Duke Alistair Noctis's study was never designed for comfort. The room was a manifestation of hierarchy, an interrogation chamber disguised by aristocratic luxury. Moonlight infiltrated through the giant stained-glass window, cutting through the room's darkness and highlighting Alistair's face as he sat behind a solid ebony desk.
Before him, the air felt immensely heavy. The mana density in this room was deliberately kept at high pressure—a passive mechanism of the Duke's to gauge the mental fortitude of anyone who stepped inside.
"So, what do you wish to discuss, Veyr?" Alistair spoke.
His voice did not rise, nor did it carry a threatening intonation. Yet, its baritone vibration penetrated the air like the verdict of an absolute judge. His face was hard, symmetrical, and completely void of emotion.
I stabilized my breathing rhythm. Under this magnitude of mana pressure, the Black Blood Decree curse began reacting passively. A cold sensation crept up my spinal marrow, but I locked the nerves in my face with the Emotional Lock. In business negotiations, the first party to show discomfort is the losing party.
"I require authorization to access the Underground Sector, the family's artifact storage," I countered with a perfectly calibrated voice volume. Flat, constant, and laden with certainty.
Alistair's eyes narrowed by a fraction of a millimeter. "For what purpose? And which specific artifact has entered your radar?" Before I could answer, his voice cut in, its temperature dropping to resemble an ice storm. "I expect you understand that Noctis family heirlooms are not toys to kill your boredom. If you borrow or take one, you bear the expectation of its value. Do not squander it."
His aura pressed down aggressively. My lungs felt as if they were being crushed by an iron beam. The original Veyr would likely have been kneeling and vomiting blood by this point. I merely swallowed saliva that was beginning to taste like rusted copper.
"Certainly. I have no spare time for games," I answered without hesitation. "There are two objects on my target list. First, the artifact classified as a 'damaged book' or Artifact of Knowledge. Second, The Perfect Sword—the Great Knight's Blade."
This was a basic negotiation tactic: Anchoring. If you want an apple, ask for the entire orchard. When the orchard owner refuses, your request for a single apple will appear as a very reasonable compromise.
"Explain your rationale," Alistair demanded. The room felt increasingly colder; every syllable that left his mouth literally lowered the air temperature around us.
"For the supposedly non-functional Artifact of Knowledge, my hypothesis suggests it may hold an ancient information structure. If I can hack its mechanism, there is a probability I can find a way to intervene or at least control the Black Reflux curse that is destroying this body," I explained.
I allowed a two-second pause for the information to be processed.
"Second, The Perfect Sword," I continued, this time lowering my intonation and allowing a small crack in my defense, displaying an illusion of vulnerability. "I feel my body's motor system is not aligned with my cognitive capacity. I am not foolish enough to claim I can master that sword now. But using it as a training medium will force me to adapt to high-level mana flow."
I stared directly at him. There was no cynical smile on my face, no triumphant laughter in my mind. This was purely social engineering. I was manipulating Alistair's psychological profile as a father watching his son struggle against a broken body. I was stimulating his buried guilt.
Alistair remained silent for quite a while. He tapped his index finger rhythmically on the desk. "A reasonable calculation," he spoke slowly, his suffocating aura beginning to retract.
However, before I could conclude victory, Alistair's golden eyes looked at me in a different way. Not as the head of the family, but as an entity bearing the weight of a bloodline.
"Before I consider that access," his tone shifted, losing its layer of ice, leaving behind a deep emptiness. "I wish to pose one variable question. As your father."
He fell silent again. His brain seemed to be weighing whether this question was worth executing.
"Does being born with my blood, and bearing a parasitic curse like this... make you wish you had never been in this lineage? If you had the option, would you choose a reality where you were born into a different family?"
For anyone else, this would be an emotional question. But to my ears, it was merely a matrix loyalty test. I looked down, staring at the wood grain of his desk, allowing my body language to radiate melancholic honesty.
"That option never existed, Father," I answered slowly, shifting my speech tone to one more resigned. "Questions about 'what if' are dead variables with no operational meaning. Guilt is also a useless metric. If anyone is to be blamed, it is merely the system that designed this fate. Or the Creator who wrote this script."
I lifted my face, looking at him with absolute conviction. My sentence carried a double meaning. Alistair thought I was speaking about God and the world's destiny, when I was literally blaming the 'Author' of this rotten novel.
"My soul is already calibrated for this body. I have never wished to be part of another family's assets."
Alistair stared at me unblinkingly. His golden eyes searched for lies, but all they found was pure logical truth. There was no teenage resentment, only a soldier's acceptance of his battlefield.
"That is your answer," he sighed softly. The man leaned back, looking a year older than just minutes ago. "Very well. I grant you access rights."
Alistair opened his desk drawer. "The Artifact of Knowledge you mentioned has long been classified as a defective item. You may have it. But for The Perfect Sword, my answer is an absolute refusal. That sword is a strategic asset deployed only on a large-scale war footing. Your body would shatter before you managed to lift it."
Exactly as predicted. My anchor bait had been successfully severed, and my primary target was surrendered without meaningful resistance.
Alistair tossed a black metal key with a raven crest onto the desk. "This is a single-use access key for the West Wing Underground. Take it. And I am classifying tonight's conversation as a top-secret matter. Do not mention this to your mother or any other faction."
"Understood."
I took the key, bowed slightly as a protocol gesture, then turned and walked out.
The moment the giant mahogany door closed behind me, the corridor's temperature felt remarkably warm. There was no arrogant smirk on my face. Only mechanical satisfaction that a high-level quest had been successfully cleared through nothing but precise dialogue exchange.
My footsteps echoed in the deserted corridor. As I walked back to my room, my brain immediately shifted to the next phase: the skill creation plan.
