Neo stood across from Richard, both shirtless and armed with wooden swords. He clenched and unclenched his fist, his breathing measured. Richard remained in place, a faint smile on his lips.
"You seem a little sluggish today," he observed, his brow raised.
Neo smirked, sweat tracing the lines of his torso.
"Sluggish? Or is this your way of taking a break?" He didn't wait for an answer, pressing the attack. His wooden blade cut through the air.
Richard sidestepped with fluid grace. Neo recovered and lunged again—a high slash. Richard parried the blow, but Neo was already shifting, reversing his grip to drive the pommel toward Richard's temple. The tattoos across Neo's upper body seemed to shift as he moved.
"Oh please," Richard said, his voice calm. "Who would need a break from all the ballroom dancing you've been doing? Come on, try a little harder."
He smiled, tilting his head. Though his expression was straight, Neo hadn't successfully distracted him from his talk about sluggishness.
He decided not to comment, instead inwardly noting how fast Neo was learning. On the first day, he'd held a sword like a club. Now, he was adapting mid-swing, refining raw talent into his form.
Richard was sure Neo had his secrets—he just hoped they wouldn't harm him, especially with the noticeable dip in Neo's physical performance. It wasn't weakness, exactly. It was as if he was having a hard time moving his body like he used to.
As Neo committed to the strike, Richard twisted his own blade subtly and drove the hilt into Neo's stomach.
The air left Neo's lungs in a pained grunt. He hit the ground and stayed there, gasping. Two hours of this. Even with an Acolyte's enhanced stamina, he was spent.
"Ugh… when do I get to land a hit, old man?"
Richard stood relaxed, his red hair stirring in the breeze. He wore only trousers, his torso a landscape of dense, corded muscle. He stroked his beard thoughtfully.
"When you're in proper shape, maybe. You're still weak. Your body has already lost years of training you need to make up for.
Neo grunted, then seized the opening in the conversation. "I get that. But why no spiritual energy? What's the point of the rule?"
The day after forming his core, Richard had laid down the law: no training using spiritual energy until he "graduated." Only daily meditation to strengthen his veins and core. It made little sense to Neo—why not use every advantage to train?
Before Richard could answer, his posture shifted imperceptibly. He had sensed a presence. Principal Lyer Greenwood stood at the edge of the training yard, pale and silent.
"Greetings," Richard said, walking over.
"We need to speak," Greenwood replied, his voice tense. "We have to explain this matter to Poddin Blackstone."
"Explain what? Did something go wrong?" Richard's smile vanished.
Greenwood's eyes flicked toward Neo, then back. "Not here, Tasher. Somewhere else."
Richard gave a single nod. He turned, his voice carrying on an amplified thread of spiritual energy. "Finish your daily meditation. I'm going out."
Neo merely nodded, watching as Richard pulled out a shirt from his storage ring, putting it on, and then seemed to melt into the gathering shadows alongside Greenwood.
'I wonder when I get to do cool stuff like that.'
He shook his head. From what he'd gathered, Richard Tasher was a Honorary Noble—a title granted by the Emperor Blackstone himself. The Tasher family had held it for three generations. This mansion was just a small part of their allocated territory.
How large is this world, anyway?
Pushing the thought aside, he sat cross-legged and began drawing spiritual energy into his core. Cultivating felt like flexing a dormant muscle; each cycle toughened his spirit veins. And his core… it fascinated him. A singular, stable point of condensed energy, formed by collapsing vast power into a singularity.
*Maybe I could try making several cores… but would that even work? Ah, never mind. None of this makes sense yet.*
He stood once his meditation cycle was complete and headed back inside, his mind turning to the System. A million subtle changes were still unfolding with its silent assistance. Its existence baffled him. Pandora, he could rationalize—a Creation Relic, a living artifact. But the System? It was just… a system. An intrinsic part of himself, yet entirely separate. An interface to a power whose depths he had only begun to fathom.
Name: Neo Ilyad
Rank: Acolyte
Titles: Creator
Awakened Element: Fire (13%), Darkness (2%)
Creator Relic: Pandora's Forge
Bonded Relics: World-Split Blade, Space Key
Bloodline: The Creator's Bloodline
Bloodline Abilities: True-Sight, Creator's Physique, Transcendence
Transcendence Cycle: Active
Souls Collected: 1
*My elements haven't increased at all,* he observed, walking back to his room. Since sparring with Richard, he had tried everything. He used True-Sight constantly, and just the previous day, after a particularly punishing training session, he had activated Transcendence, hoping to push through the pain.
The effect was immediate and brutal. It felt like his body weight had increased by fifty kilograms. Every movement became a struggle, and he could only access half the spiritual energy in his core.
The rule against using spiritual energy during training had made this change easy to miss at first, but the constant, grinding drain on his pure physical stamina was painfully inefficient.
He hurried to his room. The moment he stepped inside, he collapsed onto the bed, breathing heavily. "This is too difficult."
"Ah, my weak Creator," Pandora's voice chimed in, though she seemed unclear on the specific cause of his distress. "I must have played with too many souls in my past life. Yes, this is the universe's way of punishing me."
Neo rolled his eyes at her performance, having learned to ignore most of her antics. "Weasel," he muttered.
"You mutt," she shot back instantly.
Turning his attention inward, he focused on the System.
