novelraw Chapter 193: Results Time
Chapter 193: Results Time
***
While the first-years, more specifically, Ignotus’s people, were busy losing their minds, frying their neurons, and hallucinating geometric shapes in a desperate bid to pass John’s test, he was doing his own thing.
Ignotus was busy showing off.
Day one, about ten minutes after John handed out the "impossible" assignment, he stood in the overly decorated office of the headmaster, Dante. Without caring about the ambiance, he dragged a chair and sat down.
In under thirty seconds, he drew the ruined Rune.
The chaotic, non-linear mess that was supposed to take geniuses at least ten days to decipher was cracked open like a child’s doodle under his hand. Its attempt at a spell hummed with perfect, stabilized Divinity, forming the same wall that Aurelia’s did.
"Done."
Dante, usually the picture of stoicism, sat behind his desk with his mouth slightly open.
He looked from the beautiful wall to Ignotus, then back to the wall.
"You..."
Dante rubbed his temples.
"You are absurd."
"No, I’m like any other; the only difference is that I’m more... efficient, yes, that."
Ignotus corrected.
"Anyways, now that I’ve proved I’m better than everyone else, we need to talk about the schedule."
Dante sighed, regaining his composure.
"What about the schedule?"
"The festival is coming up."
Ignotus crossed his legs.
"But before that, I think the first years need a little vacation... let’s call it a field trip."
Dante raised an eyebrow.
"A field trip? In the middle of the semester? Why?"
Ignotus looked him dead in the eye.
"Because there’s a Greater Demon about to wake up in the Third Stratum, and we need to kill it before it decides to turn entire cities into a meal for itself and its kin."
"..."
"..."
"..."
The room went silent, and the air pressure seemed to drop.
Dante’s dark eyes widened once more.
"Are you serious?"
Again, he didn’t ask how Ignotus knew. By now, Dante was sure that asking Ignotus for his sources was like going to a brick wall for poetry. It was a lost cause. Ignotus knew things; that was just the reality they lived in.
And Ignotus appreciated that silence.
He wasn’t about to explain that he’d heard about all of this in his past life. A life where this Greater Demon had actually been awoken and emerged to terrorize many a city... Until finally, Dante terminated it.
Telling someone about their Fated failure usually resulted in madness or, at the very least, awkward conversations, both of which he wanted to avoid.
"Unfortunately, I’m dead serious. But it’s not too bad if we handle it right."
He leaned forward.
"If we send a strike team, no matter how hidden, the spies watching the Academy—from the other Houses, the weird faction-like cults, take your pick—they’ll panic. They’ll think we’re making a power play, and chaos will ensue."
Ignotus smirked.
"But... if we frame it as an Academy field trip? The spies won’t feel threatened; they’ll relax. That’ll allow us to go in and clear out the Demon and its followers while the students get their first real Reclamation Dive. Two birds, one very dead stone."
Dante stared at him for a long moment, processing the strategy.
It was pragmatic but risky.
Still, it was better than any alternative.
Slowly, the headmaster nodded, coming to a decision:
"Very well. I will arrange the logistics. We will label it a ’Practical Dive Exercise.’"
"That’s a good name."
Ignotus stood up.
"Quite catchy~."
"Is there anything else?"
Dante asked, looking tired.
"Yeah. I don’t feel like walking back."
Ignotus pointed a finger at himself.
"Send me back."
Dante stared at him.
"You want me, the headmaster of Saint Academy, to use my Divinity to taxi you five minutes away?"
"Yup."
Dante let out a long, suffering sigh.
"...fine."
He waved his hand dismissively.
Flash.
Space warped, and Ignotus vanished from the office near instantly.
Once he was gone, the air in the corner shimmered.
John stepped out of the shadows, adjusting his glasses.
Dante looked at the Inquisitor.
John looked at the headmaster.
For a moment, neither spoke until eventually they both cracked a smile.
"He is going to be a headache."
"The best students always are."
***
Ignotus appeared in the middle of his dorm room.
Before he could even orient himself, a black blur launched itself from the top of a bookshelf.
"Calamity!"
"Yeah, yeah, I’m back."
Ignotus grunted, catching the small black cat in his embrace.
Eris purred violently, vibrating in his hands. She climbed up his arm and perched on his shoulder, rubbing Her head against his cheek.
’You were gone for twenty minutes.’
Her voice echoed in his mind, sounding pouty.
’I was bored.’
"Tragic."
Ignotus deadpanned and walked straight to the training room door.
