A week had passed since the discovery of the laboratory underneath the city, and since then, a city-wide search for the unknown scientist who had escaped was being conducted by the police force.
Somehow, someway, they had managed to slip out of the fingers of the Facold family.
Although Bell's involvement was erased so that the public had no clue about it, those who commanded a little more power knew that he was partially responsible for the discovery.
"What kind of monster would do that to innocent children?"
"I can't even sleep at night knowing that they're still out there."
"Who knows how many of them are out there. It could be one person or a hundred."
"Mommy, why can't I go outside?"
These were the sorts of things being uttered throughout St. Vernon.
Once his mother heard about what happened, she didn't hesitate for one second to pay for the recovery and any procedures needed to save the lives of the kids. At least, the kids who had a chance of survival.
Some of them were too far gone, and the only option was to either leave them in that terrible state that did not befit a human or to end their suffering.
The Duchess's decision wasn't influenced by the fact that her son was involved in this. It was her nature. One of the reasons why she was so highly respected in the city, even before she became the Duchess, was her history of charitable acts.
When she married the Duke, her donations only skyrocketed rather than slowed down.
For a lot of those kids, their lives would never be the same. Physically, they were broken. And mentally, a lot of them would grow up with trauma.
How long would it take for them to recover?
That was something that could take years, decades, and for some, never.
Tiara was busy, going around visiting the kids, helping around wherever she could, utilizing the Facold family to assist with the authorities' search. It was like she was everywhere, her footsteps leaving a mark throughout the entire city.
But she wasn't the only one who was busy.
Bell, her son, hasn't been complacent since that day a week ago.
If anything, he had pushed himself even further in his body tempering. He pushed himself to the brink of death as if he were possessed. Many times, he would even faint from the pain he was forcing himself to endure.
At most, he would get an hour of sleep a day.
Every time he would close his eyes, the images of that day, the tubes, the organs floating in the liquid, the kids, everything would flash across his mind. He couldn't sleep, so he would distract himself by bringing himself closer to his goal.
His grandfather had raised concerns about how many bottles of poison and antitote that he was ordering and bringing into his room, let alone all the strange requests he had, but after being reassured that Bell knew what he was doing, he kept his mouth shut, keeping his concerns to himself.
Pushing open the door, Bell left the steel box that he had been standing in for the past hour. The inside of the box was so cold that any longer and he would've lost the ability to move his fingers for the rest of his life.
Realistically, he needed a few more weeks to go ahead with what he needed to accomplish, but as he was putting on his clothes, Bell told himself, "It's time."
For the rest of the day, he began to prepare everything that he would need, which included a magic lamp that utilizes runes to store star energy and shape the energy in a way that it would function as intended.
Sitting down, he crossed his legs and took a deep breath.
Closing his eyes, there was a long pause, and when he opened them back up, the black spade on his left rib section began to glow.
The Archaic Code had been activated.
What did that mean?
Each code represented an ability that could be used by its user, regardless of their star energy. It didn't feed on the energy like other skills and abilities. Rather, it only fed on one thing. Time.
There was a timer that, once it reached zero, would reset, and there would be an additional usage of the ability that the user could utilize whenever they desired.
The code that Bell had allowed him to stomp his foot and create this tsunami-like wave of giant tree roots that would tear through everything in its path.
But that wasn't why he was activating the code. There was actually a different way to use it. A way that only one other person knew about, at least according to the novel. They were the ones who discovered this method, and now, he was going to "borrow" it in advance.
When the Archaic Code is activated, it temporarily transforms the user's body and allows for the passage of star energy to enter them.
Grabbing the magical lamp, Bell crushed the lightbulb, breaking apart the runes that were keeping the star energy contained in the tool.
The energy was supposed to dissipate and vanish into the natural world, but instead, it began flowing into Bell's body.
Immediately, his body began to turn red, and as if there was a creature crawling around the inside of him, his body would bulge in certain areas, shrink back to normal, then another area would bulge.
Gritting his teeth, his jaw was threatening to crack, and his teeth were ready to turn to dust.
Every vein in his body felt like it had been filled with molten lava, pressing, burning, stretching against his skin.
His vision blurred, his breath hitched.
'Stay focused. Stay focused,' he told himself.
He had to endure this pain.
The pain was just a figment of his imagination.
It didn't exist.
It does NOT exist.
He had to stay focused.
Closing his eyes, he continued to endure silence. And then — he fell.
When he opened his eyes again, he wasn't in his chamber. He wasn't anywhere.
