### Chapter 7: A Stalk of Glowgrass
The journey back to the first-year dormitories was a walk through a newly carved canyon of silence. Where once there were jeers and insults, now there was only a void. Students who had previously gone out of their way to shoulder-check him now flattened themselves against the cold stone walls as he approached, their eyes wide and refusing to meet his. The whispers still followed, but their content had changed. They were no longer dismissive taunts, but fearful, hushed questions that scattered like startled birds if he so much as glanced in their direction.
He was a ghost haunting his own life, a living paradox that nobody knew how to address. They couldn't mock him, but they couldn't possibly admire him. All that was left was a deep, instinctual fear of the unknown.
Su Yuan reached the small, cramped room that had been his sanctuary and his cell. It was bare, containing only a hard straw-stuffed mattress, a rickety wooden desk, and a small, grimy window that offered a lovely view of a moss-covered inner wall. The air was perpetually damp and smelled of old stone and fading hope. This was the bottom rung of the academy, a space reserved for orphans and charity cases with little to no potential. It was a room designed to remind its occupant of their place.
Closing the heavy oak door behind him, he let out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding. The silence that filled the room was a welcome relief from the suffocating quiet of the hallways. He sank onto the edge of his bed, the straw rustling beneath his weight.
The events of the day replayed in his mind, not as a chaotic memory, but as a series of calculated moves and their consequences.
*Objective 1: Establish a new baseline. Status: Complete. Result: Over-achieved, creating a high-scrutiny paradox.*
*Objective 2: Survive interrogation. Status: Complete. Method: Create a plausible, non-verifiable narrative of 'traumatic awakening.' Result: Successfully shifted scrutiny from the nature of his power to the lack of control over it.*
*New Status: Personal apprentice to Instructor Valerius. Threat Level: High. Opportunity Level: High.*
He had walked a razor's edge. He had presented Valerius with a scenario that was, in its own way, as fantastical as the truth. A boy whose magic core was fundamentally rewritten by a near-death experience was a legend, a one-in-a-generation anomaly. But a legend was something the world could comprehend. A boy with a System that granted him infinite *anything* was a tear in the fabric of reality itself. One invited study and caution; the other invited vivisection.
He had chosen his cage well. Under Valerius's obsessive tutelage, he would be isolated, but he would also be protected. He would be given access to knowledge and resources far beyond his station. And most importantly, his "uncontrollable power" would become the perfect excuse for any future… irregularities.
His hand drifted into his pocket, his fingers closing around the soft, worn fabric of a single, perfectly normal grey sock. The absurdity of it all—breaking an Archmage-grade artifact, terrifying one of the academy's most senior instructors, and being rewarded by the cosmos with an endless supply of laundry orphans—threatened to make him laugh. The gamer 'Void' had always thrived on exploiting bizarre game mechanics, but this was on another level entirely.
As the last vestiges of twilight faded from his grimy window, Su Yuan felt the familiar, subtle shift in the world that only he could perceive. The faint connection to the infinite socks severed, and a new one bloomed in its place. He closed his eyes, focusing inward.
`Daily Item has been refreshed.`
`[Item: A Stalk of Glowgrass]`
`[Quantity: ∞]`
`[Description: A common herb found in caves and shadowed forests. When infused with a small amount of mana, its fibrous cap emits a soft, phosphorescent light. A primary ingredient in beginner-level potions of illumination and a common focus for the [Glow] spell.]`
Su Yuan opened his eyes, a flicker of genuine interest in their depths. Glowgrass. It was one of the most mundane, cheapest, and most common alchemical ingredients in existence. A student might buy a bundle of a dozen for a few copper coins to practice their potion-making. It was, by all accounts, a trash item.
To anyone else, receiving an infinite supply of Glowgrass would be a cosmic joke. It was like being granted an infinite number of pebbles.
To Su Yuan, it was the perfect tool.
Valerius had told him his first and only lesson would be control. The command was to report at sunrise. That left him the entire night. Su Yuan had no intention of arriving empty-handed. He was not a passive student; he was a player determined to grind his stats before the next quest began.
He stood up and cleared the small surface of his desk. With a simple act of will, a single stalk of Glowgrass materialized in his hand. It was about six inches long, with a pale, fibrous stem and a small, spongy-looking cap, like a dried mushroom. It felt brittle and cool to the touch. He summoned another, then another, until a small pile of a dozen stalks sat on his desk. This would be a week's worth of practice material for a normal student. For him, it was less than a rounding error.
His chosen spell was obvious: [Glow]. The very same cantrip he had accidentally turned into a miniature bomb two nights ago. Then, he had poured mana into a ward-scroll like an idiot pouring gasoline on a bonfire. He had focused on quantity, and the result was chaos. Tonight, he would focus on quality.
He picked up a single stalk of Glowgrass. Closing his eyes, he recalled the sensation from the assessment—isolating that single, perfect, infinitesimal drop of mana. He reached into the silent ocean within him and drew forth the tiniest possible thread of energy. He didn't push it into the herb. Instead, he tried to *weave* it.
He guided the thread of mana into the base of the stalk, encouraging it to flow up through the plant's fibrous channels. His goal wasn't just to make it light up, but to control *how* it lit up.
His first attempt was a failure. The moment the mana touched the herb, the cap flashed with a sickly green light and then immediately fizzled out, leaving behind the smell of burnt vegetation. He had used too much force.
