Dawn in Falus Forest resembled no other dawn in the world of Ekarthas. Light did not steal in softly and romantically to wipe away the darkness of night; it forced its way through the dense, venomous fog like cold, sharp silver blades. The pale threads of sunlight tore through the murk with great effort, revealing the forest's horrifying details: colossal trees whose trunks seeped a viscous black sap, mosses that breathed in silence, and the faint rustle of nocturnal beasts withdrawing to their lairs in retreat from the advancing light.
Not far from the cave that had witnessed his new birth, Dex sat on the trunk of a massive oak felled long ago by some ancient storm. His body still pulsed with an unfamiliar, faint warmth-concentrated at the centre of his chest, precisely where the Mana Core resided. A pale blue aura, barely perceptible to the naked eye, clung to his skin like the remnants of a half-burned dream. This halo was his body's instinctive response to the fusion of his soul-returned from death-with the magical channels that had lain dormant within this young body. He had survived his first night in the green hell. But survival here was nothing more than a brief respite before the next round of torment began.
Between his freshly roughened hands, he held a heavy golden pendant he had found concealed beneath the garments of this body. It bore the crest of House Williams' Duchy: a roaring golden lion standing upon two crossed swords, encircled by a halo of intricately engraved flames.
Dex studied the gleaming crest with bitter sarcasm, a crooked smile settling on his cracked lips. "What a pathetic cosmic joke," he muttered in the hoarse voice he was slowly growing accustomed to. "The roaring golden lion before which a continent trembles... a family that was supposed to be the very emblem of absolute power and imperial sovereignty... now standing at the edge of a dark precipice, awaiting a single light kick from a treacherous 'fox' to send it tumbling into the abyss of oblivion."
Dex closed his fist around the pendant until its sharp edges bit into his flesh. He felt no emotional bond to this father he had never met-his heart had been hardened to stone in the cell of his former life. But by the cold logic of survival, Marcus Williams was not merely a father; he was the sole political and material shield standing between Dex and Silvester's designs. If Marcus died, every fortune of the family, all its influence, and even the right to enter Horizon Academy as a nobleman would evaporate into thin air. Saving Marcus was no moral virtue in Dex's reckoning. It was a supreme strategic necessity for survival.
Yet amid this suffocating despair, as time slipped away like sand through a cracked hourglass, Dex remembered his sole advantage. The weapon no sorcerer, no emperor, and no hired blade could strip from him.
He was not merely the ostracised son of a dying lord. He was the Reader.
Dex closed his eyes and sealed off his senses from the forest's menacing sounds and the reek of decay. He began constructing a memory palace in his mind, summoning every page, every line, and every footnote he had read of "Legend of the Silver Dragon" in his former life.
"Beelzebub's Tear..." He turned the name over in his mind. In the original novel, the poison had been presented as an unconquerable, absolute force-a narrative device to remove Marcus from the stage. Every physician in the Empire had confirmed that no antidote existed in any known medical text. But the novel, as an epic work of fiction, was rich with peripheral details, forgotten lore, and authorial hints that had never been fully incorporated into the main plot.
His mind began sorting information at tremendous speed, weaving together distant threads scattered across the novel's various chapters and arcs. "The poison is demonic in nature-it feeds on pure Mana. Human medicine works by stimulating the body's own cells, which is precisely what accelerates the poison's spread. Therefore, the solution is not a 'cure' in the traditional sense, but a 'purification'-or a complete 'replacement' of the corrupted energy."
His eyes snapped open, a predatory gleam of intelligence burning in his pale blue irises. "There are three paths... three possibilities for survival mentioned in passing across the novel's various volumes. Three routes that no one has ever walked."
His thoughts travelled directly to the strongest and most logically compelling option within the world's magical framework. His mind journeyed thousands of miles northward-crossing the borders of Falus Forest, traversing the territories of the Vissos Empire-until it reached the soaring golden peaks of the Holy Empire of Ikanor.
There, upon a throne fashioned from the petrified wings of angels, sat Emperor Augustine III-absolute sovereign, spiritual father of the Great Church, and one of the vanishingly rare powers in the world to have attained the legendary Rank SSS.
