Alphonse immediately cleared his throat softly, attempting to salvage the remnants of his dignity that had just been scattered across the floor. His hand moved swiftly to adjust his monocle, an evasive gesture to hide the tips of his ears, which were burning from embarrassment.
He glared sharply at his two friends, attempting to flip the situation. "Why did you enter without knocking?"
Hearing the reprimand, Arcus didn't feel intimidated in the slightest. The Sagittarius crossed his arms over his chest, snorted softly, and pointed his chin toward the wooden wall of the inn.
"These rooms are separated by nothing but thin wooden planks, Boss," Arcus answered, stating his simple logic. "Suddenly, in the dead of night, you're laughing loudly all alone in the dark like a madman who just discovered gold under his mattress. What did you expect us to do? Knock and ask if you were possessed?"
Ignoring Arcus's sarcastic commentary, Vrischil stepped closer. The Elf's emerald eyes scrutinized Alphonse, scanning him from head to toe.
"Are you alright, Alphonse?" Vrischil asked in a calm tone that barely concealed her worry.
She needed to ensure her Guild Master wasn't afflicted by illusion magic, a mind poison, or a lethal curse that might have been rigged as a trap within the magic scroll.
Alphonse took a deep breath, letting his emotional turmoil subside. A faint smile, laden with ambition, formed on his lips.
"Come in, and close the door tightly," Alphonse ordered.
Once Vrischil ensured the door was locked, Alphonse pointed toward the wooden desk in the corner of the room. Beneath the dim glow of the crystal lamp, the [Tier 1 - Cleanse] scroll lay open.
The massive stamp bearing the Wealden Magic Tower logo, which had previously dominated the center of the parchment, was gone. In its place, the layout of the magic circle and complex runic geometry were displayed clearly, completely exposed for anyone to study.
Arcus stepped closer. He squinted, staring at the paper for a few seconds, then looked back at Alphonse's face.
"And... so?" Arcus asked in a flat tone, his face a picture of innocence. He entirely failed to grasp the urgency or the sheer magnificence of a piece of paper whose ink had slightly changed.
Alphonse turned to Vrischil, ignoring the stupidity of his lieutenant.
"Your sharp analysis in front of the showcase earlier was correct, Vrischil. There is protective magic in this world deliberately cast to obscure original magic circles so they cannot be studied or reverse-engineered by outsiders. And I just successfully erased it."
He paused for a moment, allowing the tension in the room to build so his words could sink in perfectly.
"I erased it utilizing a brand new spell," Alphonse revealed, looking back and forth between his two friends. "An authentic magic native to this world, one that never existed in the game of Orion Online."
Vrischil's eyes widened slightly. Her rational brain rapidly calculated the massive implications of that statement: her Guild Master had just learned a spell from entirely outside the boundaries of their existing knowledge.
Meanwhile, Arcus was still furrowing his brow. His eyebrows knit together in confusion, his brain visibly working overtime to process Alphonse's sentence.
"And... so?" Arcus asked again, his tone completely projecting sheer bewilderment. "You are a walking archive. It's completely natural that you can cast one extra cleaning spell, right?"
A vein throbbed on Alphonse's forehead. His patience with Arcus had finally run dry.
"You idiot," Alphonse hissed sharply, nearly gritting his teeth. "I successfully cast this new spell without utilizing a single Skill Point to learn it beforehand!"
Thump.
That final sentence struck Arcus like a bolt of lightning in broad daylight. His eyes widened perfectly, nearly popping out of their sockets. His jaw dropped as his brain finally managed to connect those logical dots.
"Oooohhhhh!" Arcus yelled in elation, instantly covering his own mouth upon realizing he was being too loud. The blonde prince finally grasped the massive scale of his Guild Master's discovery.
Vrischil took a single step forward. Her rationality operated at maximum capacity, dissecting the structure of this new reality.
"So..." Vrischil murmured slowly, formulating her conclusion. "We can freely master various new spells or combat abilities in this world... without being restricted by the sluggish Skill Point acquisition system like in the game?"
