Learning… it used to be my cornerstone, the one defining trait I would name if someone asked who I was. I loved it in a raw, almost primal sense, the process itself, not the accolades or outcomes.

There was nothing quite like peeling back the layers of a mystery, seeing the inner gears and hidden levers of how something functioned. My personal ability didn't matter in that equation. Magic, for example, was forever outside my reach, but even knowing I'd never cast a single spell didn't dull the pleasure of dissecting its principles, studying its scaffolding or just tracing the invisible logic that held it all together.

That obsession didn't fade when I arrived in Varkaigrad. The same hunger drove me, though necessity forced it into a narrower and more pragmatic path. My circumstances were unusual. I didn't walk into halls lined with endless shelves of tomes, nor did I have access to tutors fat with knowledge. Vasilisa herself was stingy. What I had was scraps: an incomplete formula here, an observed anomaly there, hints and fragments left behind by others. So I made a habit of scavenging—academic salvage work.

I took whatever half-finished theories or phenomena I could get my claws on and stitched them into something that at least resembled a system. It was slow, painstaking work, the kind that would break the patience of most. And, yes, at times it was maddening. Trying to parse the shifting logic of my own shapeshifting or hammering Alchemy into refining skills that simply rejected my biology often felt like repeatedly ramming my head into granite.

But even the headache was addictive.

And yet… somewhere along the way, the sweetness of that pursuit curdled. My love for learning… dissolved gradually, like sugar dumped into a bitter tea until nothing was left of the original taste. Because just chasing knowledge wasn't my life's priority anymore. I was being hurled into a storm of chaos, standing at the eye of it, and nothing ever ended cleanly.

Every conclusion opened into another labyrinth. Every solution spawned more variables. The enemies behind it all were clever, methodical, slippery, and frustratingly difficult to pin down. Outsmarting them in bursts was possible, but it never felt final.

That was when something inside me pivoted. The core was always problem-solving, but my means of approach shifted drastically these past few weeks. I began to look at problems, whether abstract puzzles or living, breathing obstacles and the thought came unbidden: what if I solved this with brute force? With overwhelming violence? And the exciting part was: it worked.

Knots unraveled the moment I stopped pulling carefully and instead hacked straight through. Complex riddles yielded once you extracted the answers with a threat of bloodletting. Enemies who thought themselves intricate became pitifully simple once you crushed them beneath direct pressure. It was a binary cheat code, so reliable and satisfying that I found myself savoring every application.

I walked from one side of the hallway to the other, right in front of me was my old room, part of the Alchemy Tower dormitories, now locked down as an "active investigation site." The doorway shimmered with a humming veil of defensive wards, including a light one so I couldn't even phase in. A barrier meant to keep intruders out, though clearly designed more for formality than resilience. A flick of actual force would obliterate it.

Which was the lesson I kept relearning: violence always worked. The real question was never whether it could be applied, but what consequences its ripples would stir up once unleashed.

And when I say consequences, I don't mean the long-chain aftermath of politics or reputation. I mean the immediate, conscious decision itself, the act of choosing violence, as a tool. That realization struck me hard when I fought Dvina. It felt like a philosophy of power to her during our one-sided fight. And it worked for her, seeing her confidence and their reputation, until it didn't.

I learned a subtle divide: the difference between the common-sense use of force and a higher refinement of it. True insight wasn't "use violence sparingly" or "use violence excessively." It was recognizing that violence only becomes decisive when it's applied with precision, when it's wielded surgically, as deliberately as any scalpel. What I grasped wasn't that I should lean away from violence.

Quite the opposite actually.

I let a grin curl across my face as I studied the barrier. My fingers traced the runes of a spell, etching the familiar lines into the air until a flicker of power sparked between them. Then came the strike: a hyper-condensed bolt of lightning, no wider than a needle. Any normal spell would have blown the ward into shrieking fragments from alarm enchantment, alerting everyone in the alchemy tower. But my lightning needle didn't bother with brute collapse. It lanced directly into the anchor rune, the lynchpin holding the entire lattice together. The barrier didn't even have the dignity to trigger its secondary failsafes as it just died quietly.

Knowledge, wisdom, experience, and violence. They aren't separate pillars, they interlock, each one sharpening the others. What I learned was that violence, if it is to be my language, must always be tempered and refined through every other skill I've honed.

