Chương 175: Chapter 35: The Illusion of Control

The next day, standing before Valerian, she understood Isolde's advice. She understood it in the way the jester moved, as if every gesture were a nod toward an invisible precipice. She understood it in the way his words, though wrapped in sarcasm, carried the echo of something deeper, more torn. —Welcome, my little crimson countess —Valerian intoned. He took a second before performing an exaggerated flourish as he bowed, his black robe billowing like the wings of a playful crow— The dungeon survivor.

The resonant conscious of both paths: the spoken echo and its silent verbs, as well as the written touch and its invisible letters. Welcome to another step toward the painful truth. His voice, as always, was theatrical, but today there was a distinct edge to it, like freshly sharpened steel under moonlight. He straightened up and smiled, an expression that failed to reach his silver eyes.

—This wretched semester, you will study with me expert perception of the void, offensive spoken echo, the real kind, not just little flames, as well as resonant artifacts, though alongside the third professor of the department... one you surely do not expect. —He paused, allowing intrigue to condense in the cold classroom air— Something hardly suitable for what you have already lived through, yet necessary: dungeons and their perils, in addition to expeditions and mission organization.

The silence was broken only by the rocking of his chair, a slow, calculated movement habitual to the jester. —I believe you will be pleased to know you already have experience in those last two. Though, of course, yours was more... self-taught. —Suddenly, he stopped rocking and leaned forward, resting his elbows on the desk— By the way, I left you the reading list. But I do not recommend them, crimson. He fixed his gaze on Selena's face, his tone now confidential, almost intimate.

—The only truly useful one will be A Guide to Expeditions in Zones of High Dimensional Contamination by The Explorer Sabine. Very useful for knowing what is useless to study in a book about dungeons. Ideal for imbeciles who do not understand dungeons or who merely compile tales of the wretches capable of returning. —He leaned in even closer, as if about to fall from his chair, only to right himself at the last moment with a mocking grin— There was another called Dimensional Bestiary or something like that.

Useless as well. Anyone who has ever touched a dungeon knows that they are all different, and that even the same dungeon will never be identical twice. Breaking protocol once again, the resonant laughed, a clear, cold sound. Only then did he speak, summarizing his life philosophy in a single sentence. —The illusion of control. Then, his expression softened slightly, though the shadow of the joke never fully vanished. —The man who teaches artifacts... perhaps you will find him more interesting. He has a...

practical mind. I fear his mundane, wretched mind is not as theatrical as it ought to be. —He leaped up as if the seat were burning him— Class ends here. Tomorrow, right here, same time. Bring your wit, your blood, and above all, your ability to believe nothing I say. He gave a mocking bow, relishing the gesture. —Only until then shall we meet again, my little misfortune with twin earrings. Winter advanced at a rapid pace under the relentless guidance of Valerian and the other masters.

What threw her off was that, at her current level of arcane studies, she would no longer rest during winter breaks, only in summer. Selena's daily schedule was a tangle of crammed hours, like an hourglass that never ceased flowing. The red resonant, in his sessions on the offensive spoken echo, revealed a surprisingly subtle approach: it was not about being spectacular by throwing fire, lightning, or exaggerated destruction; the core maxim was to inflict maximum damage with minimum effort.

The echo was lethal, the most lethal and swift form of magic. —The spoken echo is not a hammer, crimson —Valerian told her, rocking in his chair with the air of a drunken philosopher. She took notes, concentrating on every word. Seeing her dedication, the jester continued. If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it. —It is a scalpel. It can sever sound in a room, silence your footsteps, choke a scream before it leaves your enemy's lips.

It is the art of altering the immediate, the tangible, with the mere weight of a syllable. Understand the concept, guide yourself through perception, and once you know it, command reality to replicate. The long-awaited master of resonant artifacts, for his part, far exceeded any expectations Valerian had implied. His name was Uluas, a bishop of the Cult of the Eternal Sap. He wore a robe of earthy brown with green trim that evoked deep roots and new leaves.

