Chapter 106: Source Code ( 2 )

Source Code

The words lingered in Albedo’s mind perpetually, even just seeing the name invoked an immense amount of power and anticipation for him.

Even as the name formed in the translucent interface of Echo of Death, Albedo felt the weight of it. In the right hands, it was so powerful that it couldn’t simply be defined as just a Gift, but as a monumental source of power.

Something that if it fell into the wrong hands, could easily lead to total world domination. He let out a slow breath, pressing his hand against the floating glyph to accept the new Gift.

“Source Code…”

The air shivered around him as he spoke, a resonance humming through his bones continuously, as if an unseen script was writing itself onto his soul.

Albedo closed his eyes and allowed Echo of Death to bind the new Gift into him. He remained this way for over 5 minutes, and the moment the Gift settled in his soul, Albedo felt a thread of mana pulsing into his vision, like an invisible tendril urging him to open his eyes.

After a moment, his eyes trembled for a couple seconds and then opened slowly. For a heartbeat, nothing happened. Then,

~FWOOM!~

The training chamber bled into something else entirely.

Lines of shimmering violet script crawled across the edges of reality once he opened his eyes, like invisible strings stretched over a dark void.

Everything, from the walls, the various runes and formations carved into the floor, even the faint traces of Seraphyne’s mana that lingered on the staircase outside, it was all there, woven in luminous threads that overlapped like strands of code.

His irises gleamed with a bright, unnatural purple light as he noticed what was going on.

“This is… the architecture of magic?”

Albedo took a step forward, heart pounding. He raised his hand and whispered the most basic spell he could muster.

“Arcane Bolt.”

A thin shard of energy sparked into existence, crackling faintly above his palm. But with Source Code activated, this bolt of mana was far from normal.

It was like a program, layers of intricate data unfolding before his eyes.

Lines of script spiraled around the bolt like an array of equations, mana input, mana quality, geometric pathways, stabilizing mama force, mana compression variables and more. He could see the calculations the world itself ran to create something so simple.

It was elegant… and flawed.

“Wasteful,” Albedo muttered as he saw what was going on. He could see mana bleeding from the spell of the edges, faint distortions leaking from imperfections no ordinary eye could see.

But with Source Code, it was as obvious as a wound. On instinct, he reached in, not physically, but with intent. His mana flared, and the array shifted. A line corrected itself, stabilizing. A compression node realigned.

The Magic Circle grew brighter and the Arcane Bolt sharpened and sparkled, trembling as if eager to be unleashed onto the world.

“Go.”

~CRACK!~

The Arcane Bolt shattered the reinforced target dummy at the far end of the room. Not pierced. Shattered. The dummy’s anti-magic shell flickered like broken glass, unable to withstand the corrected spell.

Albedo stared at his hand, his purple-glowing eyes reflecting raw astonishment.

“…This is rewriting magic itself.”

He realized, then, why the Humam who carried this Gift had failed to use it before transforming into a Hollowed One.

Most mages had incredibly finite mana pools. Trying to rewrite even the smallest fragment of spell data would burn through them like wildfire, leaving them crippled or dead.

But Albedo was different. Due to his Physique, his Flame Dragon’s Heart, his Gift, training and more, his mana reserves were extremely vast for his level of strength, and they were only growing bigger.

He could bear the strain where others couldn’t, at least for the period necessary. The revelation struck him with a clarity that made his chest tighten.

“This Gift was waiting for someone like me.”

With that thought, hours slipped by in the chamber before Albedo could realize it, as he lost himself to experimentation.

Bottles of Mana Potions eventually began to pile up as Albedo continued testing things, his mana continuously draining and needing to be refilled.

Every spell he conjured unfolded into a readable structure, as if the laws of reality themselves were open-source code written before his eyes.

A simple flame spell? He could strip away redundancies and multiply its efficiency twofold. Now pair that with his Crimson Apocalypse Flames, and it would be absolutely terrifying.