'System, are you sure keeping this ability active is the right thing?' He was still confused. A bloodline ability meant to unlock his body's potential felt more like a set of shackles.
Bloodline Abilities: True-Sight, Creator's Physique, Transcendence
Transcendence Cycle: Active
> Affirmative, Creator. The longer the Transcendence cycle is maintained, the greater the benefits.
That single line of assurance was all that kept him from deactivating it.
He was amazed to find that none of his bloodline abilities consumed spiritual energy, and True-Sight remained his favorite and most-used, as he discovered that he could observe energy of any kind.
He endured the heavy pressure of Transcendence through his shower and changed into comfortable clothes.
Exiting the bathroom, he saw Pandora chasing a fly around the room for amusement. *I wish I had her energy.* He was quietly grateful she gave him privacy when he needed it.
*Breakfast or the library?*
The library won easily. It had become his sanctuary ever since he discovered what the System with access to his spiritual energy could do. Next to Pandora's Forge, the System was his favorite tool.
By channeling a thread of energy, the System could scan an entire book, absorbing, sorting, and storing its information with flawless efficiency. Neo sometimes offered silent thanks to whatever entity had created such a thing. The possibilities felt endless. It could even perform advanced spiritual manipulations on his behalf, acting like a supremely capable assistant within certain limits.
The main limitation on the functions of the system was himself. With his low-rank spiritual energy and weak spirit veins, the System's advanced functions were hamstrung, like running sophisticated software on weak hardware. Still, its current abilities were nothing short of astonishing.
He stepped into the Grand Library of the Tasher family, a vast, hallowed space filled with tiers of ancient texts. He resumed what the other patrons within called "madness," moving along the shelves, his fingers brushing spines of neatly arranged books as the System devoured knowledge.
> Scan complete. Proceed.
He spent hours like this. At first, his association with the House Master had granted him a veil of respect within the Grand Library. But his bizarre behavior—touching books without ever reading them—had eroded that.
To the nobles who were only able to send their children here to study after spending thousands of gold coins, seeing someone "waste" such access was an offense to their sensibilities.
Neo, blissfully unaware of the growing disdain, simply followed the System's prompts.
"This section is pretty empty today," he murmured to himself as he continued scanning texts diligently..
> Proceed, Creator.
Another hour passed before his stomach growled. Time for food. He turned to leave.
Stepping out into the gardens, he had barely taken a few steps when four youths his own age moved to block his path.
"What's this?" Neo mused, more amused than alarmed.
"You owe me, Ronald!" one of them, a lanky boy, crowed. "I told you he was crazy. Look at him—he sees us and just smiles like an idiot!"
"Or maybe the sight of us broke his pea-sized brain?" retorted the one called Ronald, who stood at the front with a polished, arrogant air.
"You're not wriggling out of the bet. He's clearly insane. I win."
"Fine, fine," Ronald sighed dramatically, his eyes locking onto Neo. "Let's educate this newcomer on his place first, then settle our accounts."
As Ronald strode forward, Neo muttered to Pandora, "No, we are not killing them just because you want more souls in the soul storage."
He felt her playful pout in response.
'Better to just avoid this,' he decided.
Ronald, catching the mutter, sneered. "I'm sure I didn't permit you to speak. Or are you just as crazy as the rumors say?"
'Rumors?' Neo's eyebrow lifted, a smirk playing on his lips as he met Ronald's gaze.
Ronald jabbed a finger into Neo's chest. "Listen. I don't care who you are. The Tashers can grant access to anyone they please. But when that privilege is given to someone with no respect for an ancestral establishment… it falls to us Nobles to make you see things clearly."
Neo's smile didn't falter. He assessed Ronald, who was a head taller. *I bet I could take him. Ah, I'm getting arrogant again. Pandora must be a bad influence.*
He opened his mouth to reply when a clear, feminine voice cut through the tension.
"Neo! I've been looking all over for you. You weren't at breakfast."
Helen Tasher approached, her focus solely on Neo at first. She then noticed the four boys and blinked in surprise, pausing her words for a few seconds.
"Greetings, Miss Tasher," all four recited in stiff unison, bowing with practiced courtesy. The sudden shift from bullies to polite nobles was almost comical.
Helen composed herself swiftly, returning a slight nod. "Greetings to you all as well."
Neo's smile turned genuine. *How could I forget the secret weapon?* Helen had a knack for defusing his problematic situations just by existing. She was also, he'd learned, a highly effective topic for distracting a certain grim reaper.
Helen walked over and hooked her arm through Neo's, pulling him gently but firmly toward the main mansion.
"What are you always doing out here in the Grand Library? You know there's another library in the main building, right?"
Neo ignored the stunned and furious looks from the boys behind them as they walked towards the main residence of the Tasher family. Ronald's face had darkened, his voice a frigid murmur as they walked away.
"Who's he?
"Did you see how familiar the Tasher heir is with him?"
The lanky friend nodded, eyes sharp. "As the heir to the Umbra family, I can certainly look into it. Information about him must be circulating the empire among the Noble houses already."
Neo, already out of earshot, was instead marveling at Helen's revelation. 'There's a library in the main building? That servant made me walk out here every day for nothing.'
He maintained a light smile as Helen chattered beside him, complaining about her endless lessons in noble etiquette—lessons he was also supposed to attend. He hadn't bothered, of course. He'd used the System to absorb every available text on imperial noble hierarchies and manners.