Dorian sat in awe, not daring to move a muscle. His shock was almost palpable, a torrent of a million thoughts racing in his head. Understanding that the boy might need space to process the revelation, the artifact spirit dared not say anything.
And for the longest while, both sat in silence. The spirit drank its mint tea, seemingly enjoying every last, delicate drop. The ceramic cup, which appeared utterly ordinary, was the only thing in the strange, pocket-dimension room that didn't hum with latent, terrifying energy. The silence was broken only by the soft, rhythmic clink of the teacup returning to its saucer.
"What... I... I..." The words were stuck in Dorian's mouth. He didn't even know how to react, how to formulate the monstrous questions that threatened to tear his mind asunder.
"Of course, you understand," the spirit suddenly declared, its voice a smooth baritone that seemed to resonate directly in Dorian's skull, cutting through the mental noise. It didn't look up from its tea. "Everything in this universe has a counter; a twin force, a mirror image, an opposition. Your Primal Affinity is one of a kind. It has no mirror, no direct known counter, and therefore, no established path to mastery."
Dorian finally managed to utter the question that burned most fiercely: "What is it?"
The spirit took a moment, leaning back slightly in its chair, the casual expression it wore utterly incongruous with the magnitude of the subject. "Well, in your case, you'll almost not likely be able to find another who possesses your affinity, especially not in this cluster. You must pioneer your own skills and techniques—forge your own road where none has existed for millennia. I will assist you in getting started, give you the foundational tools, but you must do the rest. You will be the architect of your own power."
The spirit paused, a thin, satisfied smile touching the corners of its lips as it took a slow, deliberate sip of its tea. Its eyes, which held the disconcerting depth of a nebula, focused keenly on Dorian. Then it continued, the casual tone abruptly dropping to one of profound significance: " Also ,due to your core being rebuilt—stabilized and harmonized with the Guardian's influence—it has doubled in size."
"What!" Dorian almost lost his mind. The words hit him like a physical blow.
The Wizarding Path: A Sisyphean Climb
To an outsider, the concept of a doubled magical core might sound like an instant, unmitigated blessing. To a wizard of the Aethereal Collective, it was a curse masked as a gift. The wizarding path was a structure of agonizing, incremental progress. Every single wizard awakened with a core of a fixed size, and every bit of arcane power they learned to generate, store, and utilize had to fit within those finite confines. Progress was measured not just in power, but in the arcane density of the core—compressing more energy into the same space.
The path was fundamentally divided into three primary Realms:
The Lesser Wizard (Levels 1 to 3)
The Greater Wizard (Levels 4 to 6)
The Grand Wizard (Levels 7 to 9)
Furthermore, each of these nine Levels was subdivided into four grueling Stages of mastery: Low, Mid, High, and Peak.
When any citizen awakened their latent arcane abilities, they immediately began at the Low Level 1 Lesser Wizard stage. The very first stage was merely an acknowledgment of capacity.
Dorian, despite being recognized as a prodigy—a genius of the Arcane House of vexhall—had only just managed to reach High Level 1 Lesser Wizard before his catastrophic misadventure and subsequent exile. It had taken him thirteen years of ceaseless study, rigorous physical conditioning, and the immense financial and esoteric support of his Noble family. Thirteen years to traverse less than one-twelfth of the entire known path.
To advance from one stage to the next—Low to Mid, Mid to High—required a wizard to completely fill their existing core capacity, then undergo a painful, dangerous process of compression, which effectively refined and shrunk the energy reserves, leaving a small, vital vacuum to be filled again. This compression increased the density and stability of their magic, allowing them to access the next stage's more complex spells and techniques.
A doubled core capacity meant that for Dorian to advance to peak Level 1—a stage he had just been approaching before the incident—he now had twice the volume to fill and compress. Every subsequent level-up would be equally, crushingly difficult. He was akin to a runner who had been given a 100-kilometer race, only to have the finish line moved to 200 kilometers, with no guarantee of extra water.
"How... how long will it take me now?" Dorian whispered, his voice trembling not from fear, but from the sudden, overwhelming despair of a task rendered impossible. He was a now an exile, severed from his family's vast resources, and his entire future felt impossibly distant. "I was only a High Level 1. Now I'm functionally akin to a newly awakened wizard again, and I have to fill a core twice the size. I... I can't do it."
The spirit regarded him with an expression that was suddenly less casual and more paternal, yet utterly firm. It set the teacup down with a decisive click.
"Relax, boy," the spirit said, its eyes narrowing slightly. "Do you think the Guardian—the very entity who created this artifact and holds sway over the fate of this entire star cluster—is idiotic? Do you think he would double the capacity of your core and expect you to reach the 9th Stage Grand Wizard in the span of one thousand years, while the fate of this cluster is already at hand, hanging by a thread? He has a plan."
