Only during a few moments of the day the sun fell vertically inside the cave, chasing away the shadows. Only when it was at its perfect zenith could it shine on Octavian training.

It had been two weeks since Aemilia had started training him, and Octavian finally felt his body had adjusted.

His [Survivor] class had absorbed those exercises as part of his effort to get out of the cave. At first, in fact, he thought he could obtain a class like [Athlete], or something like that; instead, he had made it to level 24 in his old class. He had obtained [Stamina - Minor] and [Strength - Minor]. By the end of the second week of training he had also acquired a skill that had given him a huge advantage.

[Irongrip]

His hands were able to grasp rocks with such strength that they could crack the most brittle ones. In this way he was able to climb up the first thirty meters of the wall and descend without difficulty. He had fallen only once, but Aemilia had trained him well for that too and, as if he had been a parkour expert, he had cushioned his fall by rolling, without getting nothing worse than a few bruises.

Unfortunately, he hadn't gained any skills from their training that could help him land better.

The way classes worked was peculiar: their levelling up could only be controlled up to a certain point. In fact, Octavian had imagined that, after repeating the same actions many times, he would certainly have learned a skill related to that aspect.

But he had been wrong.

Maybe it was better this way. These advances had taught Octavian new principles that he was investigating thanks to his other class.

[Scholar] continued to level up even when most of his day was occupied with physical training.

It had been four months now since he had arrived in that place. The texts had become easy to decipher for him: he could now read most of them by himself. Aemilia had also taught him how to read all the runes, thus allowing him to transcribe in Latin letters the names of dragons and other people mentioned in the books.

To be precise, dragons very rarely spoke of other races; very few creatures were worthy of their respect other than their own race.

All dragons' names, he had realised, could be transcribed as words similar to Latin ones. If his reasoning was sound, the explanation must have been quite simple: the language he found in the tomes was the equivalent of Latin, because it was an ancient language, no longer spoken in that world; on the contrary, the language that Aemilia spoke with him was automatically translated into English.

So, if someone knew an ancient, dead language, it should be possible to use that skill to access the knowledge of the language used by dragons as well.

Aemilia had helped him in learning the ancient runes and the modern language, too. According to her, all races and species used it to understand each other easily.

All that studying had made Octavian obtain [Focus], a skill he had acquired at level 20.

It might not have been a big change for someone else, but for Octavian it was as if he had just covered the distance between heaven and earth. He no longer had all the headaches that usually crippled him while thinking and reflecting, let alone studying. And not only that, he also finally had the ability to turn off the mental noise that usually made him read a page of an interesting book and get lost in a myriad of thoughts.

Aemilia had asked him if he was happy that way, or if maybe he preferred how his brain worked before.

Octavian replied that concentrating was not mandatory. He still had the ability to fantasise that had always distinguished him, but in this way he could keep it at bay: it had become a weapon and it was no longer the master who had enslaved him in the past.

This change for him was the equivalent of getting filthy rich overnight. Everyone would risk losing a lot of themselves with such a change, but the new possibilities were endless.

Besides, paired with [Scholar's Memory], another skill acquired recently, he could put aside his thoughts and return to them later; this allowed him to concentrate in a way that had never been possible for him before.

Most of his progress with the language was due to the acquisition of these two new skills.

"Do you feel ready to use magic now?" Aemilia asked. She had seen Octavian leafing through Delusum's book by himself, after having practically memorized it, reading it an uncountable number of times.

"Not yet. There is still a lot I cannot understand of what Aethereum explained to Delusum. At first, it seemed simpler to me, considering I come from a world with giant data banks. Still, my great knowledge is not enough. There are some connections that I still miss. Even using [Focus], my brain makes an incredible effort to put all those thoughts together in the right order."

Octavian felt as if he were trying to squeeze water with his bare hands. No matter how hard he tried, there was always a crack from which the liquid of knowledge could escape.

…

One evening, Aemilia had emerged from the depths with more wood than usual.

Octavian was quite curious now as to what was in there. But his fear was growing stronger and stronger.

"We will use this to cook the birds we caught," explained the woman, placing the branches on the ground and distracting Octavian from his thoughts. "With the rest I will teach you to build traps."

And that's what happened. While some birds were cooking slowly over the fire, Aemilia showed Octavian how to create bird traps to place on the cave walls.

Over time Aemilia had acquired vitality. She was no longer a shell without emotions except fear, but a real person, able to show her personality. Octavian's therapeutic company had allowed her to find the fragments of her own soul and put them back together.

The woman did not show the same acuity of thought as he did, but Octavian still delighted in talking to her, in telling her stories of his Earth and his life before his arrival there. He had never talked so much about himself with anyone else. If his old friendships had had to dig out fragments of his past, Aemilia received everything without even asking. She wasn't very open either and they talked a lot less than one would expect from two people who only had each other as company.

Her dark brown fur and her hair reflected the fire as she looked at Octavian and smiled.

That brief smile made something surge from the depths of Octavian's heart. A need to open himself up, to show one of the parts that he had always known to be hidden in his heart.

“Aemilia, there is one thing I've never talked to anyone about. I have been here for four months and I highly doubt that I will ever return to Earth. Do you mind if I share this with you?"

Aemilia had compassion in her eyes when she nodded, as if she already knew.

"I have met people who have taken their own lives," Octavian began. “Well, I've never understood suicide. What makes someone die by their own hand? Why does someone think that, when life has no more value, it is better to end it? It has always been an alien, foreign idea to me."

Octavian paused for a moment. He knew that up to this point there wasn't much out of the ordinary.

“The fact is that the idea of being able to lose everything appeals to me. There is a charm in this idea, something that draws a part of me like an infant to the mother's chest."

