The transition from the sun-drenched halls of the academy to the Vault of Whispers was like stepping from a summer day into a cold, deep grave. Arthur preferred it this way. The darkness felt honest; it didn't ask him to smile.
As the heavy reinforced doors hissed shut behind him, cutting off the distant chatter of the "sheep" in the hallways, Arthur let his shoulders relax. His white hair seemed to catch the faint, blue bioluminescence of the security wards, and his crimson eyes scanned the room with predatory efficiency.
He bypassed the sections on Basic Element Manipulation and Qi Circulation for Beginners. To Arthur, those were the instructions on how to be a good servant to the system. He moved deeper, into the heart of the restricted zone, where the air grew thin and tasted of ozone and ancient electricity.
He stopped before a shelf that felt... different. The space around it seemed to ripple, like heat rising from asphalt. This was the section on Void Mechanics and Trans-Dimensional Anomalies.
Arthur reached out, his gloved hand hovering over a scroll bound in skin that didn't look human. The moment he touched it, a shock of cold energy surged up his arm. Most students would have recoiled in pain, but Arthur leaned into it. He welcomed the sting. It was a reminder that he was alive in a world he intended to conquer.
"Let's see what the 'Old Gods' left behind," he murmured.
He unrolled the scroll, and a holographic projection bled into the air. It wasn't a map of Earth, but a blueprint of a tear in reality—the Dimensional Gate. The text was written in an ancient, shifting script that required a 9.0 resonance just to read without going blind.
Arthur's mind worked like a high-speed processor. He began to cross-reference the data with the "Dimensional Perception" he had kept hidden his entire life. He realized that the Qi on Earth wasn't a gift; it was a leak. A leak from a much larger, more terrifying reservoir of power.
"If everyone is fighting for the water from the leak," Arthur thought, a dark smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth, "I will go to the source and turn off the valve."
Suddenly, the shadows in the corner of the room shifted. Arthur didn't turn around. He didn't need to. He felt the arrogant, burning heat of a "Solar Root" approaching. A rival.
He slowly rolled the scroll back up, his expression shifting from a dark king to a curious, innocent student in a fraction of a second. The hunt was coming to him.