The results were posted three days later on a slab of polished slate in the Grand Foyer. I found my name not at the bottom, but nestled in the lower middle of Group 9's rankings. The comment beside it was a masterpiece of bureaucratic understatement: *"Veridian, K.: Demonstrates unorthodox but effective application of manifested utility skill. Shows keen environmental awareness. Mana core development remains a priority. Result: PASS."*
It was not praise. It was an acknowledgment of an anomaly that could no longer be ignored. The open mockery ceased, replaced by a wary distance. I was no longer a Blank; I was a question mark. A faint, unsettling irregularity in the academy's ordered world.
The immediate consequence was material. As a passing, "skill-manifested" student, I was granted a standard, if meager, stipend. Five silver crescents a month, access to the student commissary, and—most crucially—a transfer from the charity dormitory to a standard first-year barracks. A room with three other low-performing students. It was progress born of cold assessment, not warmth.
My new roommates—a human boy with a skill for mending cloth, a Draf girl who could polish metal to a high shine, and a half-elf whose only trick was making leaves rustle from a distance—regarded me with a mixture of curiosity and unease. They had heard the rumors about the Golem and Jax. They gave me a wide berth, which suited me perfectly.
The real prize, however, was not the room or the silver. It was the **Student Ledger**, a thin, enchanted booklet now tied to my mana signature. It listed my stipend, but more importantly, it contained a section for **Contribution Points**.
"Contribution Points," Machina explained as I pored over the booklet in the library's deepest corner. **[THE ACADEMY'S INTERNAL CURRENCY. AWARDED FOR EXEMPLARY PERFORMANCE, COMPLETING TASKS FOR FACULTY, OR CONTRIBUTING MATERIALS OF VALUE. CAN BE EXCHANGED FOR RESTRICTED RESOURCES: ADVANCED TEXTS, LOW-LEVEL ARTIFACTS FROM THE RELIQUARY, TRAINING TIME IN ENCHANTED CHAMBERS, SPECIALIZED INSTRUCTION.]**
It was a system designed to incentivize ambition within approved channels. For me, it was a map to controlled, legalized theft.
"I have zero points," I murmured.
**[CORRECT. YOU MUST ACQUIRE THEM. SCANNING AVAILABLE TASKS ON THE PUBLIC BULLETIN.]**
A list superimposed itself over the ledger page. Most were far beyond me: *"Assist in the containment of a juvenile Magma Drake during shedding (50 Points). High risk, requires D-rank Fire Resistance minimum." "Gather fresh Starlight Moss from the upper cliffs (15 Points). Requires climbing proficiency or levitation."*
Then, at the very bottom: *"Catalogue and organize disused alchemical components in Sub-Basement Storage 4B. Hazard: Dust, potential minor reactive residues. Reward: 2 Contribution Points. Supervisor: Bursar Grik."*
Two points. A pittance. But it was a start. And "Sub-Basement Storage" sounded like the kind of forgotten place where interesting things might be left to rot.
Bursar Grik turned out to be a creature of ledgers and dust. A Draf of immense age, his beard more cobweb than hair, his eyes magnified to owlish proportions by thick crystal lenses. He inhabited a warren of an office buried deep in the administrative wing, surrounded by teetering stacks of parchment and the dry, sweet smell of aging vellum.
"Veridian?" he rasped, not looking up from a sprawling account book. "The Blank with the twitch. Two points. Don't expect more. Storage 4B hasn't been touched in a decade. Things may have… settled. Sign here."
He shoved a liability waiver at me. I signed without reading. He handed me a large, brass key that felt greasy with age and a dim, everbright lantern.
"Try not to die. It creates paperwork."
Sub-Basement Storage 4B was a tomb. The air was cold, still, and thick with the smell of saltpeter, dried herbs, and the faint, acrid tang of failed potions. Shelves stretched into darkness, crammed with dusty jars, cracked crucibles, and boxes labeled in fading script. My lantern light carved a small pool of visibility in the vast gloom.
**[TASK: CATALOGUE AND ORGANIZE. RECOMMENDED METHOD: SYSTEMATIC GRID SEARCH. NOTE: YOUR [MANA-SENSE] IS DETECTING NUMEROUS FAINT, DISPERSED RESIDUAL SIGNATURES. NONE ARE IMMEDIATELY THREATENING.]**
For hours, I worked. It was mind-numbing, menial labor. Wiping jars, deciphering labels (*"Salamander Gland – Desiccated, Circa 342", "Powdered Dreamleaf – Inert", "Essence of Muted Scream – DO NOT AGITATE"*), sorting them by category and hazard. My two stolen traits made the work slightly less miserable—**[Kinetic Dispersal]** softened the ache in my knees from the stone floor, and **[Mana-Sense]** gave me a vague, early warning if I reached for something that felt particularly volatile.
It was while moving a crate of what appeared to be petrified, luminous frog eggs that I found the ledger. Not an academy ledger. A small, black-bound book, wedged behind a support beam, so coated in dust it was nearly part of the wall.
I pulled it free. The cover was unmarked. I opened it. The pages were filled not with official script, but with a tight, frantic, personal shorthand. Sketches of mana circuits, chemical formulae crossed out and rewritten, feverish notes.
*"…the principle of transference is clear, but the vessel cannot hold. The God-Touched artifacts are not mere conduits, they are *seeds*. But how to germinate?"*
*"…another failure. The purity of the Angelic blood acts as a catalyst, but also a purgative. It burns out the host. Demonic essence provides stability, but corrupts the matrix. The balance is… eluding me."*
*"…the Headmaster suspects. Must move the primary research. The Vault of Echoes is too obvious. The old Geode Caverns beneath the Spring? The resonance there is unstable, but it might mask the signature…"*
My blood ran cold. This was not an alchemist's notes. This was heresy. Experiments with "God-Touched" artifacts. Blending racial essences. This was the kind of forbidden research that had, according to fragmented histories, preceded some of the worst calamities of the ancient world.
