"Core Weave: Musculature Optimization Sequence—Level 1."<br><br>"Baguslah," gumam Lucavion. "Level satu."<br><br>[Kau mengaktifkan cekungan rehabilitasi tempur, bodoh.]<br><br>"Aku tidak tahu itu cekungan rehabilitasi tempur!"<br><br>[Karena kau tidak membaca tulisan di bawahnya!]<br><br>"Berhentilah mengomel," gumam Lucavion sambil meregangkan lehernya saat air mandi yang berpendar itu kembali berdenyut. Tekanannya telah berubah—tidak lagi begitu menghimpit, kini rasanya seperti... latihan ketahanan yang dipandu oleh hantu yang sopan.<br><br>Awalnya, rasanya tajam dan mengejutkan.<br><br>Namun sekarang?<br><br>Kini semuanya mulai mereda. Terkendali. Berirama.<br><br>Dengungan mana menyelimutinya bagaikan kulit kedua, terjalin ke dalam serat otot dan tulang dengan kehati-hatian yang disengaja. Tekanannya tetap ada—ya—tetapi tidak lagi dengan bobot yang begitu menghancurkan. Tubuhnya telah beradaptasi.<br><br>Tidak— bertahan.<br><br>'Benda ini mungkin dikalibrasi untuk Awakened kebanyakan,' pikirnya, melirik malas ke arah glyph yang masih berpendar. 'Kerangka dasar. Lulusan setengah matang dengan saraf yang lembut dan pergelangan tangan rapuh.'<br><br>Namun Lucavion bukanlah orang biasa.<br><br>Tidak lagi.<br><br>Tubuhnya, yang telah ditempa ulang melalui berbagai ujian yang tidak didokumentasikan dalam silabus Akademi mana pun, jauh lebih padat, lebih cepat, dan lebih terlatih daripada kebanyakan Awakened berperingkat di kekaisaran yang usianya dua kali lipat darinya. Otot-otot yang tadinya hancur dan dibangun kembali di bawah mantra tekanan, fluktuasi mana, trauma fisik—dan sesuatu yang lebih dalam. Sesuatu yang lebih kuno.<br><br>Ia membiarkan gelombang mana berikutnya menghantam bahunya tanpa sedikit pun bergeming.<br><br>Bahkan... rasanya lumayan.<br><br>Tidak seperti sedang mandi.<br><br>Lebih mirip sedang bertarung melawan gravitasi itu sendiri dan menang.<br><br>"Hm," ia menghembuskan napas, membenamkan diri lebih dalam. "Nah, itu dia."<br><br>[Kau menikmati ini?] Nada suara Vitaliara terdengar jijik sekaligus agak merasa dikhianati.<br><br>"Ini dikalibrasi untuk yang lemah," ujarnya malas, matanya terpejam. "Dan aku tidak."<br><br>[Oh, itu sama sekali tidak menyebalkan.]<br><br>Ia tidak terpancing. Ia hanya membiarkan air tersebut berputar melalui denyut lainnya, dan kali ini, tubuhnya menyambutnya dengan kemudahan—stabilitas. Bukan perlawanan, melainkan keseimbangan. Seolah-olah mana tersebut akhirnya mengenali apa yang sedang dihadapinya dan menyesuaikan diri dengan semestinya.<br><br>Glyph-glyph tersebut kini berkedip dalam urutan yang lembut dan stabil. Lebih mirip sebuah pengakuan daripada agresi.<br><br>"Aku bisa tinggal di sini sepanjang malam," gumam Lucavion.<br><br>[Jangan menguji takdir.]<br><br>"Godaan menyiratkan keraguan. Aku hanya sedang bersantai."<br><br>[Kau adalah satu-satunya orang yang pernah kulihat menyebut kompresi otot magis sebagai kegiatan bersantai.]<br><br>"Aku bukan kebanyakan orang."<br><br>Ia tidak menjawab.<br><br>Namun dari kusen jendela, mata keemasannya mengawasi. Diam sekarang. Tidak kesal. Hanya... mengawasi.<br><br>Karena entah ia mau mengakuinya atau tidak—<br><br>Ia setuju.<br><br>[Pria itu. Atau... benda itu. Apa pun itu.] Suara Vitaliara bergema sayup-sayup di dalam ruangan, seolah-olah pikirannya telah menemukan cara untuk merambat melalui uap. [Itu tidak normal.]<br><br>Lucavion tidak membuka matanya. Ia hanya membiarkan medan kompresi berdengung di sepanjang tulang belakangnya saat ia menghembuskan napas, lambat dan dalam. "Tidak ada bantahan untuk itu."<br><br>[Kau tidak mengenalinya? Dari novel itu?]<br><br>Pertanyaan itu menarik sebuah pikiran dari tempat yang lebih dalam—ruang sunyi tempat kalkulasi dan ingatan tertidur layaknya serigala yang sedang menunggu.