The next week was a study in controlled agony. My life became a tripartite hell of public humiliation, private theft, and brutal conditioning.
By day, I was Kaelen the Blank, the walking punchline of Astral Peak's first-year cohort. I attended mandatory lectures on Mana Theory and Racial Histories, a ghost at the back of the amphitheater. The sneers had solidified into a permanent background radiation. My F-rank status barred me from Practical Application courses, the halls where the true heirs of power learned to shape fire, earth, light, and shadow. I was a spectator to my own irrelevance, a living exhibit of failure.
"Veridian," Instructor Borin, a stout Draf with a beard like forged iron, would bark during Mana Circulation drills. "Are you even trying to feel the energy? Or are you just practicing being a hole in the world?"
Laughter. I would stare at my hands, following Machina's silent, sub-vocalized instructions instead.
[THE MANA CIRCULATION EXERCISE IS FLAWED FOR YOUR PURPOSES. IT SEEKS TO EXPAND THE CONDUIT. YOUR CONDUIT IS PINPRICK-SIZED AND LIKELY ALWAYS WILL BE. IGNORE THE EXPANSION. FOCUS ON PURITY. COMPRESS THE INHALED MANA. FILTER IT THROUGH THE LENS OF YOUR WILL. DO NOT TRY TO HOLD MORE. TRY TO REFINE WHAT LITTLE YOU CAN TOUCH.]
So while others glowed with gathering power, I sat perfectly still, wrestling with the faintest wisp of energy, trying to crush it into something denser, sharper. It was like trying to sculpt diamond with numb fingers. I felt nothing but frustration and a faint, persistent headache.
The only reprieve was the Academy's vast Grand Library. Here, amidst towering shelves of grimoires and bestiaries, I was invisible. This became my true classroom. Machina guided me past the popular texts on high-impact battle magic and lineage purification.
[YOUR EDUCATION IS DEFICIENT IN FOUNDATIONAL PRINCIPLES. YOU UNDERSTAND 'REGENERATION' AS A CONCEPT BECAUSE YOU EXPERIENCED IT FROM THE SOURCE. YOU MUST BUILD A LEXICON OF COMPREHENSION. START HERE.]
My studies were eclectic, bizarre. I pored over bestiaries, not for monster weaknesses, but for the biological and magical principles behind their traits. I read dry treatises on low-tier herbalism and alchemy, learning the properties of common mosses and fungi—the Mossback's diet. I studied elementary geomancy, not to move earth, but to understand crystalline lattice structures—the principle behind its shell. I was not learning to cast spells; I was learning to deconstruct reality into its component rules.
My stolen [Minor Cellular Regeneration] worked. The scrapes and bruises from my nocturnal activities faded within hours. The deep muscle fatigue from Machina's conditioning was marginally less crippling each morning. It was a subtle, profound comfort. My first coin in a new currency.
But one trait was not an arsenal. Machina had a schedule, and theft required opportunity.
[TARGET IDENTIFIED: GLIMMERWISP COLONY. LOCATION: ACADEMY SEWER OUTFLOW, SUB-LEVEL 3. CORE TRAIT: [MINOR LUMINESCENCE/MANA SENSITIVITY]. OBJECTIVE: ARCHIVE THE SENSITIVITY ASPECT. RATIONALE: ENHANCED PERCEPTUAL AWARENESS OF AMBIENT ENERGY FLOWS IS A PREREQUISITE FOR ADVANCED MANIPULATION AND TARGET ANALYSIS.]
The sewers. Of course.
That night, armed with a stolen kitchen candle and a resolve that felt thinner than the tallow, I descended through a maintenance hatch Machina had highlighted. The stench was a physical force—damp stone, decay, and things best not considered. The tunnels were a labyrinth of echoing drips and skittering shadows.
[BEARING 270 DEGREES. THE COLONY NESTS IN A MICRO-CAVITY WHERE RESIDUAL CLEANSING ENCHANTMENTS LEAK MANA, CREATING A HABITABLE POCKET.]
I found them. A cluster of Glimmerwisps looked less like monsters and more like a disturbed nest of angry, fist-sized jellyfish made of condensed moonlight. They pulsed with a soft, blue-white glow, floating in a cloud near a crack in the wall from which a faint, clean magical resonance emanated.