Violence without the rest is waste. Violence married to them is inevitability.

I stepped across the threshold, grinning, with no ward left standing to stop me.

***

Lysska studied Thibault's slack face as his screaming finally ebbed into silence. Well, no one enjoyed hearing their skull was about to be pried open without a shred of defense to shield them.

The Zaryn woman stood above him, eyes closed, calm as a pond. To Lysska, she was simply called Mother, sometimes Mom, sometimes Mama, the only name any child from the orphanage ever used. The single fact Lysska had uncovered about her, after years of subtle prying, was that she was a mage of Water affinity.

How that bloomed into mind magic was a mystery that no one, not even Lysska, could solve. Maybe that was the reason water mages always seemed a little unbalanced, what hidden principle within the affinity bent itself into the shape of thought and psyche? Lysska still couldn't wrap her head around it.

It did explain one thing, though, she had never in her life encountered a red core practitioner who openly walked the path of water. If mind magic was its natural evolution, no wonder it was treated as myth. It wasn't that such mages didn't exist, it might be just that they avoided the spotlight with near-religious obsession.

Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

Maybe they hid deliberately. Maybe they blended in so well that nobody ever noticed. Either way, they were invisible until they chose not to be.

And no other magic unsettled Lysska quite the same. Her own affinity for luck carried a built-in safeguard, it could warn her if someone tried to pry into her mind, provided she cloaked her magic and gave no entry point to the pests. But that didn't erase the discomfort. Knowing you were immune to poison didn't make you enjoy the smell of rot.

"Oh my…" Mother whispered, a faint curl of surprise in her voice. "Now that's something I wasn't expecting."

Lysska's eyes flicked toward her, bright with anticipation. Had she found something? It seemed she wasn't finished. Mother pressed further, slipping in one word at a time, simple, almost casual verbal prompts that triggered Thibault's mind to chase after them like bait. Then she set her hands against his skull, forcing her way past whatever layers of contract-bound resistance kept him from speaking outright.

Thibault strained, even bound as he was, mana sealed tight. His voice cracked into shrieks when Mother shoved deeper, brute-forcing past the protections that should have kept his secrets locked away. He was helpless here.

Lysska wasn't sure how else they could've managed this without mind magic. If not through him, she would have followed another path. Already her eyes had glimpsed other pieces in motion. By now Jade's subordinate— that artifact girl, Alice — must have uncovered something on her own. Still, she had to admit, the woman in front of her made the process brutally efficient.

And despite the constant unease Mother's presence stirred in her, Lysska trusted no one on this continent more. She might not be her birth mother. But in Lysska's eyes, the title was earned, not inherited.

The interrogation ended soon after, one-sided and merciless. Mother left Thibault's body twitching in convulsions.

In the dim chamber, with only the overhead mana lamp burning a pale circle of light, Lysska turned away. She followed Mother out, leaving the ruined man behind, stepping into the narrow underground corridor with its sporadic torches. These tunnels had once been part of the sewer system before the Iron Pact sealed them off after recent incidents. Perfect place for setting up an hideout given their architecture.

Her footsteps echoed against damp stone as she exhaled a sharp breath.

"What have you gotten your hands into this time, Lysska?"

That was her only question after walking in silence for some time.

"I've already told you about the incidents unraveling across Varkaigrad," Lysska said, her tone clipped. "I couldn't keep my hands off once I saw the threads. From Vok'Akhs, to the Elves, to the Iron Pact, and now even the FlameClaw sect, it's all shifting. I see the pieces in motion, patterns overlapping, looking connected but not truly tied. All I know is that something larger is building, a storm on the horizon. And when it breaks, I just want to save the people closest to me."

The woman's gait faltered for half a heartbeat, then she pressed on. "Varkaigrad will be sacrificed by the very hands of its architects."

Lysska blinked. "What?"

"That man is no one of consequence to the Elves," Mother said evenly. "He permitted them to work a kind of soul magic on the people under him. What he knew of it amounted to nothing more than a promise, greater strength for his subordinates. He himself steered clear, unwilling to gamble on shortcuts. Instead, he pocketed resources from them, fueling his own cultivation, in exchange for running errands and enacting the tasks the Elves handed down. The contract wrapped around his silence: he was forbidden to reveal that his followers had been used for soul magic, performed by a… particular strain of Elf.

