Ray stood in the quiet alchemy lab, his entire being focused into the fingertips of his raised hands. Before him, Rina sat on the stool, her back straight, her trust absolute.

Ray’s right index finger, glowing with the condensed, golden-white ‘Aetheric Needle’ of his Aetheric Suture skill, hovered over the first dormant node at the base of her spine.

He made contact.

Rina flinched, a sharp gasp catching in her throat, but not from pain. A strange, menthol-like sensation, a cool, tingling warmth, spread from the point of contact. It didn’t hurt at all; it felt like a gentle, electric massage.

From Ray’s Aetheric Perception, the moment was far more dramatic. He saw the ‘Aetheric Needle’ touch the dormant node. It ignited with a flash of brilliant, golden-white light… and then immediately sputtered, “flickered, and dimmed.”

Scholar: “The pathway is inert! It has no charge of its own. A single injection isn’t enough. We have to prime the system, like nursing a dying ember.”

Ray understood. He couldn’t just jolt it to life; he had to coax it. He began a slow, painstaking, holistic process. He moved his ‘Aetheric Needles,’ his glowing fingertips, to each of the five nodes he had identified, one by one, in the sequence the Eccentric Scholar had mapped.

Rina felt a strange, gentle, stuck feeling, followed by the cool warmth, spreading in a complex, deliberate pattern, a pulse at the base of her spine, then another at her solar plexus, then a tingling in the palms of both her hands, and finally, a deep, pervasive warmth at the base of her neck.

For Ray, it was a battle. In his vision, he was a surgeon connecting a complex, unpowered circuit. He saw the first node at her spine light up… then dim. He pulsed it again, a minimal drop of his pure Aether, this time it held. He moved to the solar plexus. He ignited it… it dimmed… he pulsed it again.

Scholar: “The first node is dimming again! You need to sustain it!”

Ray’s face tightened in concentration. He had to go back, pulsing the first node again, then the second, then moving to the palms. It was an intense, exhausting act of mental and aether juggling, keeping all five ‘embers’ lit at once. He couldn’t just push power in; he had to balance it, tuning the entire dormant network like a delicate, five-stringed instrument.

Time went by. What felt like hours passed in the silent, glowing lab. Rina felt waves of cool, tingling warmth pulsing through her body in a steady, hypnotic rhythm. Ray, on the other hand, was heavily sweating, small beads trickling down his temples. This was, by far, the longest sustained mental effort he had ever performed. His innate skill Cognitive Network paired with Stoic Assassin’s Psychological Fortitude skill was keeping his ‘aetheric needles’ from wavering.

Scholar: “Almost… the main nexus… Now!”

Ray gathered his focus and made the final, delicate pulse to the main nexus at Rina’s neck. This time, the circuit held. In his Aetheric Perception, a new, steady, and stable current of golden energy was now flowing between all five nodes. The ‘power nodes’ were built.

He pulled his hands back, his own breath coming in heavy, ragged gasps. The golden light from his fingertips faded. He was exhausted.

He asked Rina, his voice slightly strained,

“How… how do you feel?”

Rina took a deep, shuddering breath, her first in what felt like an eternity. A gasp of pure, unadulterated pleasure. She rolled her shoulders, her eyes fluttering open, wide with awe.

“I… I feel… wonderful,”

she said, her voice full of a new, vibrant life.

“Like I just had the deepest sleep of my life. Or a full-body massage. I feel so… light. And refreshed.”

Ray watched her, exhausted but energized, his Eccentric Scholar persona buzzing with a level of anticipation that was almost painful.

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Scholar: “The power nodes are built. The pathways are primed. The baseline has been altered. This is it. The data is imminent.”

He gave Rina a moment to steady herself, to let the refreshed feeling settle.

“Rina,”

he said, his voice carefully neutral,

“Please try the ‘Attunement Sphere’ again.”

Rina, who had been looking at her own hands with a dazed, wondrous expression, looked up at him. The refreshed feeling had given her a new, fragile hope. She nodded, her eyes shining.

She stepped up to the sphere. This time, there was no hesitation, no sad self-resignation. She was hopeful. She placed her hands on the cool, clear crystal, closed her eyes, and concentrated with all her might.

The sphere remained perfectly dark. Inert. Lifeless. They continued to wait but there was no change.

Rina’s face crumbled. The new, vibrant, refreshed energy drained out of her, as if a plug had been pulled. It was replaced by a deep, profound, and crushing disappointment. She wasn’t just sad for herself; she was crushed

because she felt she had failed him.

She pulled her hands away from the sphere, her shoulders slumping, unable to look him in the eye.

