"Ritual... What ritual?"
Luke asked, setting down his spoon beside his half-finished plate. He wiped his mouth clean with a tissue, his expression tinged with mild curiosity.
"I'm telling you—he's doing something in there. I heard creepy noises coming from his room," Jay said, his voice rising in urgency.
"I don't know..." Luke replied, rubbing his temple as if trying to soothe a headache. "He doesn't even have spiritual energy to perform any kind of ritual. He's still in the Deep Sleep state."
"Deep Sleep state...? What's that supposed to mean?"
Luke raised an eyebrow. "Hmm... you seriously don't know? What happened after your Awakening? Were you able to use spiritual energy right away?"
"Spiritual energy? Of course I was—from the very next day. Isn't that the same for every Awakened?" Jay asked, a confused frown on his face.
'He must not remember some things after his Awakening... that's common,' Luke thought to himself.
"Alright, here's basically what happens," Luke began, leaning back slightly as he launched into explanation.
"When some people die and come back to life, it just means they've got their soul... No special powers, right?"
"Yes! We're blessed by the Seven Gods," Jay replied eagerly, his eyes lighting up.
He always got excited whenever the topic of Awakened came up. He had dreamed of being one for as long as he could remember—reading stories, imagining their powers. And now that he was one… he sometimes wished he hadn't. But the excitement still lingered.
"Yeah... I'm not so sure about that part," Luke muttered, brushing the thought aside. "Anyway, when we Awaken, we gain the ability to use our soul and psyche, alongside our physical and spiritual bodies."
He reached for a cup of sugarless black coffee, took a sip, then continued.
"After that, we begin constructing a conceptual structure called the Triangle of Existence. It forms through the connection between soul, psyche, and the spiritual body."
He handed a cup to Jay—also sugarless, of course—with a polite nod.
"Only then can one sense, see, and use spiritual energy. Before that, even if someone's Awakened, if they haven't formed their Triangle of Existence, they can't manipulate spiritual energy. Though... they might be able to faintly perceive or sense it."
Jay listened with intense concentration, then took a sip from the cup—only to instantly spit it back onto the table.
"Hey! That's gross," Luke said, raising an eyebrow in mock disgust.
"Oh... sorry!" Jay wiped his mouth quickly. "So what you're saying is—Jin can't use spiritual energy. Or any skills or abilities, for that matter. Wait... he's not even a Mage yet?"
"Exactly. You've got a good head on your shoulders. It took me days to properly understand all that," Luke said with a laugh.
'Days? That explanation wasn't even that complicated…' Jay thought to himself.
Only then did he begin to suspect that Luke might be holding something back. He had mentioned something about souls earlier—but had stopped midway. Jay wasn't entirely sure what it was, but it had felt... intentional.
'Was it proper to ask him directly?' Jay hesitated.
Maybe. Luke did seem friendly. Much more so than Jin ever was, that was for sure. And despite Luke's noble attitude and the weight of a family name, he didn't exactly strike Jay as someone overly clever—aside from his refined manners.
And besides, Luke had mentioned a massive library during their earlier tour.
So rather than getting tangled in assumptions or showing the limits of his own knowledge, Jay chose silence—for now.
Maybe Luke was just messing with me with his act. That was also possible. And there was also his reaction towards blessings of Gods
So, in the end, Jay let the conversation flow, saying nothing more about it.
After a bit more conversation, Luke stood up, gathered a few dishes, and carefully placed them onto a larger serving tray.
"Well... I'll be going. I'll take some food to Jin—he hasn't come out yet. Maybe he's still not comfortable with how his body is functioning right now. So, see you later."
"Yes, see you later," Jay replied, bowing slightly in farewell—the way nobles did in the books he'd read, at least.
Just before Luke left, Jay asked about the location of the library.
"Alright... time to read some books," he murmured to himself with a faint nod.
***
After Luke left, Jay made his way toward the library. According to Luke, it was on the first floor—or at least, its gate existed on the first floor. The wording had unsettled him slightly.
As he walked, Jay mentally reviewed the information Luke had shared. It aligned with the general teachings of ORDER, but there were subtle differences—peculiar gaps and odd interpretations that nagged at him.
Then there was Luke's reaction to the so-called Blessing of the Gods, the widely accepted belief that Awakened powers were gifts from divine entities. But upon closer thought, Jay realized something disturbing.
ORDER never actually said that. It was simply a belief accepted by all—Awakened and regular humans alike. A belief no one ever questioned.
'Perhaps it has nothing to do with the gods at all… That would be a terrifying idea.'
Terrifying indeed. There had to be a source for these supernatural powers. If not divine… then what? Demons? History often portrayed them as malevolent forces, harbingers of calamity and ruin. But what if they weren't just myths?
