Lennon shuddered as he noticed a skull on the floor of the dark cell, visibly tortured, lying close to him.
The darkness seemed to have a weight of its own, suffocating him, wrapping around each breath.
For a moment, he sighed in relief, realizing that solitary confinement was not as threatening as he had imagined.
He thought perhaps the demons believed his mind was already disturbed enough that even darkness and isolation could break him – and he knew it could get worse.
A satisfied smile formed on his lips; this moment would be his to deepen his knowledge.
Quickly, he pulled from his mind the essence stone he had stored. As he held it, the stone glowed with a crystalline blue light.
He smiled, murmuring to himself:
"Despite the darkness, I can see a little. Let's see what this reveals."
But before he could focus, the skull, which until then had remained still on the ground, moved with an almost imperceptible delicacy.
Lennon raised the essence stone slightly, and the blue glow revealed details that had been invisible in the darkness of the solitary.
Among the shadows of the floor and walls, he noticed small cracks and ridges he hadn't seen before. Among them, symbols and inscriptions carved in the same strange language he had heard from the owner of the voice in the house of essence stones.
Most curious of all, alongside the intricate letters, there was a drawing resembling an open book, carved with perfection, as if it were fused into the very stone and wall.
Lennon frowned, intrigued:
"What does this mean? Could it be part of something larger… a guide, a warning, or some clue the guardians and solitary don't want me to understand?"
His heart raced, not with fear, but with intense curiosity. He realized that every detail in this place carried hidden meaning, and that if he could decipher it, he might gain an advantage in the system and in the very hell he was trapped in.
Lennon exhaled and carefully summoned his guide, making it appear resting on his forearm. He opened the book, the familiar blue glow emanating from its pages, but his sharp eyes scanned every symbol, every instruction, and every rule with patience and logic, hoping to find something he had previously missed.
Page after page, he revisited it all: the rigid rules, the instructions about essence fruits, the limitations, the warnings about the guardians.
Nothing. The feeling of helplessness grew inside him. Even with his 270 IQ, a mind capable of processing complexities no human could, Lennon felt… pathetic.
"Nothing makes sense… Nothing I can decipher here changes what I see in this place," he thought, irritation mingling with suppressed anger.
He closed the book lightly, the blue glow fading, and felt a tightness in his chest. The guide seemed so simple, yet at the same time, it was the key to something greater that he still could not grasp.
The sense that something essential had escaped his perception was overwhelming, and frustration blended with curiosity:
"If even this, with everything I know, I cannot understand… what else is hidden in this hell?"
Lennon took a deep breath, his expression stern, determined not to let himself be broken.
While holding the essence stone, Lennon noticed something almost imperceptible — a subtlety he never would have caught before.
The blue light of the crystal reflected on the cover of the guide, revealing an inscription that seemed to appear out of nowhere, fine lines glowing in the same hue as the crystal.
His eyes widened, curiosity seizing him instantly. He brought the stone closer, studying each letter, each symbol, trying to understand the meaning.
With every movement, more inscriptions appeared, as though the stone was a catalyst activating hidden layers of the book.
Lennon opened the guide once more.
The pages, once blank, now displayed writings that had been hidden, revealed only by the crystal's light.
Although he couldn't decipher the words, a smile of satisfaction crossed his face. For the first time, he had uncovered something truly secret about the book, and it thrilled him.
"Interesting… so everything here might have hidden layers, and all I needed was the right angle, the right light," he thought.
The feeling was mixed: frustration at not understanding yet, but also excitement at having uncovered a clue to what was concealed.
For the first time, Lennon felt that even in this hell, there was room for discovery and progress, and that his newly heightened IQ might be the key to unraveling much more.
Lennon remained silent for a few seconds, analyzing the page of rules and conduct. Each letter, each stroke seemed to dance under the essence stone's light, and something began to make sense in his mind.
He already knew the original content, but now he tried to decode the newly revealed layer, searching for patterns, repetitions, and symbols that could logically connect.
Carefully, stroke by stroke, line by line, he began to discern relationships between the characters of the strange language and the known content.
It was as if a second message had been hidden beneath the veil of the original words, a secret language that had previously eluded him.
A subtle smile appeared on his lips. Finally, the complexity of the writing began to unfold before his expanded perception.
Lennon discerned the rhythm, the logic, and the pattern of the hidden language – the essence stone not only revealed what was concealed but also provided the tools to decode it.
"So that's it… everything here has layers, and now I can begin to understand what others would never perceive," he thought, excitement mixing with caution.
It was then, as he read the cover, that besides the title "Prisoner's Guide", Lennon noticed another inscription: "Ascend to Transcendence."
He was stunned. It was as though that truth had always been within reach, but he had never known how to access it.
If that truth was in the book, then all the others must have something similar, but the demons, knowing it better, seemed to have done something that made them masters of the knowledge – while to him, only a superficial appearance remained. But how? If we can also transcend, why do the demons hold the control?
Lennon reflected for a brief moment and considered that the explanation might lie in a pact, or perhaps it was the result of some cosmic event. Without it, he would never know of such possibilities.
As he turned the page, a system window suddenly appeared before his eyes:
[The bearer has reached the minimum knowledge required to begin his journey to transcendence. Do you wish to view your status window?]
Lennon blinked twice, still not used to the sudden appearance of the system, and replied, firm yet curious:
"Yes… after all, I am curious."