The clinical air of William Sinclair's office smelled faintly of dried eucalyptus and old parchment.
Arthur sat perfectly still in the leather wingback chair, though his mind was anything but. For the past three weeks, Sinclair's cognitive training had systematically dismantled Arthur's neural filter. The inattentional blindness that had once crippled his photographic memory was gone.
Now, keeping his amber eyes fixed neutrally forward, Arthur could see everything.
He didn't need to turn his head to know the brass pendulum on the corner desk was swinging exactly eighty-two times a minute. He didn't need to shift his focus to absorb the spine titles of the twenty-four books stacked carelessly against the western wall, or to notice that Sinclair had buttoned his navy-green jacket one hole out of alignment. His peripheral vision had become as sharp and data-rich as his central focus.
He could absorb a staggering volume of information simultaneously, holding the ambient data in his short-term memory for up to an hour without a single drop of conscious effort. It was intoxicating. He was standing on the threshold of true multitasking—capable of absorbing a lecture while simultaneously charting magical engineering matrices in his peripheral vision. All he needed now was the final key: how to transfer this massive influx of raw data into permanent, long-term storage.
He leaned forward slightly, his expression carefully controlled even as anticipation hummed beneath his quiet posture.
"We are bypassing mnemonic categorizations today," Sinclair announced, idly turning a silver pocket watch over his knuckles. "We will begin the foundational lesson for the Autonomic Merged Processor. To achieve this, we must merge your conscious executive function with your subconscious."
Arthur's anticipatory smile froze.
"The first step," Sinclair continued, his tone light but absolute, "is the complete and total elimination of your inner monologue."
A sharp prickle of ice bloomed at the base of Arthur's neck. He stiffened, the muscles in his jaw tensing. "Eliminate it?" he repeated, carefully measuring his tone to hide the immediate flare of defensive anxiety.
"My processing speed is optimal, Mr. Sinclair," Arthur argued, his voice slipping into a cold, articulate rhythm. "Even without the Sivanamine, my cognitive output hasn't declined in the slightest. What you are suggesting implies removing the pilot from the cockpit. If my subconscious merges with my active consciousness, who—or what—maintains executive control over my actions? I refuse to surrender my rational thinking to base instinct."
Sinclair didn't argue. He simply smiled, the expression disarming and utterly unreadable.
"You are reluctant because you are accustomed to being the smartest entity in the room," Sinclair observed smoothly. "Your conscious mind answers logic gates, vector calculus, and paradoxes with terrifying speed. You trust the voice in your head because it has never failed an exam."
Sinclair leaned forward, planting his elbows on his knees. "But recall our first session, Cedric. The tower of crystalline marbles. You failed to recall their colors not because you are stupid, but because your conscious mind actively discarded the data as irrelevant. Your brain didn't fail to see them. Your subconscious scanned every single hue flawlessly. Your rational, executive pilot is the one that threw the data away."
Arthur's brow furrowed. "But we resolved that," he countered smoothly. "The filter is gone. I can see the dust on your left shoulder, the exact angle of the sunlight hitting the floorboards, and the title of the third book on your stack. The inattentional blindness is cured. I am not discarding anything anymore. So what are you trying to say, Mr. Sinclair?"
Sinclair's honey-amber eyes narrowed slightly, shedding his lighthearted demeanor for a surgical, Socratic edge.
"Imagine a scenario, Cedric," Sinclair murmured. "An Expert-rank combatant steps into your immediate space. He strikes. A blade of Aura moving just below the speed of sound is aimed precisely at your carotid artery."
Arthur went perfectly still. He felt the phantom weight of the Nameless Manuscript's teachings thrumming in his nerves.
"Track the mechanics for me," Sinclair challenged softly. "How long does it take for the light of that blade to hit your retina?"
"Less than a thousandth of a millisecond," Arthur answered instantly.
"And how long for that visual data to travel as a bio-electrical signal to your visual cortex?"
"Two to three milliseconds."
