novelraw Chapter 213: Burden of Chains
Chapter 213: Burden of Chains
Three days.
Ignotus spent three days staring at a white ceiling, playing connect-the-dots with its cracks.
Eris, thankfully, didn’t take too long to wake up. On the morning of the third day, she stirred on the pillow next to him, stretched her little black paws, and yawned.
’You look terrible.’
"Good morning to you, too."
Ignotus grunted, swinging his legs off the bed.
He cracked his neck, which sounded like a bag of gravel.
For seventy-two hours, his routine had been thrilling:
Sleep. Wake up. Eat tasteless mush. Go to the bathroom. Sleep again.
He hated these biological necessities; eating took too much time, and digestion took energy.
Going to the bathroom so much was just... undignified.
He couldn’t wait to hit the Shepherd Class.
Once a Runebearer ascended past Priest and reached the Eighth Class—Shepherd—the body changed. The Runes would be fully integrated into the Soul and flesh. Runebearers stopped being human with Runes and started being Runes with a human shape.
No more hunger, no more thirst, and no more bathroom breaks.
Even sleep became optional—a mental defrag rather than a biological requirement.
Plus, the lifespan boost was nice, and it unlocked the Complete Synaxis Transformation.
Currently, Ignotus and his people could only do Partial Transformations—an ice crown here, a fire aura there. A Shepherd? They could turn into the Element itself.
Over the next few days, Ignotus was discharged, but he didn’t go back to normal duty.
He was on "medical leave," which meant he sat in his dorm while his people reported in.
First were the ice wolves, who were fully healed and back to work.
Lykos and Ulv looked... dusty.
"We cleared a D-Rank dungeon near the border."
Lykos tried to sound casual but failed to hide his pride.
"A standard monster sweep, nothing like... the other one."
They’d gone to experience how a normal one would actually play out.
"We have no losses."
Ulv added, sitting on the floor.
"Everything had gone well for once."
"Did you get the loot?"
Ignotus asked immediately, sitting up straighter.
"We obtained a Light Rune."
"What about the monster’s teeth? The pelts? The furniture?"
"The... furniture?"
Lykos looked at him like he was insane.
"Why would we take the dungeon furniture?"
Ignotus sighed, falling back onto his pillows.
"Amateurs. You leave nothing when leaving a dungeon. If it’s not nailed down, it’s loot. If it is nailed down, you take the nails and then the thing."
He was a loot goblin at heart, destroying everything but never using anything. He wanted to scream at them for the lost potential gold they left rotting in that dungeon.
"Next time, bring bigger Dimensional Rings."
Next came the rivals.
Mer and Aur didn’t visit together, but their reports were similar.
"I learned a new combustion ratio."
The cat-girl spun a blue fireball on her finger.
"If I compress the Solar Heart, I can snipe."
Mer seemed to take her training even more seriously, becoming stronger.
"I figured out how to make the wind blades silent."
Aur told him an hour later while spinning her whip.
"Merlin and Ulv won’t hear me coming next time."
Ignotus nodded.
"Good. Good. You have to be able to kill each other."
Their collective rivalry was loud. The whole dorm heard them arguing in the training grounds. It was great for business; competition bred power, and Ignotus needed them powerful.
Then there was Gaia.
Of course, she was... different.
She didn’t come to report but to sit.
Her progress was slower than the rest, staying with him the longest.
While Ignotus sat cross-legged on his bed, diving deep into his Soul to fix the cracks in the sky, Gaia would sit in the chair by the window, reading a book or just watching the clouds.
She didn’t speak much and instead offered a grounding presence.
’She has a gentle Soul.’
Eris noted one evening, curled up on Gaia’s lap.
’Yeah... I’m glad that I chose her.’
It helped. Having her there made the meditation easier. It kept the "beautiful chaos" inside him from spilling out.
And finally, the last piece of news came from Nora.
She walked into his room one evening, holding a piece of parchment, looking exhausted but relieved.
"I got it!"
Nora handed him the paper.
It was an official Academy decree.
She was now fully recognized as a student!
"About time..."
Ulv had been accepted on the very first day. Nora? It took her over a month of grinding, fighting, and surviving a Greater Demon to get the same paper.
