A week passed.

  It was an ordinary, quiet week. As calm and flat as water in a bowl.

  The daily lessons felt effortless, entirely devoid of tension. My mind was at peace—I wasn't actively researching anything new. Not out of laziness. I just didn't feel that burning, obsessive thirst for experimentation anymore.

  The only thing that genuinely entertained me was watching Elinia.

  She walked around the Academy practically glowing like a magical lantern. On one particularly dry day, her blonde hair was constantly crackling with static electricity.

  Finn even joked about it during combat practice. "Careful, Princess... you're charging up like a thunderstorm."

  She scoffed at him, but she was visibly, deeply pleased.

  Meanwhile, my book—the physical-magical cryptographic masterpiece—just lay on my desk in my dormitory. Gathering dust. Like a legendary sword that no one bothered to pick up. Like a master-crafted tool with no purpose.

  It made me feel... strangely sad. I had poured so much agonizing effort, mana, and paranoia into creating it, and now it was just an expensive paperweight.

  The Festival of Chaos

  By mid-October, the Academy began preparations for the Festival of Chaos.

  It was an ancient, bizarre human tradition. On the night of the festival, the moon supposedly turned bright red. Students would don terrifying monster masks, wander the Academy halls, and "demand" items from one another. In return, they were obligated to give something back.

  Mostly, it was just an excuse for meaningless, chaotic exchanges and a lot of laughing.

  The atmosphere in the Academy became pleasantly insane.

  Finn arrived at dinner wearing a flowing red robe, using an illusion spell to make it look like his head was literally on fire. Edgar clanked into the dining hall wearing a full suit of jagged knight's armor he had forged overnight. The swordsmen just wore their standard uniforms with slight modifications; they seemed to enjoy the silly tradition the least.

  I just sat on the sidelines, watching them all and thinking: Human life is so incredibly strange. But... it is warm.

  A Meeting Under the Red Moon

  When the noise of the festival finally began to die down, I stepped out into the courtyard and looked up at the roof of the Academy.

  Elinia was standing there. Alone.

  I caught her eye and gestured subtly: Nine o'clock. Here.

  She nodded once and vanished back into the shadows.

  At exactly nine o'clock, she arrived at the secluded corner of the courtyard. No monster mask. No magical lights. Just... Elinia.

  "Helvard?" she asked quietly, stepping out of the gloom. "Did something happen?"

  I didn't say a word. I simply reached into my mantle and held out the heavy, metal-spined grimoire. And the tungsten-alloy key.

  "My work... is finished," I said softly. "And right now, it is just gathering dust. I want you to use it. You will do far more with it than I will."

  Her icy blue eyes widened drastically. She froze, staring at the book as if it were a live explosive.

  "You're... you're giving this to me...?" she breathed. "The entire thing?"

  I nodded. "It needs an owner. And you... need it more than I do."

  Her hands were actually trembling as she reached out and took the heavy tome. She held it with a reverence usually reserved for religious artifacts. She looked as though I had just handed her a crown—not an inherited crown of ice and politics, but a real one, forged from pure knowledge.

  "I am... so happy," she whispered, her voice cracking slightly. "Truly. I have never... never in my entire life received a gift like this."

  She looked down, suddenly seeming very small and embarrassed. "But I... I cannot possibly give you anything of equal value in return right now..."

  I smiled warmly. "You can figure it out in the future. Consider it a debt. Or... just a joke for the festival."

  She looked momentarily lost. And then—for the very first time since I had met her—she laughed. It wasn't a polite, aristocratic chuckle. It was a bright, genuine, entirely un-royal laugh.

  "Alright," she smiled, her eyes shining. "Then... someday... I will give you something equally valuable."

  She turned and practically sprinted back toward the girls' dormitory, clutching the heavy grimoire to her chest as if it were the most precious treasure in the world.

  I stood in the quiet courtyard, watching her go.

  I think... this was the right choice, I mused. Let her grow. Let her research. Let her enjoy the thrill of discovery.

  And for the first time, my book wasn't lonely anymore.

  Another week passed.

  It was a highly unusual week. Every single day, I noticed Elinia looking progressively paler. She looked exhausted, as if she had spent the entire night fighting a war.

  Even casting standard, basic spells in class seemed to physically drain her. The instructors grew visibly concerned.

  "Princess, are you over-training?" the Water Magic instructor asked gently. "Are you falling ill? You must rest..."

  But she would just wave them off with a tired, radiant smile. "Everything is perfectly fine. I can manage."