He began to think about his adventures in Africa, when he and his group had almost been captured by terrorists. Another time they had been blocked by criminals who had let them go after stealing some vaccines: they were happy with the idea of reselling them and did not want to draw too much attention to themselves.

In all those moments, Octavian had felt a connection with those situations, with the risk his life could be ending soon. What happens to men who were forced to face terrifying conditions? What happens when someone loses everything human in the world and gets tortured until he turns into an animal again?

The idea fascinated him.

It was as if he was attracted by the thought of losing everything, of showing a part of himself that he had never brought to light before.

“When I travelled to Africa, once I risked ending up in the hands of terrorists, people who enjoy asking for ransoms or killing prisoners in front of cameras, so that everyone can see. I know it doesn't have much to do with suicide, at first glance, but think about it: people commit suicide because they have nothing left, because their life is useless and too heavy to carry on. Many describe the moments before suicide as the need to rest and close their eyes forever. I have seen volunteers lose faith in humanity and take their own lives, people who have dedicated all of themselves to help others and create a better world. But every time someone talked to me, even just as a joke, about suicide, I didn't get it. I'm still not getting it.”

“When I think of the idea of losing everything, or rather, of not being able to lose anything anymore, I feel a strange euphoria. When I think these thoughts it is as if suddenly a part of me is unlocked, something ancient, a strange..."

Octavian felt a surge of shame. It was not easy for him to talk about these feelings. His greatest fear was that anyone who heard him talk about this subject would find him ridiculous, that they would lose consideration in him.

But Aemilia was not just any person. It was worth trying to talk to her.

“When I thought I could be kidnapped by terrorists, I felt butterflies in my stomach. You know, the feeling you usually get when you're in love. And maybe love is born just like the feeling I felt, thanks to the primal joy I felt at the thought of having terrorists in front of me and being able to tear them to pieces, to bite off their carotids. I feel the call of violence, of… ferocity. There is no anger, just coldness. The thought of seeing those people die, once my darker side is released, excites me."

"And are you afraid of this part of you?" Aemilia asked him.

"Afraid? Maybe,” Octavian ran a hand through his hair. His dark blue eyes were slightly moist and red. “The idea is so beautiful and fascinating that I have to constantly try not to think about it. Several times I have thought of giving up volunteering because, even if I like the idea, I know that once the genie is freed from the lamp, it cannot be pushed back."

Deep inside him, something was moving.

A part of the abyss in which the monstrous part of himself was contained tensed.

Octavian made a grimace on his face, to express how bad he felt about this problem: the real dilemma was finding someone who could understand what he was saying.

“When I think about these things, I feel alone. I've never been able to talk to anyone in my world about it; there killing is seen such a terrible act that, at the very thought that someone can find charm in it, anyone else would be horrified."

Aemilia said nothing this time, letting him speak.

The man imagined that, in a more primitive and crueller world like the one where he was now, where death could be found at every corner, his condition, so unique on Earth, was not so rare. He needed to find someone else like him, if only to keep from going crazy.

Octavian had been repressing his feelings for so long that now that the dam had broken he couldn't help but talk and talk. It was as if someone was finally draining the poison from his chest, leaving a trembling sensation of heat between his ribs.

Aemilia smiled at him with worried eyes, but she listened in silence, nodding from time to time. At some point she had decided to get close to him, to hold his hand. He couldn't have been happier, especially when he, without thinking, put his head or her strong legs.

He was telling her how there was a monster in him, how this part of himself attracted him more than it disgusted him; and that was his problem, which was an addict's dilemma. Giving in to that kind of drug was terrible for his health, but so beautiful, so vivid.

As he talked about it, Octavian could imagine what would happen if he plunged into the abyss, how he would never stop at the bad guys. Once the beast had been released from its cage, he would be prey to instincts too strong to be repressed.

He looked at his image in her eyes, though, and he felt calmer. In him there was no longer the fascination of dispensing death, but only what Aemilia was giving him. In this life too he had found something, no, someone who was worth not becoming a monster.

It was then that Aemilia leaned forward and placed a light kiss on his lips.

And it was always then that Octavian realized that he had found a safe haven, a reason to live and continue to fight against the dark side of himself in this world as well, a reason to become stronger and protect the person he loved.

Aemilia gave him a calm that he hadn't felt since he was a child and went on summer holidays at the seaside: the boredom and repetitiveness of those places made life resemble a bubble, slow and placid; they took away the craving and gave peace.

Peace.

That evening, Octavian and Aemilia slept with their hands intertwined and their faces close together, with souls touching and healing each other.

…

"If you ever want to tell me something, I can listen as you did for me."

They had finished their physical training once again. This time, Octavian had managed to climb the first thirty meters five times in a row. Then he had reached fifty, where the wall had an inverse slope, to be covered only with the arms: it was the most dangerous point of all; yet, once that was over, it would have been much easier to proceed to the top.

As he descended, using his now calloused hands and his new ability [Irongrip], he realized what it really meant to come out of the cave. It meant reaching freedom, exploring the world with Aemilia.

It had been about six months since he had arrived in this new world. He would never have imagined that it would take so long to find a solution to his situation.

He had read an impossible number of books, sometimes more than three a day, and had acquired knowledge that seemed far too rare not to be thoroughly investigated.

He often reflected on magic and Aethereum's teachings.

More than once he found himself daydreaming, imagining the boundaries between his reality and this one. He had found many answers and his brain had slowly adapted to the changes, making him able to climb yet another step of an invisible ladder.

He felt no compassion for anyone, not even for Delusum; yet, when he sensed the difficulty that the disciple had experienced, he was troubled. Delusum had come very close to being ready for magic. This opportunity had been taken away from him by pimps in the royal court, too busy with their little power games to see the bigger picture.

It was then that Octavian felt one of his rare fits of hatred. If only he could have put his destructive force at the service of good ...

Good is who do good, Aemilia had told him some days before.

Perhaps there was hope for him to become more than a sack of flesh ready to destroy the whole world and all its inhabitants. As long as Aemilia stayed close to him, his instincts could be tamed.

He was even more sure of it when she approached him and gave him a strong kiss on the lips. Octavian returned it, taking her face in his hands and giving her a light pinch on the ears. Aemilia hated when he did it and, in fact, he immediately fled; unfortunately for him, she was faster than any Bolt, but in order not to finish the game too soon, she made Octavian run under the branches of the trees for a few minutes before tackling him to the ground.

Both were sweaty and happy, sucked into a rush of energy and contentment. It was an unusual feeling for both of them, accustomed as they were to the negative side of their emotions.

Octavian had saved the lives of many children and had seen their mothers cry holding them to their breasts, reassuring them that they would see them grow up and have children themselves.

While he was specializing he had managed to carry out operations that not even the chief physician of the hospital had been able to perform.

He had performed feats he did not boast about. No, better: he didn't care about them at all.

The feat he was most proud of was the one he was carrying out there, in that cave, together with Aemilia. Rarely before he had wished to have next to him his friend Georgia, one of the few people he tolerated, to whom he would proudly show the woman who made him happy, with whom he ended up by chance.

Because, for once, he cared about everything.

If love really existed, it had to be what Octavian and Aemilia felt for each other.

Throughout his life Octavian had imagined that such a deep feeling could arise only in the isolation of an island - or of a remote cave who knows where -, not based on simple attraction, but on an inseparable bond. It was a relationship born out of need and hunger for the presence of the other. Once he left such an isolated place, love could survive, a line of fate would always connect their souls.

There was something great inside them. Wherever Octavian and Aemilia went they would always keep in their memories the cave that had consecrated their love.

If he had been more rational, at this moment, Octavian would have realised that he had idealized the bond with Aemilia, that he had made it into the projection of what he had always needed.

And, even if he had had the clarity to realise it, it wouldn't have made any difference. He would have been happy anyway.

…

“We should start preparing for real if you want to get out of here,” Aemilia said, picking nuts.

“Well, we'd need backpacks for food supplies. Maybe it would be useful to build something that allows us to carry water. And some books. We don't need much else."

Clothes, Octavian had none, except those he was wearing. They cyclically tore apart at some point, but that wasn't a problem.

[Equipment: Self-Repair]

It was one of his [Survivor] skills. His class had taken pity on him when he was on the verge of being practically naked, barely covered by the shreds that had once been his clothes. After that, from his boots to his long-sleeved shirt, everything was fixed within a day.

He supposed that, for an explorer, it was important not to have holes in his shoes so as not to lose a finger due to frost or after a bite from a poisonous snake.

He also noticed how his muscles had begun to better fill his clothes, thanks to the training.

“Most of the books I've read are about history or other useless things. All the manuals on potions, bestiaries - except the books of magic - we have already read them. My [Scholar's Memory] helps me, but I'd rather have these manuals with me at all times."

"Wait, I've got the right thing."

Aemilia immediately disappeared into the cave tunnel system and reappeared almost half an hour later, covered in filth from head to toe. She was waving a small leather bag.

"It's called a duffer bag."

Octavian took the object and looked at it from multiple sides, looking at it. It was barely as big as two fists.

“This is the ingenious invention of a people who traded with dragons until recently. Inside there is a space tens of times - hundreds, in some cases - larger than the real one. The production method has never been revealed, but it is suspected to be simpler than everyone thinks."

He heard Aemilia's words as he thought about how useful such an object would be.

He could have put food and water in there, provided he first found something where to put the water collected in the pool in the centre of the cave. Aemilia might have been looking for something like bottles, skins, or flasks in the corridor.

He had to admit that he was a little sorry to leave that cave without having acquired the ability to use magic. But the skills that had been given to him by the [Survivor] class were enough for the climb.

Before leaving that refuge, he should have made sure he could return. He had to find plants to weave some huge rope, if he ever wanted to go back.

He glanced at the tunnel that led to the deeper parts of the cave.

“You know, every now and then I think maybe I should go to the darker parts of the cave. But then I remember one of my favourite myths."

Aemilia was taken aback by his words.

It was not strange that he talked to her about these "myths", stories invented by men to find meaning in something greater than themselves. Only, she still hadn't gotten used to the speed of Octavian's thoughts, always bouncing from topic to topic.

“If I think I am losing something in life, I think of this story. The moral depends on its many interpretations, but I like to give it a fairly personal explanation.

“Orpheus was a young man, a skilled musician in playing the lyre and singing, so skilled that he enchanted men, nature and even gods. Besides, his mother was Calliope, a minor goddess, muse of eloquence and poetry."

Even the birds, which had been making a lot of noise lately because of the traps they got caught into, fell silent.

Octavian's words became the only sound inside the cave.

“Orpheus loved the nymph Eurydice. One day, while walking in a meadow, the young girl was bitten by a snake and died. With his lyre, Orpheus certainly could not save her. But one thing he could do: he could pray to the gods with his mournful song and force them to pity him. Thus, the gods of the Underworld were moved to compassion. Above all Persephone, the queen of the Underworld, allowed Orpheus to go and bring Eurydice back to the world of the living.”

“How arrogant, don't you think? Going to the world of the dead and demanding that someone come back to life could be considered equally insolent and courageous. An undeniable gesture of love.”

“This prompted the queen of the Underworld to please the young man. On one condition: that, while returning to the world of the living, Orpheus did not turn to see if Eurydice was following him. Implicitly, this meant trusting Hades and Persephone, rulers of the world of the dead, gods of oblivion; it meant putting one's happiness in their hands, demonstrating faith, staving off hubris.”

“But impiety, hubris, arrogance - all the names we use to call disrespect for everything divine - were the attributes of Orpheus, who believed himself to be a god just like them.”

“Once he reached the exit of the underworld, a few steps away from salvation, he believed that the gods had made fun of him and looked back over his shoulder. For a moment, his life was full again when he saw Eurydice smiling at him; but her smile became sad and she dissolved under his eyes and he was not allowed any other journey into the underworld.”

“From this story I have drawn my conclusions, namely that the faculty of being able to doubt what is beyond the understanding of mortals belongs only to the gods. Too many men have gotten lost looking for meaning in the world shaped for them by the gods, imagining that they could understand the same divine secrets that had never been their prerogative. But there are things in this world that belong only to the gods.”

“Whenever we have something beautiful in front of us, whenever we feel faith in something, we also feel the need to look over our shoulder, to check that the deities are not making fun of us. But what right do mortals have to investigate secrets that should never be theirs?”

“And those who lose faith, who look back, find a world without sense, empty and monstrous, where everything loses its meaning. Faith does not have to be in a god. Yet every man needs not to fall into total nihilism. But every time we look over our shoulder, we find something we don't want to see, something that makes us become a shell without life and faith.”

“There are those who make a woman the object of their faith, those who kneel before an invisible being who they call God. Those who embrace a career, or those who instead choose family. But all sane people believe in something, even though they know that their world actually belongs to the divine, not the mortal.”

“It seems to me to be in the exact same situation. If I looked inside these tunnels, I have a feeling that I would lose something that I could never get back. I know it's silly, but I had a dream the other day, and when I woke up, it all came to my mind. I don't know if it's the excess of roots and nuts, but I don't want to tempt fate."

…

Octavian held Aemilia in his arms and tried to kiss her in vain, since she was several centimetres taller. Aemilia bowed her head and their lips closed on each other's.

It was the last gesture of affection before starting the climb.

They had made an inventory of everything they would need outside the cave. Octavian had decided to take no more than a couple of books with him.

The man made a final reconnaissance tour around the dark walls, tracing every available inch with his hand. That rock had become so familiar that it seemed intimate.

He followed the markings on the floor to the part of the cave that was hit by direct light from the opening in the ceiling. He had stopped studying those rituals, whatever they were, when he had received Delusum's book from Aemilia; and that very book was one of the few he would take with him out of the cave. There was a wisdom among the words of the disciple of Aethereum, probably derived from the master, a depth foreign to the modern world.

When Octavian was reading about Aethereum, it seemed to him that he had Seneca's texts in his hand again, so universally true, profound, enlightening.

Octavian knew many people who liked to quote ancient or modern famous authors just for show, but without understanding the weight of their words. It sounded good, especially when they wanted to strut in front of ignorant spectators. However, they had never thought long and hard about the world and how it really worked, why a person had bothered to put those words on the page.

But now was not the time to reflect on these matters.

Rather, it was really a shame that Octavian had so little time to study those markings on the floor. However, he dropped that thought and used [Focus] to think only about the climb. As he had discovered a few months earlier, this skill could be used not only for studying.

He began to observe the rock face and retrace the path he had taken hundreds of times by now. He had also tried it with stones tied to his back, in case he had to carry a heavy backpack. The duffer bag, however, had also made this task much easier. He was very satisfied with what he had achieved in those months of living in the cave.

Aemilia was waiting for him in front of the wall. She had advised Octavian to go first: in case he fell, she could grab him and pull him up. In those months, the woman had begun to eat consistently and her muscles were filled and strengthened beyond all human limits.

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Octavian also went to the wall. He put his hand on it and took a deep deep breath. It was time to get out of that hole and go back to explore the world. A new world.

The climb began.

The first ten meters flew in front of Octavian, who had covered them dozens of times.

He looked down and noticed Aemilia just behind him. The woman gave him a smile.

Octavian winked and continued the climb, soon reaching thirty meters.

The sky was clear and there were no clouds in sight. They had waited for the weather to be as good as possible; if it had rained it would have been a big problem - even if they had both trained for this eventuality.

They continued to the beginning of the inverted slope, undoubtedly the most difficult part of the whole wall to climb. Octavian didn't get distracted, he traced a path with his eyes and, breath after breath, grabbed the protruding solid rocks with his bare hands, with a firm grip. An iron grip.

He had never been afraid of dying. Not even now he was.

He continued undaunted, overcoming the most dangerous point of the rocky face in a few minutes. Not even a professional climber could have kept up with the pace he and Aemilia were keeping.

His face had turned into a smile on a blank page. All the concentration in the world would not have been enough to prevent him from thinking about the fantastic adventures he would have lived with Aemilia, once he had left the cave.

When he reached about a hundred meters in height, Octavian's heart began to dance in his chest. It was enthusiasm! They were climbing a wall the height of a skyscraper, and without ropes!

The opening of the cave was finally in sight. Octavian and Aemilia could finally—

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACK!

A bird, pierced by the wooden pole of one of the traps placed by Aemilia, began to scream at the top of its voice, with such power that Octavian’s ribcage vibrated. A note of intelligence in the winged enemy's eyes made him tremble.

We're under attack.

It was a spontaneous thought, even before a cloud of other birds appeared, carrying sharp stones with their feet.

[Scholar's Memory]

He remembered reading about that species in one of the books written by dragons. They were dirty beasts who loved to throw stones at the most fragile constructions of the masters of the skies. Impertinent and cruel. They had also stoned baby dragons, those cursed beasts.

"Run!" Octavian shouted to Aemilia as he began to climb at a speed he was not used to. It didn't matter: they had to reach the summit at all costs. It wouldn't take more than a couple of minutes to get to the top, especially at that new speed.

It was then that the stone throwing began.

