The Elder's Pavilion, which had been Ren's entire world for a month, now felt like a cage he was about to leave. The prospect of a real mission, a task that mattered beyond his own self-improvement, sent a current of quiet energy through him. It was the feeling of a blade being drawn from its sheath.
Elder Tian led him not to the garden or the archive, but to a small, hidden chamber behind a false bookshelf. The room was spartan, containing only a single, large table made of polished obsidian. As they entered, the Elder placed his hand on the table's surface. Aether flowed from his fingertips, and the black stone lit up from within, displaying a complex, three-dimensional architectural diagram of a large, fortified manor.
"This," the Elder said, his voice low and serious, "is the private estate of Baron Von Hess, a minor noble with major ambitions. Officially, he is a loyal purveyor of rare minerals to the Imperial Court. Unofficially, he has been selling high-grade Aether-conductive ores to a third party, a clear violation of Imperial and GAMA law."
He zoomed in on a specific wing of the manor. "Our intelligence suggests his client is a research division from the Spirit Lumina Pagoda, who are using the ore for unsanctioned experiments in large-scale Aetheric resonance."
The name sent a familiar, cold chill down Ren's spine. His first mission was a direct entanglement with the hunters who were searching for him.
"GAMA cannot move openly against a noble of Von Hess's standing without concrete proof," the Elder continued. "A direct raid would cause a political incident. An operative sent to retrieve evidence would be detected by the manor's formidable defensive arrays, which were, of course, designed by the Pagoda themselves."
He looked at Ren, his meaning clear. A conventional Spirit Master, no matter how powerful, would be detected. But Ren was not a conventional Spirit Master.
"Inside the Baron's personal study," the Elder pointed to a specific room in the diagram, "is a safe. Inside that safe is his private ledger, detailing the illegal transactions. Your mission is to infiltrate the manor, open the safe, retrieve the ledger, and return. You will do this tonight. You will leave no trace of your presence, physical or Aetheric."
He gestured to the diagram again, highlighting a series of glowing red lines. "The manor is protected by a full-spectrum Aetheric sensor grid. It does not look for power signatures; it looks for anomalies—any deviation from the ambient background noise. Your chameleon's cloak will be your only shield. If it wavers for even a second, the entire manor will go on high alert."
He then pointed to the safe. "Furthermore, the safe is a marvel of Pagoda engineering. It has no physical lock. It is sealed by a solid plate of reinforced alloy and can only be opened by a specific, complex Aetheric frequency key. Any attempt to force it open will incinerate the contents. You cannot break it."
This was the crux of the test. He couldn't force the safe, and he couldn't use a key he didn't have. He was being asked to walk through walls and open a box that could not be opened.
Ren studied the glowing schematic, his mind already dissecting the problem. "The hinges," he said quietly, his eyes narrowed in focus. "The locking mechanism is on the door, but the door itself must be attached to the frame. The hinges are a separate component."
A slow, approving smile touched the Elder's lips. "Indeed. A scalpel, not a sword. You will not open the safe. You will remove the door."
The plan was audacious, and it relied entirely on the unique, forbidden art he had been perfecting. He would use his resonant blade to sever the internal bolts of the hinges from within the metal, a feat of surgical precision that would leave no external mark.
The Elder provided him with a simple, dark-grey tunic and trousers, the common uniform of an acolyte, with no distinguishing marks. There would be no tools, no weapons. His only asset was his will.
Hours later, cloaked in the perfect illusion of a powerless commoner, Ren slipped out of the Elder's Pavilion under the cover of a moonless night. He moved through the sleeping academy, a ghost in the shadows. He navigated the city beyond the walls, his senses alive, feeling the ebb and flow of the night's Aetheric currents.
He reached the high stone wall surrounding the Von Hess estate an hour before midnight. The air here was different. It was clean, still, and unnervingly uniform. The Pagoda's defensive grid was active, acting like a massive filter, smoothing out the chaotic fluctuations of the natural Aether Weave into a placid, predictable hum. It was a beautiful, terrifying expression of their obsession with order.
He took a deep breath, calming his racing heart. He reinforced his chameleon's cloak, weaving his Aetheric signature into the monotonous hum of the security field. He was a single, silent note in a long, boring song. He placed a hand on the cold stone wall, feeling for its internal structure.
He didn't climb the wall. He reached into it with his will.
He located the mortar between the stones, a substance with a different resonant frequency than the granite blocks. He applied a series of focused, oscillating pulses, not to destroy the mortar, but to temporarily loosen its molecular cohesion, turning it from solid to something more like sand. He created a handhold, then another.
With the silence and grace of a spider, he climbed the sheer wall, leaving no mark, making no sound. He slipped over the top and dropped into the manicured gardens within, his landing as soft as a falling leaf. He was inside. The first throw of the stone had been made, and the river had not yet noticed.