His thoughts spiraled further—toward the soul.
He couldn't let go of Luke's unfinished sentence. "They got their soul," he had said.
Why would he phrase it that way? Why obtain a soul?
Then a chilling realization surfaced.
"Wait… what if… it's because we don't originally have souls? No, no, that can't be true…"
He laughed nervously at his own absurdity. The very thought of humans existing without souls was grotesque. Wasn't the soul the essence of life itself?
How could one live without it?
Still, a part of him whispered otherwise.
Wrapped in the fog of unsettling theories and creeping doubt, Jay finally reached the entrance Luke had mentioned.
He blinked and looked around.
The corridor was steeped in a darkness deeper than shadow—quiet, cold, almost predatory. The rest of the mansion's first floor was nowhere in sight, swallowed by that uncanny gloom. There was no one else around.
He was utterly alone.
A chill crawled up his spine. The forgotten fear he had buried earlier returned with jagged claws.
How had he even made it this far? This wasn't like him. He had never possessed this kind of nerve.
His hand trembled as it reached for the doorknob. He forced himself not to look into the suffocating darkness, not to imagine what might lurk there—monsters, spirits, entities born of shadow and silence.
With sudden desperation, he flung the door open and slipped inside, slamming it shut behind him as though sealing away the nightmares outside.
Only then did he breathe—though he still hadn't opened his eyes.
Because a new fear bloomed inside him.
What if the library was worse? What if he had escaped one ghost only to enter the mouth of another?
"Hahaha… Don't be afraid. There are no ghosts in this library."
A voice—smooth, melodic, but disconcertingly sudden—broke the silence.
Jay flinched violently, his heart nearly stopping.
But then he recognized the voice.
"L-Lord Albedo?!"
"Yes," Albedo replied, standing amid the stillness like a dream wrapped in velvet. "Welcome to my library. Within these walls, you may find answers to all your questions."
Jay slowly opened his eyes—and what he saw devoured the remnants of his fear.
The library was immense.
No, more than that—it was impossible. It seemed larger than the mansion itself, vast beyond reason. Shelves rose like towers into an unseen sky, each one crammed with books older than nations. The shelves alone were titanic—easily twenty times his own height, perhaps more than the entire height of the mansion.
Jay's breath caught. "How… is this possible?"
Albedo smiled, and the light seemed to bend around him. "Because this library doesn't exist in a physical form. It is not bound by wood or stone. This place is an embodiment—a conceptual space born of the idea of human knowledge. An Imaginary. That's what it is. It expands with the knowledge accumulated by humankind."
He paused, his luminous gaze dimming, a melancholic note threading through his voice.
"It was a gift. But not the original Imaginary. Merely… an imitation. A migration of the true one, which still slumbers somewhere within the human world."
***
Jin's room now lay in utter chaos. The table was shattered, one leg of the bed was missing, and deep scorch marks scarred the once smooth and glossy floor.
At the center of the wreckage sat Jin, calm and composed. In his hand rested a small, palm-sized black box—oozing a strange, almost sentient aura that seemed to breathe, whisper, and watch.
"I'm certain now," Jin said, his voice flat and emotionless, his eyes unreadable.
He had finally found the answer he had been searching for. After hours of meticulous experimentation—and half-destroying his newly assigned room—he had succeeded.
"It's a Numerical Cube," he stated plainly.
Just then, a sudden knock at the door interrupted his thoughts.
"Who is it?" he asked, tone unchanged.
"It's Luke. I brought you lunch."
"Lunch? I don't need to eat. So leave."
A pause. Then a teasing voice replied, "Really? Then why is your stomach growling?"
Growling?
Now that it was mentioned, Jin did feel an odd gurgling sensation deep within his abdomen, accompanied by a dull pain he had been ignoring.
"You know what that is?" he asked.
"Yeah. I'm pretty sure you're just hungry."
Hungry.
At that moment, fragmented memories resurfaced—flickers of a time long gone. His mother, smiling, feeding him and his sister at a table bathed in golden light.
"Indeed… humans require sustenance to survive."
With that realization, he stood. The black box faded from existence, vanishing into nothingness. He walked to the door and opened it.
Luke's eyes widened slightly as he glanced at the wrecked room.
"What the hell were you doing? No wonder Jay thought you were performing some kind of ritual."
"No ritual," Jin replied coolly. "Just experiments."
Luke let out a sigh. "Fine. Here's your food."
He handed over a large serving tray, piled high with warm dishes.
As Jin accepted it, he paused, his expression shifting slightly.
"Now that you mention food... I also feel a strange pressure building at the back."
Luke blinked. "What? Then run to the bathroom!"