Chapter 149: The Thirteenth Leaves Himself

It lasted less than a minute before Rhovan changed the spheres’ directions and he lost them again, but compared to how badly he had started, it was still progress.

Rhovan continued making the exercise harder until Marek’s concentration began slipping more frequently. There was no reason to keep forcing it after that, so the two golden spheres eventually dissolved and disappeared.

Marek sat near the edge of the stone pathway afterward.

He wasn’t physically exhausted. Their training on Earth had been far worse than this, especially whenever Rhovan made the group fight him one after another.

His head just felt tired.

Maintaining precise awareness of two different positions for hours was more mentally demanding than Spatial Parallax initially sounded.

“How long does it take to master that?” Marek asked.

Rhovan created another golden chair for himself even though several normal ones were sitting only a few meters away. “I don’t know.”

“Very helpful.”

“Technique mastery doesn’t follow a fixed schedule. You understand the form now, so you could technically be considered Learned. That doesn’t mean you’re good at it.”

Marek looked at him for a little while longer, to which Rhovan hugged himself in ecstasy. He looked like he was on drugs.

According to Rhovan, Marek had already satisfied the most basic requirements of Spatial Parallax. He could establish two valid references, recognize their distance, direction, and angle, and track how their separation changed while either reference moved.

His consistency was still terrible whenever several things happened at once, and movement made him unconsciously fall back into using himself as a reference.

That was something practice would fix.

Marek looked around the garden while thinking about it.

Reaching Degree V back on Earth had felt like mastering Space itself, at least as far as his current Cycle was concerned. Rhovan had always told him that Degree represented control, so Marek had assumed there wasn’t much left to improve unless he crossed into Cycle II.

He had misunderstood part of it.

Degree V meant he had mastered the Authority available within his current Cycle.

It didn’t mean he’d mastered every possible way that Authority could be shaped.

“So Degree V means I’ve mastered my control over Cycle I,” Marek said after a while. “But something like Spatial Parallax is separate because it’s a structure made from that Authority.”

Rhovan stopped moving, although Marek didn’t notice immediately. When he finally turned his gaze back toward him, the man’s expression had changed completely. He wasn’t looking at Marek or anything else in the garden anymore, and his attention seemed fixed somewhere far beyond what was actually in front of him.

“Rhovan?”

No response.

Marek stood up. “What happened?”

Rhovan blinked several times and slowly looked toward him. “I remembered something.”

Marek’s expression immediately became serious.

Whenever those words came out of Rhovan’s mouth, it usually involved Ophiuchus. “What?”

“A phrase.”

“From where?”

Rhovan frowned. “I don’t know.”

Marek waited while Rhovan remained quiet for several seconds. Unlike before, however, no headache followed. The man didn’t grab his head or stop himself midway through whatever memory had surfaced.

He simply looked confused by it.

Then, Rhovan spoke.

Marek didn’t understand a single word.

It wasn’t Earth Language, Thesarin, or Prime Language. His Tongue Script didn’t recognize it either, which already made the language strange enough considering it had been prepared to give him functional Prime and Libran speech.

There was something even stranger about the way Rhovan said it. The pronunciation sounded natural coming from him. Too natural for someone who claimed he didn’t know where the phrase came from.

Before Marek could ask anything, the interface panel appeared.

His eyes widened.

The same unfamiliar sentence surfaced across his vision in a script he had never seen before. The characters were nothing like Thesarin or the writing used for Prime.

Then, a translation formed beneath the unfamiliar words.

[CASE-SCRIPT AWAITING FULL ACTIVATION…]

[THE TWELVE LEAVE HEIRS. THE THIRTEENTH LEAVES HIMSELF.]

Marek read it twice.

Rhovan noticed the change in his expression. “What?”

“I understood that,” Marek answered.

Rhovan’s brows creased. “Understood what?”

“What you just said.” Marek kept staring at the words. “Something translated it for me.”

The confusion on Rhovan’s face only deepened. “Something?”

“I don’t know.” Marek wasn’t even sure how to explain what he was seeing. “The words just appeared.”

That was new.

Whatever had been appearing to Marek whenever his Authority recognized a Case had never translated a language for him before.

His Case-Script had always shown him information about things he could contain: injuries, diseases, curses, conditions, and other problems attached to people. Sometimes, it provided information Marek didn’t understand yet, but it had never reacted to a spoken language.

Then, another line appeared beneath the translation.

[REFERENCE LANGUAGE RECOGNIZED.]

Marek stared at it.

