CHAPTER 86 — I'm Back

  Lucien moved as fast as his body would allow toward the Headmaster’s office, which, frankly, wasn't fast at all. He hobbled and pivoted his hips in a rhythmic, desperate jerk that made him look like an inhuman species trying to mimic a human walk for the first time. Every step was a negotiation with his nervous system, a frantic "speed-walk" that sent jolts of electricity up his spine.

  Sebas was already gone, heading back to the estate. The goodbye had been awkward; the butler had practically cornered him, eyes brimming with the fear of being obsolete. Lucien had dismissed the melodrama with a sharp wave of his hand. He wasn't firing Sebas—far from it. He was preparing him for the long haul.

  Over the last three years, Lucien had exhausted himself fixing history, preventing disasters, and getting the world's gears to turn in his favor. But that wasn't the lifestyle he actually wanted. He hadn't regressed just to become a tireless martyr for the Empire. He wanted to drink, he wanted to flirt, and he wanted to party until the sun came up.

  For that to happen, Sebas had to be his ultimate patsy—the man behind the curtain, cleaning up the messes while Lucien played the part of the carefree noble. And if Sebas ever got tired? Lucien would simply force him to train a successor. It would be a generational curse of servitude.

  As for Dame Seraphine, she had vanished into the city’s shadows to lay low. She was performing reconnaissance, hunting for the threads of the group responsible for the curse before they could weave their trap. Lucien knew the attack was set for the Festival of the Founder, but if it could be smothered in its sleep without a single innocent soul getting hurt, that would be the best-case scenario. It would mean less work for him later.

  Finally, the massive, iron-reinforced doors of the Headmaster's inner sanctum loomed ahead. Lucien didn't knock. He leaned his weight against the wood, pushed his way inside, and practically collapsed into a chair in front of the Headmaster's desk.

  "I'm back," Lucien wheezed, his face pale but his eyes burning with a gambler’s intensity. He slumped into the chair, the mahogany armrests the only thing keeping him upright. "And I believe it is time that we begin our bet."

  Headmaster Merinth Vallog didn't answer immediately. He set down his quill and gave Lucien a hard, penetrating look, his eyes scanning the boy’s trembling hands and the thin, sickly sheen of sweat on his brow.

  "What happened to you?" Merinth asked, his voice low and dangerous.

  "I pushed myself too hard," Lucien said matter-of-factly, dismissive of the agony. "But that's not what you really wanted to ask. You wanted to ask what took me so long and if I’ve finally given up on our little wager."

  The Headmaster opened his mouth to retort, but Lucien didn't give him the air.

  "I’ve been busy taking care of religious errands," Lucien said, leaning forward despite the protest of his body. "And I haven’t given up. I’ve come to be engraved."

  The Headmaster leaned back, his leather chair creaking in the silence. A slow, mocking smirk began to creep across his face. He gestured to a calendar on his desk.

  "Are you sure?" Merinth asked. "The promised timeline was a year, but thanks to your... sabbatical, you now only have six months left. Half the time for a task that usually takes 3 years of meditation."

  He turned his chair slightly, looking out the window at the elite students training in the courtyard below. "Are you sure you can do this, Lucien? If you give me the Stone now and sign a contract to be my personal errand boy for the next year, I can let the debt go. I’ll even let you stay in the Academy under my protection."

  Lucien leaned back, a sharp pang of pain making his breath hitch, but he didn't blink. He had faced a 10th Vein nightmare; he wasn't about to be intimidated by a schoolmaster’s contract.

  "No," Lucien said, his voice cold and steady. "The bet is still on."

  He looked the Headmaster directly in the eye, the weight of a thousand years of experience hiding behind his youthful face.

  "I am confident that I can connect to my Origin Vein in half a year," he said. "The only reason I originally said a year was because I was being modest with myself. Six months is more than enough time for me."

  The Headmaster looked at him incredulously. How was this boy so confident in connecting his engraving to his Origin Vein?

  Finding that connection usually required years of deep meditation and grueling self-exploration. The internal pathways of the soul were a labyrinth; unless one already knew the way, it was like searching for a single grain of gold in a mountain of sand.

  But how could he know the way? The Headmaster wondered. The only people who possessed that kind of internal map were those who had been engraved before, and once a soul received an Engraving, it became an immutable part of their being. It was impossible to remove or reset.

  Well, it doesn't matter, Merinth thought, the skepticism fading into a cold, satisfied greed. He couldn't help but smirk. In his mind, the Aether Stone was already officially his. In six months, the boy would fail, the debt would come due, and the stone would sit in his vault. He was certain Lucien’s "religious errands" had simply been a distraction that had cost him his only chance at success.

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  He rose from his chair, the heavy silk of his robes snapping. "Let’s go."

  Lucien grunted, his face contorting as he struggled to push himself up from the chair. His legs shook, and his breath came in ragged hitches. The Headmaster ignored it entirely. As one of the premier Engravers in the Empire, Merinth had a clinical detachment toward his subjects. The boy’s physical condition was irrelevant to the process; the soul didn't need to walk; it only needed to endure.

  "Follow me," Merinth commanded, walking toward the reinforced door at the back of the office.

  Lucien hobbled after him, each step a fresh fire in his nerves. He knew what was coming. The ritual of Engraving was a violent, invasive process even for a healthy body. For him, it was going to be an agonizing layering of pain upon pain. But as he watched the Headmaster’s retreating back, Lucien’s eyes remained sharp.

  He didn't need years of meditation. He already had the map.

