[Location: The Dungeon Training Room]
[Status: Secured. Soundproofed.]
Sylvia Frost was no longer a Princess.
She was a shivering mess of exposed skin and shattered pride.
She knelt on the cold stone floor, her uniform folded neatly beside her. She wore only her undergarments; lace, silk, expensive, and currently useless against the aura of dominance I was projecting.
I sat on the chair. Legs crossed. The Usurper (Left Hand) glowing with a hungry red light.
"You look cold," I noted. "Irony."
Sylvia flinched. She wrapped her arms around herself.
"I... I can't feel my mana," she whimpered. "You took it all."
"I took the control," I corrected. "Your mana is still there. But the 'key' to access it? That's mine now."
I leaned forward.
"Do you want it back?"
She nodded frantically. For a mage, losing magic is like losing a limb. It's worse than death. It is helplessness.
"Then beg."
Sylvia froze. The last shred of her royal dignity fought against her survival instinct.
She looked at my eyes. The Abyss.
She realized she was already falling.
"Please..." she whispered, her face burning red. "Please... Professor... give it back."
"Louder."
"Please! Master!" She cried out, tears spilling. "I'll do anything! Just let me cast again!"
[System Notification]
[Target 'Sylvia Frost' Submission Level: 95%.]
[New Relationship: Disciple/Slave.]
"Good."
I stood up. I walked over to her.
I didn't give her the skill back. Not yet.
I placed my hand on her bare shoulder. Her skin was soft, trembling violently.
"I'm going to unlock your Circuits manually," I lied.
I wasn't unlocking anything. I was branding her.
I pushed mana into her body. My mana. It was corrosive, dark, and possessive. It flooded her veins, chasing away the cold, replacing it with a burning, heavy heat.
"Ah! Nngh!"
Sylvia arched her back. Her eyes rolled back.
It wasn't pain. It was a sensory overload. Her body, trained for ice, was being violated by void fire.
"It burns!" she moaned, her nails scraping the floor. "It's inside me!"
"Accept it," I ordered. "Let it stain you."
I moved my hand down her spine. Every nerve ending lit up like a Christmas tree.
She collapsed against my legs, panting, sweating, her body twitching in aftershocks.
[Dopamine Spike: Conquest.]
She looked up at me. Her eyes were glazed. Adoring. Broken.
"Master..." she purred. "I feel... full."
"You are," I said, stepping away. "You now run on My mana. If you betray me, I cut the supply. And you die."
I tossed her uniform back to her.
"Get dressed. You have a job."
"Yes, Master." She grabbed the clothes, moving with a desperate haste to please me.
I checked my watch.
"Lesson's over."
"Now, for the real loot."
——————————————————————————————————————————
[Location: The Academy Basement - Sector Zero]
[The Vault of Forbidden Knowledge]
The door wasn't wood. It was a giant, spinning gear mechanism made of star-metal.
Dean Merlin stood there, holding a complex runic key.
He looked nervous.
"Professor Cross," Merlin warned. "This vault hasn't been opened in fifty years. The books inside... they aren't just books. They are Hazardous Memetic Agents."
"They bite," I translated.
"They consume minds. The last Archivist went insane. He ate his own eyeballs."
"Sounds festive," I said. "Open it."
Merlin sighed. He turned the key.
KLANG. HISS.
Steam poured out. The gears ground open.
I walked into the darkness.
"Wait outside," I told Sylvia and Seraphina. "If something screams, ignore it."
I stepped in.
The room smelled of old dust and cosmic horror.
Shelves stretched infinitely upward, defying physics. Books floated in the air, chained to the walls.
Some books were bleeding. Some were whispering.
One book, bound in human skin, snapped its jaws at me as I walked past.
"Cute dog," I muttered, slapping it with the flat of my dagger.
I wasn't here for the small fry.
I walked to the center of the room.
There, on a pedestal of obsidian, sat a single, massive tome.
It had no title.
It was pitch black. It absorbed the light around it.
[Item: The Grimoire of the Void (Original)]
[Grade: Forbidden (Taboo).]
[Warning: Do not read. Reading causes instant death.]