  I knew exactly what was causing it.

  The book. My book.

  Every single page of that grimoire demanded a specific, highly concentrated toll of mana to decrypt. It was essentially a brutal, unrelenting magical endurance test. When I created it, I honestly hadn't thought anyone possessed the sheer stamina to read the entire thing.

  This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

  And yet...

  At the end of the week, she approached me in the corridor. No royal entourage. No arrogant posture. Just a deeply exhausted, triumphant girl.

  "I read it all," she stated simply.

  I nearly choked on my own spit. "...How?!"

  She yawned, covering her mouth delicately as if discussing the weather. "Well... it was incredibly difficult. But I read it. Every single page."

  I was speechless. I literally had no words.

  She smirked tiredly. "Did you intentionally design the mana-drain to be that aggressive just to weaken me? Honestly, Helvard, I didn't know you were so petty."

  I opened my mouth to say "No," but she kept talking.

  "Truly, though... I have never encountered a book that physically devours mana just to be read. It was fascinating."

  And then, she handed me a single slip of parchment.

  I looked down at it.

  It was completely blank. I flipped it over. Blank.

  And then, the realization hit me like a physical blow. It needs mana.

  I carefully channeled a tiny pulse of my aura into the paper.

  Ink began to bleed into existence. But it was erratic. Each letter required a micro-pulse of mana, and more importantly, they required different oscillating frequencies.

  I shifted my frequency. A new line of text appeared. I played with the wavelength, coaxing the hidden message out of the blank parchment.

  ELINIA MADE THE IMPOSSIBLE, POSSIBLE.

  She had created a cipher based entirely on my mechanical principles. A cipher that could only be read by actively tuning one's mana. A cipher that was fundamentally impossible for an ordinary human mage to read or write.

  I stared at the paper in absolute, unadulterated shock.

  "You... you made this yourself?" I asked quietly.

  She smiled, her tired eyes sparking with pride. "Of course I did. You gave me the foundational example. I merely replicated the logic. Or did you actually think you were the only person in the world capable of inventing things?"

  My jaw was practically on the floor.

  She squinted at me. "What? Are you upset that I managed to catch up to you?"

  "This..." my voice was hoarse. "This is Grandmaster Artificer level. You created a written code based on pure mana resonance... This doesn't exist in any textbook!"

  She nodded. "No. It doesn't. But... I just systematically deconstructed your book. Page by page. And I learned how your logic operates."

  I froze again.

  She hadn't just studied my physics. She had studied ME. She had analyzed my exact method of thinking, and used it to create something of her own.

  The Princess offered a soft, genuine smile. "It's funny... I came to this Academy expecting to learn from the grand instructors. But... it seems I have far more to learn from you, Helvard."

  She turned and walked away, her posture relaxed and victorious.

  I stood in the empty corridor, clutching the piece of parchment, paralyzed by a single, terrifying realization:

  Elinia's growth rate is absolutely monstrous. If she keeps this up... she isn't just going to catch up to me. She might actually surpass me.

  The following week was deceivingly calm. Lessons proceeded normally. Everyone trained hard. Elinia was practically glowing with latent energy, but surprisingly, she never once demonstrated her newly acquired Lightning magic to the class. She kept it hidden, hoarding it like a lethal secret.

  But on Monday morning, I saw something... bizarre.

  Newspapers.

  Every single newspaper in the Kingdom had the exact same headline plastered across the front page in massive, bold letters:

  NEW BOOK BY MERLIN DISCOVERED! A REVOLUTION IN MAGIC! THE FUNDAMENTALS OF A NEW ELEMENT: ELECTRICITY!

  I nearly dropped the paper in the middle of the courtyard.

  "Whaaaaaat?!" I gasped.

  I frantically bought a different newspaper from a passing vendor. It said the exact same thing. I bought a third.

  "Merlin's lost manuscript reveals the underlying mechanics of electrical currents! The possibilities for the Kingdom are limitless!"

  I was completely bewildered. Was I not the first? Did the legendary Merlin actually write about the exact same atomic physics I did?! How is that even possible?!

  The Academy was in an absolute uproar. Students were buzzing with frantic excitement in the halls. "Did you read the excerpts from the new book?!" "The theories in there are insane!" "This is going to revolutionize combat magic!"

  And through all the chaos, only one person remained perfectly calm.

  Elinia.

  She caught my eye from across the courtyard. She was wearing a sly, overwhelmingly smug smile. Her eyes clearly communicated: Well, well... put the pieces together, genius.

