rushing in to meet me. Orizon was a city that never truly slept; outside my window, the ambient mana of the world settled over the spires like a luminous fog. To the mages out there, this was the breath of the universe. To me, it was atmospheric interference.
I sat on the edge of my bed, the room dark save for the faint iridescent glow leaking through the window. My mind was restless, looping back to the island. I remembered the salt spray, the grey sky, and the silence—the absolute, heavy silence of a place where magic didn't exist.
And then, I felt it.
A warmth blossomed against my thigh. It wasn't the sharp, erratic heat of a spell; it was a rhythmic, deep thrum. I reached into my pocket and pulled out the stone.
In the dim light, the obsidian surface looked different. It didn't just reflect the blue glow of the city; it seemed to absorb it, creating a tiny pocket of absolute darkness in my palm. As I stared at it, the pulse grew stronger.
Thump-thump. It matched my heartbeat.
I remembered the first time I touched it on the shore. Back then, I thought it was a static shock—a discharge of energy from a dying world. But after weeks of Akhtar's lectures on mana density and frequency, the truth clicked into place with the cold precision of a mathematical proof.
It wasn't static. It was a Mana Pulse. The stone wasn't a "void." It was an anchor. It had been waiting for a frequency it recognized, and my "etched" nervous system, stripped of all biological bias by the vacuum of my world, was the perfect transmitter.
I placed the stone on the wooden desk. My hands were steady, my thoughts sharpening into the cold, analytical state I used back in the lab. I didn't need a spellbook for this. I needed physics.
"If the stone is an anchor," I whispered, "then mana isn't just energy. It's a wave-form."
In Earth's physics, every object has a natural frequency. If you hit that frequency perfectly, you get Resonance. The mages of Avulum were trying to "brute force" the stone, throwing buckets of magic at a wall. I was going to try to find the keyhole.
I closed my eyes and reached for the "sip" of mana I kept stored in my pathways. I didn't push it. Instead, I began to oscillate it. I visualized the energy not as a bolt, but as a vibrating string.
Low... lower... steady.
I tuned the vibration, searching for the "hum" I felt in my bones. The stone began to react. It didn't glow, but the air around it started to warp, like the heat haze over a summer road. The moment the frequencies matched, the obsidian surface turned liquid. It phase-shifted, turning into a dark, mercury-like substance that flowed toward my hand.
The liquid stone touched my skin and vanished. There was no pain, only a sensation of incredible density moving into my marrow. Then, the world fell away.
I wasn't in my room anymore. I was standing in a vast, silent space that felt like a cathedral carved from the night sky. There were no walls, only endless rows of monolithic shelves and floating crystalline structures that stretched into infinity.
In the center of this mental space sat a singular, massive pedestal. Floating above it was a sphere of liquid glass—an Orb that seemed to hold a swirling galaxy within its depths.
I stepped toward it, my footsteps echoing in the silence. As I reached out to touch the orb, the "Blank Slate" status of my body acted as a key. The liquid glass rippled, and a flood of information poured into my mind—not as text, but as Concepts.
I saw the Eight Sockets I had glimpsed before, but now I understood them as the Eight Pillars of Reality.
The Orb pulsed with a soft, orange light, and a single realization crystallized in my mind:
"The first gateway is the Law of Heat. To understand Fire is to understand the movement of all things. But the mind cannot hold the Law without the strength of a Core."
I pulled my hand back, gasping as the weight of the knowledge settled. This place is built by a Supreme Magus, a Tier 9 mage, a realm that the books of Avulum only theorized and didn't dare to pursue. And this place is his Legacy, the culmination of his work, His Path. "Can I follow this path?" I thought, knowing my "Special " state maybe it is possible. I knew my current standing: Tier 1 (Apprentice). I had 100 units of mana circulating in my system, but no central "battery" to stabilize them.
In Avulum, Mages have tiers and it depends on their mana capacity. Tier 1 are called Apprentices and their mana is flowing through their body and needs to accumulate 100 Mana to be able to transition to tier 2 ,Initiate. To transition you need to build your core where you store mana , and each tier afterwards needs the accumulation of more mana and then compressing it, But ,obviously it gets harder and harder the further one walks as an Archmage ,a Tier 6 mage, can Level cities by just unleashing his mana.
The Library was showing me the blueprints for a Tier 2 Core, but it required 200 units of mana to ignite. My body couldn't produce that much energy on its own—not yet.
I tried to wander around to explore but i was blocked, and i felt a new information appeared on the orb, it wants energy to unlock the legacy, more energy than i gave , than i have.
Then, an image flickered within the Orb. A jagged, glowing crystal found within the heart of a beast. A Monster Core. It doesn't just need my energy but also Monster cores that can also be used to form my core. It didn't want just energy , it wanted a symbiotic relation. Using the core to unlock more of the legacy and helping me form my core. How?, I didn't know . "Is This just a Legacy?" My scepticism flared but thinking of the stakes, I would rather believe it is an opportunity
The Library was telling me that the Supreme Magus that built this place ,called the Architect, didn't just meditate for power; they harvested the refined energies of the world to "calibrate" their own evolution. To unlock the first Pillar—Thermodynamics—and form my Tier 2 Core, I needed a high-density Fire Core.
The vision shattered, and I was back in my room.
I was gasping for air, my skin drenched in sweat. I looked down at my hand. The stone was gone, but the silver-blue lines on my arm now had a faint, dark metallic sheen. I could feel the Library resting in the back of my mind, a silent vault of secrets waiting for me to bring it the "fuel" it required.
I looked at the door. Akhtar was just down the hall. The Council was just a few floors up. They were looking for a savior or a weapon, but they were looking for it within the laws of their own magic. They had no idea I had just found the master blueprint.
I stood up, my mind already calculating. I couldn't ask for a core. They wouldn't give a "Blank Slate" something that valuable. If I wanted to unlock the Legacy, I would have to be a student by day and a ghost by night.
The Rogue Path had begun.