Chapter 82: The Day My Mind Changed

Chapter 82. The Day My Mind Changed

I grinned. Then I did exactly what every warning told me not to do.

I reached toward the crystal.

Not with my hand, obviously.

I was crazy, not stupid.

Dark-violet mana gathered around my fingers as I activated Abyssal Formation Creation.

Lines appeared in the air.

One circle.

Then another.

Then another.

I didn’t use one of Rey’s formations this time.

This one belonged to Evan Veyr.

Modern magical researchers occasionally handled corrupted artifacts, cursed relics, ancient weapons possessing enough resentment to murder whoever touched them, and other delightful objects that made occupational insurance extremely expensive.

I’d handled plenty.

Especially after that accident.

The artifact that damaged my mana core had left a particularly deep impression on me.

Trauma was surprisingly motivational.

After losing most of my ability to preserve mana inside my body, I’d studied corrupted and cursed artifacts obsessively. Containment formations, mana isolation, curse suppression, spiritual barriers, resonance cancellation, I learned everything I could find because I refused to let another artifact ruin me twice.

So I created the highest-level containment formation.

The strongest.

Thirty-six interlocking formation rings appeared around the Maledict Sovereign Crystal.

Symbols rotated in opposite directions.

The outer rings isolated ambient mana.

The middle layers prevented energy leakage.

The inner formation suppressed resonance between the crystal and anything possessing a mana core.

Finally, I added one more layer specifically designed to prevent corruption from attaching itself to living mana.

Overkill? Absolutely.

I liked overkill.

Overkill was just safety with enthusiasm.

[Abyssal Formation Creation]

[High-Order Containment Formation Completed.]

[Target: Maledict Sovereign Crystal]

[Corruption Leakage: Suppressed.]

The black mist vanished.

The pressure filling the chamber disappeared so abruptly that my ears almost felt strange without it.

I waited.

Five seconds.

Ten.

Nothing leaking.

Now I touched it.

Bare-handed.

My fingers closed around the crystal.

Cold.

That was all.

No whispering voices telling me to conquer civilization.

My system remained perfectly calm.

I turned the crystal over in my palm. "Nice."

A fist-sized SSS-rank corruption crystal created personally by the Dark Lord sat harmlessly in my bare hand.

I couldn’t stop smiling.

This was perfect.

Actually, perfect wasn’t strong enough.

This was practically a gift-wrapped revenge package.

I didn’t even need the entire crystal for what I had in mind. Considering how concentrated its corruption was, shaving off a tiny fragment would probably be enough.

The Holy Relic was supposed to detect Dark Lord corruption.

It was also supposedly impossible to corrupt.

Supposedly.

And now I possessed the equivalent of concentrated blasphemy in crystal form.

I sent the Maledict Sovereign Crystal into my Dimensional Ring, keeping the containment formation wrapped around it.

The chamber immediately felt emptier.

I turned around.

Then stopped.

Something had been behind the crystal.

At first, I thought it was part of the cavity.

A pale metallic object sat deeper inside the stone, partially buried beneath compacted soil. Without the overwhelming presence of the Maledict Sovereign Crystal, its mana signature had become much easier to notice.

Another artifact.

Rey’s memories clicked into place.

He’d put this here too.

Not because he wanted to hide it.

Because he’d used it to suppress the crystal.

The artifact originally contained powerful Light Mana, and Rey had positioned it beside the Maledict Sovereign Crystal to reduce its corruption leakage. Opposing attributes interfering with one another.

Crude compared with modern containment methods, but effective.

Or it had been.

I stepped closer.

My Eclipse wisps illuminated the object.

My breath stopped.

My stomach dropped.

I took another step.

The chamber disappeared.

Not literally.

For one horrible instant, I wasn’t Rey Valen standing inside Hollowgrave anymore.

I was Evan Veyr.

Twelve years old.

Lying on the floor of my dad’s study room.

Unable to breathe.

Mana bleeding out of my body faster than I could preserve it.

The servants screaming around me.

Something glowing violet-white across the room.

And the unbearable sensation of my mana core cracking.

I staggered backward.

My shoulder struck the cavern wall.

My hand instinctively went to my chest.

There was nothing wrong with Rey’s mana core.

I knew that.

Different body.

Different era.

Yet, my body remembered pain that technically belonged to another body.

My jaw tightened.

I forced myself upright.

The artifact remained inside the cavity.

I stared at it.

Then my fear slowly transformed into anger.

My fingers curled.

A humorless smile pulled at my mouth.

"I never thought I’d meet you here."

The artifact that ruined Evan Veyr’s mana core.

Thousands of years earlier.

What kind of cosmic joke was this?