There must have been at least two hundred birds, Octavian estimated with a quick glance.

He went through all the skills of his class, looking for something that could help him. The wall was almost perfectly vertical, if not actually bent outward. Simple to climb, but also a great spot for bouncing stones.

He was hit twice in the ribs and once on the side of the head. It hurt, but the stones weren't big enough to wound him badly.

Thankfully, many of the stones didn't have enough momentum to really hurt them. However, as if they had known it, the birds rose higher and started throwing stones at them from higher up.

Things got bad.

Octavian's breath was broken as a stone hit his back at high speed. Something had just snapped.

It was then that he had to pause for a second to breathe again and saw Aemilia balancing only on her legs, then grabbing two stones, one in each hand, and throwing them at monstrous speed towards the birds.

Three beasts fell dead weight towards the centre of the cave, frightening all those around and giving the two a moment of peace.

Aemilia passed Octavian, giving him a look of reassurance. She would protect him.

She began to move her hand over her head to deflect the stones that came in their path, or even catch them in the air and send them back at their enemies.

During those moments, Octavian kept his head down and his body protected behind Aemilia's powerful limbs. They proceeded slowly, but always upwards.

Ten minutes passed.

The top of the cave was getting closer and closer.

And then...

A stone larger than the others hit Aemilia on the head.

Octavian saw the woman's grip loosen as she began to fall. She had lost consciousness.

[Focus]

[Focus]

After using the skill twice, Octavian felt something tighten in his chest, like the string of a stringed instrument. The tension generated was a barrier between him and what he needed.

His breathing became laboured.

And that string stretched in his chest snapped.

He froze his own blood and focused all his attention on that moment. An arm grabbed Aemilia before she fell, while a couple of broken ribs protested the addition of new weight.

[Focus]

Time began to pass more slowly.

Another stone was released from the paw of a bird, right towards Octavian. But now that the seconds were ticking away slowly, his trajectory was predictable.

Octavian took a deep breath and went into apnoea.

A few moments before the stone hit him, he shifted Aemilia's weight onto his arm, and this made him slide down about five centimetres.

Swinging Aemilia, he used the recoil of the woman's body to jump up and grab a ledge.

Another stone was about to hit him on the head. Octavian moved a little farther, just to avoid it, thanks to another swing generated by Aemilia's dangling body.

The birds created concentric circles in the sky, an apocalypse of wings and hard beaks. Even harder were the stones they threw rhythmically to eliminate the two climbers.

Those damn birds were too smart.

Few were the moments in life he would have remembered with so much hatred. He thought he could see the devil's sardonic grin mocking him.

Perhaps Satan did not know how much Octavian enjoyed betting on his own life.

The [Scholar] continued, undaunted, to climb the rock wall, gritting his teeth, ignoring any background noise in his mind. Objectives: not to be hit by the stones, protect Aemilia, reach the top.

As much as he tried to dodge them, some stones hit their mark, Octavian's arms or back. But, even before he knew it, he came to the edge of the cliff.

He saw endless expanses of green grass, uncontaminated land, brightly coloured flowers. The sky of an almost purplish blue overlooked him and the clouds welcomed him into the world that would host his happiness.

Aemilia's body, which had more muscle and skeletal mass than him, was getting heavier and heavier.

He moved her body vehemently. He had to throw her over the edge before his arm lost all strength and let her fall back into the cave. Unfortunately for him, this meant having to give up dodging some of the stones.

The first hit him on the temple, opening a gash in his scalp and almost making him let go of the rock face and Aemilia.

He couldn't give up right now.

Octavian's mind processed the information from Delusum and Aethereum in a remote corner. He tried with all his might for a solution, recalling all the information acquired in those six months of studying magic.

There had to be something, some kind of solution that could help him. He imagined the two dragons talking, the great [Sage] instructing his [Disciple].

Octavian was beginning to visualize images in his mind, information that could help him get out of trouble.

It seemed to him that he was reliving a memory, that he could see himself as Delusum and, above all, the old Aethereum in front of him. And he felt the eyes of the great dragon, of the [Sage], along with all the power of his image, swallow him. It was like being thrown to the bottom of the ocean in an instant, realizing the full weight of what it was like to be at the top of the world - what it was like to be a creature at the top of the food pyramid.

He roared like an animal. No, like a dragon, so strong that the birds lost their courage and broke the ranks.

He found enough strength to throw Aemilia over the edge and then hoisted himself up, resting his arms on the soft lawn.

His [Focus] vanished, replaced by a huge headache.

He looked up at the clear sky and thanked all the gods for the skill that had saved his and Aemilia's lives.

Now a new adventure began. He could embrace a less dark and less lonely reality.

He took a deep breath and smiled.

He turned to Aemilia to hold her close and wake her—

"Aemilia?"

She wasn't there.

"Aemilia?" he called again. No-one replied.

She would never have played such a prank on Octavian, she would not have been able to. Nor could she have decided to leave him alone, now that they were both finally free.

Where the hell had Aemilia gone?

All Octavian could think of were atrocities.

"Aemilia?!"

The man looked around in despair.

He was alone now. Even the birds, which were attacking him until a few seconds ago, did not fly above him anymore.

He searched wherever his eyes could go, stood up and carefully examined the clearing.

Nothing.

"Aemilia?!"

The woman's name continued to echo in the void.

Eventually, the letters that made up his name scattered through the air and never came back.

Octavian looked inside the cave, but could not make out the bottom. The sun's rays had been covered by a cloud that suddenly came above him.

A light drizzle pattered on his shoulders.

Octavian felt something move inside him.

He squinted several times and tried in vain to relax the muscles of his body, which were contracting against his own will.

There was something evil about what was happening.

How was it possible that Aemilia had vanished? It couldn't be possible.

It couldn't.

It couldn't.