He discarded the stalk—it simply dematerialized—and summoned a fresh one. This time, he was even more gentle. He imagined the mana not as a current, but as a mist, slowly seeping into the Glowgrass.
The cap began to luminesce. It was a faint, wavering light, flickering like a dying candle. It was unstable, pathetic even, but it was sustained. He held it for a full minute before the light sputtered and died. Progress.
For the next hour, he repeated the process, using thousands of stalks of Glowgrass. The cost of this experimentation would have bankrupted any other first-year apprentice. Su Yuan didn't even notice. He was in the zone, the familiar hyper-focused state of a top-tier gamer mastering a complex new mechanic.
He learned to modulate the flow. A gentle, steady stream created a soft, constant light. A short, sharp pulse created a bright flash. He learned that the mana didn't just need to enter the Glowgrass; it needed to resonate with its inherent magical properties. He began to feel the subtle network within the herb, a web of organic pathways eager to channel arcane energy.
He wasn't just casting a spell. He was having a conversation with his focus.
By the third hour, he had achieved perfect stability. He could make a single stalk of Glowgrass glow with the soft light of a firefly or the bright, steady light of a lantern, all with perfect control and without burning it out.
But this was just the beginning. This was the tutorial level.
He stood back from his desk and extended his hand, palm up. A single stalk of Glowgrass appeared. He infused it, and it cast a soft glow. Then, another appeared beside it. And another. Soon, a dozen stalks floated in the air above his palm, each one perfectly and individually illuminated. He made one flicker, another pulse, and a third shine with twice the intensity of the others. This was multi-tasking, a fundamental skill for any advanced mage. It was also an exercise that would drain a normal apprentice's mana reserves in minutes. Su Yuan felt nothing.
His control was improving, but he wanted more. He wanted to understand the absolute limits of the spell.
He waved his hand, and the floating stalks vanished. He then began to summon Glowgrass in earnest. They didn't fall to the floor. Instead, they hung in the air, a silent, growing cloud of pale herbs. One hundred. A thousand. Ten thousand. The air in his small room grew thick with them, the space transformed into a strange, suspended forest.
Other mages had to worry about resource management. Su Yuan's only constraints were time and imagination.
He stood in the center of the suspended cloud, a faint smile touching his lips. Valerius wanted to see control. He wanted to see him tame the storm. So be it.
He took a deep breath, and this time, he didn't draw out a thread of mana. He opened a channel, a perfectly regulated, steady river of pure energy flowing from his core. But instead of directing it at a single point, he diffused it, letting it permeate the entire room like a fog. He guided the energy with his will, commanding it to seep into every single one of the tens of thousands of stalks of Glowgrass simultaneously.
The effect began subtly. A single herb began to glow. Then a dozen. Then a hundred. Then all of them, all at once.
His dark, gloomy cell, a room defined by its shadows, was completely and utterly banished by light.
It wasn't a violent, explosive light like his failed attempt with the scroll. It was a pure, clean, and absolutely stable radiance. The light was a soft white-gold, pouring from ten thousand individual points, merging and overlapping until the very concept of shadow ceased to exist. The damp stone walls seemed to glow from within. The grimy window became a square of pure brilliance. The air itself felt warm, clean, and saturated with serene energy.
He wasn't in a dorm room anymore. He was standing in the heart of a miniature sun.
The intensity was staggering. If anyone had been looking at his door, they would have seen brilliant white light blazing from every crack and seam, as if a star were being born inside. Yet, there was no heat, no sound, no sense of overwhelming force. There was only light. Perfect, absolute, and under his complete command.
He stood there for what felt like hours, maintaining the flow, refining it. He learned to shift the color, turning the entire room from gold to a soft, ethereal blue, then to a calming silver. He practiced focusing the light, gathering the output of all ten thousand stalks and concentrating it onto a single point on his desk, a point that grew so bright it was painful to look at, yet did not burn the wood.
This was control.
This was the power of infinite resources combined with infinite mana. He could perform experiments no archmage in history would have ever dreamed of attempting, simply because no archmage had ever possessed ten thousand of *anything* to waste on a single cantrip. He was forging a new path to power, one paved with the universe's most mundane and overlooked trash.
As the first hint of grey dawn began to dilute the blackness outside, Su Yuan finally let the spell fade. He cut the flow of mana, and the ten thousand points of light extinguished in perfect unison. The cloud of Glowgrass dematerialized, leaving no trace.
His room was once again a dim, miserable box. But it no longer felt like a cage. It felt like a laboratory.
He was not mentally fatigued—the gamer 'Void' was used to all-night sessions—but the intense focus had left him with a deep sense of accomplishment. He had done more than just practice. He had taken the most basic light spell in existence and mastered it to a degree that was likely unprecedented. He understood its structure, its limitations, and its potential in a way its creator probably never intended.
He walked over to the small, cracked basin in the corner and splashed cold water on his face. He looked at his reflection in the murky water. The same gaunt face, the same dark eyes. But something was different. The perpetual shadow of despair that had clung to the original Su Yuan was gone, replaced by the quiet, unshakable confidence of a man who knew the rules of the game were broken in his favor.
He smoothed down his simple black robe, the standard uniform of an apprentice. It was time. His first lesson with Instructor Valerius was about to begin. He wondered what the severe instructor planned to teach him about control.
Whatever it was, Su Yuan felt a surge of genuine anticipation. He was ready to learn. And perhaps, he thought with a ghost of a smile, he might even have a few things to teach.