[APPROACH SLOWLY. THEY ARE NON-HOSTILE UNLESS THEIR HABITAT IS THREATI—]
My foot slipped on the slimy stone. I stumbled, my free hand shooting out to brace against the wall. The Wisps' gentle pulsing turned into a frantic, synchronized strobe. A high-pitched hum filled the chamber. Then, they attacked.
It wasn't a physical assault. Thin, nearly invisible beams of concentrated light lanced from their bodies. Where they struck the wet stone, it sizzled and steamed. Where one grazed my forearm, it felt like a white-hot wire laid across my skin. I hissed in pain, dropping the candle. It sputtered out, plunging us into a chaos of strobing light and my own panic.
[EVASIVE MANEUVERS! THEY ARE TARGETING YOUR MANA SIGNATURE, HOWEVER FAINT. YOUR DISRUPTION IS PERCEIVED AS CONTAMINATION.]
I scrambled backward, slipping again, the beams cutting the air around me. One seared a line across my thigh. The pain was acute, brilliant. This wasn't a slow Mossback. This was a swarm of energized, perceptive defenders.
Comprehension. The principle wasn't just light. It was perception. They sensed mana. My clumsy presence was a pollutant in their clean energy source.
I couldn't fight them. I had to… apologize. To demonstrate I wasn't a threat.
Gritting my teeth against the pain, I stopped scrambling. I forced myself to stand still in the chaotic light show, ignoring the instinct to flee. I focused inward, on the pathetic trickle of mana I could barely compress. Instead of holding it tight, I did the opposite. I tried to smother it. To make my own energy signature as quiet, as still, as the stone around me. I thought of the Mossback's patience, of being part of the background, unmoving and unthreatening.
The frantic strobbing of the Wisps slowed. The beams ceased. Their hum lowered from a shriek to a wary buzz. They pulsed softly, drifting closer, their light playing over me. I held my breath, my heart hammering against my ribs. One particularly large Wisp drifted within inches of my face. I could feel the tingle of its energy field, a cleaner version of the sewer's foul mana.
I didn't reach for it. I simply observed. I opened my senses, trying to feel what they felt—the leak of clean magic from the wall, the turbulent, foul energy of the sewers, the tiny, muted candle-flame of my own core. The principle was awareness. A passive, constant reading of the energy world.
Slowly, I raised a hand, not to grab, but to hover near the large Wisp. I focused on that feeling of expanded awareness, of tuning into the subtle currents.
[TARGET ANALYSIS OPTIMAL. COMPREHENSION PEAKING. INITIATE ARCHIVAL.]
I activated [Adaptive Mimicry].
This time, the sensation was different. Less a warmth, more a sharp, crystalline clarity blooming behind my eyes. The world didn't change, but my perception of it did. The vague, oppressive atmosphere of the tunnel resolved into distinct layers. I could feel the sluggish, polluted flow of residual waste-magic in the main channel, the bright, thin trickle of cleansing energy from the crack, the agitated but calming signatures of the Wisps themselves. It was like gaining a new sense.
The large Wisp pulsed once, brightly, then drifted back to its colony. The sense of threat dissipated.
[ARCHIVAL PROCESS INITIATED…]
[TARGET: Glimmerwisp Colony (Collective Awareness). CORE TRAIT IDENTIFIED: [Mana-Sense].]
[ANALYSIS: Passive perceptive faculty. Allows detection and basic categorization of ambient mana types and densities. Non-visual, operates on a synesthetic level (feeling tones, pressure, temperature).]
[COMPREHENSION CHECK: HIGH (User achieved empathetic resonance and demonstrated principle application).]
[PHYSIOLOGICAL RESONANCE: EXCELLENT (Neural pathways readily adapted for sensory expansion).]
[ARCHIVAL SUCCESSFUL. TRAIT: [Mana-Sense] integrated permanently. Mana cost: Passive.]
I stood in the dark, breathing heavily. My arm and thigh throbbed where I'd been burned, the new regeneration already itching fiercely. But I was grinning, a wild, breathless expression in the pitch black. I could feel the world. It was a torrent of information, overwhelming and glorious.