It couldn't.

It couldn't.

His mind sped up, considering every possibility.

He twisted his neck so hard to the side that he thought he was going to break it for a second. Instead, the result was only a terrible sound of bones crushing other bones. For an instant he wished that his bones grind each other to dust, that the whole world would turn to dust.

The more he kept looking into the depths of the cave, into the monster's mouth, the more pressure he felt that made breathing more difficult.

A part of him - the part that had grown with Aemilia by his side, his caring part - was desperately trying to get him away from there.

He took a couple of deep breaths and tried to calm down, closing his eyes. A series of notifications hit his mind.

[Survivor level 32!]

[Survivor level 33!]

[Scholar level 40!]

[Skill obtained - Hyper-Focus]

He didn't think for a moment about levels or skills.

An expression of pure contempt appeared on Octavian's face.

He felt his unconscious talking to him, the deepest part of himself warning him, telling him not to open his eyes towards the cave, towards the abyss; it was trying to protect him, to prevent him from leaping towards the charm he had always looked upon with distant longing.

Instead, Octavian opened his eyes and looked at the cave.

The other part of him began to speak to him.

It told him to look down, deeper, deeper

To jump.

Without Aemilia — if Aemilia was nothing, what was he supposed to be?

If he had finally lost everything, what else could he ever become?

Octavian sought a rational part of himself to better explain what had just happened.

He knew there had to be an answer.

And then it occurred to him that one of the last things he had told Aemilia was the myth of Orpheus. But he, unlike the young musician, had not been arrogant: he had left the underground tunnels unexplored and left them into the hands of the gods.

And maybe that lack of arrogance had doomed him.

Now he knew where to find the answers he needed.

He looked into the depths of the cave, which had never seemed so terrifying as it did now. All the happy and grandiose memories of Aemilia had that cave as a frame, resting buried in a place where she had hoped never to have to set foot again.

He looked around, looked at the outside world. There, a life like the one he had had on Earth awaited him. Perhaps, with a little effort, he could find another person with whom life would be liveable. But the other part of himself was telling him that this would not be the case, that there was only one Aemilia - if she had ever really existed.

If she hasn't been just a fantasy.

If Aemilia hadn't existed, wouldn't the image, the thought of her have been enough to soothe his soul?

For a moment, Octavian welcomed inside of him some of the beauty that surrounded him.

All around the mouth of the cave there was incredibly lush vegetation: after the expanse of green grass, there was a forest very similar to the Amazon rainforest in South America. The trees thickened proceeding inwards, so much so that the inside of the forest was impossible to see; the most fascinating thing was how the shrubs stratified, making room for each other, and creating a succession of exotic plants and trees of a green such as can be seen only hundreds of kilometres from a city.

Sinuous, bright brown trunks almost seemed to move in the distance, majestic and able to tower over all the rest of the vegetation. Every kilometre or so, stood huge specimens of trees that Octavian had never seen, with branches of a bright and vivid green.

In the midst of the vegetation, a huge river made its way, passing a couple of kilometres from where Octavian was. It had water so blue it made him rub his eyes several times, despite how far he was.

The Amazon rainforest had been one of the most beautiful places he had ever visited, yes, but this ... This was magic.

He could feel it, palpable, after all the meditations guided by Delusum's book. He could see the magic almost with the naked eye.

There was something powerful in the air, mysteries ready to be unravelled. How many things could he have studied, how many could have created an excitement and emotions that had never harboured in him. He was in another world, why would he have to surrender to his worst instincts?

He looked again into the abyss.

He smiled.

He let himself fall backwards, opening his arms to the sky and his new nature.

He closed his eyes.

[Hyper-Focus]

Time slowed down and became a fraction of what it had been before. Octavian felt the ability to focus his mind as he had never been before.

He focused all his attention on the fall. He had about six seconds before he crashed on the ground. His brain gave him the information with a simple mathematical operation. Physics lessons he had never listened to came back to him, resurfacing from the past.

He remembered all the words of Delusum and the teachings of Aethereum.

Aethereum, my master, forced me to meditate on the nature of the world for a hundred years.

Octavian felt all the nature he had observed moments before and the one from his world passing through his veins, understanding the movements of the leaves, the paths of small insects and, finally, the entire cycle of life.

It all passed in front of him in one second.

Another hundred would have been devoted to feeling the mana inside my body...

He concentrated his mind inside his body, where he saw scattered, weak energy. It was like looking at an endless series of puddles scattered on a slab of concrete.

He called up that energy and made it coagulate, little by little, in a small ocean. He called her from all parts of his body, from wherever it was, so that a single mass would take shape in his mind.

Two seconds later, he had gathered all the mana inside his body.

... then another hundred more to perceiving it outside myself.

He opened his eyes.

He saw a myriad of colours hiding around him, dancing between the light and inanimate objects, running on the blood of the birds that had died in the fight against him and Aemilia.

He felt the world around him and all the life he had lived.

But that still wasn’t enough.

A whole second passed.

The ground was now very close.

[Hyper-Focus]

There was still something escaping him as his mind tried to grasp the meaning of the universe in a split second.

[Hyper-Focus]

[Hyper-Focus]

His bloodshot eyes pierced Maya's veil.

He saw the world as it really was, empty and meaningless.

He felt humans, animals and all living creatures transform into insects in his mind.

Everything had lost its value, but a big smile spread across his face. A stream of euphoric emotions ran through him.

His grey, emotionless, cold and negative life was gone.

Octavian burst into a thunderous laugh as he did a backward somersault in the air and, with a little manipulation of the mana, cushioned the impact with the ground.

His first manipulation.

It wasn't perfect, and he landed with a heavy thud. Still, he just kept smiling, his eyes now full of life.

He felt magic run through his veins with the same force with which a waterfall pours into his basin.

