Kael remained in his seat until Orin officially dismissed the class. The instructor immediately moved to the nearest group of novices to correct the angle of their chisels and nudge their hands toward steadier strokes. Normally Kael would have lingered to confirm he hadn't missed some nuance, but the Compendium pulsed a directive against his ribs.
More arrays required.
He slipped out before Dean could ask him where he was going.
The vast doors of the library swallowed him once again. The familiar scent of dust, paper, and mana oxidation settled around him like a shroud. Last time he had wandered aimlessly and flipped through random texts like a blind man searching for landmarks. Not today.
He went straight to the Siphon Array section he had found before.
He did not read for comprehension. He scanned for diagrams. He looked for schematics, glyph patterns, anchor rings, and pressure channels. Anything the Compendium could analyse. Hours passed in tight silence. By the time he leaned back, stiff and tired, he had only collected two siphon arrays and one feedback loop that differed even slightly from the standard model.
It was not enough.
Compendium, he thought, directing the query inward. Can you work with these and build something efficient?
A cool whisper responded.
[Query Received: Optimization request. Siphon arrays plus feedback loops.]
[Result: Insufficient data. Additional diagrams required.]
A sharp frustration dug into his ribs. This entire section contained rows upon rows of research, yet all of it recycled the same basic designs. Nothing new. Nothing experimental. It felt as if the field had been abandoned decades ago.
As if the topic itself had been buried.
That thought nudged another memory. Kellan had mentioned the restricted archives offhandedly. His token of access still rested in Kael's pocket like a secret weight.
Kael checked the aisles. Students drifted between shelves, absorbed in their own desperate struggles to survive the week. He waited. He pretended to browse until the flow of bodies thinned enough.
Then he slipped through the side arch and descended into the forbidden wing.
The air changed immediately. It was colder here, quieter, as if even sound hesitated to linger. He searched fast but thoroughly. No labels mentioned siphon arrays. No categories hinted at drain constructs. The more he searched, the sharper his frustration became.
Then his foot brushed a shelf he hadn't noticed.
Incomplete and Dangerous Research.
Kael stilled.
He scanned the spines. Soul Infusion. Poison Tempering. High-Density Mana Compression. Experimental Gate Conditioning.
Dozens of abandoned ideas. Failed theories. Half-mad attempts at advancement that likely cost the authors their lives.
Kael's eyes landed on a cracked black spine.
Siphon Array Experiments: Feedback Loop Trials.
His pulse tightened. He slid the tome from its place and opened it.
The first page was not a diagram. It was a warning.
The arrays within this volume are the final work of Alaric Dent, Research Master of Parasitic Formations.
He believed: "If mana can be drawn, then why can't we empower our arrays and formations with it?"
He died pursuing these designs. Attempting any array described herein is fatal.
Use this book only for academic understanding.
Kael stared at the page, throat working. Below the warning, a paragraph in Dent's hurried script read:
We have seen natural formations that draw ambient mana for their own activation. We siphon mana daily to power our tools. If we succeed here, humanity may one day stand independent of external reservoirs.
Kael's breath caught.
Was he researching three-dimensional arrays?
So he wasn't the only one who believed it possible. He wasn't the only one who felt the people of this kingdom had imposed unnecessary limits on themselves.
The Compendium stirred. No voice, no guidance, just a subtle shift beneath his consciousness. Observation. Interest.
Kael turned the page.
The tome was dense with aborted theories and half-mad brilliance. Alaric had attempted dozens of siphon arrays, but the moment he tried integrating a third functional layer, the structure overloaded and collapsed. His scattered notes described an alternative approach. He tried layering inscriptions separately and binding their functions afterward. But attachment runes degraded the instant more than two functions came into play.
Kael absorbed it all. He turned pages with mechanical rhythm, feeding the data into the Compendium's quiet, crystalline memory.
He only needed ten siphon arrays and ten feedback loop arrays for his beetle design, yet Dent had catalogued more than sixty incomplete structures. Each one was a failed experiment. Each one was a step toward a theory that could reshape array craft entirely.
Kael felt a strange kinship with the dead man. He traced a thumb over a smudge of ink in the margin. Alaric hadn't wanted to live within the boundaries other humans had accepted. He had pushed. Reached. Broken himself on possibility.
Then the alert he had been waiting for flickered across his mind.
[Input received: partial arrays recorded. +20 CP]
"Compendium," Kael murmured. "Optimize the arrays for the beetle model."
[Query initiated: Optimization of array for beetle model.]
[Estimated cost: 100 CP]
The Compendium immediately began its work.
Kael felt it more than heard it. It was an internal storm of silent calculations. It tested inscriptions, cross-matched effects, layered functions, tore them apart, rebuilt them, and discarded them again. Each attempt was checked for compatibility, then etched into one of its hidden pages. CP drained to fuel the relentless iteration, and as new knowledge settled into the lattice, a faint trickle returned.
It was mesmerizing.
Kael could already tell the process would take some time.
He closed the tome with a careful exhale, slid it back onto the shelf, and left the silent rows of the library.
His stomach growled. Long overdue.
He headed toward the dining hall while the Compendium still hummed quietly inside him. It was building something new.
Something no one else in the kingdom had dared attempt.
The corridor outside the library was quiet at this hour, lit only by the pale glow of floating lumen-orbs. Kael walked with controlled steps, though his mind was far from calm. The Compendium continued its silent internal churn. Threads of calculations wove and unwove beneath his awareness like a pulse beneath the skin.
He needed food. His body reminded him only when he reached the lower floor of the Academy and the noise of the dining hall spilled out into the hallway.
The moment he stepped inside, conversations dipped.
Not by much. Not enough for anyone to accuse the room of silence. But enough for Kael to feel the subtle shift. Curiosity, wariness, and something colder from a few scattered corners.
The Harcott cousins sat near the center. Kyle noticed him first, expression hardening like carved stone. His younger cousin followed a heartbeat later. Her lips curled and her posture tightened as though Kael's presence alone was an offense.
Kael ignored them. They were irrelevant variables.
He moved through the food line, took a tray of rice, broth, and roasted root vegetables, and chose a quiet table along the far wall.
He had barely taken his second bite when someone slid into the seat across from him.
Dean.
"Kael, can I sit here?" he asked, voice lower than usual.
Kael looked up. "We are friends, Dean. You don't need to ask."
Dean's face reddened. "You looked like you wanted to be alone. And I haven't seen you all day. You should have joined my elective instead of choosing minor runology."
Kael smiled. "I like runes. And siphoning runes fascinate me."
Dean brightened a little, and the two of them settled into quiet eating until the cafeteria doors opened again.
Cyras walked in.
The room shifted around him like metal filings drawn to a magnet. Kael felt his heart skip annoyingly before he forced it steady. Cyras flashed them both a mischievous smile, all easy confidence, and Kael's jaw clenched.
So he was his usual self. Flaunting that charm at every opportunity.
I hate this vulnerability.
Around the hall, girls and boys alike leaned toward Cyras's orbit as if entering the radius of some gravitational pull. Kael shook his head, tore off a piece of bread, and asked Dean a question.
"Why wasn't Cyras in Battle Weaving with us? It isn't an elective. He shouldn't be able to skip it."
Dean blinked, then stared at Kael as if he had asked why water was wet.
"Kael, you can skip the first week of classes." Dean said it slowly, as though Kael might be concussed. "Preparation for the dungeon skirmish is important. Most nobles don't take classes the first week. They get private dungeon survival lessons."
He gestured subtly around the hall.
"If you haven't noticed, most nobles are practicing alone. The skirmish is only a few days away."
Kael hadn't noticed.
He felt a faint heat rise under his skin. He might have the Compendium, arguably the most powerful advantage any student possessed, but in some aspects, he was painfully lacking. He hadn't even realized half the class wasn't showing up.
"But if they don't take classes," Kael said slowly, "how will they learn to control their mana? How do they fight back?"
Dean harrumphed, a bitter sound. "They have inheritances, Kael. Memory stones. Their families' magical knowledge stored for their use. Nearly every noble has one. At least the top-tier ones do."
Dean looked away for a moment, his voice tightening with a mixture of shame and resentment.
"I don't have one. I wasn't worth investing in when I left the house. And if they gave me one now, it would be an admission of failure. They won't lose face for me."
He gestured toward Cyras.
"Cyras is a Vale. Connected to the royal family. He's probably immersed in a memory orb right now, pulling guidance from generations of spell masters. By the time the nobles finish absorbing their initial knowledge..." Dean exhaled, defeated. "They will have advanced by leaps and bounds compared to us."
Indignation flared in Kael's chest.
But then he remembered.
He had the Compendium.
Memory stones stored limited, inherited knowledge. Static snapshots of the past.
The Compendium could grow.
Endlessly.
Relentlessly.
Exponentially.
One day, Kael thought, they will be nothing if I continue feeding knowledge into the Compendium.
And from what he had already seen, their "inherited knowledge" was lacking. Badly.
As Kael finished the last of his meal, a ripple of pressure tightened behind his eyes.
Not pain. Not strain.
A switch flipping.
The Compendium stirred, then clicked into place. It was a sensation like a massive internal gear locking with a final, decisive tooth.
[Optimization Complete. Siphon Array Variant: Accepted]
[New Formation Schema Unlocked]
Kael's breath stilled.
The dining hall blurred around him. Noise faded beneath the thunder of information unfolding in his mind like an opening map.
Then he saw the new schema.
And his heart stopped for a beat.
Three-dimensional formations.
Alaric Dent had theorized them. Orin had told him outright that no one in the kingdom could develop a stable structure for 3D arrays. It was a limitation so deeply accepted that even the most brilliant magi treated it as immutable truth.
Yet where they failed, the Compendium had succeeded.
Once again, Kael felt that strange, humbling certainty.
I have been blessed with a very good aspect.
