It had been two days since Luciel's awakening. He had become an Awakened Resonator with a Stanza of his own. When he woke up, he found himself in an old wooden lodge just miles away from the south of the Federation. And unsurprisingly, it was Bambi who had carried him all the way there.
What surprised him, though, was the state of his body being fully regenerated. His torn-off arm grew anew, and his almost withered leg patched itself up.
Moreover, immediately after Luciel returned to reality, he noticed a profound change of his body and mind. For a second, he thought he had possessed someone else's body and spirit; it felt so foreign and out of place.
His muscles were strengthened, more robust and flexible. The fibers under his skin felt newly rewired, packed tighter together without adding unnecessary bulk, as if his body had been revitalized and reborn.
The more notable change was the strange energy overflowing into every nook and cranny of his being. It shifted everything inside him. The so-called Echo Essence doubled his vision; his awareness gained depth; his processing speed spiked. Nothing was left unscathed by the Encore and its Essence.
And the most important of all, of course, was the runes, and Luciel had been analyzing them nonstop.
"You've been staring at the runes since waking up. It's not gonna go anywhere."
"I know."
"Then stop. You need to eat. If you don't, I'm spoon-feeding you myself. You wanna be a baby?"
Luciel narrowed his eyes in disgust.
"No—just… later. I'm not hungry yet."
Bambi let out a sigh before putting a bowl of hot porridge down the nightstand. Then, she stood in front of him with her arms folded. Her finger tapping with rhythm as she stared at him for a good while.
Puzzled by her actions, Luciel asked:
"What? Something on my face?"
Bambi suddenly stomped her feet and pouted.
"Idiot!"
She jumped onto his bed and made a mess, squirming around and attacking him at the same time.
Luciel inwardly chuckled.
"And here I thought you got something serious to say."
Bambi had been his traveling companion for more than a year or so, and they had visited many places in Tellus while working odd jobs to make ends meet. Yet, no matter how much time had passed, he still couldn't believe that his partner-in-crime was an Elf.
Elves, who belonged to the forces of otherworldly races, known as Otherworlders, had no business being in the Western Bloc where human civilization prospered. Their homeland was on the Eastern Bloc, and rarely did they leave their forest, not even when mankind was on the brink of destruction.
Basically, Bambi escaped from home.
Luckily, the Elven race was one of the otherworldly races that humans actually held respect for instead of seething despise, or else she wouldn't have had an easy time over here.
Luciel recalled the first time he met Bambi, and the reason he had accepted her invitation in the first place. It wasn't because she was an Elf, which on its own, was intriguing. But the real reason was the fact that she was a Resonant herself, and a monstrous one at that.
Bambi was an Elf who could control blood like a Vampire, an extinct race only mentioned in myths. Her blood had special properties of being colorless, odorless, and poisonous.
It was easy to forget how dangerous Bambi was since they were allies. Sometimes, he had to remind himself from time to time that she could kill a room full of people without lifting a finger. A walking, pouting catastrophe.
"Fine! Let's look at the runes together."
He turned to Bambi, who sprawled on the bed like a starfish.
"Now you're curious? I thought you said I should keep it to myself."
She shot up and smiled smugly.
"Well… yes, to everyone else. I'm just warning you not to reveal the runes to just anyone. I'm not just anyone. I can help you decipher them!"
'So shameless.'
While Luciel did request for her advice, she adamantly refused when he showed it to her because she wanted to teach him a lesson about keeping this a secret. A cheat code, she said.
He glanced down at the back of his hand. The Resonant Stigma sat on it like a small scarlet seal, shaped like a four-point star inside a thin circle of light. He assumed one circle meant the first stage of awakening. At rest, it looked faint and dim, like any regular tattoo.
"Alright, accept my intent."
Bambi nodded.
"Show me."
Immediately, as if a magic word had just been spoken, a small spark leapt from his Stigma, and the ring around the scarlet star lit up. Simultaneously, Bambi's Stigma glowed brightly.
Then, the spark darted to her Stigma and gradually settled there.
After a long silence and multiple sighs, Bambi finally said:
"No matter how I see it, you have a freaking cheat code. You know those stories with a status screen? The ones that shows stats and skills? It's exactly that!"