"Now," Sinclair said, raising a single finger, "how long does it take for that signal to travel from your visual cortex to your prefrontal cortex, for your inner monologue to format the word 'Duck', and then send the executive command to your motor cortex to physically move your body?"
Arthur opened his mouth to answer.
His jaw snapped shut.
The frictionless logic engine ran the calculation. The synaptic relay. The linguistic formatting. The motor response.
One hundred milliseconds. Minimum.
By the time the voice in his head finished forming the thought, the blade would have already severed his neck.
"To formulate language is to suffer friction," Sinclair said quietly, watching the realization dawn in Arthur's amber eyes. "In the realm of logic, your inner voice is a genius. In the realm of physics, it is a fatal bottleneck. Why do you think every Emperor and God-rank Swordsman in recorded history moves faster than biologically possible? They do not think about their strikes, Cedric. Because to think, is to die."
Arthur stared at the floorboards, the terrifying logic settling over him like a heavy iron mantle. He needed the Nameless Arts to survive. If he ever faced the Ash Mage again—or a monster operating beyond a 3-Star proficiency—his genius-level intellect would be the very thing that got him killed.
"I won't force you," Sinclair added, leaning back into his chair, the Socratic pressure evaporating into a casual, lighthearted grace. "I am neither a swordsman nor a mage, Cedric. If you prefer to cling to the comfortable friction of your internal commentary, you are entirely free to step out that door. But if you intend to survive the harsh reality of a genuine threat... you must learn to leave the narrator behind."
Arthur looked up. "If I eliminate it... am I permanently severing my ability to rationalize?"
"The merge is not a lobotomy; it is a toggle," Sinclair reassured him, a gentle, almost poetic lilt returning to his voice. "It is a gear you shift into. When the threat passes, you switch modes. The monologue returns. The pilot re-enters the cockpit."
Arthur swallowed the lingering, irrational fear in his throat. He looked into Sinclair's unreadable eyes—this was the mind that had quite literally saved his life. He trusted William Sinclair's logic above all else.
"Teach me," Arthur said.
For the next two hours, the clinician's office descended into a grueling, silent war of mental attrition. Sinclair guided him through the brutal process of untethering words from actions, forcing Arthur to react to rapid visual and auditory stimuli without allowing a single syllable to form in his mind.
By the time the lesson concluded, the silence inside Arthur's skull was absolute, echoing, and profoundly strange. He felt completely untethered, floating in a sea of pure, wordless observation.
He sat across from Sinclair, watching him casually adjust his silver epaulettes. In that echoing internal silence, a sudden, powerful urge bloomed in Arthur's chest.
I should tell him. The thought arose completely unprompted. The desire to drop the 'Saint' persona entirely. To confess the truth of the identity swap, the murder, the agonizing lack of magical talent. To be fully known, and perhaps finally understood, by a mind that was actually capable of keeping pace with his own.
But just as quickly, Arthur crushed the impulse, burying it beneath a reinforced layer of emotional ice.
Sinclair had already set the terms of their engagement the morning after his withdrawal broke. The boundary was absolute. Sinclair didn't want a companion. He didn't want the messy, volatile emotional burden of a friend. He desired a state of professional distance marked by instrumental trust and civil inattention. They were a transactional alliance—a relationship where duty replaced intimacy, and proximity never becomes personal.
A sharp, quiet pang of disappointment flickered in Arthur's chest. He missed the warmth of those seven days in the twilight of his fever.
But as he stood up to leave, Arthur recognized the disappointment for what it truly was. It was the cognitive rot Sinclair had warned him about. It was his pathetic, starving weakness for external validation—the same ego-driven blind spot Vigo had exploited to nearly destroy him.
Sinclair was right to keep him at arm's length. The boundary was the safest, most optimal solution for them both.
He must really want me alive, Arthur thought, the memory of their initial arrangement stirring faintly beneath the quiet of his mind. Which leaves only one question... what favor does he intend to claim from me?
"Thank you for the lesson, Mr. Sinclair," Arthur said, his voice a flawless, perfectly modulated imitation of his brother.
Sinclair offered a polite, faint smile. "Of course, Cedric. Do mind your step on the way out."