He was in a vast, endless dark space, similar to the void where the skill tree of Solmire had been. There was no floor, no ceiling — just a yawning abyss that had no corner or wall.
But rather than stars that illuminated the dark space like the night sky, in front of him, hovering in the air, was a puzzle.
It was a shifting structure of countless black shards, all turning like gears without teeth. They were constantly rearranging themselves in maddening patterns.
At the center of the puzzle was a tiny ember of light. It was faint, weak, but alive.
The rules of the puzzle were simple.
If he solves the puzzle, the ember would grow and become his first star, marking the creation of his own skill tree, one that was separate from any gods. He would become his own god.
But if he fails, the ember would shatter, and so would his body.
It was either he solves it, or he dies.
The problem was — there was no clear solution. The shared moved without rhythm, without reason, like a storm of blades being blown around by an uncontrollable tornado.
Every instinct in his body and mind screamed that this puzzle was unsolvable.
And yet, he knew it wasn't. After all, someone in the novel had already done it.
It wasn't mentioned how he did it, but the novel did mention that there was a puzzle that they had to solve.
The first wave of pain hit him like a hammer to the chest.
Even in this void, his real body's agony was bleeding through, and he could feel his organs twisting, his muscles spasming, and his skin blistering under the strain of the star energy that was trying to tear him apart.
Staggering, he forced his knees to lock, catching himself. His breathing was shallow but steady.
If he lost concentration for even a moment, the space around him would collapse. The pain was trying to drag him out, and he had to ignore it, endure it as if it were a breeze.
Reaching for the shards, the moment his fingers brushed one, a violent sting shot up his arm, splitting his nerves like glass.
Hissing, he didn't let go. He needed to know more about these shards that made up the puzzle, regardless of the pain.
Turning the shard, it suddenly clicked into place with another shard, and the two connected shards formed this ray of light towards the ember like a bridge.
But before he could take satisfaction, the rest of the structure shifted and the bridge collapsed, the two shards separated and continued moving around the ember "mindlessly".
"The puzzle is a literal puzzle," he muttered. But there was something more to it. He had to experiment a little more to discover what that more was.
Again.
He grabbed, twisted, rearranged. This time, no shards connected. He repeated his actions. Every movement required precision. Another bridge formed. Then it broke shortly after.
Every second, the pain in the outside world was growing worse, and it was getting harder to ignore it in the void.
His heart raced so violently that it felt like it was about to burst at any moment.
POP!
Shaking his head, he pressed forward.
Closing his mind off to everything but the puzzle, the only thoughts that mattered to him were solving it. He didn't care about the sweat soaking his real-world clothes, the pulsing red veins that were glowing under his skin — not even the terror of knowing that losing his focus would spell his death.
Only the shards mattered. The ember. The impossible maze he was traversing.
He was no longer thinking in words. Just shapes, lines, patterns. As he got into a rhythm, he felt where each shard belonged, even as the pain lanced through his spine and his chest seized.
It wasn't just about the shards fitting with one another. It was about timing. There was an order that they had to be connected. The pattern that the shards were moving wasn't random.
He would get five shards connected, then make a mistake.
Seven shards connected, but he mistimed the next one.
He flipped over the wrong one.
He got eight shards to connect.
Another mistiming.
Another mistiming.
Wrong shard.
Not that one.
Nope. Not that one either.
Too early. Too late.
Then—
The shards, finally all aligned, just barely, but enough to form a complete bridge of light that connected to the ember, they began to let out this sound — a resonance.
The ember flickered brighter with every passing second.
Bell's knees buckled in relief, but he caught himself. Not done. Not yet.
He couldn't let his guard down until everything was complete. If it were over, then the constant agony that surged across his body like crashing waves would've disappeared by now.
The shards slowly got closer and closer to each other, and finally, there was not a single empty space between them as they formed a complete disk that surrounded the ember in the middle.
The ember blazed as the disk was sucked into it.
The ember of light grew and grew as it began to rise up into the sky of the void.
Then once it was high enough, the light began to take shape until it looked like a star.
Although no one or nothing said anything to Bell, he could sense that the star was incomplete as it was waiting for him to finish the last step.
It was asking him—
What is its principle?
The answer Bell gives would be the seed that the rest of his skill tree would grow from.
It was a difficult choice to make as there were endless possibilities. The original person to form their own skill tree from the novel chose the principle of gravity. There were all the elements: fire, water, air, lightning, etc.
So many possibilities — yet, Bell already had an answer in his mind. He had thought about it long and hard.
He didn't know how his answer would be interpreted, but the thing he valued the most, above any magical element, was—
"Liberation."