<br><br>'Tidak,' pikir Lucavion. Bukan sebuah bisikan, bahkan bukan agar didengar olehnya—hanya sebuah kebenaran yang melipat ke dalam diri.<br><br>Tidak ada catatan mengenai sosok seperti itu dalam narasi aslinya. Tidak ada catatan berlumur tinta di pinggir halaman, tidak pula foreshadowing tersembunyi di antara baris-baris kalimat. Dan Lucavion mengingat setiap adegan dengan kejelasan tingkat bedah. Setiap nama. Setiap kematian. Setiap tingkat kekuatan dan petunjuk naratif.<br><br>Namun pria itu—suaranya, matanya, cara ia mengalami glitch seolah-olah realitas berusaha menelannya kembali—<br><br>Nihil.<br><br>"Aku tidak tahu ada hal seperti itu yang eksis," ucapnya akhirnya dengan suara tenang di balik arus ketidaknyamanan yang tersembunyi.<br><br>Vitaliara kini muncul lebih utuh, bertengger tepat di samping ukiran glyph, lututnya ditarik ke atas, rambutnya ikal di tengah kabut mana. Tatapannya tak terbaca, bagaikan badai yang tersembunyi di dalam air tenang.<br><br>[Ia terbuat dari mana, kurasa.] Suaranya merendah. [Bukan dibentuk olehnya. Dibuat darinya. Seperti cetakan tanpa inti.]<br><br>Lucavion merenungkan hal itu perlahan. "Tapi ia berbicara. Berpikir. Bereaksi."<br><br>[Tepat sekali.] Ia mengetukkan salah satu cakarnya dengan ringan ke atas batu yang berpendar oleh glyph. [Dan saat ia berkata
Bab 877: Pikiran
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"Core Weave: Musculature Optimization Sequence—Level 1."
"Oh good," Lucavion muttered. "Level one."
[You activated a combat rehabilitation basin, you idiot.]
"I didn’t know it was a combat rehabilitation basin!"
[Because you didn’t read the inscription below it!]
"Stop with the nagging," Lucavion muttered, rolling his neck as the glowing bathwater pulsed again. The pressure had shifted—less crushing now, more like... resistance training conducted by a polite ghost.
At first, it had been sharp, jarring. But now?
Now it was settling. Contained. Rhythmic.
The hum of mana wrapped around him like a second skin, woven into the fibers of muscle and bone with deliberate care. It pressed—yes—but no longer with the same overwhelming weight. His body had adapted.
No— endured.
’This thing was probably calibrated for your average Awakened,’ he thought, glancing lazily at the still-glowing glyphs. ’A baseline framework. Some middling graduate with soft nerves and glass wrists.’
But Lucavion was not average.
Not anymore.
His body, reforged through trials they didn’t document in any Academy syllabus, was denser, faster, more conditioned than most of the empire’s ranked Awakened twice his age. Muscles that had been broken and rebuilt under pressure spells, mana flux, physical trauma—and something deeper. Something older.
He let the next wave of mana crush down along his shoulders and didn’t even flinch.
In fact... it felt kind of nice.
Not like a bath.
More like sparring with gravity itself and winning.
"Mm," he exhaled, sinking deeper. "There it is."
[You’re enjoying this?] Vitaliara sounded both disgusted and mildly betrayed.
"It’s calibrated for the weak," he said lazily, eyes closing. "And I’m not."
[Oh, now that’s not insufferable at all.]
He didn’t rise to it. Just let the water cycle through another pulse, and this time, his body met it with ease—stability. Not resistance, but balance. Like the mana had finally recognized what it was dealing with and adjusted accordingly.
The glyphs flickered in a soft, steady sequence now. More like acknowledgment than aggression.
"I could stay here all night," Lucavion murmured.
[Don’t tempt fate.]
"Temptation implies doubt. I’m just relaxing. "
[You are the only person I’ve ever seen call magical muscle compression relaxing.]
"I’m not most people."
She didn’t answer.
But from the sill, her golden eyes watched. Quiet now. Not irritated. Just... watching.
Because whether she’d admit it or not—
She agreed.
[That man. Or... thing. Whatever it was.] Vitaliara’s voice echoed faintly in the chamber, like her thoughts had found a way to ripple through the steam. [That wasn’t normal.]
Lucavion didn’t open his eyes. Just let the compression field hum across his spine as he exhaled, slow and deep. "No argument here."
[You didn’t recognize him? From the novel?]
That pulled a thought from deeper inside—the quiet space where calculation and memory slept like wolves in waiting.
’I didn’t,’ Lucavion thought. Not a whisper, not even for her to hear—just a truth folding inward.
There had been no mention of such a figure in the original narrative. No ink-smeared notes in the margins, no foreshadowed Chapter tucked between lines. And Lucavion remembered every scene with surgical clarity. Every name. Every death. Every power tier and narrative cue.
Yet that man—his voice, his eyes , the way he’d glitched as if reality had tried to swallow him back—
Nothing.
"I didn’t know something like that existed," he finally said aloud, voice calm despite the undertow of unease.
Vitaliara emerged more fully now, perched just beside the glyphwork, her knees drawn up, her hair curling in the mana mist. Her gaze was unreadable, a storm concealed in still water.
[He was made of mana, I think.] Her tone dropped. [Not shaped by it. Made of it. Like a cast with no core.]
Lucavion turned that over slowly. "But he spoke. Thought. Reacted."
[Exactly.] She tapped one claw lightly against the glyph-lit stone. [And yet when he said "Unstable," I felt nothing. Nothing. No source. No core. No link. Just... void.]
He opened his eyes, barely, gaze flicking to her. "So he didn’t lie."
[Not about that.]
Silence fell between them again, dense and layered. The mana field pulsed once more—subtler now, as though it too were listening.
[But he did one thing that no construct, no projection, no puppet should be able to do,] Vitaliara murmured.
Lucavion turned his head slightly.
[He identified you.]
His expression didn’t change. But the stillness around him did.
[Lucavion... there is no one else I know— nothing in the Academy—who could look at you and see what I see. Who could name it.]
"You think he knew?"
[He said Abyss . But that wasn’t what hit me.]
"What, then?"
[Your mana. He recognized it. You weren’t suppressing it fully, were you?]
Lucavion gave a faint shrug. "Didn’t feel the need to."
[Exactly. That thing didn’t need your permission to see. It felt it.]
There was a pause. Not accusatory—just cautious.
[No normal human can sense death mana, Lucavion. Not truly.] Vitaliara’s tone was soft now, but not uncertain. [It’s not just rare. It’s forbidden. Forgotten. The body rejects it, the soul recoils from it. Most mages can’t even see it, let alone name it.]
Lucavion’s eyes drifted to the ceiling, watching steam coil into soft spirals above. The mana in the basin pulsed again, but it barely stirred him now. He’d long since adapted to its rhythm—made it his.
"So," he said slowly, "how’d he do it?"
Vitaliara didn’t answer at first. She traced the edge of a glyph with one fingertip, her nails glinting faintly in the charged air.
[That’s what unsettled me. That wasn’t some highborn enchanter or academy elder with a fancy bloodline. That thing didn’t even have a proper form. It was stitched together with mana like it had crawled out of the seams of a broken spell.]
He exhaled softly, the corner of his mouth twitching upward.
"And yet it saw me."
[It did.] Her golden gaze met his. [And not just you. It saw what you carry.]
Lucavion’s eyes half-lidded again.
The [Flame of Equinox].
A black fire that burned not with heat, but with silence. It devoured noise, light, presence—left no ash, only absence. In all his uses of it, no one had ever been able to name it. Scholars had speculated. Alchemists theorized. But the truth always slipped past them like ink through cracked parchment.
That was why he didn’t hide it.
Because no one could trace it.
Because even seeing it didn’t mean understanding it.
Most just assumed it was a rare affinity or a corrupted elemental strain—dangerous, yes, but still within the realm of the known. Manageable.
’But he knew.’
Lucavion’s jaw flexed.
That... thing hadn’t recoiled in fear.
It had identified.
Named.
Abyss.
A word never spoken aloud in the original script. A word that had weight even in silence.
[That’s why you’ve never been careful, isn’t it?] Vitaliara said quietly. [With the flame. You let them see because they can’t recognize it. You wanted someone to. ]
Lucavion didn’t respond.
Not at first.
Then—"Maybe," he said, too lightly to be casual.
But both Vitaliara and himself knew that was not just a maybe.
’A clue.’
After all, there were a lot of things that he didn’t even know about himself.
Weren’t there?
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