“I’m so sorry, my lord,”

she whispered, her voice thick with unshed tears.

“You… you went to all that effort. I… I’m sorry. It seems I… I really just have no talent at all. Your effort was wasted on me.”

As Ray watched Rina’s face crumble in crushing, selfless disappointment, his internal committee exploded with two violently different reactions.

The first was a wave of pure, unadulterated relief.

Courtier: “Thank the gods! It failed! This is the best possible outcome!”

Veteran: “He’s right. It means Svane’s ‘cure’ was a one-off, specific to his pre-existing injury. Which means the two Shadow Guards we healed will not experience a miraculous enhancement.”

Courtier: “Maybe they will just feel refreshed, just like Rina. They’ll report nothing. Our weak fluke cover is secure! The time bomb is defused!”

But a second, furious voice drowned out the relief, the Eccentric Scholar was in a state of indignant rage.

Scholar: “NO! This is a scientific failure! The hypothesis was sound! Pure Aether + Blank Slate = New Potential! The results do not coincide with the theory! Why?! WHY did it fail?! Was the Aetheric input too low? Was the sequence wrong? Did I misidentify the primary nodes?”

The Eccentric Scholar asked with a questioning rage filled tone

Scholar: “This is unacceptable! We need more data! We must try again! Double the input! Modify the sequence! We must solve this!”

The Scholar’s cold, desperate demand for more experiments on the heartbroken, apologizing Rina made something in Ray snap.

NO! SHUT UP! The experiment is over.

He silenced the screaming, cold logic of his archetypes and stepped forward. His expression softened, the calculating Eccentric Scholar and the paranoid Scheming Courtier vanishing. He was no longer a scientist. He was just Ray.

He gently placed a hand on Rina’s shoulder, not as the World Weary Healer performing a diagnostic, but as a person. She flinched, still looking at the floor in her shame.

“Rina, look at me.”

She looked up, her eyes bright with unshed tears.

“You didn’t fail,”

he said, his voice quiet but firm.

“My theory was wrong. You feel… refreshed? Lighter? That’s not a waste. That’s a success. Your talent isn’t in that sphere.”

He gave her shoulder a small, reassuring squeeze.

“It’s in your loyalty, and your strength, and your stillness. You are more valuable to me than any mage. Now, perk up! Tomorrow is another day!”

Moments later, Ray is now in his private room. He finally let the exhaustion of the night wash over him. The sustained, high-wire act of performing the Aetheric Suture as a precise, multi-point treatment had drained his mental stamina more than any combat he had yet faced. He sat on the edge of his bed, reviewing the result: the Attunement Sphere had stayed dark. Rina still had 0% Mana affinity .

Ray let out a slow, heavy breath, his physical exhaustion mixing with a profound, bone-deep sense of relief. His ‘failure’ with Rina had just solved his single biggest possible security problem with the Shadow Guards and the headmaster.

Now, he just had one more narrative to shore up.

The next day, Ray was in his study, his mind replaying the 2-v-1 spar. His ‘Engineer’s Narrative,’ the master-level performance of casting cantrips via ‘pure theory,’ had been a resounding success. Cassian and Eliza had believed him.

But a good performance, as his archetypes knew, required more than just a single, convincing show.

Conman: “A good con is believable, kid. A great con has evidence. They bought the story today, but a 4th-Circle brain-box like Cassian is gonna get suspicious. He’ll keep picking at it. We need a prop. We need to show them the ‘engineering’.”

Ray leaned back in his chair. A prop. The Charismatic Conman was right. A physical object that proved his narrative. His mind’s eye flashed back to his internal sparring match with the Arcane Scribe archetype, the way it had used ‘prepared runes’ on its gauntlets to channel power.

Scholar: “Yes. Runecrafting. It’s the perfect solution. Golems, wards… Institutional Magic is built on using runes to store and automate complex spells.”

Weaver: “BORING! Static! One glove, one spell? A ‘Fire Glove’? Where’s the flair? No, no, no! That contradicts our whole versatility narrative! We’re not building a tool, we’re building a stage!”

Scholar: “The Weaver is… crudely… correct. A ‘Fire Glove’ would be a direct contradiction. We need a versatile prop. Not a pre-inscribed rune, but a…”

Weaver: “A blank canvas! A conduction matrix! A beautiful, empty socket that looks like it’s doing all the hard work! We’ll build a blank amplifier, and you’ll just channel your fluke magic through it!”

The idea took root, and a surge of new, creative energy filled Ray. This is going to be his perfect alibi.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep