I stepped out of my room into the silent corridor.
Saturday.
The emptiness confirmed what the memories had whispered: the semester had only just begun. Few students had arrived yet. That meant I could move without being noticed—perfect.
The library was my destination.
At the entrance, I swiped my ID against the glowing panel. The gate clicked open, spilling me into the cavernous hall. The first floor was deserted, its long rows of shelves resting in the hush of suspended time. From the stairwell above came faint murmurs—upperclassmen, no doubt. First-years weren't allowed up there anyway, so I turned toward the catalogue terminals instead.
Three sections I had to check. Three paths to clarity: History of Mana, Monsterology, and Magic, Spells & Mana.
From each, I pulled two volumes:
Records of the Enlightenment
Rupture Catalogue
Basic Knowledge of Void-Born
Basic Knowledge of Corrupted
Fundamentals of Spellcasting
Circulation & Control of Mana
By the time I stacked them in my arms, my muscles ached, but the excitement kept me moving. This—this was how I would survive.
Records of the Enlightenment
One hundred twenty years ago, humanity awakened. Overnight, the System appeared—interfaces like something torn from a game screen—and Gates tore across the world. At first, people ignored them. Eight months later, the Fall came. Monsters poured out, devouring entire cities.
In desperation, humanity united. Fifteen years after the Fall, they began reclaiming land.
Twenty-five years in, the White Gates appeared—the so-called Trials of Terra. Unlike standard Gates, they bestowed Return Stones the moment an Awakener stepped through. Bound to the user, these stones acted as anchors, allowing instant retreat. Mortality plummeted.
In the novel, only White Gates granted this. But in the game? Every Gate, every Rupture held a Return Stone.
Here, only White Gates.
My heart thudded faster. This world wasn't one-to-one with either version. It was… something else.
Rupture Catalogue
Ruptures weren't Gates. They were tears straight into Corrupted Realms, bleeding miasma into the world and twisting the land into Encroachment Zones—the Graveyards.
Thirty years after Enlightenment, Purple Ruptures appeared. Zombies, goblinoids. Their Graveyards were small, the size of cemeteries. Contained. Cleared. Repurposed into training grounds. Twenty-four existed across the globe.
Thirty-five years after the Purple Ruptures came the Red. Vast Graveyards crawling with Corrupted Vampires, Shades, and horrors that defied nightmares. And during a Surge? Nullborn Wretches—faceless things immune to detection, slipping through barriers, exploding into clouds of choking miasma when slain. Only eight Red Ruptures scarred the world, but even that felt like too many. Around each of them, humanity built fortresses of knowledge and steel—the Eight Great Academies—training new generations of heroes in the shadow of catastrophe.
And then, another thirty-five years later, came the Black Rupture. Singular. A wound which scarred a third of Fauntrael with its vast Encroachment Zone, birthing Corrupted Dragons and myths made flesh. No one knew what its Surge looked like; no one had lived to tell the tale. The only reason the world even knew it could be endured was because Wardell—the Visionary of the Isles—stood against it. He held the line, long enough for humanity to survive.
Wardell. The same name that had already unsettled me.
The final note hit like a stone. Wardell is gone now, last week an unknown breed of Void-born claimed him(Mire Seraphs, they would come to be known as) during black rupture surge according to William's memories and this is also following the games story, the world is weaker for it.
Monsterology
The basics were straightforward.
Corrupted: Goblins, trolls, vampires, shades. Twisted echoes of life. They bleed, they burn, they die—if you know how.
Void-Born: Not echoes. Not warped. Spawn of the Void itself. Voidweavers. Blightborn. Witherfiends. Wrong things, unshaped by natural law. They appeared sometimes in Gates, but mostly in Ruptures.
The descriptions were clinical, but the images they painted curdled my stomach. I forced myself to keep reading. Knowledge meant survival.
Fundamentals of Spellcasting
Three types
Incantation Casting (Worded).
Mana channeled through circuits, shaped by phrases. Stable, versatile, slow. Vulnerable to interruption.
Wordless Casting.
Mana guided directly by thought. Fast, adaptable, but volatile. A wavering mind, a broken spell.
Skill Invocation (Single-Word Casting)
The pinnacle. A keyword recognized by the System, pulling the trigger instantly. Reliable, but rigid—you couldn't change what the System itself acknowledged.
I slowed at a line in the margins: Some skills enhance the mind itself, granting sharper focus and faster learning.
My pulse quickened. That was it. That was the one.
In the game, I remembered how it was obtained: twelve hours of unbroken focus. Reading, writing, training. No distractions. Not even a moment of rest. The reward: a skill that organized thought, burned memory into permanence. A foundation for mastery.
I had come to the library to understand my situation better — but also because I hoped I could seize it now. The skill. If I managed it, everything would change. Faster study. Sharper focus. Clearer control. A way to plant my feet on ground I didn't belong to… and to confirm whether the game's skill acquisition methods still applied here.
Circulation & Control of Mana
Two fundamentals.
Control: Precise allocation. Too much mana wasted. Too little, the spell fizzles.
Circulation: Keeping mana flowing through pathways, always. Like stretching a muscle. Preventing blockages. Building endurance. Until spellcasting became reflex.
These weren't mechanics anymore. They were laws. Rules for survival.
When I closed the last book, the sky outside had darkened. The library glowed in amber light, shadows stretching long across the shelves.
Hours—gone.
My fingers trembled as I summoned the Status Window.
And there it was.
A new line, faint but undeniable, waiting beneath my stats.