Upon arriving at the archives, Elias immediately noticed the presence of an individual whom he hadn't seen in a long while.

Professor Doherty was seated behind her designated desk, her expression one of leisure as she chatted casually with the mildly agitated Sophia.

She turned towards the concealed entrance upon noticing Elias's arrival, gesturing for him to come towards her table with a casual smile.

Elias obliged, curious as to what his elusive employer had been up to for her not to show up at the academy for almost three whole weeks.

In fact, he hadn't seen her ever since his official employment, a fact quite shocking as she was the Dean of the History Department and needed to be present for relevant matters.

Elias had heard from his senior employee—Sophia, that this was quite normal for the professor, as she could disappear for months on end sometimes, relegating her official role to the Assistant Dean.

The only reason she was still the Dean was due to her extensive knowledge in the field of Sapience and etheric research, as no professor present within the academy could best her in those fields.

Elias slowly approached the desk, his gaze alternating between Professor Doherty and Sophia, before offering a greeting.

"Good morning professor, it's been quite a long time. I hope you've been well?"

Professor Doherty let out a jovial smile,

"Of course I am. I've been really busy as of late. Sorry for not being present more often."

"Sorry? Well, you don't seem sorry to me. Somehow I suspect that you secretly enjoy pushing your responsibilities onto other people. Such as the Assistant Dean and... we your employees!"

Sophia quipped, clearly annoyed at the professor's laid-back attitude.

"Whatever do you mean? I've been out on investigative research all this while. It's not my fault that it sometimes interferes with my official duties, now is it?"

Professor Doherty quickly defended herself, feigning innocence as if she didn't catch on to what Sophia was implying.

Sophia huffed in frustration, storming away from the professor's table to another section of the archives.

Elias watched her walk away, glancing at Professor Doherty soon after with a gaze that looked to ask 'Are you really going to let her leave that?'

"Oh, don't worry about her." Her expression idle and relaxed. "I'll just increase her wages this month, that always seems to calm her down."

Elias shook his head amusingly, before noticing the sets of oddly styled books neatly arranged on her desk. These were books he hadn't seen before, drawing his curiosity as their styles and covers appeared a lot older than the others on the table.

He leaned in for a closer look, before turning towards the laid-back female professor.

"Professor you said you have been busy, does that have anything to do with these odd books on your desk?"

Professor Doherty appeared unbothered by the question, reaching for the book on the top pile and flipping through its worn-out pages.

"Yes, it is. I've been investigating the traces of one of the relics our founder left behind, and I was lucky to finally pinpoint its location after almost three years of extensive search." She stopped at a certain page, turning the page to Elias for him to take a closer look at its contents. "It turns out that our founder was engrossed in some new research before his disappearance, isolating himself on an inhabited island close to the Black Sea border to focus on completing it. These were the notes he left behind, notes which would revolutionize how we interact with Oddities as people of mortal blood."

Elias closely examined the contents on the page, his eyes glancing through the hastily drawn diagrams of different types of Mutated Beasts and biological Oddities.

There was an image of a detached scaly arm labeled to belong to something called the Underwater Siren, and this arm was fixed at the shoulder joint of a human-like figure, fusing into it and becoming its new arm.

Elias's eyes drifted to the writings scribbled below the diagram, his eyes widening in shock and surprise.

He turned towards Professor Doherty urgently, meeting her playful gaze.

"Professor... is this something you should be showing a student so easily? The contents on this page are more extreme than I thought!"

Professor Doherty chuckled in mild amusement, before laying back into her chair.

"It's fine, it's fine. You are already an Apprentice of this academy, you should start getting used to things like this. Besides it's not like it's going to be some kind of high-level secret anyway, I've already gotten permission from the Principal to include it in your Paranormal Studies syllabus once the contents have been verified. It won't do any harm for you to have an early peak, so take it as a side benefit that comes with your job. Sophia is aware as well."

Elias calmed down a bit, but couldn't help to remain baffled at what he had just seen.

The contents on the page contradicted with a major part of what he thought he knew about the foundational nature of Oddities, especially when compared to present-day research on the topic.

Previously Elias had thought that Oddities were made up of chaotic and unstable levels of ether, making them appear completely incompatible with the physical body.

The only way Oddities could be wielded by one of physical and mortal nature based on his knowledge was through Spiritual Tethering, a method that applied the use of a more esoteric method rather than physical.

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This is because the erratic ether could rip apart and utterly destroy the more minimally defended physical body, but would find a harder time doing so to the Inner Body of Truth as it also has its nature firmly grounded in ether. This would allow them to easily come into a state of equilibrium, a situation that was previously thought to be completely impossible when dealing with the physical body.

Now not only did the contents on the page completely disprove this, but it also put an alternate method into perspective, one which would aid the physical body to fuse with not only Odd Entities, but Mutated Beasts as well.

The contents state that as long as the physical body has high resonance with ether, it should be able to merge and assimilate into the subject ether, creating a state where they can become one with each other.

The physical body housing high ether resonance would be able to partially balance the raging ether for a little while during the merging surgery, and would then be assimilated into the subject's body and act as one.

As long as the body could bear the intrusion of the entity’s ether into their own, the mixed-in ether would then confuse the latter, causing it to mistake the physical body as its own and act in tandem with it.

This can only work with one body part, as fusing more than one part would lead to a destabilization within the synchronized ether and could cause a breakdown.

The possibilities of this research were endless, as Spiritual Tethering could only link Odd entities and Objects, whereas this method could work using both Oddities and Mutated Beasts.