"Exactly," Alphonse answered firmly. "The game has been destroyed. Its rules have been annihilated. There is no longer any such thing as a Skill Point limit, and there is no longer a Skill Tree."
"We are no longer bound by system prerequisites that force us to unlock skills in a sequential order," Alphonse affirmed.
Vrischil's thoughts leapt far ahead, reaching a vastly grander tactical scale.
"Meaning, theoretically," the Elf continued, staring intently at Alphonse, "if I possessed the manual for it... I could instantly learn the spatial manipulation spell [Tier S - Gate] without needing to waste time mastering lower-tier teleportation spells like [Tier A - Teleportation] first?"
Alphonse nodded. "Theoretically, yes, absolutely. If you possess sufficient comprehension to read the structure, there is no system that will forbid you from casting it."
However, amidst the euphoria of the system's limitations shattering, Alphonse swiftly delivered a slap of reality.
"But, there is a fatal price to be paid," Alphonse warned, his face turning incredibly serious. "In the game, when we allocated points and unlocked a skill at Level 1, the system guaranteed that the spell would unfailingly manifest upon casting, regardless of how weak the effect or damage produced was."
He pointed at the parchment on the desk. "However, in the real world, devoid of automatic assistance from an interface system... the failure rate becomes a very real, lethal threat."
Alphonse stared directly at Arcus and Vrischil, delivering a confession that dropped his own ego as a stern warning.
"In this world, the utilization of magic or energy manipulation can fail completely if you have not fully mastered the structure of its magic circle," Alphonse asserted. "Losing your focus for even a fraction of a second will cancel everything. Your Mana thread will snap, or worse, explode in your own hands."
Alphonse leaned his back against the chair. "Even I... failed my first attempt when trying to cast the [Tier 4 - Null Script] earlier, simply because I felt slightly nervous. We are indeed free to learn anything now, but mastering it will demand real effort, precision, and genuine sweat."
Alphonse's explanation brought a momentary silence to the room. The destruction of the game's laws was a double-edged sword. It granted absolute freedom, but demanded total precision over every current of Mana.
"There are real consequences to failure," Alphonse stared at his two friends with a grave expression. "I have not yet attempted to cast high-tier magic. However, when my attempt failed earlier, even though it was merely a utility spell, there was a mild shockwave that I felt violently recoil against my Mana flow."
He rested his elbows on the wooden desk. "In this world, I do not yet know the reaction of failing to cast a high-tier spell... especially those related to spatial manipulation or large-scale area-of-effect attacks."
Alphonse looked straight at them, delivering a stern warning from a leader to his members.
"I do not want you getting hurt as a result of experimenting blindly," Alphonse said in a softening tone. However, subconsciously, his sharp, golden gaze was locked solely on Vrischil the moment he uttered the words 'do not want'.
The reaction to that biased gaze was instantaneous.
Vrischil, the Scorpio who usually radiated an aura as cold as a blizzard and never flinched in the face of monster legions, suddenly froze stiff. Her eyes widened slightly. The pointed tips of her Elven ears flushed slightly red, overpowering the natural pale hue of her skin.
A faint smile, so subtle it was nearly imperceptible, painted her lips. Vrischil immediately lowered her face, attempting to avoid eye contact with her Guild Master to conceal her heart, which had suddenly begun racing wildly.
In the corner of the room, Arcus, who had been standing there listening to the serious warning, now felt like he was playing third wheel in the dead of winter.
The Sagittarius immediately clicked his tongue cynically. He mimicked Alphonse's tone with a deliberately exaggerated, dramatic flair to ruin the moment.
"Tch," Arcus scoffed, crossing his arms. "'I do not want you getting hurt...'."
Arcus sharpened his voice, staring at his Guild Master with a mocking glare. "You really should change the word 'you' to 'her' if your eyes have only been staring at one specific person this whole time, Mr. Monocle."
Alphonse's ears instantly burned upon hearing the mockery from his best friend. He realized exactly where his eyes had been fixated. To cover the sudden, suffocating awkwardness, Alphonse cleared his throat loudly.