[SECONDARY OBJECTIVE ACHIEVED. WITHDRAW. MEDICAL ATTENTION REQUIRED FOR SECOND-DEGREE ENERGY BURNS.]
I limped back to my room, my mind alive with new input. Every student, every enchanted sconce in the halls above, now registered as a distinct point of pressure or light in my new sense. I was a blind man given sonar in a crowded room.
Back in my cell, as I applied a stolen healing salve (another acquisition Machina had guided me to pilfer from the alchemy lab waste bin), I reviewed my status.
USER STATUS: Kaelen Veridian
MANA CORE RANK: F (COMPRESSION EFFICIENCY: +0.7%)
ARCHIVES:
1. [Minor Cellular Regeneration] (E-Rank Trait) - SYNCH: 89%
2. [Mana-Sense] (D-Rank Trait) - SYNCH: 61%
The Rank of the sense was higher. A D-rank trait, integrated because I'd understood it deeply. Comprehension was the key. Not force, not lineage, but understanding.
The next morning, in Mana Theory, Instructor Borin was droning on about elemental affinities. I sat in the back, my eyes closed. I wasn't trying to feel my own mana. I was using my new [Mana-Sense] to observe the class.
I could feel the vibrant, swirling heat of a fire-aspected human two rows down. The steady, grounded pulse of a Draf with an earth affinity. The sharp, clean chill of an Elf whose magic was ice-aligned. I could feel Borin's own power, a deep, resonant thrum like a buried forge. And I could feel the voids—the other students like me, with weak or unformed affinities, including a sullen-looking noble's son everyone had assumed was a late bloomer. But my sense told a different story. His core wasn't dormant; it was… fractured, leaking energy in a sad, dissipating trickle.
Knowledge. It was power of a different kind.
As the class ended, Borin called out. "Veridian. A moment."
My blood ran cold. Had he sensed my new perception? I trudged to his desk.
He looked at me, his stone-grey eyes not unkind, just weary. "You try. I see that. You're not daydreaming. But some soil, no matter how much you till it, will not bear fruit. The Headmaster has been… petitioned. Your spot in the dormitory is a charity, but it is also a slot that could go to a student with potential."
The dismissal hung in the air, unspoken but clear. They were going to expel me. To cast the Blank back into the mundane world, where I would live out my days until the Void came.
I met his gaze, the new senses screaming information about the dense, powerful energy coiled within him. I felt no fear from it, only a grim finality.
"I understand, Instructor," I said, my voice quiet but steady. "How long?"
"Until the end of the semester evaluation. Six weeks." He sighed. "Use the time, Veridian. Find a… practical trade. The world needs cobblers and scribes too."
I nodded, turned, and walked out. The laughter in the hallway seemed distant, irrelevant. I had a new deadline. Not thirty-five years. Six weeks.
In the silent sanctuary of my mind, I addressed my only ally.
"Machina. The timeline has moved up."
[OBSERVED. EXPULSION WOULD SEVER ACCESS TO ACADEMY RESOURCES: LIBRARY, SECLUDED GROUNDS, LOW-LEVEL THREATS. UNACCEPTABLE. CONDITIONING PARAMETERS WILL BE ADJUSTED. ACQUISITION SCHEDULE ACCELERATED. YOU MUST DEMONSTRATE 'POTENTIAL' IN A MANNER THEIR PARADIGM CAN RECOGNIZE BEFORE THE EVALUATION.]
"How? I'm still F-rank. I have no offensive skills."
[INCORRECT. YOU HAVE TWO TRAITS AND A FUNCTION. AND YOU HAVE COMPREHENSION. THE NEXT TARGET WILL SERVE DUAL PURPOSES: FURTHER FORTIFICATION AND THE ACQUISITION OF A DEMONSTRABLE 'SKILL.' PREPARE. TONIGHT, WE VISIT THE ACADEMY'S MENAGERIE.]
The Menagerie. Where they kept magical beasts for study. Where security was real.
The stakes had just been raised. Theft was no longer just for survival. It was for my right to remain in the belly of the beast, to continue my silent, heretical ascent. The currency of comprehension was about to be spent on something far more dangerous than light or regeneration.