He dove deeper into the schema.
What he found stunned him.
And somehow it felt obvious. Infuriatingly, elegantly obvious. It was like a solution that had been sitting in plain sight, unnoticed only because everyone had been taught not to look.
Instead of layering arrays on top of each other, instead of stacking functions the way every researcher had attempted for generations, the Compendium was conjoining the stone layers themselves. It embedded the linkage inside the stone and allowed the inscriptions to form a single, interwoven three-dimensional structure.
Not stacked.
Not layered.
Merged.
A formation that existed inside its own material.
Kael inhaled sharply.
It was beautiful in its simplicity. Terrifying in its implications. And powerful enough to reshape the entire field of runology.
The Compendium whispered another line across his consciousness.
[Stability Threshold: Acceptable]
[Construct Application: Feasible]
A shiver went down Kael's spine.
This wasn't theory anymore.
He could build this. He could build it now.
His first beetle wouldn't just function. It would be efficient, stable, and centuries ahead of modern formation design.
Kael rose from the table, tray forgotten.
His fingers trembled with controlled excitement. He wanted to begin immediately. Amazement filled him, but cold logic pulled him back. He knew the number of prepared stones he could get from Orin were three at most. He wanted to create a swarm.
The stone he currently could prepare was at 3% efficiency. He did not have enough CP to fully analyse the stone infusion.
Compendium how many CP do I currently have?
[Current total CP: 23]
So, another session in the library. But it would be worth it.
Kael stood abruptly, the legs of his chair scraping against the stone floor.
"Dean," he said, his voice clipped and precise. "I have to go."
Dean blinked, a spoonful of broth halfway to his mouth. "Already? But you barely finished..."
"I'm full," Kael lied. He was far from full. The hunger in his stomach gate was a dull, constant ache, but the hunger in his mind was a roaring fire. "I need to go study in the library. I have some theories I want to test."
He didn't wait for an answer. He turned and strode out of the dining hall, ignoring the magnetic pull of Cyras Vale's laughter and the sharp, burning glares of the Harcott cousins.
They were static. Background noise. He had a signal to decode.
The walk to the library was a blur of calculation.
[Current CP: 23. Target CP for Preparatory Infusion Technique: 100. Deficit: 77.]
Seventy-seven points. Based on his previous rate of absorption in the first-year section, that meant roughly six hours of intensive study. He could cut it if he found magical runes, but Magus Valia had made it clear that runes were strictly guarded secrets.
I need denser information, Kael decided as he pushed through the heavy oak doors of the library. I need to go to the restricted section where discarded runes are placed. What mages discard as trash is a treasure mine for the Compendium.
He bypassed the rows of introductory manuals and headed straight for the restricted section. He pulled three heavy tomes. Unstable Elemental Runes.Utility Runes for Arrays.Theoretical Limits of Using Runes for Crafting.
He found a secluded desk in the shadow of a spiral staircase and opened the first book.
He didn't read. He consumed.
His mana channels were still raw from the battle weaving class, but the rest had dulled the ache. He pumped his confidence and infused his cranial gate with Arcane Mana.
He drove his focus into the pages, forcing his eyes to track lines of text faster than his conscious mind could parse. He let the Compendium take the wheel. It scanned, categorized, and cross-referenced, turning ink and paper into pure data.
The headache started ten minutes in. A sharp pressure behind the eyes. By the second hour, it had bloomed into a migraine that felt like a nail being driven into his temple.
The Compendium Within pulsed. Every gain in knowledge energized the aspect in some way. The words on the page blurred, discarding runes and theories that went above his head, but the Compendium caught them. It was storing knowledge and categorizing it as if a smart library was working inside his skull. Whenever it finished a topic, the Compendium would urge him to find a new tome to complete the set.
This went on for hours. The Compendium fed.
The cranial infusion kept going, and Kael felt the physical toll mounting, but the results were undeniable.
[Input Received: +3 CP]
[Input Received: +5 CP]
[Input Received: +12 CP]
[Note: Novel concepts yield higher CP returns than standard patterns.]
The numbers climbed agonizingly slowly. The Compendium was picky. It disregarded redundant information and only rewarded him for novel concepts. He threw aside useless runes, outdated theories, and redundant diagrams.
Time distorted. The library emptied out as the evening deepened. The silence grew heavy, pressing against his eardrums.
Finally, as he turned the last page of a treatise on unstable geometric paradoxes, the chime rang out in his mind, sweet and clear.
[Total CP: 104]
Kael slammed the book shut, exhaling a breath that rattled in his chest. His vision swam, dark spots dancing in the periphery, but a cold grin tugged at the corner of his mouth.
"Purchase," he whispered. "Mana Infusion Technique: Preparatory Infusion."
[Query Initiated: Mana Infusion Technique: Preparatory Infusion. Cost: 100 CP.][Commencing Knowledge Integration.]
The knowledge slammed into his mind. Precise, heavy, and perfect.
Finally. He had the last piece of the puzzle. Now, it was time to build the swarm.