I activated Abyssal Eye.

The system immediately reacted.

[Unknown Ancient Artifact Detected.]

[Analyzing...]

The analysis took longer this time.

Then...

[Identification Complete.]

[Item: Radiant Cognition Prism]

[Current State: Corrupted]

[Original Rank: SSS]

[Current Classification: SSS Corrupted Sacred Artifact]

[Original Attribute: Pure Light / Mind / Mana]

[Current Attribute: Light / Corruption / Mind]

My eyes narrowed.

More information appeared.

[An ancient Sacred Artifact originally designed to stabilize mental processes, enhance cognitive clarity, strengthen resistance against mental interference, and regulate complex mana circulation. The artifact has absorbed a massive quantity of Primordial Corruption through prolonged proximity to the Maledict Sovereign Crystal. Approximately 47.8% of the Maledict Sovereign Crystal’s original corruption has migrated into the Radiant Cognition Prism.]

That explained something else.

The Maledict Sovereign Crystal I’d found was powerful, but Rey’s memories suggested it had once been considerably worse. He had barely been able to transport the thing even with layers of protection.

Now I knew why.

The crystal hadn’t weakened naturally.

Its power had separated.

Nearly half had transferred into the artifact intended to suppress it.

Two artifacts.

Two different vessels.

Roughly half the original corruption in each.

No wonder the Radiant Cognition Prism’s mana looked so violently unstable.

Light Mana had spent years trying to purify the Dark Lord’s corruption.

The corruption had spent years contaminating the Light Mana.

Neither had completely won.

Instead, they’d merged.

I almost laughed.

This artifact was physical proof of my theory.

Something pure could be corrupted.

Fundamentally altered.

The modern Light Temple had hated that conclusion.

They’d insisted Sacred Artifacts would always purify foreign corruption eventually.

Apparently nobody had bothered asking what happened when the amount of corruption exceeded the artifact’s purification capacity for several thousand years.

I continued reading.

[Corruption Mutation Effects: Mana-Core Destabilization, Forced Mana-Pathway Expansion, Cognitive Overstimulation, Accelerated Pattern Recognition, Enhanced Mana Perception, Potential Intelligence Amplification]

My eyes stopped.

I reread the final line. My mouth slowly opened.

"Oh, wait..."

Intelligence amplification?

A memory surfaced.

The accident.

When the containment failed, the artifact hadn’t merely cracked my mana core.

It had released a pulse.

I’d been thrown across the room hard enough to break two ribs and fracture my wrist.

Afterward, everyone focused on the obvious damage.

My mana core.

That was the catastrophe.

I went from a promising magus with an excellent mana core to someone capable of retaining barely ten percent of what my body should have held.

But something else had happened afterward.

Learning something became easier.

Not immediately.

I’d been too busy recovering and being furious at the universe.

But over the following months, something about me had changed.

Let’s be honest.

A thirteen-year-old kid suddenly throwing himself into advanced magical research and actually understanding it was weird as hell.

Especially me.

For the first twelve years of my life, I’d barely touched anything related to serious research. I knew basic magic like every other kid with an education, but ancient formations, mana-core theory, artifact engineering, magical equations, curse structures?

No.

I hadn’t even had a mentor.

Yet after the accident, I’d started reading.

And somehow, I understood.

One research book became five. Five became twenty. Before long, I was reading papers written by magi with decades of experience and finding myself following their logic without anyone sitting beside me to explain it. When I encountered something I didn’t understand, I hunted down another book, taught myself the missing concept, then returned and continued.

I’d assumed nearly losing my mana core had simply awakened some ridiculous determination inside me. Since I couldn’t rely on raw magical power anymore, I’d compensated with knowledge until research became my entire life.

But looking at this artifact now...

Maybe thirteen-year-old Evan Veyr hadn’t spontaneously become a magical research genius.

Maybe the accident had done more than destroy ninety percent of my ability to preserve mana.

It had changed the way my mind worked.

My fingers slowly touched my temple.

The artifact had damaged my mana core.

But its corrupted Mind attribute had affected something else.

My cognitive growth had accelerated dramatically.

I stared at the corrupted Radiant Cognition Prism.

Then laughed.

Softly at first.

The sound echoed through the empty chamber.

The artifact that destroyed my future as a conventional magus might also have been responsible for turning me into the researcher capable of compensating for that destruction.

It had crippled my mana core and sharpened the mind I used to survive without it.

I leaned against the wall, staring at the artifact with an expression somewhere between hatred and fascination.

So technically...

Evan Veyr had been corrupted too.

Not like the monsters.

But that pulse had changed me.

Just subtly enough that nobody had realized.

Including me.