"Come on, I’ve got things to try."
He entered the reinforced training room, the mats smelling of sweat.
This was his sanctuary, and he was at its center, sitting cross-legged.
Eris hopped off his shoulder and sat in front of him, Her tail flicking with anticipation.
It was time.
He had unlocked the Synaxis step during the fight with the Demon, but he hadn’t properly stress-tested it yet. Ignotus didn’t just bear a new skill and hope for the best; no, he’d go to the training dummy and crunch the numbers.
"Synaxis..."
Closing his eyes, he reached into the core of his Soul, finding that heavy, dense knot of power.
"Zero."
THUMP.
The pressure in the room skyrocketed.
Ignotus opened his eyes. If there had been a mirror, he would have seen the whites of his eyes turn entirely red, a glowing crimson.
And then came the blood.
Red tears streamed down his face.
It didn’t hurt—well, it hurt a little, though Ignotus ignored pain on principle—but it felt heavy.
It was like his body was a vessel cracking under the pressure of too much water.
’Let’s see...’
He flexed his hand, and the power surge was undeniable.
His base stats—Strength, Agility, Endurance—shot up.
—
{Statistics}
[Strength] 35 → 45 (Temporary)
[Intelligence] 43 → 53 (Temporary)
[Willpower] 46 → 56 (Temporary)
[Speed] 40 → 50 (Temporary)
[Endurance] 45 → 55 (Temporary)
[Appearance] 70 (B+)
[Personality] -1 (G)
[Luck] 70 → 80 (Temporary)
—
But more importantly, he felt his Runes click.
They were refreshed, their cool-downs fully reset.
"This’s very good."
Ignotus muttered, wiping blood from his chin.
It meant he could spin the wheel, get a random Element, use it, enter Synaxis, and potentially spin it again immediately.
But wait, did that mean that he could use two Elements at once?
’I have to try this out later.’
This was a double-cast built into his biology.
Plus, the spells themselves felt denser. If he threw a ball of magma now, its explosion would be much greater.
But, of course, that didn’t come with no downside.
The Divinity consumption was massive.
"Nothing is free."
He deactivated the state, the red glow faded, and the bleeding stopped, leaving dried tracks on his face.
’You look scary when you do that.’
Eris chirped, licking Her paw.
’I like it.’
"You would."
Ignotus chuckled and continued his experimentation, spending the rest of the day there.
Unfortunately, and as he expected, despite his curiosity, the entirety of the Rune reset.
That meant that he couldn’t use Fortune’s Wheel, then activate his synaxis, and use Fortune’s Wheel again to have two different Elements. Two could never be activated at once.
He wasn’t discouraged and kept on, turning Synaxis on and off, timing the drain, and testing how fast he could cycle his Runes. By the time evening fell, the floor was covered in sweat and droplets of blood.
That night, the sleeping arrangements were... standard.
Gaia, his wife, which still felt unusual to say, clung to his left side.
She claimed she got cold easily, which was ironic for an Earth Runebearer, but Ignotus didn’t mind. He was basically a human furnace.
Eris slept directly on top of him—or sometimes squeezed between them—staking Her claim as the primary deity in residence.
Ignotus stared at the ceiling for a few seconds before passing out.
Life was weird, but good.
The next few days were a blur of similar productivity.
While the other students were frantically trying to draw lines, Ignotus was in the library.
He had a checklist.
First thing on the agenda was the next Rune.
Though he already had one ready, he needed to find another in advance. It was mostly because the deadline for its discovery was nearing, and he needed to find it first before anyone else did.
Its location in his memories was weak, which was why he came here to flip through maps and geography texts, cross-referencing them with what he could remember.
The second thing on the agenda was Full Transformation.
By now, he was confident of his Partial Transformation; it was strong.
But it was a bottleneck.
He couldn’t be satisfied with this; to survive the monsters coming later, he needed all of Synaxis. So he read everything he could find on the Luck Element, trying to decipher the best way he could go about doing so.
Most of the books were useless philosophical garbage about the Element, while others spoke of "finding one’s inner beast." Ignotus skimmed them, looking for the proper steps.
Day after day passed.
He ate, trained, researched, and slept.
Five days to six, to seven, and then to nine.
Finally, the "Hell week" for the first years had ended.
The deadline passed, and all the exhausted students had submitted their work... or failed trying.
Ignotus closed the heavy book he was reading—Theories of Divine Transmutation, Vol 4—and stood up.
"It’s time."
Indeed, it was time to see the results.