Rod hesitated.Do I slap her with a show of force… or use my specialty?
He looked Cassandra up and down. She's just a team leader. No need to burn a trump card.Though he'd overused Soul Energy earlier and felt a bit hollow, covering one arm should be fine.
"Alright."
He raised his hand. Light bloomed at his fingertips, swept up to sheath his entire arm, and rolled on to the shoulder.
"Done. Issue the pass," he said simply—and only then noticed the sudden silence around him.
He turned. Everyone was frozen. Wayne's jaw hung open. The green-haired boy's jaw looked dislocated.
Cassandra's eyes went wide—lake-blue irises full of incredulous shock. All the pride in her pretty face drained away.
"Y-You… how do you have that much? Why didn't Teacher Calaman say anything in class? I mean—when did you awaken?"
The born class-leader was actually stammering.
"Just now," Rod said offhandedly.
"Impossible! You need a long time to—"
"Nothing's impossible."
Annoyance pricked him. Showing people up is a hassle—next time just use a trump card.
"What we've got is dust," he said evenly. "Even the stray motes of Soul Energy floating in the air shine brighter than our little sparks. I've grasped a sliver of power—what's so strange about that?"
For whatever reason, the words worked.
Cassandra nodded. "Fine. I'll get it for you."
She turned and raised her voice. "No classes this afternoon. Team Ten, gather in the common room at second bell after noon. We'll continue training. I'll use Moon-Sleep Dust. Attendance is mandatory."
A chorus answered—"Oh—" "Got it." "Okay."
First day or not, she'd managed to build some authority.
Not that everyone accepted it.
Wayne muttered, "I was going to Fairy Homeland for a blue lamp-weed cocktail…"
Green-hair grumbled, "What's the point of grinding? If I could soul-synchronize with Teacher Calaman, I'd be set. That's how Rod got his energy—he's sly. The room should've been filled with my inspiration, but he stared too much and stole it. I should've looked harder!"
Wayne yawned and ignored him. His dream was simple: graduate, join the safer city garrison, earn a solid wage, and bring his Black Ox Village kin to the capital. Meteoric rises weren't part of the plan—least of all via green-hair's nonsense.
…
With Cassandra's help, Rod soon obtained a Society Pass—the credential allowing free entry to the Kinworth Society.With it, he could finally reach the Society Library and hunt the books he needed.
"Are you really not coming this afternoon?" Cassandra asked before leaving.
"No. I told you—I'm reading."
"Reading is good. Knowledge is our second life. But pace yourself—don't exceed your limits…"
She went on and on. Rod heard none of it; his mind was already in the library, chasing unknown script.
When she finished, he ran.
The library sat by the lake, a large white building whose walls reflected the water, serene and sculptural.Most who came and went were senior students and dark-robed teachers; freshmen like Rod were rare.
Inside, quiet settled over him until even his breathing softened.
He found a librarian and asked to borrow everything related to language.Naturally, the librarian refused—handing him A Compendium of Tongues and The Evolution of Writing instead, with instructions to use the catalogs to locate specifics.
Rod then discovered, to his dismay, that he recognized only a fraction of the words in either book.
This guy was really illiterate, he grumbled at his past self, and borrowed Beginner's Dictionary of Common to limp along.
Nightmare mode began.
All afternoon, Rod stayed in the library, crawling through the Compendium and Evolution volume with the dictionary in hand—learning Common while researching scripts.The world here held a bewildering number of languages; perhaps the ages lost to darkness were simply too long. Ancient tongues alone numbered over a hundred.
By dusk he still hadn't matched the dream-script.
Reluctantly, he asked the librarian—he hadn't wanted to reveal any samples.Unfortunately, after careful study, the librarian only shook his head.
"I don't recognize this. It may be a newly discovered ancient language."
Rod's heart sank halfway to his boots. "Does anyone else know it?"
The man shook his head again. "I'm one of the Society's ancient-language researchers. I can identify all known ones. The Society has no record of this script."
"What should I do?"
"You could submit full rubbings to the Society. We might assemble a team to study it, but timeline and results are uncertain."
Rod refused without thinking. "I'd rather not."
The librarian didn't mind. "Then find a collaborator interested in the work. You'd share credit, and if the capital deems the language significant, you could be well rewarded. It resembles High Antiquan—you might use this volume as reference."
Rod hesitated, then borrowed High Antiquan to start solo.Parsing a few lines with a dictionary can't be that hard…
By the time he got back to the dorm, it was late.Though the difference between day and dark was slight—black mist always made the city feel like midnight—people here still kept the division.The dorm clock told the story: the day split into four watches—Dawn, Noon, Dusk, Night—each with four bells, sixteen in total.
Now it read: Dusk, third bell—around ten at night.
Rod shut the door and plunged into High Antiquan.It was agony—like using English sources to learn Russian when your English is shaky. Double pain, double difficulty.
His head felt split, but for the sake of his own survival he kept at it.
By mid-Night—around three or four in the morning—he finally had scraps of progress.High Antiquan was indeed close to the dream-script. By matching similar glyphs, and with a lot of guesswork, he pieced together rough meanings.
The dark-red star's text read:
Devourer of DarknessState: Constantly BurningStellar Power: Soul ErosionQuantifiers: Abyssal Night; Eternal Mist; Blood of GulothStrength: Medium CarveDescription: Dream-born illusion; the supreme ideal; wings that surge as you fall; the last edge left upon a sword.She was born of humanity's highest ideal, and died to humanity's foulest desire.
…
And the blood-red runes on the back of the obelisk:
INVASION!INVASION!INVASION!Three sunsets—then the Nightmare arrives!Souls of the dead to stillness; Soul Energy endures!