The sterile, humming silence of the simulation hall was a world away from the howling blizzard Alvian had just conquered. He stood, the [Klaus's Upgrade] a cool, solid promise of power on his finger, his mind already churning, processing Professor Rogge's parting words. A flawed, un-upgradable skill. A forbidden tome. It wasn't a task; it was a challenge laid at the feet of his SSS-Rank talent, and he intended to answer it with overwhelming force.
He left the hall, the attendant's stunned, reverent gaze following him until the automated doors slid shut. The modified black student ID in his hand pulsed with a faint, inner light. Instead of heading towards the bustling central plazas, Alvian followed the subtle, ethereal route projected onto his vision, a path reserved for faculty and high-clearance personnel. He moved through the academy's hidden arteries, a ghost in the machine, bypassing the throngs of students who were still gossiping about the Battle Grid. Their world of factions, rivalries, and petty politics was a game he had no time to play.
His destination was one of the oldest and most imposing structures in the entire academy: the Sanctum Arcanum, the central library. It was not a single building but a colossal, spire-like island of its own, connected to the main campus by a single, heavily guarded bridge of pure, solidified moonlight. Golems carved from obsidian stood at hundred-foot intervals, their crystalline eyes glowing with dormant power. As Alvian approached, the lead golem's eyes flared to life, a deep crimson that signaled a lethal threat. A scan of his ID, however, caused the light to instantly dim to a passive, respectful blue. The golem stepped aside, its massive form moving with an unsettling silence. The message was clear: this was not a place for the uninvited.
The interior of the Sanctum was a breathtaking cathedral of knowledge. Shelves carved from ancient, petrified wood spiraled upwards for thousands of feet, their tops lost in an artificially created nebula of swirling starlight. Books, scrolls, and data-slates floated between the shelves in silent, orderly streams, moving with a will of their own. The air itself hummed with a palpable energy, the collective weight of millions of spells, theories, and histories pressing in on him. It smelled of old parchment, ozone, and the faint, metallic tang of sealed power.
At the central desk, an ancient, wizened librarian with spectacles perched on the end of his long nose looked up from a massive, leather-bound tome. His eyes, sharp and intelligent, widened in surprise as Alvian approached.
"A freshman?" the librarian's voice was a dry, rustling whisper. "The main archives are on the lower floors. You seem to have lost your way."
Alvian said nothing. He simply placed his black student ID on the polished marble countertop. The librarian's eyes fell upon the unique, matte-black crystal. His composure, honed over centuries of managing forbidden knowledge, shattered. He fumbled with his spectacles, pushing them up his nose as he leaned in for a closer look.
"Rogge's personal mark…" he breathed, his voice a mixture of disbelief and profound respect. He straightened up, his demeanor transforming from dismissive to deferential. "Forgive me, Special Entrant. It has been… a long time. What knowledge do you seek?"
"The restricted archives," Alvian stated, his voice flat. "I need access to the section on Flawed and Unstable Arts."
The old librarian nodded slowly, his gaze lingering on Alvian with a new, intense curiosity. He tapped a rune on his console, and a section of the wall behind him dissolved, revealing a shimmering, blood-red portal that crackled with contained energy. "The Chantry of Whispers. Be warned, young man. The knowledge within is not always… quiet. Some of these tomes resent being caged."
Alvian stepped through the portal without hesitation. The hum of the main library was replaced by a dead, oppressive silence. This section was a vault. The air was cold, and the shelves were forged from a black, non-reflective metal. Each tome was not merely placed on a shelf but locked within a transparent containment field, faint, silvery runes crawling across its surface like a spider's web.
He walked the aisles, his gaze sweeping over the titles. [Heart-Burn Incantation]. [Summoning the Unspeakable: A Primer]. [Flesh-Sculpting for the Ambitious]. These were not just skills; they were heresies, arts so dangerous or unstable they had been deemed a threat to reality itself. He saw a book that was visibly vibrating, straining against its arcane prison. Another seemed to weep a thick, black ichor that sizzled where it touched the containment field.
His modified ID made the search simple. A path of faint golden light guided him through the maze of forbidden lore, leading him to a single, isolated plinth at the heart of the vault. Resting upon it, encased in a field of crackling blue energy, was a thin, unassuming tome bound in pale, frost-covered leather.
He reached out, and the containment field dissolved at his touch. He picked up the book. The leather was so cold it felt like it was burning his skin.
A system panel, its borders rimmed with jagged ice, materialized.
┏━━━━━[ Flawed Skill Tome ]━━━━━━┓
│ Name: [Frost Descent]
│ Rank: A (Flawed)
│ Type: Active AOE Spell
│
│ Description: Unleash a localized, hyper-dense blizzard at a target location, dealing
│ massive, continuous ice damage and rapidly applying stacks of [Frostbite] to all
│ enemies within the radius.
│
│ ▷ Drawback: The chaotic nature of the spell creates a violent backlash of raw frost
│ energy, inflicting 30% of the total damage dealt back to the caster as unavoidable
│ True Damage.
│ ▷ System Note: The core mana structure of this spell is fundamentally unstable.
│ This skill is marked as [UN-UPGRADABLE].
│
│ Requirement: Learn Now?
┗━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛
Alvian's lips curled into a predatory smile. It was perfect. A weapon of immense power, chained by a fatal flaw. A lock for which only he possessed the key. The note from the system, a definitive, absolute declaration of impossibility, was the sweetest music he had ever heard. To any other player, this was a suicide skill, a trap for the foolish. To him, it was a lump of unrefined, god-tier clay waiting to be molded.
He took the book, but did not learn it yet. A voice, familiar and manic, suddenly echoed in his mind, a private communication link activated by Rogge.
"Found it, did you? Beautiful, isn't it? A masterpiece of flawed design!" Rogge's disembodied voice crackled with excitement. "Now, you can't just learn that spell here. It's not a simple incantation; it's an attunement. The art requires you to harmonize with a source of pure, untamed elemental ice. Trying to learn it without a catalyst would shatter your mana channels."
A set of coordinates appeared in Alvian's vision, a location on the academy's world map so remote it was practically off the charts.
"The Frostfang Caverns," Rogge's voice explained. "A festering wound in the world, a place where the elemental plane of ice bleeds into our reality. Deep inside, you will find a 'Heart of Frost.' It is a raw, crystallized nexus of ice energy. Go there. Submerge yourself in its aura. Endure its power. Only then can you claim the blizzard as your own.
Try not to die. The paperwork is a nightmare."