  The Academy library was absolute bedlam.

  For the first time since I enrolled, the building was packed shoulder-to-shoulder. Mages, swordsmen, and even elitist upperclassmen were practically fighting at the librarian's desk.

  "Give me the Merlin book!" "I need two copies!" "Put me on the waiting list for tomorrow!"

  There were very few copies available, and the line stretched out the door. I stood at the back of the crowd until I realized there was absolutely no chance I was getting my hands on a copy today.

  I sighed, turning around to leave in defeat—when I heard quiet footsteps behind me.

  Elinia.

  She held out a pristine, leather-bound book. "Here you go."

  Her smile was entirely too satisfied.

  I took the book from her hands. I felt like a child tearing into a long-awaited festival gift. I flipped it open.

  Page 1. Author: Merlin. Title: The Fundamentals of the Electrical Element.

  I began to read the first paragraph... and I screamed so loudly that two upperclassmen nearby actually jumped in terror.

  "WHAAAAAAT!!!" I bellowed. "THIS IS MY BOOK! THESE ARE MY EXACT WORDS! MY FORMULAS! MY ANALOGIES!"

  I slowly, mechanically turned my head to stare at Elinia.

  She simply pressed a delicate finger to her lips. "Shhh."

  The Mastermind

  After classes ended for the day, Elinia approached me in the empty courtyard.

  "You explicitly told me, 'Use it better than I did,'" she stated matter-of-factly. "So, I did."

  I could barely form a coherent sentence. "Y-YOU... YOU GAVE MY BOOK TO THE PUBLISHERS AND CLAIMED IT WAS MERLIN'S?!"

  Elinia smiled brightly. "Yes. I spent the week translating your cipher into standard academic text, removing all of your weirdly personal, paranoid margin notes, and making the physics slightly more digestible for ordinary mages. Then, I used my royal authority to contact the Grand Publishers and instructed them to release it as a newly discovered manuscript by Merlin."

  "...WHAAAAAAT?!"

  "The Head Publisher was absolutely thrilled, by the way," she added innocently. "He said the theories were nothing short of revolutionary. He begged to know who the real author was..."

  She paused dramatically. "I told him, 'That is classified royal information.'"

  I let out a long, shaky exhale, collapsing onto a nearby stone bench.

  Her smile widened into a full beam. "He offered me a 15% royalty on all sales across the Kingdom. I, being incredibly generous, am willing to give you 12%."

  She sat down next to me. "It isn't a massive amount of gold per book, because I specifically demanded they price it cheaply so that commoners and standard mages could afford it. But think about the sheer volume, Helvard... Every single person in the Kingdom who buys a copy will be putting a small piece of silver directly into your pocket."

  I sat there, staring blankly at the stone path.

  I honestly didn't know whether to rejoice, cry, or scream into the void.

  On one hand: MY WORK. MY CODE. MY FORMULAS. MY EXPERIMENTS. They were now in the hands of the entire Kingdom.

  On the other hand: I remained completely anonymous. The world would learn something fundamentally new, and I wouldn't have to deal with the terrifying political fallout of being a "revolutionary genius."

  On the third hand: What if this knowledge created overwhelmingly powerful, dangerous mages in the future?

  But the fourth thought was the most paralyzing of all.

  Elinia... had saved me.

  From every possible angle. She saved me from unwanted fame. She saved me from the Inquisition's suspicions. She saved me from endless interrogations by the Archmages. And she had secured my financial independence.

  I looked at her. "Thank you," I said quietly.

  She looked back, her icy eyes softening. "You're welcome."

  The Next Day

  The Magical Theory instructor practically danced into the classroom, his face flushed with ecstatic joy.

  "Children!!" he announced loudly. "We have just received the newly published textbooks of Merlin! What an absolute, unparalleled genius that ancient man was! Effective immediately, we are adding an entirely new course to the curriculum: Electromagic!"

  The entire class buzzed with excitement.

  Noah, flipping through the textbook with narrowed eyes, muttered, "Hmm... the writing style is highly unusual. It almost reads as if it was written by a completely different person..."

  I nearly choked on my own saliva.

  "Whoa!" Finn yelled, slamming his fist on the desk. "It says here that localized lightning can actually amplify the kinetic impact of my fire spells!"

  Edgar was tracing the diagrams with a thick finger. "And you can use magnetic electrical currents to rapidly temper forged metal... fascinating..."

  And sitting quietly in the back row was Elinia.

  Her eyes were shining. And she wore the faint, undeniable smile of an absolute victor.