"Hold on a second," Alphonse cut in quickly, refusing to indulge Arcus's teasing. He had to divert the conversation before his dignity crumbled for a second time tonight.
Alphonse closed his eyes. He focused his remaining concentration. A second later, as his eyelids opened, his golden irises emitted a blindingly bright glow, piercing the room's dimness.
Seeing that glow, Arcus and Vrischil instantly returned to serious mode. They realized Alphonse was utilizing his ultimate ability once again.
In a fraction of a second, Alphonse's consciousness shot into the Akashic space. He did not linger; he requested only one structure from the Terminal: the layout of [Tier 3 - Magic Inscription].
The moment the geometric pattern of the sealing spell was perfectly recorded in his brain, he severed the connection immediately.
The golden glow in Alphonse's eyes dimmed drastically. He let out a long, heavy breath. Cold sweat poured down his temples and neck. His Mana capacity had plummeted to absolute rock bottom due to the repeated usage of the Akashic Terminal without sufficient rest intervals.
"Alphonse!" Vrischil reprimanded in worry, seeing Alphonse's body slump slightly in the chair.
Ignoring the exhaustion, Alphonse raised his right hand. He pointed his slightly trembling index finger toward the parchment scroll that had been cleared of the magic tower's logo.
With mental visualization, the air above the parchment immediately vibrated. For three seconds, threads of golden light wove themselves in the air. Hundreds of runes interlocked with precision, carving the complex geometric pattern of [Tier 3 - Magic Inscription].
Once the magic circle was formed perfectly and hovered stably, Alphonse opened his eyes. With a single flick of his finger, he dropped the magic circle squarely onto the surface of the paper.
The golden light rapidly absorbed into the parchment.
A brand new emblem was printed boldly, an emblem highly familiar to all three of them. The logo of the Pioneer Guild.
It was an engraving of an elegant compass, where the outer circle was formed by a sequence of intricate magical runes, while the directional needle in the center was the intersection of a knight's sword and a mage's staff.
Alphonse slowly lifted the parchment scroll, revealing the new stamp to his two comrades. A tired but overwhelmingly victorious smile graced his face.
"As you can see," Alphonse stated hoarsely, placing the scroll back down. "I can not only erase their properties. I can replace them. From this second onward, we can manufacture, manipulate, and monopolize any Magic Scroll we desire in this world."
It was a silent declaration of war against the entire hegemony of the mage faction in Orion.
Witnessing the achievement, Arcus cheered dramatically. His edgy, sarcastic demeanor collapsed instantly, replaced by the enthusiasm of a little kid who had just been shown a toy store.
"Incredible!" Arcus exclaimed, his eyes sparkling. "I want to master a new skill too! Alphonse, hurry up and find a list of lethal archery skills or spells in this world from your Terminal! I want to pick one to master tonight!"
Faced with that entirely misplaced enthusiasm, Alphonse could only gently massage the throbbing bridge of his nose.
"Tomorrow," Alphonse answered weakly. "My Mana is completely depleted. If I force it again, my life will be in danger."
But Arcus did not surrender. "Oh, come on, just find a low-tier one, that's fine, as long as I can try it out before going to sleep!" the Archer General whined, utterly destroying his usually lethal image.
Running out of patience watching her comrade's childish behavior, Vrischil immediately stood up.
Without uttering a single word to Arcus, the Elven woman stepped behind the archer, grabbed the back collar of Arcus's black cloak tightly, and forcefully dragged him out of the room, completely ignoring the Sagittarius's protests and struggles.
"Good night, Alphonse," Vrischil said politely in her signature calm tone, while still restraining Arcus with one hand outside the room. "Please rest."
The Elf then shut the wooden door tightly.
Hearing the sound of Arcus's whining fading down the hallway, Alphonse could only lean his head back against the chair and offer a tired smile in return.
While silence enveloped the Black Raven Inn, the atmosphere in the elite district of Wealden City was far from tranquil.
A horse-drawn carriage upholstered in dark velvet and engraved with the emblem of a golden falcon sped through the night streets.