It was time to observe the truth.

Octavian concentrated for a few moments, thinking about the first skill he would have liked to learn that day with Aemilia, before reading Delusum's book. A flame rose in mid-air from his palm and, moments later, took the shape of a globe.

In the reflections of the flame's light something occult and forbidden fluttered. There was so much wrong with the essence that it should have warmed and, at worst, destroyed… but now there was something more; there was a cruel and universal essence. There was evil.

There was wrath.

With another simple thought, the globe began to emit much more light.

In addition to everything he felt now, inside him there was also a dull anger, mute for some reason. At least for the moment.

He headed for the darkest and deepest tunnels, using the globe's light as a guide.

One step. Two.

Every centimetre he walked would drive him to madness.

It was an acrid smell of death that welcomed him into those tunnels.

He entered one of the rooms, passing the door on his left, with a smile still on his face.

“Let’s see.”

The first thing he found were still rotting remains of skeletons that were not human. The skulls had a different composition and the bodies were at least twenty or thirty centimetres larger than human ones.

Some skeletons were massive and stocky, others slender and minute.

Men and women.

Octavian passed over most of these, stopping to examine a few just out of curiosity.

The skeletons had two depressions on the sides of the skull into which the long ears had to probably fit.

They're like Aemilia.

There was not much doubt.

He left the room and continued exploring.

Near his feet ran the channel of rotten water that reached the centre of the cave. He walked for several meters, following it, until he reached a huge and very high room.

All around the walls stood great trees full of branches, as dry as bones. Many of the trunks had been cut clean, as well as the larger branches. At its centre were several underground lakes, at least three meters deep, which smelled of life. The waters were clear and lightened by a luminescent moss that covered the walls of the pools and reached the bottom. Fish of different shapes, each more beautiful than the other, swam quietly on the bottom of the pools.

This is where the wood and fish that Aemilia recovered when they needed it came from.

The small river with dark waters, however, continued its journey beyond the lakes. Octavian still followed its path.

A little further on, the passage narrowed again, returning to take the shape of a dark and narrow tunnel. Other rooms opened into the corridor.

To the right and left there were huge rooms - eight or nine - with floors covered with the memory of richly decorated carpets. Several desks were arranged in the centre of the rooms, accompanied by as many chairs.

The greatest peculiarity of those rooms were the walls lined with bookcases. Some books were missing from the shelves; he supposed they were the ones Aemilia had brought to him. The others, on the other hand, were neatly arranged on the shelves.

Octavian took one in his hands and examined it. The binding was smooth, well made, but it didn't feel like leather. It looked like it was made of human skin. He put it back in place with a shiver.

He moved to study the tables, which were piled high with disorderly scribbled papers. He could not understand anything that was written on them.

However, he noticed that some of the chairs had very strong chains linked to the armrests, useful for holding a prisoner still. There were stains of dried blood on those desks.

The Enchantments that had preserved the wood had also preserved the atrocities committed there. A warning and a curse, or perhaps a reward.

The rooms were all the same and he didn't stop there too much.

He returned to the main hallway and went deeper. With each step he took, the cave became less and less cared for, the floors were worn down by the passage of countless animal feet and paws, the arch on Octavian's head tightened and became less and less comfortable to cross.

The endless system of tunnels and rooms had turned into necrotic scars within the earth.

The rooms that were at that point of the walkway were made of the same dark stone that gave shape to that abyss; they were bare, devoid of any furniture or objects.

The only thing they contained were more elaborate versions of the diagrams at the beginning of the cave. Some of the diagrams still glowed with a sickly greenish light.

It wasn't even real magic, but a shadow of it contained within the runes.

A rush of euphoria shot through Octavian's body as he approached the runes.

[Hyper-Focus]

He began to interpret the meaning of that magic, the purpose for which it was created.

Now he could do it. Now he had reached the state that Delusum had pursued for so long, the one that had led Aethereum to become the greatest [Sage].

He put his hand close to the green writing, touching its substance and, above all, its magic.

The diagrams were ancient and full of corrupted power. He could see bodies that were… he couldn't see well. Damn. He felt the hitherto dormant wrath begin to boil, but at the same time give him new strength. He had never been at the mercy of his emotions before.

It was all so ...

So...

Fantastic.

He laughed heartily as he concentrated all of himself on understanding that magic. Octavian focused on the sensation that pervaded his body, that ecstatic storm that revealed the secrets of the world and the entire universe to him, that he could penetrate space-time as if it were tissue paper.

He felt something.

[Enhanced: Hyper-Focus]

"Enhanced? Not bad."

He finally had a vision of that magic, which struck him as his own emotions. Strong. Clear.

Vivid.

He was in the room with runes on the floor. All around the walls were, hanging like pictures in an art gallery, half-rabbit, half-monkey creatures screaming hollowly, releasing no sound. But he heard everything else. He could hear someone's footsteps beating on the rocky floor with rhythm, waiting. And he saw the figure. He was a human being - no. He looked at him better. He looked like a human being. He strongly felt the lack of humanity. The pupils were slits and the irises merged with the sclera in a colour that contained the whole rainbow.

Before him was another similar being, waiting silently with his arms crossed.

"Disappointing results this time too," said the first, putting a hand on his temple. “Experiments from 1334 to 1340 are useless. None of the Ahalis have shown great changes, indeed, it is clear that they are dying. In addition, the energy needed to complete 1337’s formation process is much greater than the others. We should suspend the experiment."

Octavian looked back at the Ahalis and saw them sink their hands into their own skin. They began to remove their skin and flesh in front of the two humanoids, screaming with the most deafening silence Octavian had ever heard.

The second humanoid yawned, and with his yawn a puff of smoke came out of his mouth. A dragon.

