The first chill of autumn had truly settled over Silvershade City, painting the leaves in hues of rust and gold. But inside the office of Teacher Bill, the atmosphere was one of quiet, fervent industry.
Bill sat at his desk, his single eye scanning the golden numbers scrolling across his Celestial Scroll.
[Rank 49 Achieved.][Source: Distributed Cognition (Library Network).]
It had been a subtle strategy. Sending his textbooks—The Principles of Soul Mechanics—to neighboring schools and libraries as "gifts" had been a Trojan Horse of enlightenment. Every student in a dusty library twenty miles away who opened his book and thought, "Oh, so leverage works like that," sent a tiny packet of conceptual energy back to Bill. It was a pyramid scheme of knowledge, and he was the pharaoh at the top.
"Teacher Bill?"
Lucas stood at the door, shifting nervously. The ten-year-old boy looked older than his years, a seriousness in his eyes that mirrored his mother's.
"Ready, Lucas?" Bill stood up, grabbing his coat.
"Yes, sir. Mom packed lunch."
"Good. Let's get you a ring."
The hunt for Lucas was surgical. Bill didn't need a mercenary team for the periphery anymore. At Rank 49, his aura alone was enough to make thousand-year beasts hesitate.
They found their target near a stream in the Sunset Forest: a Steel-Back Turtle (380 years).
Lucas's spirit was the Iron Rod, but unlike Marcus who went for brute force, Lucas was smaller, tactical.
"The turtle is slow, but its defense is absolute," Bill instructed from the tree line. "You can't smash the shell. What do you do?"
Lucas gripped his rod. "Vibration. Transfer force through the shell to the soft organs inside."
"Show me."
Lucas didn't swing wild. He placed the tip of his rod against the turtle's shell as it retracted. He closed his eyes, inhaled sharply using the Void Vortex breathing, and pulsed his soul power.
Thrummm.
The rod vibrated at a frequency that made Bill's teeth ache.
The turtle didn't crack. It just… stopped. The vibration liquefied its insides.
"Clean," Bill nodded, descending. "Absorb it."
When they returned to the city, Lucas was a Spirit Master. His first skill: Reverberating Strike. A hit that ignored external defense to damage internal organs. A terrifying skill for a child.
—————
The following week brought a courier with the insignia of a spider.
The Spirit Hall.
Bill received the package in the privacy of his study. Inside was a medal of platinum and gold, etched with the Angelic Sword. Order of Innovation, Second Class.
Along with it, a letter stamped by the Supreme Pontiff herself, Bibi Dong.
To Teacher Bill,Innovation is the sword that severs the old world. The Hall acknowledges your contribution.
It was brief. Cold. Powerful.
Bill sat back. Bibi Dong. The tragic tyrant. The genius. If his "memories" were correct, she was currently consolidating her power, preparing to declare the Spirit Empire.
He took a fresh copy of his textbook. On the inside cover, he wrote a dedication: To Her Holiness. Knowledge, like power, must be directed. May this serve the Hall.
He packaged it with a request for a widespread publishing license. If Bibi Dong read this—if she saw the logic, the physics, the stripping away of mystic superstition—she would see its value in training her armies.
—————
That evening, Jenny came to the manor. She was there ostensibly to discuss the quarterly earnings of the Printing House—which she now managed with ruthless efficiency—but the glint in her eye suggested otherwise.
They sat in the study.
"Profit is up 40%," Jenny said, sliding a ledger across the desk. "The Seven Treasure Clan bought five hundred units of paper last week. They're trying to reverse-engineer the ink formula."
"Let them try," Bill smirked. "The chemical compound requires a specific Fire Spirit catalyst temperature. They'll burn their eyebrows off."
Jenny laughed. She looked healthy. Her cultivation was progressing steadily. Rank 26.
"You've been busy with Lucas," she said softly. "He came home beaming. He showed me his ring."
"He earned it."
"Thank you, Bill." She stood up and walked around the desk. She was wearing a simple grey dress that clung to her figure. "You handle the world. You handle the machines. You handle the kids."
She sat on the edge of his desk, pushing the ledger aside.
"Who handles you?"
Bill looked up at her. "I manage."
"You don't have to manage alone." She leaned forward, her hand cupping his scarred cheek. "Sarah is pregnant. She's nesting. She's happy. But a man like you… with the fire you have… you need release."
It wasn't a seduction born of desperation anymore. It was an offer of partnership. Of mutual comfort.
Bill stood up, his hands finding her waist. "You're learning to negotiate, Jenny."
"I learned from the best."
She pulled him toward her. The door was locked. The curtains were drawn. For an hour, the ledger was forgotten, and the only numbers that mattered were two.
—————
The month turned. The air grew colder.
And then, it happened.
Bill was in the middle of a lecture on Thermodynamics of Fire Spirits when he felt the dam break.
The accumulated energy from the Scroll—fed by a hundred libraries, a thousand students, and his own relentless cultivation—surged.
Rank 50.
He stopped mid-sentence. The chalk snapped in his hand.
The class stared at him.
"Class dismissed," Bill said, his voice tight. "Read Chapter 4."
He walked out. He didn't run. He walked with the heavy, inevitable momentum of a landslide.
He needed a ring. A Black Ring.
—————
Two days later, the Sunset Forest, Deep Zone.
Bill stood in a clearing surrounded by devastation.
He hadn't come alone. He had hired two Spirit Emperors this time. Korg (Rank 62, Defense) and a new mercenary, Viper (Rank 64, Agility/Poison). It had cost him nearly all his liquid cash, but for a Fifth Ring, for a Ten Thousand Year Beast, you didn't bargain.
The carcass of a massive bat lay before them.
Shadow-Echo Chiroptera.Age: Approx. 12,000 years.
It was a beast of nightmares. Wings that spanned twenty feet. A scream that could liquefy brains.
It had taken them four hours. Korg had taken a broken rib. Viper had lost a dagger. Bill was bleeding from his ears.
"Take it," Korg wheezed, sitting on a log, nursing a potion. "Before its mate comes back."
Bill sat cross-legged before the beast. A black ring, radiating a terrifying, soulful pressure, floated above the corpse.
Ten thousand years. The threshold where beasts gained intelligence. The threshold of the Soul Shock.
"Prepare the mind," Bill whispered.
He initiated the Void Vortex.
He pulled the ring in.
BOOM.
It wasn't pain. It was a scream. The spirit of the bat slammed into his mind. It was cold, screeching, full of malice. It showed him darkness. It showed him falling.
GET OUT, the beast screamed in his psyche.
Bill's body convulsed. Blood trickled from his nose.
I am not a cave, Bill roared back in his mind, projecting the image of his Celestial Scroll. I am the Library! I am the Architect!
He didn't fight the scream with a roar. He fought it with Analysis.
He deconstructed the scream. He broke the frequency down into sine waves. He analyzed the intent, categorized the malice, and filed it away.
You are data, Bill thought coldly. And data belongs in the Scroll.
The bat's spirit shrieked one last time, confused by the lack of fear, and was sucked into the golden pages of the Scroll.
The pressure vanished.
Energy flooded Bill's body. It was thick, dark, and incredibly potent. It remodeled his bones, toughened his organs, and expanded his meridians to the size of rivers.
He opened his eye.
The world had changed.
He didn't just see the forest. He heard the shape of it.
He activated his new Fifth Skill: Sonar Omni-Scan.
A pulse of ultra-high frequency sound, inaudible to humans, erupted from him. It bounced off every tree, every leaf, every heartbeat within a mile.
The data rushed back into his brain, processed instantly by the Analysis skill.
He saw Korg's broken rib—a hairline fracture. He saw Viper's heartbeat—slightly elevated. He saw a rabbit burrowing fifty meters underground. He saw the sap flowing in the trees.
It wasn't just detection.
He focused the sound on a boulder ten meters away.
Focus.
CRACK.
The boulder didn't explode. It dusted. The internal structure was vibrated into sand instantly.
"Spirit King," Korg muttered, watching the black ring settle around Bill. "A Spirit King with a Ten Thousand Year ring on the fifth slot. You're a monster, Bill."
Bill stood up. He felt invincible.
"I am a teacher," Bill corrected, wiping the blood from his nose. "And class is in session."
—————
The return to the city was a triumph.
When Bill walked through the gates of his estate, the aura he projected was restrained but undeniable.
Sarah ran out to meet him, heavy with their unborn child. She stopped a few feet away, her eyes wide. Her Hound spirit manifisted in exitement showing her ears perked up and tail wagging.
"Bill?" she whispered.
Bill smiled. He released his rings.
White. Yellow. Yellow. Purple. Black.
The black ring hummed with a dark, majestic power.
"Rank 51," Bill announced. "Spirit King."
Sarah let out a cry of joy and threw herself into his arms. The triplets ran out, cheering. Jenny, who had been helping Sarah with the nursery, stood in the doorway, her hand over her mouth, tears of pride in her eyes.
Bill held his family. He looked over Sarah's shoulder at the city beyond the walls.
He was a Spirit King. In this small city, he was now the apex predator.
But he knew the map. He knew the timeline. The real monsters were in the Spirit City, in the Imperial Palace, in the hidden clans.
I see you, Bill thought, his sonar sense expanding to cover the entire estate, feeling every heartbeat he had sworn to protect. And I am coming.
[Current Status: Bill][Rank: 51 (Spirit King)][Martial Soul: Celestial Scroll (High Evolution)][New Skill: Sonar Omni-Scan / Acoustic Destruction][Family Condition: Secure / Thriving]