"Huh?" Old Wan perked his ears up. "Abnormal effect?"
Alex quickly nodded his head. "Yes, under my status window there is an abnormal status effect. What does abnormal mean?" he asked hopefully, crossing his fingers, hoping the old man had the answer. The old man's hair must not have turned white from anything other than time and experience, and he had probably spent his entire life in this library. Surely he had not risen to the position of head librarian without having skimmed through most of the books housed within it.
Old Wan, instead of answering, slid back the chair he had been sitting on previously and settled back into it properly. He placed his hands beneath his chin and began tapping with a slow, rhythmic pattern, closing his old, coal-black eyes.
Alex's heart started beating harder inside his ribcage, his chest tightening with a feeling that had nothing to do with fear or danger. It was purely the pressure of hope, the fragile, aching kind that made a person hold their breath. Old Wan had to have the answer, didn't he? Having spent all his time inside a library this massive? Alex's eyes drifted across the room, tracing the bookshelves that lined every corner, and then he tilted his head upward toward the dome, gazing upon the upper floors where the shelves too were filled to their very brim.
Alex turned his focus back to Old Wan. His palms had grown sweaty and, unable to stop himself any longer at the sight of the old man still deep in contemplation, he struggled with the urge to wake him, afraid the old man had simply fallen asleep. But seeing the continued rhythmic tapping of fingers against chin, he held himself back and chose instead to wait patiently. Alex's leg, however, had other ideas, his foot started tapping silently beneath the table trying to calm the raging storm inside him.
After what felt like an eternity to Alex, Old Wan opened his eyes, revealing that dark, coal-black gaze of his. Alex leaned his head slightly forward as the old man drew breath and parted his wrinkled lips.
"Boy, I don't recall ever hearing of an abnormal effect." The old man muttered the words half to himself and half toward Alex. Alex's grip on the table loosened and he nearly dropped his chin to the surface, catching himself just in time as he looked back up at the old man.
"I have only ever heard of, and seen upon my own status window, effects such as mental attack, poison, paralysis and the like." Old Wan answered, meeting Alex's gaze. "But I have never seen anything remotely close to the word Abnormal beneath it."
Old Wan continued, "Does it only say Abnormal, or are there other words beside it?" The old man raised his brows, studying Alex with quietly curious eyes.
"There is just the word Abnormal under status effects." Alex answered. He even opened his status window to check if anything had changed, but just as it had been in the morning, nothing was different. His level remained stubbornly fixed at one, and his status effect still read only the single word: Abnormal.
Alex's heart, which had been hammering so eagerly moments before, gradually slowed. It was returning to its normal rhythm, and then it seemed to beat even slower than that, as though reflecting the quiet retreat of hope and the dull, settling weight of reality. His foot had already stopped its tapping the moment Old Wan revealed he did not know anything about it.
"If you are comfortable," Old Wan began, glancing at Alex with a careful, thorough look, his brows knitting together as a flicker of confusion crossed his features as though he was wrestling with how to say what he wanted to say. At last he continued, "Could you tell me in detail about your status effect? And, is this connected to you still being at level one?"
Alex nodded weakly. His family had always told him not to reveal the abnormality of his status effect to anyone, to keep it buried and hidden because others might find fault in him for it. Though, without him even doing anything, everyone had already begun looking at Alex as though he were a waste, a fraud, something defective. And so he had stopped believing that hiding it would shield him from the stares that had already taken root. He decided to tell the old man, clinging to the thin, stubborn thread of hope that maybe, just maybe, Old Wan could piece together some theory, some solution to it.
…
…
…
"So that is why I believe I am still stuck at level one." Alex explained in careful detail how he had first noticed his status effect reading Abnormal, and how despite training day and night all his life he had never once managed to reach level two, remaining stuck at level one for as long as he could remember.
Alex had explained how his experience points sat at one hundred percent and beyond, never tipping him past that invisible wall. Old Wan had listened with a deep, focused gaze, and Alex noticed that at some point during the explanation the old man had quietly put up a sound barrier around them. Alex was deeply grateful for it.
Though no other students sat close to them, a few could be found studying in the distance, separated only by shelves and open floor, and Alex had no desire for his abnormal status effect to become known to even one more person than necessary.
It would only add another ugly thread to the already tattered image people had sewn around him. And though he had ended up revealing it to the old man, Alex felt, with a steadiness that surprised him, that Old Wan was not the sort who would carry someone else's secret to idle ears.
The old man had offered him a potion and food without being asked. He had listened without contempt. And so Alex had quietly placed Old Wan into the small, carefully guarded category of good people in his life, and hoped sincerely that his judgment would not one day prove to have been wrong.
"Haah." Old Wan let out a long, weary sigh and rubbed his temples. The few thin strands of black hair still clinging to his head seemed, for just a moment, to be threatening to turn white on the spot. "Boy, your life is one hell of a disaster."
