The blinding gold light slowly dissipated into ambient motes, drifting harmlessly down upon the stone pavers. As the anti-gravity field collapsed, Cyril's pristine white robes fell back around his ankles.
Arthur's cognitive engine misfired. The absolute, wordless void of his mind palace violently fractured as frantic language flooded back into his conscious processing. I've observed various followers of faith in the Academy, but I've never seen such a phenomenon before.
Arthur's thoughts raced to catalog the impossible atmospheric shift. He's suddenly radiating an aura similar to that of a Grade-8 Believer around him now. I mapped his biological variables less than three minutes ago—I couldn't sense any Holy Energy from him before.
Arthur's gaze sharpened, a hyper-focused intensity bleeding through the edges of his warm smile. He must have concealed it at the beginning. But what was the purpose of this act? To bait an underestimation? To gauge my reaction to a sudden spike in divine force?
Cyril blinked, the cosmic resonance fading from his crimson eyes. It was replaced instantly by a hazy, mundane confusion.
"Huh?" Cyril mumbled around his half-chewed caramel. He lifted his hands, staring at the back of his palms. "What are these marks on the back of my hand?"
Cyril extended his arms forward, thrusting them directly into the midday sunlight for Arthur to inspect.
Arthur's pulse remained perfectly steady, but his amber eyes locked onto the newly altered flesh. Geometric rings, perfectly spaced at precise fifteen-millimeter intervals, had burned themselves into the boy's epidermis. The dark, arcane ink of the stigmata was fresh, unmistakable in its structure.
The Divine Blessings of Protection and Exercise. Arthur mentally cataloged the variables, his mind spinning at terrifying speeds. I examined his exposed skin with absolute scrutiny when I breached his personal perimeter. They definitely weren't there before. Which means he manifested it directly from a passing comment about culinary salt.
Arthur leaned in closer, his eyes tracing the intricate architecture of the crest anchoring the center of the rings. He froze. The core symbol was different from what he had meticulously studied in Clive's lectures. It was more akin to that of the Celestial Moon Church than the Sun. Just what were they teaching this ascetic over the past decade?
Arthur smoothly erased the analytical shock from his features. He allowed a benevolent, perfectly calibrated smile to stretch across his face as he reached out, gently clapping a hand onto the boy's shoulder.
"Congratulations on your breakthrough, Cyril," Arthur said, his voice a soothing, brotherly baritone. "You'll learn about the strict mechanics of these things eventually in the Academy curriculum, but since you're so curious, I'll tell you about them now."
Cyril's eyes widened, sparkling with innocent, unfiltered fascination. "I see!" he practically bounced. "So as long as I have faith, I can obtain more power?" A faint, childish pout touched his lips. "Old Man Ward never told me about this!"
Old Man Ward? The new variable was immediately isolated and filed into Arthur's threat matrix.
Arthur didn't miss a beat. "Well, in theory, yes," Arthur answered, casually sliding his hand back into his pocket. "However, in practice, you have to show continuous devotion. The divine path requires you to undergo various trials that appear when you least expect it, testing various aspects and degrees of your faith before the heavens allow you to advance."
Cyril cupped his chin with his newly branded hand, his fluffy white hair tilting to the side. "I see..." he hummed softly, entirely absorbed in thought.
As Arthur watched, the outermost geometric ring on Cyril's hand—the eighth circle—simply evaporated. It dissolved into golden dust, scattering harmlessly into the passing breeze.
Arthur's jaw tightened imperceptibly. He skipped the ninth grade of initiation entirely, materialized at the eighth without church instruments, and now he just breached the seventh grade merely by pondering the nature of faith? What monstrous growth.
Arthur rapidly cross-referenced the academic texts he had memorized from the Inferior Archives. Unlike elemental blessings, which stack external rings as proficiency and vessel capacity increase, divine blessings begin with nine rings. The user loses them as they advance.
Arthur forcibly stabilized his internal logic. Calm down. It's an anomaly, but it's manageable. This is only the seventh stage; most of the devout followers in the Honor Class already possessed this level of stigmata when they first enrolled—roughly equal to a low Intermediate-rank. Furthermore, the cost of faith is exponential. It gets monumentally more difficult to shed rings the further along one gets on their path.
"Woah—" Cyril suddenly gasped, his eyes blowing wide as he looked down at his hand.
Arthur's breath hitched. His muscles locked up beneath his uniform. Don't tell me he advanced to the sixth grade already!
Cyril held up his hand, pinching the half-eaten stick of caramel between two pristine fingers. He pointed at the center of the confection, looking up at Arthur with pure, unadulterated awe.
"There's a sour apple syrup in the middle," Cyril whispered.
The sudden drop in atmospheric tension hit Arthur like a cold draft. He blinked once, forcing the Saintly warmth back into the curvature of his lips with mechanical precision.
"Congratulations on your breakthrough," Arthur said, letting a soft, indulgent chuckle carry the weight of his voice.
Cyril tilted his head back, letting out a bright, unrestrained giggle. "Haha, you already said that."
Arthur's gentle expression remained frozen in place, but behind the amber glass of his eyes, the cognitive architecture of his mind ground to an instantaneous halt.
Repeating what I said earlier... is he playfully mocking me, or giving me a warning?
Cyril took another bite of his confection, completely oblivious to the silent labyrinth of calculations firing behind his mentor's polished gaze. He chewed happily, his soft crimson eyes drifting upward to study Arthur's face with unshielded, childlike curiosity.
"How old are you, mentor?" Cyril asked, tilting his head slightly as a few stray tufts of white hair fell across his brow.
Arthur maintained his benevolent, open posture, his hands resting naturally at his sides. He let a mild, brotherly curve remain on his lips, projecting an effortless air of warmth and approachability.
"I turn fifteen in a month," Arthur answered smoothly, keeping his tone measured and gentle.
Beneath the flawless surface of his Saintly facade, Arthur's mind instantly recalibrated, isolating the opening and locking onto the tactical opportunity.
This will be my first test.
"When did you awaken mana?" Arthur asked, his voice calm, and disarmingly curious.