.
The lecture hall emptied with military precision the moment the clock struck one. Ambition drove the students out; the desperate need to excel tomorrow dictated their movements today.
Vigo departed soon after, his cape swirling in his wake. Arthur followed, masking a starving, predatory eagerness behind a measured, saintly gait.
They claimed the same chairs as the previous day, recreating the tableau of their earlier confrontation within the silence of the office.
"Your performance today was exceptional," Vigo said, his voice heavy with an uncharacteristic softness. "No student—save for your brother—has ever successfully bypassed the superficial layer of my instructions to extract their true intent."
Arthur drank the syllables like fine wine, delighting in the enunciation.
"The accuracy. The surgical precision," Vigo continued, leaning forward. "One could deduce you have invested hundreds of hours into rigorous, unyielding practice."
The phantom sensation of an interrogation lamp blinded Arthur. A critical miscalculation, he hissed internally. No novice manifests that level of engineering on a preliminary attempt. I have painted a target on my own back via sheer competence. There is no logical framework to explain my mastery.
He raised his defenses—the gentle, porcelain mask of the Hero-Saint.
"You are far too kind, Instructor," Arthur said, offering a practiced, sheepish smile. "Truly, it is merely that I harbor a profound passion for the sub—"
"Cease this."
The command was absolute. It wasn't a request; it was a wall of wind.
Arthur's mind went blank. Against an 8th-Circle King-Rank Wind Mage, resistance was not a concept; it was a suicide note. He froze, waiting for the strike.
"You do not need to maintain this facade with me," Vigo murmured.
Arthur blinked. What?
"You must despise me, yes?"
The question hung in the air, heavy and suffocating.
"While you and your brother were fighting for your very survival," Vigo whispered, his gaze dropping to the floor, "I was stationed in Varethal. I was savoring aged wine while children were slaughtered."
Arthur watched, stunned, as the Instructor's composure fractured. The icy grip of terror in Arthur's chest began to thaw, replaced by a slow, creeping warmth.
"And Arthur died. If I had simply been present…" Vigo's hands, hands capable of leveling cities, shook visibly in his lap. "I have grieved. I have attempted to balance the scales—assisting you from the shadows—but absolutely nothing quells the rage. Nothing silences the guilt."
Vigo looked up, his eyes rimmed with raw, unfiltered emotion.
"When you breached my quarters... I had been rotting in my own filth for weeks. But seeing you? I experienced a joy so absolute it defies linguistic expression. I had ceased conscious function since the incident, and seeing you breathing... it was pure bliss."
Vigo exhaled, a ragged sound. "I cannot begin to fathom the psychological devastation you are enduring."
Arthur remained silent, the machinery of his mind whirring. The tension left his shoulders. The air in the room, once stifling, now tasted sweet.
"I accept total responsibility," Vigo said, his voice firming with resolve. "Direct the entirety of your hatred at me, if you must. But I beg of you... do not suppress this agony. Do not destroy yourself to accommodate my failure."
Arthur stared at the broken man.
Your deductions are fundamentally flawed, Vigo, Arthur thought, the realization blooming like a dark flower in his chest. This entire persona is a fabrication. There is zero emotional trauma to suppress.
He watched the tears well in the Instructor's eyes.
Yet... to calculate that I—Arthur, the discarded anomaly—held such immense psychological value to you? That an 8th-Circle King-Rank Mage would physically and mentally shatter himself over my cessation?
Arthur felt a vibration in his fingertips, a rush of blood to his head that had nothing to do with fear.
You have provided me with an immeasurable surge of euphoria.
"You must not assign this blame to yourself, Instructor; I have always held you in the absolute highest regard, and learning of your silent advocacy only elevates that standing. The failure of that day is mine alone, but I assure you, it will not be my ruin. My profound weakness in that moment serves only as the supreme catalyst for my ascension.
"The suppression of my grief does not generate a torment I cannot manage. I construct this facade for the benefit of the inferior minds around me—a deception I accept the burden of—but I assure you, Instructor... I do not deceive myself."
If any entity in this facility possesses the cognitive architecture to comprehend my true nature, Arthur thought, watching the instructor, it is Sivan Ruarc Vigo.
Arthur let the mask of the grieving brother slip, just enough to reveal the steel resolve beneath.
"My brother's death is not a permanent state."
Comprehension didn't dawn on Sivan Ruarc Vigo; it struck him instantly. The atmosphere in the office shifted violently. The air grew heavy and thick, the pressure plummeting until it mimicked the crushing, lightless trenches of the Water God's own domain.
"I have engineered a methodology to anchor him back to this plane," Arthur continued, his voice steady against the crushing weight in the room. "To retrieve him. To violently correct every wrong inflicted upon us."
"You speak of resurrection."
The word hung in the humid air—Resurrection. It was a concept that referred to a single, forbidden field: Black Magic. Yet, Vigo inquired without a flicker of shock, his tone as flat and clinical as if he were discussing the weather.
"It is my absolute obligation," Arthur stated, the words tasting of iron and duty. "As the one who survived."
"And does the scope of your design end there?" Vigo asked.
Arthur faltered. The question knocked him off balance, forcing a retreat behind his polite facade. "Forgive me. I do not fully grasp your parameter."
"What of the entities responsible for his murder?" Vigo pressed, his silver monocle catching the lamplight. "What of your family's continued security? What of your own ascension?"
The questions hit Arthur like physical blows. It felt as if the gravitational constant of the universe had shifted, placing its entire mass solely upon his shoulders in the form of sheer exhaustion. His mind began to race, seeking answers to variables that he, for some inexplicable reason, had not calculated sooner. Critical error. Variables unaccounted for. Halt cognitive spiral.
Vigo stood abruptly.
"Follow me."
The Head Instructor moved to the stone brick wall. He placed his hand against the masonry, right beside the refined, organized bookshelf that now stood where a chaotic pile of wood had been just the day before.
Moments passed in silence. Then, an emerald light began to bleed through the mortar of the bricks. It pulsed, each vein of magic moving at its own pace, spreading until every fissure glowed.
The masonry groaned, the stones shifting and retracting, the entire wall rising upward like a hidden portcullis.
It revealed a space that defied the geometry of the building. It was not merely a room; it was a cavernous laboratory several times the size of the office. It was crowded with the cold, brass instruments of science, sitting uncomfortably beside the grotesque paraphernalia of horror and the heretical.
Vigo turned, his silhouette framed by the dim light of the forbidden lab.
"I formulated an inaccuracy during our previous discourse," he said, his voice echoing slightly. "I am not merely fascinated by this forbidden field. I actively exploit it."
He stepped aside, gesturing to the abyss of knowledge before them.
"When I offered my absolute assistance, it was not a platitude. I demand that you fulfill the monstrous potential your brother left behind. Become my apprentice, Cedric. I will forge you into the most terrifying mage this world has ever endured."