Rhovan noticed. “What happened?”

“Another message appeared.”

That immediately caught Rhovan’s attention. “Another message?”

Marek nodded slowly. “It says, Reference Language Recognized.”

Rhovan’s expression changed. “You can see words?”

“I haven’t mentioned this before,” Marek admitted. “Sometimes, when my Authority recognizes something as a Case, I see words. Information. It’s almost like a System panel from a game.”

Rhovan stared at him for a moment. “What is this ‘panel’ showing to you?”

Marek looked at the message again. “I already said it, but I don’t quite understand what it meant.”

The first sentence remained visible while something else seemed to be happening behind it. Several unfamiliar characters started appearing beneath the translation, then disappeared before Marek could properly examine them.

The Case-Script flickered. That had never happened either.

Another notice appeared.

[SELF-REFERENCE FUNCTION DETECTED.]

Marek’s brows furrowed. “Self-reference?”

Rhovan immediately stepped closer. “What?”

“This so-called… I suppose it’s called Case-Script, is doing something. I don’t know why, but it just occurred to me that it’s called the Case-Script… this interface.”

The interface shifted again.

Whatever was happening didn’t feel like his normal use of Ophiuchus. Marek wasn’t attempting to diagnose anyone, contain anything, or examine a condition.

In fact, the Case-Script didn’t seem interested in anyone around him.

It was looking inward.

More text appeared.

[SELF-STATUS RECOGNITION UNLOCKED.]

Then, everything disappeared.

Marek blinked.

For several seconds, nothing else happened.

Kellan and Nadia were still sitting beneath the covered terrace, although both had finally noticed something was wrong. Silas had stepped outside again at some point, while Rafe was standing near the rear door with his device still in hand.

“What happened?” Nadia asked.

Marek didn’t answer because another interface opened before he could.

This one was different from everything the Case-Script had shown him before.

[SELF-STATUS]

CURRENT CONTINUANCE: Ninth Continuance — The Wrought Concordance

CYCLE: I

DEGREE: V — Mastery

SIGN EXPRESSION: Space

SUNBLIND STATUS: Approaching

Marek stared at the information for a while. Most of it wasn’t surprising. He was still at Cycle I, Degree V. His Sign Expression was Space, and his Sunblind was apparently already considered Approaching.

All of those things were information he already knew, which made the sudden appearance of a self-status function somewhat useless in itself.

There was only one part he didn’t understand, though.

Rhovan watched him for several seconds before becoming impatient. “What is it showing?”

“My information.”

“What does it say?”

Marek read everything again just in case he had missed something. “Cycle I. Degree V. Space. Sunblind approaching.”

Rhovan nodded slowly. “That’s all?”

“No.”

Marek looked at the first entry.

CURRENT CONTINUANCE: Ninth Continuance — The Wrought Concordance

He had already seen the term Ninth Continuance several times since arriving in Courtspire City. It appeared on dates, historical references, government documents, and even some of the public displays around the city.

There was nothing unusual about identifying the age they were currently living in.

What bothered him was how the Case-Script had labeled it.

“There’s another line,” Marek said.

“What line?”

“It says Current Continuance.”

Rhovan remained quiet.

Marek looked at him. “Why does it say current?”

At first, Rhovan didn’t seem to understand why that mattered.

Then, his expression changed.

Marek returned his attention to the Case-Script.

If it only wanted to identify the Ninth Continuance, then simply writing Continuance would have made sense.

Current Continuance sounded different.

It sounded like the function had been made with the expectation that there could be another one. More importantly, he couldn’t understand why his own status needed to identify the Continuance at all.

Perhaps that was normal. Continuances had changed eight times already, after all, so maybe the Case-Script was simply using the same terminology people currently used.

That explanation would have been enough if the thing showing the information were a Courtspire device.

It wasn’t.

The Case-Script was tied to his Ophiuchus Mark, recognized a language Marek’s modern Tongue Script couldn’t understand, and had just unlocked a function neither he nor Rhovan knew existed after hearing a phrase Rhovan couldn’t remember learning.

That made the word current considerably harder to ignore.

Marek looked at Rhovan again. “Do you know why it says that?”

Rhovan shook his head. “No.”

Marek sighed.

Another mystery had somehow appeared before they had even finished dealing with the ones they already had.

At least, he had learned Spatial Parallax.

Creation is hard, cheer me up!

Your gift is the motivation for my creation. Give me more motivation!

Creation is hard, cheer me up!

Your gift is the motivation for my creation. Give me more motivation!