Sergeant Seraph walked Jonah out of the library without saying a word. Her hand on his shoulder wasn’t rough, but it was firm – there was no mistaking it: he had no choice but to follow. Jonah expected to be marched to a training field or a lecture hall, but Seraph led him in the opposite direction, toward a staircase labeled ‘SUBLEVELS.’

“Where are we going?” Jonah asked, his voice echoing in the stone stairwell.

“We are going on a side trip,” Seraph replied, her voice flat. They descended past the first sublevel, a bustling area for equipment maintenance, and the second, which housed the alchemical labs.

They went deeper, into the silent, rarely traveled levels of the Academy’s foundation.

“Your file,” Seraph began, her voice echoing slightly in the confined space, “didn’t just get flagged by a mid level administrator, Jonah. The energy signature from your Awakening at the Pillar was so unusual it bypassed normal channels. It went directly to the top.”

Jonah’s blood ran a little cold. “To the top?”

“The Headmaster,” she confirmed.

Jonah froze. The Headmaster? Everyone knew who the Headmaster was. He isn’t just some teacher, He’s living legend. An Overlord Grade Elite, one of the handful of people in the entire Mystic Phoenix Nation who stood at the absolute pinnacle of power. The thought that such a powerful being even knew his name made his knees feel weak.

“Why?” he managed to ask.

Seraph turned to face him, her expression dead serious. “Because in the brutal war against the beasts, our tactics have barely evolved in fifty years. We fight harder, we build stronger walls, but we’re always reacting. The Headmaster sees your ‘Weaver’ class not as a simple curiosity, but as a potential turning point. A proactive weapon. That’s why he sanctioned your… special curriculum.”

They stopped before a heavy, steel door set into the rough stone wall. There were no handles, only a single, glowing rune in the center. Seraph placed her palm on it. The rune glowed with blue light, and with a grinding sound, the door slid open.

.

Jonah nervously followed her into the room. The door slid shut behind him, and everything went almost pitch black. A moment later, soft lights began to glow from the ceiling, illuminating their surroundings.

They were in a massive, circular chamber. The walls were lined with row upon row of transparent, crystalline alcoves. And inside each alcove, a single orb of glowing, colored light floated, pulsing with a gentle energy.

“What is this place?” Jonah breathed, his voice full of awe.

“This is the Essence Archive,” Seraph said. Her voice was quieter now, and there was a kind of respect in it that caught Jonah off guard. “A repository.

“For years, the Academy’s best teams have been out there hunting the strongest Demonic Beasts they can find. This… this is where all that power ends up. Stored. Studied. Ready to be used.”

She gestured to the countless glowing orbs. “Normally, access to this chamber is restricted to Rank three students and above. This place is one of the Academy’s biggest secrets – and its most valuable asset.”

“So… why did you bring me here?” Jonah asked, his voice small. He felt like someone who didn’t belong, like a kid who’d somehow wandered into a royal vault.

“The Headmaster has granted you conditional access,” Seraph said. “You are a craftsman without a gallery, a painter who has only seen a color. To understand what you can truly build, you must first study the works of the masters.”

She pointed to a nearby alcove. A small, neatly engraved plaque beneath it read: Gryphon Wing Essence. Inside, an orb of brilliant golden light pulsed with a majestic energy.

Jonah stepped closer, his eyes wide. He could feel the power radiating from it, a feeling of endless flight and fierce loyalty so strong it almost brought him to his knees.

He looked at the next one. Basilisk Eye Essence. The orb inside was a sickly, petrifying green, emanating a cold aura of stone and venom. Further down the row was Wyvern Talon Essence, a swirling vortex of violent gray energy that hummed with power ready to burst.

“You are not to touch anything,” Seraph’s voice was a firm anchor in his sea of awe. “And you are not yet strong enough to even dream of using essences of this caliber. An attempt at synthesis would not give you psychic backlash; it would liquify your brain.

Your purpose here is to observe. To learn. To understand the properties and potential combinations of what truly powerful essences feel like.”

Jonah didn’t need the warning. He understood perfectly.

This was the real library.

The books upstairs were just words. But this… this was the real thing. The living language of his power. Every glowing orb felt like a word, a sentence, a story. A story about a battle, a monster, and the moment it was beaten – its essence sealed and saved.

He moved slowly down the aisle, his eyes wide. He wasn’t just looking at glowing lights. He was looking at his future. His potential. He finally understood his new goal, a purpose that burned brighter and clearer than just surviving or proving himself.

He spent hours in the Archive, losing all track of time. Seraph left him to it, standing guard by the door. Jonah moved from sphere to sphere, his mind racing as his God Mark analyzed and cataloged, sorting the raw data into understandable concepts. To fly, you need a light body and hollow bones. Petrification comes from a bio-alchemical process, not just magic. The Wyvern pierces armor by releasing a powerful burst of force when it strikes.

He had to get stronger. Strong enough to go out into the wilds and hunt beasts of this caliber himself. Strong enough to earn the right to not just study these essences, but to claim them. To take these incredible, impossible colors and weave them into something new, something the world had never seen before.

He finally had a real goal. Not just surviving. Not just getting through Seraph’s tests. Something bigger. Something he could chase with everything he had. One day, he wouldn’t just stand here staring at these essences – he’d earn them. He’d be strong enough to go out and claim them himself. And when he came back, it wouldn’t be as some wide eyed student… but as someone who belonged.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep