NovelOnline Chapter 285: The Pristine Disaster
Chapter 285: The Pristine Disaster
Master Cedric arrived at the subterranean vaults huffing for breath. He pressed his hand to the runic array, preparing himself for the horrific view of the destroyed archive, already formulating the furious reprimand he was about to unleash. The heavy doors clicked and groaned open. Cedric stormed inside.
"CROFT, WHAT ARE YOU…"
Cedric bellowed, then froze. Laid before him was a pristine, immaculate Royal Archive. Every single scroll, map, and heavy leather-bound tome was perfectly aligned on its designated mahogany shelf. Not a single speck of dust looked out of place. Ray Croft was sitting on the ground and leaning against a bookshelf near with a book in hand, looking at him with a surprised look.
Ray blinked, acting surprised as Master Cedric burst in.
"Master Varkas? I believe I still have thirty minutes left."
Ray asked in a surprised tone.
Cedric ignored him completely. He marched past the boy, his eyes darting frantically around the aisles, looking for the mess. He walked over to the shelf holding the Compendium of the Second Kingdom. It was resting perfectly in its slot. He pulled it out with difficulty, checking the binding.
It's intact.
Cedric thought as he was completely lost.
I saw him throw this! I saw the mess! How in the world did he put thousands of texts back perfectly?
Unable to reveal that he had been secretly spying on a student using classified scrying wards, Cedric aggressively smoothed his robes and cleared his throat, trying to regain his composure. His mind raced.
Was the scrying ward malfunctioning? Was I hallucinating from the stress of dealing with the effects from the Main Qualifiers result?
Cedric thought.
For a fleeting, terrifying moment, the Master of Statecraft genuinely questioned his own sanity.
"I... yes. You have thirty minutes, I merely came to check your condition. I trust the sheer volume of the Royal Archives was not... too overwhelming for you to learn anything?"
Cedric said stiffly, looking at Ray with utter confusion.
Ray stood up calmly,
"It was... deeply educational, Master Varkas, I appreciate the opportunity. But I think I have reached my limit."
Ray replied smoothly.
"I see… You have left everything exactly as you found it... which you clearly have,"
Cedric muttered, still staring suspiciously at the shelves as he stepped aside to let Ray pass. Ray walked past the Head of Statecraft.
But internally Ray was smiling a cold, dangerous smile. Cedric had no idea. Ray hadn't stolen a single piece of paper. The wards remained unbroken.
It hadn't been easy, though. Forty-five minutes earlier, driven by the Eccentric Scholar’s obsessive, unyielding need to acquire knowledge, the Scholar had abandoned targeted research and gone on a complete scanning spree.
Because there was no deep analysis involved, only raw data acquisition, it had only taken the Eccentric Scholar exactly thirty minutes to scan the remainder of the vault.
With one hour and fifteen minutes left on the clock, Ray had decided to step in.
“System, Deactivate Full Immersion”
Ray commanded from the Ambient Presence.
The moment he regained control, he nearly collapsed. The mental drain of downloading thousands of pages was agonizing, but the physical sight before him was worse. The Royal Archive looked like a hurricane had hit it. Piles of priceless scrolls and tomes were scattered across the floor in massive, chaotic mounds.
Ray groaned, clutching his throbbing head. He immediately reached into his belt pouch and pulled out a dense, high-calorie protein bar Rina had prepared for him.
As he choked it down, the Crimson Weaver's ‘Neural Gastronomy’ passive skill kicked in instantly. The heavy calories were aggressively converted into raw cognitive energy, rapidly replenishing his mental stamina and dulling the migraine.
As Ray caught his breath, a voice echoed in his Ambient Presence.
Scribe: "Host, when I was observing the lethal containment sigils earlier, I also identified a standard pulse-scrying node embedded in the ceiling array. Its runic matrix is nearly identical to the ones on your suite in the Spire of Sages."
The Arcane Scribe noted calmly.
Ray froze. He knew exactly how that rune worked. It could only record for five minutes before it needed to passively recharge on ambient mana for thirty minutes.
And the recording window?
Ray asked internally.
"It just ended.We have a thirty-minute blind spot."
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
The Arcane Scribe responded.
Ray looked at the impossible mountain of books. His first instinct was to handle the mess magically. A standard 1st-Circle ‘Unseen Servant’ spell would normally be too weak and slow for this volume of heavy tomes, but Ray had recently experimented with applying his Aether-Infusion technique to the spell's framework. The result hadn't just strengthened the servant; it had fractured the spell, creating a small army of autonomous spectral force that could have reorganized the room in minutes.
He began to gather his mana, but a sharp warning echoed in his mind.
Scribe: "I strongly advise against spellcasting, Host. I am reading a secondary ward woven into the masonry. A localized anti-magic suppression field designed to prevent unauthorized transmutations or transport spells inside the vault."
Ray paused. To confirm what the Arcane Scribe told him, he reached out and tried to tap into his bag of holding. Nothing happened. The connection was completely dead. The oppressive, stifling sensation in the air was incredibly familiar; it felt exactly like the ‘null field’ they had encountered deep within the void ore mines of the Iron-Wake Domain.
Ray knew that even with this ‘null field’, he could overcome it with his ‘Aether-Infusion technique’, he could easily shatter the field and cast the spell anyway. But overpowering a Royal Archive ward would undoubtedly cause a massive magical fluctuation, instantly triggering every alarm in the College of Statecraft. Magic was out of the question. A slow, determined smile spread across his face. If he couldn't use magic, he would just have to rely on himself. He accepted the challenge.
With his mental stamina recovered, Ray initiated Tri-Concurrent Partial Immersion. His passive Cognitive Network skill automatically activated to offset the mental load.
Ray first, layered in the Gritty Detective archetype as he activated the Gritty Detective's Observation skill to track the precise spatial location of every scattered item.
Next, he called upon the second archetype the Arcane Scribe.
He activated the Arcane Scribe’s ‘Eidetic Rendering’ skill and with the help of the passive ‘Perfect Recall’ skill instead of using it to remember runes, he applied it to the room itself, remembering exactly what the archive looked like the moment he stepped inside. Then, channeling his mana, he rendered faint, glowing holographic outlines of books and scrolls appeared on the empty mahogany shelves, creating a massive, three-dimensional puzzle guide of where everything belonged.
Finally, to execute the cleanup, he layered in the Stoic Assassin's and activated its Flowing Shadow Technique, pairing it with the Scribe's Precision Engraving to ensure his high-speed movements wouldn't damage the fragile bindings as he is picking the items up.
Ray became a blur. He dashed through the aisles in absolute silence, snatching books from the floor and slotting them flawlessly into their glowing holographic outlines. His hands moved with superhuman fine motor control, handling centuries-old parchment as gently as a feather while moving at the speed of a striking viper. It took him less than thirty minutes. Just as the final map cylinder was slotted into place a familiar blue transparent screen appeared before him.
[SKILLED APPLICATION DETECTED]
[EVENT: SPATIAL RECONSTRUCTION & SURVEILLANCE EVASION]
[PERFORMANCE EVALUATION: INSPIRED]
[ANALYSIS: Host successfully executed a Tri-Concurrent Partial Immersion. The synergistic combination of the 'Arcane Scribe's' Eidetic Rendering to construct a holographic spatial map, paired with the 'Stoic Assassin's' kinetic mobility and 'Gritty Detective's' spatial awareness, allowed for flawless, high-speed puzzle resolution. Vault surveillance parameters bypassed completely.Largest mastery gain.]
[Eidetic Rendering +20%, Flowing Shadow Technique +15% (CAPSTONE already reached, adding half of mastery gain to the next archetype skill 'Emotional Detachment'), Observation skill +10% (CAPSTONE already reached, adding half of mastery gain to the next archetype skill 'Evidence Analysis').]
Ray dismissed the notification and later on the heavy doors of the vault opened as Master Cedric entered
Moments later Ray walked out of the College of Statecraft and into the bright afternoon sun, he knew he had just successfully pulled off the greatest heist in the history of the academy.
He had just walked out with a backup copy of the Kingdom's greatest secrets safely locked inside his head.
Later that day it was already night time at the Solhaven Academy demi-plane. Inside the Spire of Sages, the suite was perfectly quiet. Rina had exhausted herself with her nightly training and was already fast asleep in her room. Svane had returned to his quarters after his guarding duties with Ray.
Ray sat in the bed in his personal room, the only sound being the soft, rhythmic purring of Nox, the void-malkin coiled comfortably on his lap. Ray absentmindedly stroked the creature's dark fur, his golden-flecked eyes focused on the empty space in front of him.
"System, Initiate Tactical Replication Protocol. Display a 3d map representation of Eldoria."
Ray commanded softly in the quiet room.
A holographic overlay instantly showed in front of him, it displayed a three-dimensional holographic map of the entire Kingdom of Eldoria that hovered a foot off the floor.
Ray leaned forward.
"Input data subset: The Thorne Ledger. Overlay with data subset: Secret Roads."
Instantly, the map ignited with color. Thick, pulsing crimson lines traced the Argent Hand’s known smuggling routes, bleeding out from the Void Ore motherlode in Iron-Wake. Then, a secondary layer of glowing, ghostly blue lines appeared, the ancient, subterranean pre-calamity tunnels he had discovered in the archives known as ‘Secret Roads’.
The blue and crimson lines wove together flawlessly, bypassing every major Royal Army checkpoint to connect directly to the heart of the ‘Gilded Cage,’ the Blackwood Manor blind spot in the Capital.
In the Ambient Presence, the Grizzled Commander and the Gritty Detective stood beside the map, which was also being displayed there with the help of the system, analyzing the flow of resources.
Commander: “They are moving thousands of tons of Void Ore and Null-Alloy. But logistics dictate you cannot move that sheer volume of material continuously through subterranean tunnels without staging areas. If the Secret Road collapses, the supply line dies.”
The Grizzled Commander rumbled.
Detective: “They need waystations, Middle-men caches. Places to temporarily hold the cargo before moving it to the next checkpoint.”
The Detective agreed, chewing on a phantom matchstick.
Ray’s eyes narrowed.
"System, cross-reference the Secret Road pathing with property records of abandoned outposts, ruined pre-calamity structures, and foreclosed noble estates along the route."
The holographic map flickered. Suddenly, a number of distinct amber dots illuminated near or along the secret roads, spread across the various provinces of Eldoria.
A blue transparent screen materialized over the map.
[TACTICAL ANALYSIS COMPLETE]
[VARIABLE: ARGENT HAND SUPPLY CACHES / WAYSTATIONS]
[PROBABILITY ASSESSMENT: 95% CONFIDENCE IN TARGET LOCATIONS.]
Ray let out a slow, satisfied breath. The system had just handed him a map of the Argent Hand's entire hidden infrastructure. He didn't just know who they were anymore; he knew exactly where they kept their resources.
He leaned back in his chair, a cold, calculating light in his eyes. The time for quietly gathering intelligence was over. It was time to start breaking the board.
Ray reached into his pocket and pulled out his Custodian Crest, tapping the glowing runic surface. He drafted two messages.
The first went to Kaelen Thorne.
Ray: Meet me at the Headmaster’s office building tomorrow morning.
The second message was routed directly to Headmaster Andrade’s secure channel.
Ray: Requesting an immediate meeting tomorrow. I have something to talk to you about.
Ray sent the messages. The pieces were in place. Tomorrow, he would hand the Kingdom its sword.