Augustine's power lay not solely in his mastery of the great sword, nor in his vast legions of holy knights, but in a sorcery unique to his bloodline and his alone: Sacred Purification Magic. Dex analysed this in purely magical terms. "Purification magic is not mere light-based Mana. It is the natural and absolute antithesis of demonic forces-cosmically engineered to erase every trace of demonic energy it encounters. If Beelzebub's Tear is the consuming darkness that devours cells from within, then Augustine's magic is the searing light that disperses it entirely and reduces it to nothing."
In theory, a single healing session-nothing more than a touch from Emperor Augustine III's hand as he directed his Purification Mana toward Marcus's heart-would be sufficient to vaporise the demonic poison entirely and restore the Lord to the full heights of his power within days.
"The advantage is as plain as daylight," Dex murmured, tracing a rough map of the continent on the damp earth before him with one finger. "Purification magic is the ideal solution-the cleanest and most certain. It requires no rare ingredients, no complex rituals. Nothing but the Emperor's will."
Yet the moment he finished assessing the merits, his cold analytical mind collided with a towering wall of obstacles-a wall that was difficult, if not impossible, to scale given his current circumstances.
First: the brutal geography. The distance between his current position at the continent's far south and the Holy Empire at its far north was staggering enough to inspire despair. The continent was vast, and between them lay the Mountains of Lamentation, haunted by frost dragons, and the Crimson Blood River, seething with feral Mana. Even if he could hire the fastest flying beast at a price he did not have, the round journey would take no less than four months. He had sixty days before his father drew his last breath.
Second: politics and the walls of class. The Holy Empire was a closed state that regarded the other kingdoms as heretics or lesser beings. Its borders were fortified with inspection wards that barred entry to anyone without a Papal seal. And even if, by some divine miracle, Dex could compress the journey, breach the border, and slip past thousands of guards... how was an obscure young man-an outcast from a dying noble house-ever to approach the palace of a Rank SSS emperor? The zealous imperial guard would reduce him to ash the moment his foot crossed the palace threshold, before he had the chance to utter a single word.
"Convincing a near-divine emperor to save a lord from another nation, for nothing in return, in under two months? That is not merely the stuff of fantasy-it is a spectacular act of stupidity." Dex exhaled sharply and scuffed out the map he had drawn with his boot.
And yet... amid that frustration, a flash of pure cunning ignited in his eyes-like a wolf that has spotted a fat quarry caught in a snare.
"And yet... the matter of persuasion itself, were I able to reach him, is not entirely impossible."
A dangerous smile spread across Dex's face. He knew the secret. He knew what the ageing Emperor Augustine III had been searching for across decades-the thing that robbed him of sleep and drenched him in cold terror despite his mythic power. In the second volume of the novel, a chilling truth had been revealed: Sacred Purification Magic came at a steep price. The Emperor, who had lived for a hundred and fifty years, was suffering from "Light Poisoning." His Mana Core was slowly solidifying and transforming into a lifeless crystal, the consequence of centuries of channelling absolute light energy without restraint. He was dying from within, and there existed only one magical artefact in the world capable of balancing that energy and saving his life: the Cup of the First Dawn.
And Dex-Dex alone in this vast world-knew where the novel's author had hidden that Cup.
"If I could stand before the Emperor, I would say to him simply: 'Save my father from Beelzebub's Tear, and I will give you the Cup of the First Dawn to save yourself from the Light Crystallisation.'" Dex turned the thought over, and felt a momentary exhilaration at possessing such knowledge. "It would have been the trade of the century. I hold the single trump card that might bring an emperor to his knees before me... but what bitter irony-I have the card, but no table to play it on. I have neither the time to travel, nor the strength to reach him."
Dex shook his head sharply, dismissing this idea that was at once irresistible and impossible. The first path, despite its theoretical perfection, was currently sealed shut by the twin red wax of distance and time. To dwell on it any further was to squander the precious seconds draining from Marcus's life.
He rose slowly and brushed the earth and moss from the black coat he had taken from the assassins. The cold air filled his lungs, and his mind shifted at once, with ruthless pragmatism, to the next option.