Alex nodded slowly. "Yes and no," he replied, dragging his hand across the surface of the wooden table. "I have been loved by my family all my life, and they continue to love me despite my failure to level up. Though love cannot solve everything, and I wish with everything in me that it could, it has not saved me from struggling with myself, and it has not stopped the stares from people that prickle against my skin like needles."
Alex ended up revealing everything to the old man, and he found, strangely, that he did not regret it. He had needed someone to pour it all out to, and as the last of his words settled between them, a soothing calm began to fill him from inside. The nervousness that had gripped him earlier, the kind that had made him second-guess whether he should have revealed at all, was entirely washed away by that quiet peace.
Alex lifted his head and looked at Old Wan, who was watching him back with eyes full of pity. Alex did not like those eyes. He had always hated that particular look. It only ever reminded him that he was, in the end, a failure.
"Don't look at me with those pitiful eyes, Old Wan," Alex muttered, and he was startled by the firmness in his own voice. Just earlier that day he had felt as though he had lost his voice entirely, and yet hearing it come out clear and steady now, he felt that he was not someone who was ready to give up just yet.
Old Wan shook his head slowly. "Boy, I have no solution to your problem. But..."
"But what?" Alex's voice wavered slightly at the end. He rose from his seat, his eyes fixed on the old man who had gone quiet again. The hope returned against his will, fragile and unwelcome, but the hope died down almost entirely remembering the first part of the old man's words.
"Sit, boy." Old Wan said, and Alex lowered himself back into the chair, his back settling against the wooden backrest with a quiet slouch.
"But I have heard, and read, that people under great pressure sometimes unlock a hidden class, or that their existing class evolves." The old man let the words breathe in the air for a moment before continuing. "And sometimes people unlock entirely new skills driven by nothing more than desperate need."
"Have you heard of this?" Old Wan asked, looking back at him.
Alex nodded. "Yes. I have even heard of people deliberately endangering their own lives in the hope that their class would change or evolve into something stronger. Though only a handful of such people could ever be counted as having truly succeeded."
"So, have you ever been in a life and death situation?" Old Wan asked, rubbing his chin in thought. "It is also said that one's status is bound to the very soul. When life is truly in danger and the status resonates with a person's deepest self, they can sometimes perform wonders that exist only in stories."
Alex's hands clenched against his thighs. He had been close to death once, when he was five years old and had wandered into the gate during the incident involving the princess who had gotten trapped inside. As the memories surfaced, a dull pang moved through his chest.
But had that truly been a life and death situation? His memory of it was hazy and fragmented, but he could recall struggling through it and returning without any wounds serious enough to be called lethal. Does that mean it does not count as life and death?
"I think I have been, to some extent, in a life and death situation," Alex said slowly, though even as he said it the words felt uncertain in his mouth. He thought briefly about the battle royale and the beating Lucian had given him inside it, but that had not been life and death either. The pain had been real enough, but not once had he felt the cold, genuine fear of losing his life as the principal had mentioned that no one would die in reality inside that space. So that probably did not count either as a life and death situation.
Old Wan sighed, a long and heavy sound. "I don't want to suggest that you put yourself in danger. But boy, perhaps you have been sheltered a little too much."
Alex nodded, though somewhere in him a small voice rose up wanting to push back, wanting to remind the old man that he had trained his entire life and had collected more than a few bruises along the way.
But he swallowed the impulse and did not voice it out, understanding well enough that the old man's concern came from a place of genuine care rather than accusation. The urge to defend himself had appeared only because he felt he was being blamed for something that had never been his choice to begin with. He let that thought settle and then quietly set it aside.
Alex drew his attention back to the present.
Rather than pressing further into the discussion, Old Wan rose from his chair and tucked the book he had been previously reading firmly under his arm. "Boy, I hope what I have told you is of some use. I have my duties to attend to, so I cannot linger with you much longer."
Old Wan paused and then, to Alex's complete surprise, appeared beside him in a single quiet movement and flicked his forehead. Alex's hands shot upward instinctively, still halfway to his head in delayed defense, bracing for the familiar weight of the book against his head, but the old man used his fingers to heat his forehead instead of usual spot, catching Alex entirely off guard.
"Don't worry too much about it," Old Wan said, his voice carrying a gentleness beneath its usual roughness. "The gods are not merciless. They must have some plan for you."
Not Merciless? How laughable. The gods had never done a single thing for Alex despite all the prayers he had poured out to them over the years, each one more desperate than the last.
Old Wan flicked his forehead again, sharper this time, and Alex groaned and glared up at the old man with a wounded expression.
"Boy, one more thing," Old Wan said, his voice dropping into something grave and deliberate. "Do not ever think about putting yourself in danger in the hope that your abnormal status effect might change." He let the words settle fully before continuing. "The stories of miracles of people benefitting from such experiences are so rare that they could be counted on one hand."
With that, Old Wan retreated back toward his old desk without another word. Alex lingered in his seat, staring down at the brown surface of the table in front of him.
Maybe, just maybe...
***
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