It showed the difference in treatment. Great Houses like Death got the fast pass. Lower Houses, or guards attached to less aggressive nobles like Gaia, got the red tape.
"Don’t let it get to you."
Ignotus handed the paper back.
"This paper doesn’t change anything; you keep the path you’re on."
Nora smirked, tucking the paper away.
"I know. But the cafeteria discount is nice."
Surprisingly, none of them asked Ignotus about his and Letum’s apparent acquaintanceship, their history. They seemed to have accepted that Ignotus had many a secret.
Anyhow, time passed, and the cracks in Ignotus’s Soul slowly knit together.
Not fully, but enough for him to keep his Divinity in once a battle began.
During that time, Ignotus had honestly expected Dante to visit. He waited for him to drop in and at least explain what happened to the Greater Demon.
Ignotus knew the monster was dead; the system notification had made that very clear. But how? Did Dante punch it? Did he talk it to death? Did he erase it from the world?
But the headmaster never came.
The old man was ghosting him!
All Ignotus knew was that the other students—the ones who hadn’t been part of the fight—had been evacuated safely. The Academy had swept the whole "Greater Daemon Awakening" under the rug.
To the public, it was just a "structural instability" in the dungeon.
A classic cover-up that Ignotus was aiming for.
Though he didn’t entirely avoid Fate, it was a step in the right direction. After all, in his past life, the Demon had fully awakened and rained terror, destroying many a Lower House before it was terminated.
Perhaps that was by design, the Great Houses using the Demon to destroy their enemies, but Ignotus wasn’t sure.
With no answers and a lot of free time, Ignotus went back to the grind.
He spent his days in the Great Library scouring the shelves. He read dusty books on Rune theory, Synaxis, ancient history, and forbidden biological alchemy. Again, he was looking for one thing:
A Rune.
Yes, he had one ready, but it didn’t hurt to be prepared.
He couldn’t go back to Hell to find one. The Demons there would be waiting for him with a "kill on sight" order after the stunt he pulled with Letum. Even if he could sneak by, getting one sounded like too much of a gamble.
His luck wasn’t that good.
"Nothing..."
Ignotus slammed a heavy book shut, dust puffing into his face.
"Damned garbage. All of it."
He couldn’t find a match. The Academy archives were vast, but they were curated. The weird stuff he needed wasn’t here.
It seemed that perhaps the only place he could find a Rune of such a caliber was up.
The Second Stratum.
But he was a first-year; he couldn’t go there yet.
Besides, the gates were locked until the end of the semester exams.
"Ha..."
Ignotus leaned back in his chair, balancing on two legs.
"I’m stuck."
For now, his option was to switch tracks.
’I’ll focus on Synaxis.’
He should’ve been able to transform by now; he was everything ready, there should’ve been no problem, but once more, he was stuck.
Like earlier, something was missing.
Finally, on a random Tuesday, the waiting ended.
Ignotus was in a large courtyard, eating a sandwich he didn’t want, when the air shivered.
A hooded figure appeared on a central podium, an announcer from the administration.
"Attention, students!"
The chatter in the courtyard died down.
"The Annual Festival will begin tomorrow!"
Ignotus smiled.
"However, due to the... exceptional quality of this year’s batch, the format has been changed."
Ignotus paused mid-chew.
"There will be no parade, and there will be no exhibition!"
The figure swept his gaze over the crowd.
"There will be a tournament."
"..."
"..."
"..."
Usually, the first-year festival was a fun event.
Games, food stalls, and a little light sparring to show off to the parents.
Rewards were there for most things, but they weren’t exactly fought over.
But a tournament? That was aggressive and damned competitive.
It meant blood.
Ignotus swallowed his sandwich.
He wasn’t back to full strength, perhaps operating at maybe 30% capacity. If he pushed too hard, the cracks in his Soul would tear open again, and he’d turn Hollow for real this time.
The burden of his defying Fate weighed him down.
Yet that didn’t give him pause.
Much like how the crowd around him erupted into excited murmurs, Ignotus stood up, dusting crumbs off his pants.
"30 percent?"
A chuckle left him.
"That’s plenty."
He’d win anyway.