With the Codex Ignis soon to be in my hands, I could convert absolute understanding of physics into magic without draining my own mana circuits. I initially had an ambitious idea: Absolute Creation—Creating solid objects from nothingness.
However, as I processed its logical framework, the fatal flaw of that idea immediately surfaced in my head.
The Codex Ignis demanded an absolute understanding of the origin of matter. If I wanted to create an iron sword from nothing, I had to understand how iron was formed.
Iron is extracted from iron ore. Iron ore originates from the earth's crust. The earth formed from magma and cosmic material. Magma consists of molten minerals. Minerals are made of molecular structures. Molecules are built by bonded atoms.
Up to this point, a genius mage might be able to comprehend it. But the physics from my previous world did not stop there.
Atoms are not solid; they are made of sub-atomic particles: protons, neutrons, electrons. Protons and neutrons are made of quarks. So, what are quarks made of? Are they made of the vibrational energy of one-dimensional strings (String Theory)? And where does that absolute energy originate from?
This was the paradox of Infinite Regress.
If I used the Codex Ignis to create a sword without understanding the most microscopic layer of quarks or quantum foam, the artifact would detect a 'comprehension defect' in my concept. The punishment from that energy backlash would instantly detonate my brain.
"Absolute matter creation canceled," I murmured to my own shadow. "The brain computation risk exceeds the tolerance threshold. Too many blind variables. I must shift focus to manipulating existing variables, not creating from zero. Burning, cooling, or accelerating kinetics... these have far more certain and safe thermodynamic laws for my brain."
Without realizing it, my feet had brought me to a halt right in front of my chamber door.
I turned the knob and pushed the door open. Inside the room, under the dim lighting of the crystal lamp, a figure of a maid stood frozen in the corner of the room.
Eris.
The blue-eyed girl appeared startled. In her hands, she clutched a stack of thick books with dark leather covers. Her back stiffened immediately, and she hurriedly lowered her gaze.
"M-Master Veyr," she spoke, her voice containing a tremor of alertness that could not be concealed. "Forgive me if my presence disturbs you. I was late in tidying your room due to an extended training schedule with Young Miss Selena."
I stared at the stack of books in her arms. Veyr's memories gradually synchronized with the reality before me.
Ah. The Friday Night Protocol.
The original Veyr, in his arrogance and shortsightedness, had always forced Eris to come every Friday night carrying heavy books from the library. Veyr never read those books. He merely used it as a pretext to exhaust Eris, and then punish the girl if any corner of a book was folded or if she arrived even one second late. A form of low-grade sadism.
"Today, as per your instructions... I brought literature on the History of Dark Magic for your review," Eris continued. Her tone sounded very flat and cold. It was not a tone of defiance, but of absolute resignation. She had already mentally prepared herself to be slapped, humiliated, or forced to kneel on the cold floor tonight.
However, draining my energy to shout at or punish a servant for a hollow sense of satisfaction was the pinnacle of inefficiency. I had just spent a significant portion of my mental bandwidth resisting Duke Alistair's mana pressure and locking my nerves to prevent vomiting black blood. My physical operational reserve was at 15%.
I loosened my tie and tossed it casually onto the single sofa.
"Place the books on the table," I ordered without looking at her. I walked toward the bed, feeling my bones creaking, begging for rest. "I am deactivating tonight's protocol. You do not need to stand there as a display piece. Return to the servant barracks and do something more productive with your time."
Eris's facial expression changed instantly. Her stoic defense cracked from pure confusion. Her eyes widened, staring at me with disbelief. She exhaled the breath she had been unconsciously holding.
"V-Very well, Master Veyr," she said quickly, placing the books down carefully. "I shall take my leave."
She half-ran toward the door, as if afraid I would change my decision before she could cross the room's threshold.
The room fell silent again. I closed my eyes, letting my body's internal system rest and prepare for the Codex Ignis acquisition tomorrow morning.
Outside the room, Eris's footsteps did not immediately retreat.
The maid girl stopped just a few steps from Veyr's chamber door, leaning her back against the stone corridor wall. Her left hand clutched her rapidly beating chest.
Something is wrong, Eris thought hard.
In the past, Master Veyr would not have cared if she was exhausted after training with Young Miss Selena. Master Veyr would have used her lateness as an excuse to kick her knees or douse her with cold water. Tonight, her master demanded no explanation, made no physical contact, and did not even glance at the books he had deliberately made her bring.
However, it was not the sudden pardon that disturbed Eris's analytical instincts.
Eris was an observational genius, a talent that would lead her to become a top-tier support faction member in the future. Her eyes recorded details that escaped the notice of ordinary people.
When Veyr loosened his tie earlier, Eris saw it clearly under the dim lamplight. The veins on her master's neck were blackened, protruding in an unnatural pattern, pulsing faintly as if pumping venom instead of blood. Additionally, Veyr's footsteps as he walked to the bed—though regulated to appear calm—had an asymmetrical weight distribution. Veyr was enduring pain on a scale unimaginable to a normal human, and he concealed it behind a face that was completely numb.
An impulsive monster does not possess that kind of self-control, Eris thought inwardly, her eyes narrowing toward the closed teak wood door.
She replayed all the data: a morning without rage, a sharp gaze unshaken by a slap, and a night without senseless torment.
He's not being kind. He's simply discarding everything he deems... useless.
The hairs on Eris's nape stood on end. Somehow, the master who used to strike her frequently now felt far more terrifying when he transformed into a figure that was utterly silent, rational, and harboring a dark secret behind the blackened veins of his neck. Eris swallowed hard, taking slow steps down the long corridor, realizing that the Noctis Residence now housed an anomaly unprecedented in their history.