Dorian's skepticism flared, born of thirteen years of academic rigor that left little room for blind faith. "Okay, what's the plan then?"
The spirit stood, its form shimmering slightly. It was tall, perhaps two meters, and dressed in simple, flowing robes that looked woven from starlight and shadow. It didn't move, yet the air around it thrummed with restrained power.
"All in due time, young one. All in due time," the spirit answered cryptically, a familiar, frustrating refrain. It sounded like the kind of platitude uttered by tutors who refused to give up the answer key. "Right now, I want you to focus on getting to the 2nd Level Lesser Wizard. You are currently a Low Level 1 Lesser Wizard—your compression was undone in the process, naturally. Don't come back to me until you have reached the second level. That is your immediate, singular task."
The demand was absurd. To go from Low Level 1 to Low Level 2 was a monumental undertaking that could take a gifted wizard five to ten years of constant effort. The required compression alone was a near-fatal endeavor. And Dorian had to do it with a core twice the size, an undertaking equivalent to reaching Level 3 or Level 4 for a normal wizard.
"Wait, how am I going to get there if I don't have a training technique?" Dorian asked, frustration boiling over into panic. "I don't have my family's Arcane Codex. I don't have the Vexhall techniques—they're all locked down by blood-pacts and wards! I need a method to fill this core!"
Suddenly, with a barely audible whooosh, the entire elegant sitting area—the invisible table, the chairs, the teacups—vanished. The pocket dimension contracted, and the artifact spirit was suddenly the only thing in the strange, shimmering void with Dorian.
Dorian's eyes widened, caution flaring in his exhausted mind, but the spirit was too damn fast. It moved with the impossible swiftness of a thought made manifest. Before Dorian could even twitch a muscle to defend himself, the spirit was upon him, its face a mere hand-span from his own.
The spirit's left hand rose. Its thumb, which was long and impossibly delicate, was placed directly onto Dorian's forehead—an action that completely perplexed and terrified Dorian in equal measure.
The Torrent of the foreign information rushed into his mind like a horde of wildebeests
And then, everything exploded.
It wasn't a physical explosion of sound or light, but an internal one.
Like a wild, untamed river bursting through a crumbling dam, a torrent of pure, high-level esoteric information flowed from the spirit's thumb directly into Dorian's consciousness. It wasn't the slow, digestible process of learning; it was an instantaneous, brutal download.
Dorian's brain, fine-tuned for the careful, logical processing of arcane formulae, was suddenly faced with a deluge of millennia-old knowledge. It was the Aethereal Arcana—the very foundational, Universal laws that governed all magic.
He saw:
Complex Runology that made the Vellum Family's techniques look like children's scribbles. This wasn't merely etching runes; it was Runological Algebra, the principles governing the very creation of arcane symbols, including a thousand-page thesis on the Stability Function of multi-strand matrices.
The Blueprint for a New Core: He instinctively grasped the entire methodology for safely and rapidly filling his newly enlarged core—a technique designed not for the slow growth of a standard wizard, but for the rapid, exponential expansion necessary to house a doubled capacity. It was an advanced, terrifyingly efficient Cultivation Method, utterly unlike the energy-siphoning techniques of his home world.
A Universal Affinity Primer: His unique Primal Affinity, the "Void-Edge" essence, was cataloged and explained in brutal detail. He saw the potential for spells that didn't just manipulate existing matter, but pulled energy and matter from the edges of other dimensions—from the very Void between universes. The spells were impossibly complex, but the foundation was now his.
The Guardian's Wisdom: Alongside the technical knowledge, there were flashes of philosophy, strategy, and warnings. The knowledge was laced with the residual wisdom of the Guardian—a voice in the back of his mind that spoke of balance, of universal custodianship, and the impending catastrophe that awaited their star cluster.
The pressure was unbearable. His eyes rolled back into his head, his optic nerves straining to process the blinding, internal light of pure knowledge. His skull felt like a rapidly expanding balloon. Every thought was a thousand-page book, every concept a lifetime of study. It was too fast, too much, too soon.
A final, searing line of text—*"Master the Pioneer's Gaze and the path will reveal itself"—*burned into his consciousness.
Then, just as suddenly, the flow stopped. The spirit withdrew its hand.
And like a felled tree, Dorian collapsed again, the sheer shock and overwhelming volume of the transmitted information rendering him completely unconscious—a habit, he dimly realized in the moment before the darkness took him, which was getting all too common in the presence of this ancient, powerful entity.