A shield barrier? He could thicken the reinforcement nodes without consuming extra mana. Think about it, someone with immense offensive potential like Albedo also producing the strongest defensive spells, it would be ridiculous, and so amazing.

Even a water conjuration, an element he wasn’t nearly as attuned to as Fire, became accessible once he saw the lattice of its construction.

His control became frightening.

Source Code could literally be called the Source of all Magic. The more mana Albedo channeled, the clearer the ’Source’ becomes.

If he were to describe it, he could say that Mana was essentially data, the inputs used for every single spell, technique or other ability.

As for spells and techniques, they were essentially programs, manipulating the mana

( data ) to create the necessary outcome, and Source Code allowed him to read that fundamental data and manipulate it.

However, like every single power, it had its drawbacks. The piles of Mana Potions all around him was a testament to that. All of these were High Grade Mana Potions and yet there was dozens of bottles littering the floor.

That was because the more mana he channeled into his eyes, the more of the Source Code revealed itself. Yet, with each level of clarity, the strain on his eyes and his overall physique multiplied continuously.

Blood vessels flared red against his eyes, his skull pounded with searing pain, and by the time he collapsed into a chair, his vision had nearly gone black.

He sat there panting, sweat trailing down his temple as he allowed himself to relax.

“That’s one hell of a catch,” Albedo muttered to himself.

Source Code wasn’t free. It was a devourer of not only mana, but also of focus and mental endurance. Without immense reserves of both, the Gift would chew a mage apart from the inside, and eventually kill them if used too sparingly.

But Albedo smiled through the exhaustion. Because for him, this was a ladder. Even as the ache clawed at his skull, his mind raced ahead, painting vivid pictures of what could be.

“Twilight Tongue and Source Code…”

Two Gifts that when in the wrong hands, they were completely useless. Only those with enough power and resources could draw out their full potential.

However, when together, Albedo was salivating at their potential. One could decipher and translate the forgotten legacies of civilizations lost to time, while the other could rewrite them at their root.

In the Original Novel, while there was constantly the discovery of ancient glyphs, books and more, it wasn’t really a focal point. After all, it would take an extensive period of time to truly decipher all of those.

Some mages would even just stare in confusion at the alien glyphs, dismissing them as gibberish. But his Twilight Tongue would breathe life into the script, revealing an ancient spell of chain-lightning once wielded by a race erased from history.

And then, Source Code would unfold it like a book. He could strip the inefficiencies, cut away the archaic redundancies, and optimize it until the lightning would burn brighter, sharper, faster than the ancients themselves had ever dreamed.

His lips curled into a slow, dangerous grin as he thought of this, “I could take the scattered fragments of history, polish them with Source Code, and build something no one in this world has ever seen before…”

The thought filled him with an intoxicating fire. For the first time in a long while, Albedo felt as though he had been given the tools to redefine magic itself.

Later that night, after showering and changing into casual clothes, he found himself seated on the villa balcony, overlooking Pantheon’s sprawling lights.

Gwen’s soft laughter echoed faintly from her room, where she spoke with Diona over her phone. The assassins still trained outside under Seraphyne’s unyielding command.

But Albedo’s mind wasn’t with them.

His hand brushed over the railing, absentmindedly tracing faint lines of mana as his glowing purple eyes replayed the structures of Source Code again and again.

In the Novel, Lucian’s Gift had been hailed as transcendence itself, growth through endless combat, the hallmark of a protagonist. But the Gift he obtained, it was different.

It wasn’t a weapon, it didn’t directly buff his combat power or give him some extraordinary spell, but it was a framework, a skeleton key to rewrite all the rules himself.

Lucian could grow stronger endlessly, but so what? Albedo would always be able to find the weaknesses in his spells or techniques and exploit them.

Tomorrow, classes would resume. He would see Morgana, Luna, Nymarielle, the rest of his peers. The Exchange loomed closer.

But none of them knew, not even Raphaeline or Seraphyne who were immensely powerful, knew that in his hands now rested a Gift that could peel open the skin of magic itself.

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