This was it.
In the lore, this book belonged to the "Demon King of the Void"; the endgame boss of the Second Expansion.
It contained the source code for reality hacking.
I reached out.
The book opened itself.
Pages flipped wildly.
Eyes. Thousands of eyes stared at me from the paper.
"YOU ARE NOT WORTHY," a voice boomed in my head.
Psychic damage. Massive spike.
My nose started bleeding.
[Mental Defense Check...]
[Fail.]
[HP: -100.]
My vision blurred.
"Shut up," I snarled.
I slammed my Void Ring onto the open page.
I wasn't reading it.
I was Eating it.
"GLUTTONY!"
WOOSH.
The book shrieked. It wasn't a metaphor. It screamed like a banshee being fed into a woodchipper.
The black ink lifted off the pages. It swirled into a vortex, sucked directly into the gemstone on my ring.
"No! No! I am Eternal! I am—"
SLURP.
Gone.
The book on the pedestal turned into white, blank ash.
My ring burned. It turned from black to a deep, pulsating violet.
[Ring of the Void Monarch: Level Up!]
[Tier 2 Unlocked.]
[Tier 3 Unlocked.]
[New Passive Acquired: 'Mind of the Abyss'.]
(You are immune to Fear, Insanity, and Mind Control. Your thoughts are hidden from Gods.)
[New Active Skill Acquired: 'System Override' (Alpha Version).]
(Once per day, you can rewrite the properties of an object.)
I fell to my knees, laughing.
My head felt like it was splitting open, but the knowledge... oh, the knowledge.
I knew the spawn times. I knew the drop rates. I knew the hidden backdoors of the universe.
I stood up.
I looked at a rusty spoon sitting on a shelf.
"Override," I whispered.
[Target: Spoon.]
[Property Edit: 'Rust' -> 'Sharpness'.]
The rust fell off. The edge of the spoon shimmered. I touched it. It cut my finger.
A razor-sharp spoon.
"This..." I grinned, wiping blood from my nose. "This is broken."
BOOM.
The alarm sounded.
Red lights flashed.
[Security Breach Detected.]
[Sector Zero Locking Down.]
"Professor!" Dean Merlin's voice came over the intercom. "The Vault Guardian has awakened! You triggered the defensive mechanism!"
"I triggered the Content," I corrected.
A golem formed from the surrounding books. It was thirty feet tall, made of paper and angry magic.
[Boss: The Librarian]
[Level: 45]
It raised a fist made of Encyclopedias.
"SILENCE IN THE LIBRARY," it roared.
I looked at the Golem.
I looked at my razor-sharp spoon.
"No," I said.
I activated my new Void Walk.
I didn't fight. I simply stepped through the coordinates of space.
I appeared outside the blast door, right next to a terrified Dean Merlin.
SLAM.
The vault door sealed shut behind me, trapping the Golem inside.
"You..." Merlin stammered. "You survived? What did you take?"
"Just some light reading," I said, dusting off my hands.
I looked at Sylvia.
She was waiting, eyes lowered, submissive.
I looked at Seraphina.
She was healing a paper cut on her finger.
"Pack your bags," I said.
"Class trip?" Seraphina asked.
"No," I smiled. "We have visitors."
I pointed to the window.
Outside, above the Academy grounds, the sky was tearing open again.
But this time, it wasn't monsters.
It was Ships.
Airships. Black sails. Skeletal designs.
The Necromancer Cabal.
"The 'Traitor' Plotline," I noted. "Right on schedule."
In the story, the Necromancers invade the Academy to kidnap the students for experiments.
"Are we going to save the students?" Sylvia asked, her voice trembling.
I laughed.
"Save them?"
I pulled out my calculator (System Interface).
"The Necromancers drop 'Soul Stones'. Each stone sells for 10,000 Gold."
I drew the Soul-Eater's Fang.
"We aren't saving anyone."
"We are Farming."
——————————————————————————————————————————
The lead Airship lowered a ramp.
A figure stepped out. A Lich wearing a business suit.
"Greetings," the Lich announced. "We are looking for a thief named Cain Cross. He stole our Crown."