  The Headmaster led Lucien deep into the heart of the valley, past the roaring cataracts of the Water Pillar and the scorched earth of the Fire Biome, until the elemental noise faded into a haunting, pressurized silence. They stood now at The Neutral Shrine: The Inner Sanctum.

  It was a bleak amphitheater of weathered gray stone, acting as a gravitational void that sucked the color and heat from the air. There was no wind here, no flickering flame—only the heavy, expectant stillness of pure energy. It was a place designed to strip away the ego and lay the soul bare.

  "Lay down," Merinth commanded, pointing to the cold slab of the central altar. "Show me your back."

  Lucien complied, his movements jerky and stiff. As he pressed his chest against the freezing stone, he braced himself. He remembered the searing agony of his first life’s Engraving, but he knew this would be worse. His current body was a shattered vessel, and he was about to pour lightning into the cracks.

  Merinth Vallog reached into the air, and with a sharp, guttural incantation, he activated the Primal Sigils embedded in the arena's floor.

  The transformation was instantaneous. The sky, which had been clear moments ago, curdled into an unnatural, bruised purple. Thick, oily clouds spiraled directly above the shrine, blotting out the sun. The temperature plummeted.

  The Headmaster produced a chisel forged from star-iron and a heavy, silver-etched hammer. He didn't use ink; he used the atmosphere itself.

  CLANG.

  The first strike descended. As the hammer hit the chisel, a jagged bolt of white lightning tore through the dark sky, striking the head of the tool at the exact microsecond of impact. The current surged through the iron, through the Headmaster’s steady hands, and directly into Lucien’s spine.

  Lucien’s vision went white. His muscles locked so violently he thought his bones would snap. The smell of burnt hair filled the air.

  CLANG.

  Another strike. Another bolt from the heavens. Each hit was a symphony of cosmic violence. Merinth moved with the precision of a master jeweler, carving the first lines of the Origin Vein into the meat and spirit of the boy. With every blow, the lightning didn't just burn; it searched. It hammered against Lucien’s internal barriers, trying to find the path it was supposed to follow.

  "Endure it!" Merinth roared over the thunder. "If your soul wavers now, the lightning will turn you to ash!"

  Lucien didn't scream. He couldn't. His lungs were paralyzed by the sheer voltage. Instead, he reached deep into the "map" he carried from his previous life. As the lightning struck, he didn't fight the pain—he guided it. He opened the microscopic valves of his spirit, beckoning the raw power to flow into the deep, hidden grooves he already knew existed.

  CLANG. CLANG. CLANG.

  The rhythm accelerated. The shrine became a pillar of constant, blinding light. The gray stones of the sanctum began to glow red-hot. To any observer, it looked like the Headmaster was murdering the boy, pinning him to the altar with bolts of divine wrath. But beneath the agony, the foundation was being laid. The Neutral Shrine absorbed the excess energy, preventing Lucien’s heart from exploding, while the star-iron chisel bit deeper and deeper.

  By the final strike, the sky let out a deafening crack that shook the very mountains of the Academy. The clouds vanished as quickly as they had formed, leaving a ringing silence that felt louder than the storm.

  Lucien lay limp on the altar, steam rising from his charred skin. On his back, glowing with a faint, dying ember-light, was the raw, jagged script of a masterwork Engraving.

  The Headmaster stood over him, his own robes singed, breathing heavily. He looked down at the boy, expecting to see a corpse or a broken mind. Instead, he saw Lucien’s fingers twitch against the stone.

  "Is... that all?" Lucien wheezed, his voice a ghost of a sound against the cooling stone of the altar.

  "That is all," Merinth replied, his voice tight with exhaustion. He wiped a streak of soot from his brow, his hands trembling slightly from the sheer volume of celestial energy he had just channeled.

  Lucien closed his eyes, surrendering to the white-hot agony that felt as if his nervous system had been replaced by molten wire. But beneath the pain, he felt it—a rhythmic, jagged pulse. It was the same familiar hum from his past life, the violent resonance that had once made him a powerhouse among legends. It was the lightning that had allowed him to stand tall while others knelt.

  Yet, this time, it was different. The Neutral Shrine had stripped away the impurities, and his broken body, tempered by the three-month coma, acted as a desperate sponge for the power.

  Lucien reached inward. He didn't wait for months of meditation; he activated Equilibrium. He seized the raw, chaotic energy flooding his new engraving and forced it through the "map" he had carried across time. He didn't just balance the power—he amplified it, pushing the scales until they groaned.

  Suddenly, the smell of burnt air returned, sharper than before. Tiny arcs of white-blue lightning began to dance across Lucien’s charred skin, snapping against the air with the sound of breaking glass. The stone altar beneath him cracked.

  Headmaster Merinth Vallog took a sharp step back, his eyes widening in genuine shock. "What... what are you doing?"

  It was impossible. A fresh Engraving was a silent, dormant seed. It required years of soul-searching just to coax a single spark from the Origin Vein. But Lucien wasn't coaxing; he was commanding. The lightning flaring from the boy’s body was a manifestation of a connection that shouldn't exist yet.

  Lucien’s head loll-rolled to the side, a bloody, manic smirk stretching across his face. He looked like a corpse being reanimated by a thunderstorm.

  A cold pit formed in Merinth’s stomach. He looked at the shattered stone and the effortless display of power from a boy who shouldn't even be able to stand. For the first time since the sabbatical began, the image of the Aether Stone sitting in his vault began to flicker and fade.

  Am I really going to lose this bet?

  "I’m back," Lucien whispered, the lightning in his eyes reflecting the fading glow of the shrine.

  ? The Noble Reincanarted Demon King ?

  by BookRusher98