“These Ahalis show no possibility of surviving. Still, the preliminary experiments were promising, showing that the submissive and terror-filled nature of the rabbits would facilitate the absorption of the enhancements."

The image disappeared.

The room returned empty, but a voice began to recite aloud all the news regarding the last of the experiments.

"Experiment zero? Checked two days ago. It's still absorbing rituals to make its magic more powerful. It survives without problems, but its mind is still independent and rebellious. Continuing to strengthen it is not an immediate danger, but it would be better to work on the [Geas]. The [Seals] are doing a great job, but we're playing with the unknown here. It is better to be sure of what we do."

The figure of a man slowly materialized. He nodded several times over the next minute, as Octavian saw the Ahalis inside the bubble of silence die out one by one, choking on their own air.

"I'm going to check the rituals."

Octavian followed him without even thinking about it, moving his body in the present between the rooms that the man had crossed in the past.

The trickle of dark water was always there, accompanying every movement inside the tunnels.

And it went deeper and deeper.

Always deeper.

In total darkness.

She heard a woman's inhuman screams penetrate the blanket of silence summoned upon her, too loud for the magic the dragon could wield.

Then, finally, Octavian reached the end of the tunnel. There was one last room there, right in front of him.

He followed the humanoid through the door.

An Ahali woman was crucified in the centre of the room. Her hands were nailed to a post and her feet were on a pedestal with barely enough space to give her support. Around her neck she had a metal collar that made blood drip out whenever she moved.

Under her feet passed the small rivulet Octavian had followed through his travel in the cave The woman's blood dripped there.

“Physiology is regular and in perfect homeostasis. Its mana reserves appear to have been expanded by the process. Its screams contain elaborate magic, but also raw mana. Fascinating."

The woman screamed and screamed, unable to do anything else.

She had lost speech and sanity months ago.

Neither the blood nor the parts of her body that showed living flesh and organs were disgusting. The most revolting thing was the coldness of the being at her side, who from time to time delighted in looking his guinea pig in the eye with a perverse smile.

The chains that blocked her were clearly enchanted, but they didn't stop her from squiggling. The wounds to her limbs opened and healed up in a unending cycle of torture.

The owners of that creature had no intention of putting her to death as long as she was of any use to them. Although killing her would have been the most charitable act they would commit in all their lives.

The normal nudity of the Ahalis was now wrong, an existence error, exposing that woman's fears and weaknesses to the world.

The specimen's eyes were purple, full of magic and life. She had been deprived of love and emotion, but a flame burned in her eyes that Octavian had never seen before.

Her irises were a promise of a different world, unaffected by people's wickedness. She felt no anger, only pain that she hoped would atone for the wrongdoing attributed to her race.

All the sacredness of the moment, the divinity contained in the woman's condition was extinguished by the words of the dragon.

“Let His Majesty Azaxium know that once we fully penetrate the creature's mind, we may have a new entity in our hands. The Ahalis can level up because they're not simple mindless minions. But this creature could be the first step towards the creation of a being unable to level up, and yet powerful enough to be an excellent soldier for our holy war."

Octavian saw the woman's eyes linger on him, before her smile could awaken him from the spell.

He laughed when he thought of the words of Lucretius that he had read and reread countless times: It will not be the light and the glare of the sun that will bring us out of the darkness, but the knowledge of things.

How much he wished those words were true.

How much he wanted it ...

He looked up.

The man found himself in front of a corpse, still chained but as beautiful as the woman with whom he had spent the best moments of his life.

It didn't take a genius to predict such a predictable outcome.

It didn't take a genius to understand torture.

It didn't take a genius to know who number zero was.

He arrived in front of the woman who had given him peace.

His body was neither skeletal nor rotten.

It was mummified.

Something had preserved it, giving an oily sheen to the shrunken and dried tissues. But her beauty remained unchanged in her scrawny face and violet eyes.

Octavian stood still and tears began to flow down his cheeks.

He screamed at the top of his voice, until he tasted blood in his mouth. His will moved the mana to heal his flesh, only so that he could then reopen it with new screams.

He banged his fists on the ground in despair. He felt shaken, an infinite anger pervaded his heart. He could have lifted his arm to the sky to tear it in two.

Aemilia...

All that she had given him, all the sensations he had begun to feel at the woman's side, all the love he had learned to feel, all the things he had felt for the first time in his life… it was all gone.

Slowly, Octavian rose to his feet, studying the space around him and looking again at the mummified corpse of the woman he had loved.

“Don't you want to run away from me?” Was one of the first things Aemilia had said to him. She had pronounced the sentence in a discontinuous, slow, fragmented, incomplete way - but he had understood it anyway.

If he had understood earlier that Aemilia was a creation of his mind, yes, he would certainly have run away.

If he had had the courage to remember earlier that he had explored that cave, he would have tried to climb the wall as black as night the day after his arrival in that place.

If he was truly as ready for death as he said, he would not have removed the memories that the runes had given him and he would have embraced them, he would have made them his own.

Octavian moved the globe of evil flames towards the woman's abandoned body and placed it on the ground, in front of the wooden cross. Then, he generated another to make light. He knew what he should do.

Drops of sweat rolled down the sides of his square, set jaw. Flowing from his head to his back, the sweat tried to freeze him, to make him make a different decision, perhaps moved by Aemilia's spirit.

The fire started quickly.

It consumed what had tried to remain preserved until then. The mummy disappeared inside the flames, illuminating her departure from the world of the righteous.

It didn't take a genius to figure out what the dragons had done to her.

But it took a monster to put an end to this rotten world.

A rush of euphoric heat ran through Octavian's body as he prepared to leave the cave.

The moment had come to start having fun.

[Class Loss]

[Class Absorbed: Scholar]

[Class Absorbed: Survivor]

[Class obtained: Calamity - Level 1!]