He bore a slight resemblance to Alistair, something in the calm of his movements, in his serene way of observing, but where Alistair was a silent shadow, Uluas was a radiant presence of tranquil knowledge. —Resonant artifacts —Uluas explained, his deep voice echoing in the workshop filled with ancient items. Selena kept her attention on the objects she held in her hands, almost dreamlike, but brought out of the sensation by the master's voice. —Are not destroyed. When a resonant die carrying one, the artifact...

absorbs. It merges with the others they carried, and with the echo they commanded. The result is... the strangest synergies. —He paused, running his fingers along the spine of an ancient book— Sometimes, the accumulation of negative effects renders them useless, heavy, dysfunctional monstrosities. But when the synergy works... the resulting artifact can be extraordinarily useful. A tool that transcends the sum of its parts. Selena noted down the nuances of the bishop's new instruction.

The room was filled with the scent unique to old objects. —Every resonant artifact has three paths: the written, referring to the resonant who used the written touch —the master gestured as if writing in the air— the spoken, belonging to those who used the spoken echo; and the imagined. Each of these three has levels of utility: latent for those nearly useless, initiate for those more useful but unmastered, advanced for those beginning to master their power, and conscious for those with almost no flaws.

It surprised her; they possessed levels of dominance corresponding to the classification the resonant had reached before dying to give birth to them. —Then arcane, for those of a strong and refined power, quite uncommon; from here many diversify, and I fear I cannot tell you more —the bishop smiled, seeing the girl's intense focus— There are also some extremely rare ones that possess mixed paths.

Though I believe you will be more interested to know that we ordinary human beings are incapable of seeing the peculiarities in them that you can. The master walked over to her and took her hand, touching her bronze ring, then said: —I know it is an artifact; His Majesty told us —he turned the ring on Selena's fingers while she gave him her full attention— To me, it is an inert piece of copper, yet to you, you probably feel it as a light, warm or cold.

Resonants are only capable of this because of their perception of the void. As for the classes on dungeons, they were far deeper than Valerian had suggested. Selena already knew the basics: that they were born from the death of an imagined resonant and the corruption of reality. But now she understood the mechanics with chilling clarity. The core of every dungeon was an imagined artifact, as the King had mentioned.

Yet if a resonant managed to claim it, the artifact "swallowed" the entire anomaly and distortion, returning the area to what it was before the contamination. It was a cycle of death and purging, an eternal reminder of the cost of playing with the boundaries of the real. —The threats inside a dungeon —Valerian explained, using his characteristic gestures and flourishes as he continued the thought. Selena rested her face on her fist. The jester paid for it no mind and continued.

—Are bound to the life of the resonant who generated it. A fire resonant who suffered violence in life and feared spiders... might create a perimeter filled with fire spiders that delight in burning slowly and cruelly, unconcerned with their own survival. They are not beasts; they are materialized nightmares, twisted echoes of a decaying soul.

Selena nodded in silence, remembering the dungeon of eternal life, its personalized horrors, its traps tailored to the very fears and memories of the resonant who generated it. Expedition protocols, contingency plans, security formations... everything now felt familiar to her, like a manual written in her own blood. Then came expert perception of the void with the jester. The exercises no longer consisted of distinguishing the real from the false among inert objects.

Now, all the objects were resonant, real, and tangible. The challenge was to feel which held greater potential, which resonated with more force, which hid layers of intent and power. Selena spent hours in silence with her eyes closed, allowing her consciousness to extend threads toward the artifacts, seeking the deepest echo, the most persistent note in the symphony of the void.

Little by little, Selena adapted to the new feeling of the signals, learning to differentiate the fine nuances separating the mundane from the extraordinary. On some days, the most important element in determining an object's potential was a feeling in her chest, a visceral hunch that guided her without apparent reason. On other days, it was a different scent, a subtly altered texture, a sheen that did not correspond to the light in the room.

Valerian had engraved a fundamental truth into her mind:"Anything anomalous within what is already magical could, ultimately, be a sign of superior potential." The nuance was as subtle as the whisper of a leaf falling in a silent forest, and she learned to listen to it with the patience of someone who knows that the price of an error is losing something invaluable.