"But there was one thought buried deep in him, something he heard but wasn't meant to. He kept it clamped down, even at the cost of tearing himself apart when I brushed his mind. He gained nothing by hiding it, yet hid it anyway. The words he'd overheard from his supposed superior were these: 'Varkaigrad will be sacrificed by the very hands of its architects.'"

Lysska's mind spun at the cryptic line, her thoughts racing to crack its meaning.

Mother's voice softened. "What it means, I cannot say. I know nothing of events beyond the walls of my own home." She looked down at her hand, and Lysska noticed her finger had begun to distort, skin budding, unfolding into a fragile flower. Her expression darkened. "Feels like I've seen something I shouldn't have in his head. So I won't be telling you more. Just know, your curiosity may serve you as poison." She exhaled heavily. "I feel too old to be dragged into this. I should have refused your request outright. Now I'll have to do what I swore never to do again."

Lysska kept her face unreadable as Mother raised a hand to her own forehead. "When this is done, I only want you to tell me, 'You did what you had to.' Call me a coward if you must. You'd be right. I am one. All I wish is that you find a way to avoid and outlast this storm. And if fate is kind, perhaps I'll finish my cycle and pass on content, knowing my life was lived in peace."

Her eyes glazed. When she refocused, her gaze darted about the tunnel. "Lysska? Child… where am I? Why does your sadness press on me like a tide?"

Lysska's expression didn't change as she snapped, "I keep telling you to stop crawling into my head!"

A sharp thwack landed on her skull. "No intrusion. Your mind was shouting the grief so loudly I couldn't ignore it. Try controlling it before it leaks. Now, tell me, did I do something to end up here?"

"You did what you had to."

The words brought a glimmer of clarity back to her eyes. "Ah… I see. Thank you." She shook her head with a rueful laugh. "Though I should have waited until I was home. Old age must be catching me faster than I thought. I don't know the way out of this... place, so if you'd be kind enough to escort me back, child?"

Lysska inclined her head, her face was a mask. "Of course."

But inside, a wild theory had begun to take root. And she hated where it was leading.

***

I sat on my old bed, its frame and sheets roughed up from the so-called "investigations" that had clearly taken place here. Must have planted the evidence they claimed to have found under that guise. Either way, I wasn't interested.

My focus was on training. Specifically, grinding down on [Core Stabilization] and [Mana Manipulation]. As they stood, they weren't enough. Chaos was a constant, always waiting to rip through me, and if I wanted a tether, a true anchor, I needed to strengthen myself. I had plenty of power, yes, but it was raw, half-refined, with almost skills still stuck at low tiers. I needed every edge I could scrape together if I was going to refine the applications of my favorite language: violence.

That meant going back to basics. No brooding over distant threats, no simmering over grudges. Just work. Just training.

The system rewarded repetition, and I had a massive mana pool to burn through. So I should use it, empty it endlessly, even while multitasking. Every cast, every weave, every failure built toward proficiency. I was still underdeveloped, still a novice compared to what I could be.

[Advanced Mana Manipulation] hovered on the brink of advancement, stuck at level nine, one last push and it would break through. [Core Stabilization] lagged further behind, but steady use would get it there eventually. So I set up a closed loop: weaving the [Observer's Mark] spell matrix with fine mana threads, overcharging each rune until it hummed, then snuffing the whole construct with an [Oblivion Rune]. Meanwhile, I kept [Core Stabilization] running in the background, sinking into a controlled, tranquil state that accelerated recovery.

The cycle was elegant. Mana manipulation sharpened with every weave, core stabilization strengthened with every recovery in a perfect loop. The only flaw was the inevitable buildup of excess mana as the oblivion rune harmlessly dispersed my output, that pressure was difficult to fully hide.

Which meant one person in the Alchemy Tower could probably detect what I was doing.

And sure enough, I heard the sharp, staccato tapping of boots against the stone floor. An instant later, a figure appeared in the doorway, her face shadowed but her eyes sharp as a hawk's, piercing and already locked on me.

Well. She was here.

Next chapter will be updated first on this website. Come back and continue reading tomorrow, everyone!

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.