"Machina. Analyze."
**[SCANNING CONTENT. LINGUISTIC PATTERNS CROSS-REFERENCED WITH ACADEMY RECORDS. AUTHOR IDENTIFIED WITH 89% PROBABILITY: ARCANIST MALKOR. FORMER CHAIR OF TRANSMUTATIVE STUDIES. DECEASED (OFFICIAL RECORD: LABORATORY ACCIDENT) 27 YEARS AGO.]**
A dead man's forbidden research. Hidden in a disused storage room. And it spoke of "God-Touched artifacts" and a "Vault of Echoes."
"Is this… useful?"
**[DATA IS ALWAYS USEFUL. THIS PROVIDES CONTEXT, MOTIVATION, AND POTENTIAL LOCATIONS OF HIGH-VALUE TARGETS. THE 'GOD-TOUCHED' ARTIFACTS MAY BE FRAGMENTS OF THE CREATOR'S WORK, OR OF THE VOID. THEIR STUDY COULD ACCELERATE COMPREHENSION. THIS LEDGER IS WORTH SIGNIFICANTLY MORE THAN TWO CONTRIBUTION POINTS.]**
I tucked the black ledger into my tunic. It felt heavy with illicit potential. I finished the cataloguing task, my mind racing. When I returned the key to Bursar Grik, he merely grunted, stamped my ledger with two points, and waved me away.
Back in my barracks, hidden under my thin mattress, the black ledger seemed to pulse with silent accusation. It was a key to a door I hadn't known existed. A door marked "forbidden."
**[NEW STRATEGIC OBJECTIVE ESTABLISHED. PRIMARY: CONTINUE TO ACCRUE CONTRIBUTION POINTS THROUGH LEGITIMATE TASKS TO BUILD COVER AND ACCESS. SECONDARY: INVESTIGATE THE LOCATIONS MENTIONED IN THE MALKOR LEDGER. THE 'VAULT OF ECHOES' AND THE 'GEODE CAVERNS' BENEATH THE SPRING. PRIORITY: SEARCH FOR A 'GOD-TOUCHED' ARTIFACT. EVEN A FRAGMENT COULD SERVE AS A CATALYST FOR YOUR DEVELOPMENT.]**
"A catalyst? How?"
**[YOUR [ADAPTIVE MIMICRY] FUNCTIONS ON COMPREHENSION. A PHYSICAL FRAGMENT OF DIVINE OR VOID ORIGIN WOULD PROVIDE AN UNPARALLELED REFERENCE POINT. IT COULD UNLOCK HIGHER-TIER ARCHIVAL POTENTIAL OR REFINE EXISTING TRAITS.]**
Theft was no longer just about survival or passing grades. It was about archaeology. About looting the graves of dead gods and dead fools. The black ledger was my first real treasure map, paid for with two points and a day's dust inhalation.
The following week, I took on two more tasks. One was assisting a harassed scribe in the library's copy-room, earning 1 point for a day of mindless transcription. The other was more interesting: collecting fallen feathers from the Aviary of the Zephyr Hawks for use in air-aligned enchantments. The Hawks were F-rank magical beasts, fast and proud, but non-lethal. The task paid 3 points and required patience and a steady hand.
It also gave me an idea.
In the Aviary, a vast, open-air mesh dome, I spent hours sitting perfectly still, a bowl of raw meat beside me, waiting for the sleek, blue-feathered hawks to descend. My **[Mana-Sense]** was attuned to their movements, their sharp, clean avian energy. And I watched, not just for feathers, but for their *flight*.
The principle wasn't a trait or a skill. It was *aerodynamics*. The minute adjustments of primary feathers, the way they caught and shaped the currents of not just air, but of the faint magical zephyrs that suffused their enclosure. It was a lesson in efficiency, in using the environment to propel oneself.
I didn't try to archive it. It was too complex, too biological. But I *comprehended* it. I added the principle of *"Guided Descent"* and *"Current Catching"* to my growing internal library. When I finally stood to leave, my bowl full of gleaming feathers, my own movements felt slightly more fluid, my balance a fraction more sure. Not from a stolen power, but from a stolen *idea*.
**[OBSERVATION: PASSIVE LEARNING THROUGH ENHANCED PERCEPTION AND COGNITIVE INTEGRATION IS A VIABLE SUPPLEMENT TO ACTIVE ARCHIVAL. EFFICIENCY INCREASE IN NON-COMBAT MOTILITY NOTED: 2.3%.]**
Every experience was data. Every task, a lesson. The two points from the dust, the one from the scribe, the three from the hawks. Six points total. A meager hoard. But in the reliquary's exchange list, I saw that for ten points, I could access the **"Low-Yield Mana Condensation Chamber"** for one hour. A room designed to force-feed a student's core, speeding refinement. It was a brute-force method, painful and inefficient for most. For me, with my focus on compression over expansion, it might be revolutionary.
I needed four more points.
The bulletin offered nothing suitable. But the black ledger, burning a hole under my mattress, suggested another way. It mentioned the "Geode Caverns beneath the Spring." The academy was built around the Astral Spring, a fountainhead of naturally pure mana. There were old service tunnels, maintenance accesses for the spring's conduits. Forbidden to students.
But a thief with a map to a possible divine fragment couldn't afford to care about forbidden tunnels.
That night, with my six points symbolizing my fragile foothold in the legitimate world, I prepared to leave it all behind and descend into the dark, wet belly of the academy. The path of the god-thief was splitting in two: one bathed in the sanctioned light of Contribution Points, the other delving into the secret dark of a dead arcanist's obsession. Both led to power. One was just messier.