Professor Doherty noted the dumbfounded look on Elias's face, perfectly understanding his surprise. She too had been quite shocked when she first found signs of the research, taking a long time to deliberate over it before finally accepting the possibility.

She closed the book shut, reaching for her cup of rosemary tea and taking a sip to relax herself.

"You don't need to worry about this for now. I first have to submit this to the Council of Uncommons, who will then study and verify it before announcing the results. It seems like our founder, even in death, still has a lot of surprises for us."

The founder being mentioned was Noa El-Lah, the man popularly known as the Benign Philosopher, who was renowned for both the establishment of the Estican Island and the White Helm Academy.

He was a scholar who was well known for his interest in paranormal science and extremely odd topics, which perfectly reflected itself in the subjects of his research.

Only he would consider a method of fusing the physical body with Mutated Beasts and creatures, a topic which would most likely be viewed as occultic by most of the orthodox religions. It was such a pity that he mysteriously disappeared almost a hundred years ago, as he would have been able to further push the supernatural world forward if he was still alive today.

Elias nodded, deciding to no longer bother himself with such advanced topics. He was about to walk away when he saw a series of parchment papers folded closely beside the stacked up books.

"Professor, what are those? More research papers?"

Elias was obviously curious, wondering what other types of unconventional research his academy founder had put forward.

Professor Doherty finished taking a bite from a small breakfast cookie, washing it down with some tea before looking towards where Elias was pointing.

"Oh, those things. Our founder had a peculiar hobby you see, as he liked to come up with poems to distract himself whenever he was stuck during research. Those are the ones he came up with during this particular inquiry. I pulled them out of the pages and arranged them separately, as I later plan to publish them into a children's poem book."

Elias nodded, feeling like their founder had quite a weird hobby.

"May I see them?"

Professor Doherty agreed, focusing her attention on something else as Elias reached for the parchment papers.

He glanced through each separate page, taking into view the different poems littered across each one.

There were poems about almost every aspect of life, encompassing love, friendship, betrayal, hate, and even death. Elias calmly read each one, not knowing how long it had been since he had started.

Each of the poems was complex and not so easily understood, almost appearing as if they were supposed to be mind-turning questions rather than poems.

Elias glanced through each one before noticing one that seemed out of place, as it was written in bright red ink rather than the usual glossy black one.

The poem read;

'As the bright afternoon sun falls over the me of now, the me of before stands patiently awaiting your fateful visit.'

'The golden sunlight slowly illuminates a message from me to you, a message of neither romance nor affection but rather one of longing, the longing of our inevitable meeting.'

The heading of the poem was titled 'Your Fateful Visit' and seemed to slowly capture Elias's attention.

The reason wasn't due to its content or message, but rather because he could sense a gentle wave of ether radiating out of each word of the poem as he read them.

This caused him to be suspicious and ask Professor Doherty if there was anything unusual about that particular poem, but she simply shrugged it off while stating that it must have been addressed to an unknown lover of his, which would also explain why he wrote it in red ink as red was usually used to symbolize love and affection.

Elias felt like there was more to it but decided to drop the issue, as he had more pressing matters to deal with than worrying about some weird poem.

Even if the poem was problematic it had nothing to do with him, so he would rather focus on what he needed to do.

He bade farewell to the professor before walking to his section of the archives, immediately diving into books on the topic of divination and prophesy to seek an explanation for his initial frightening dream.

...

The next day passed by relatively quickly, with the academy staff being in an uproar due to the research submitted by Professor Doherty.

Most of them were shocked by the unexpected discovery, leading to the students having a lot of free time due to professors being absent for varying reasons.

It was now noon and Elias was walking through the Academy with a thoughtful expression. Contrary to his expectations, he hadn't been able to forget about the peculiar poem since he saw it, almost as if he had been inflicted with an intense surge of obsession.

This caused Elias to have a relatively sleepless night, as he was up for most of it trying his best to make sense of the poem. He attributed this to the ether resonating out from the letters, suspecting that it carried a subtle intent to make whoever noticed it investigate the hidden meaning behind those words.

This brought Elias to his current predicament, as he couldn't rest in class and decided to take a walk, hoping that he might have some inspiration and get rid of the gnawing feeling.

He had already walked to the center of the academy estate, the appearance of the shadow of a statue falling over him before he realized the fact.

He looked up towards the statue, noting that it was the ceremonial image of the founder—Noa El-Lah, which had been erected in the epicenter of the estate.

Elias admired the vague features of this mysterious researcher before a wave of realization suddenly hit him.

The first stanza of the poem held a very unique message, referencing the 'him of before' and the 'him of now'. If the 'him of before' was the version of Noa El-Lah which had disappeared without leaving behind a trace, then wouldn't the 'him of now' be represented by the representation of ‘himself’ currently existing right now, the ‘him’ erected as a statue?

This was a vague and uncanny way of interpreting the poem, but the obsession currently gnawing on his mind compelled him to look into it further.

He looked up at the statue, extensively observing it to take notice of any inconspicuous message or detail.

The afternoon sun suddenly reached its highest point at this moment, casting an illuminating golden glow on not only the cemented statue but also the entire estate itself.

For a brief moment afterward, Elias noticed a subtle shimmer appear on the statue's base, causing an alignment of words to suddenly fade into reality before swiftly fading out once more.

This change was instantly caught by Elias, the obsession in his mind blaring alarms to inform him that he was on the right track!