Luciel tried to recall whether he had ever read those kinds of stories before. Since he mostly indulged in more profound topics, none came to mind.
"I don't know what you're talking about."
Her head snapped toward Luciel, eyes widened.
"What!? You are seriously telling me you've never read those comics before? It's pretty popular in Narae."
He sighed in disappointment.
"Comics? At your big age?"
Bambi clicked her tongue.
"Shut up. I don't wanna listen to a geezer who reads philosophical books for fun."
Then, she hit Luciel in the arm, chest, then thigh.
He tried to block it, but she was too fast.
"Ow! What's your problem?"
"At my big age, I can punish you whenever I want. You're the junior here."
Bambi switched her attention back to the runes.
"Okay. Let's open them!"
Luciel nodded and beckoned the runes to come closer.
He focused on the Soul Aria where [Agnihara] rested. In an instant, the name started to write its description.
Soul Aria: [Agnihara]
[A soul born of flame and bound by an ancient promise to destroy it. You burn to expose the deepest of sins, to judge falsehood, and to shield what remains true, even if your blade goes against the heavens themselves.]
Bambi gasped.
"Sounds heavy. You might be the protagonist of this world."
"Stop being dramatic. You read too many comics," Luciel said, deadpan.
"And are you planning to contribute or not?"
She grinned.
"But your fire's naming sense is kinda good, no? Aria is generally a solo musical piece, so it's about your identity. Fits what the description is telling us."
Luciel agreed with her. Musical terminologies were also used by the runes, just like in everyday life, and they made sense to a satisfying degree. The one who coined the term Stanza was cool and all, but the runes took the cake.
'Definitely no bias here.'
He continued down the line.
Soul Chorus: Symphony No. 1 — [Scarlet]
[The first awakening of the divine fire. When your God bled for the first time, mortals saw a scarlet hue streak across the skies. Some called it an omen, others called it a blessing. With every prayer, the clock ticked down toward the same Scarlet, the one who adored mortals the most.]
"Damn."
Bambi looked at him stiffly. Just as he thought, she didn't understand a thing about [Scarlet]'s description either, but both of them felt the weight and intensity of its words. It was exactly how symphonies told its stories through elements such as tempo, dynamics, and orchestration to evoke emotion.
And [Chorus], by definition, is a repeated part of a song with a purpose of embodying its core message. [Scarlet] was the first symphony, and its chorus expressed the main theme of his soul.
"Now I wanna see my Symphony."
Luciel chuckled at her words. There weren't much to be said about the Chorus, so he moved on to the next.
Soul Resonance: [First Movement]
[A flame that knew no equal and needed no witness. In the silence before complete devotion, Scarlet burned alone, unaware of the weight a single choice would carry.]
Bambi studied the description and said:
"A symphony has four movements, correct? Doesn't it correspond to the Aleph Scale?"
Luciel nodded.
After contemplating for a while, she added:
"There are seven symphonies then. Matches the BSM's seven ranks."
Her theory made sense, and he had the same thought as well.
The Berend Sequencing Model's purpose was to measure the capacity of Encores, the potency of one's Echo Essence, and the power and potential within a Stanza.
When a Resonator channeled their Essence into a measuring device with BSM calibration, it would manifest a color and letter corresponding to your Rank and mastery on the Aleph Scale.
Each Rank was displayed in one of the rainbow's colors, and they were: Red for Awakened, Orange for Attuned, Yellow for Maestro, Green for Guardian, Blue for Harbinger, Indigo for Palatine, and Violet for Paragon.
Within each Rank, similar to Movements, there used to be four letters in the Aleph Scale, in order of increasing refinement: Daleth 𐤃, Gimel 𐤂, Beth 𐤁, Aleph 𐤀.
However, the model was tweaked and added in the fifth letter to prevent overclassification. Officially, Maestro and below would be assigned to the letter He 𐤄. The decision was made because the gap between each refinement at Maestro and below wasn't large enough to warrant the usage of the original Aleph Scale.
So when Luciel said Bambi was monstrous, he meant it. She was a whopping Daleth-Guardian, while he was a new Awakened. He realized he still had a lot of catching up to do.