An Otherworldly Scholar [LITRPG, ISEKAI]

I was alive, and I had tinnitus.

Sunlight entered through a window, and the room was warm, but my vision was blurry, and I could barely make out the shapes of the things around me. I blinked repeatedly and, to my relief, the room slowly came into focus. White walls, shelves with Alchemist's tools and potions, the sharp sting of disinfectant. Then, the memories flooded my mind. The Red Crystal, the Sound Bandit, the ritual, the explosion. A quick bodily inspection told me I still had all my limbs, fingers included.

"You are awake," Byrne said.

I slowly turned around my neck to see the old man sitting in the corner of the room, looking at me like a falcon looks at a rabbit. Suddenly, I felt like a child, powerless, out of control of the situation. I tried to say something, but my mouth felt like it was full of caked mud.

Byrne poured water into a glass and put it against my lips.

"Where am I?" I asked, after downing half of the glass.

Byrne put it aside.

"The House of Healing at the royal palace," Byrne explained. "The best Healers on the continent had been working on you for the past week."

He must've noticed my panicked expression because he quickly added.

"Your barrier absorbed most of the impact. They recovered the burned areas and healed a couple of fractures caused by the falling rubble. They also fixed your ear."

Tinnitus only affected my left ear. In the worst case, I could ask Vedras for a potion. I just hoped tinnitus wasn't as hard to heal in this world as it was on Earth. Byrne walked around my bed and locked the door.

"It has been hard to find a moment with you alone."

A shiver ran down my spine. Suddenly, I felt like I was trapped in a room with a tiger. Where did that feeling come from? I couldn't tell. It definitely wasn't [Foresight]. I tried to sit up straight, but my body was having none of it.

Byrne approached the bed.

"What did you see?" he asked, putting a hand on my shoulder and pushing me down into the mattress.

I tried to call [Foresight], but the skill was nowhere to be found. Not even the distant echo of the lack of mana answered. Nothing. Where was my parachute? My lifeline? My fangs?

"What did you see?" Byrne repeated the question.

"There was a man with a hockey mask," I replied, fighting with my tongue to produce the correct sounds. "Where is he? Did he survive?"

Byrne laughed at my attempt to divert the conversation.

He took the bait.

"A hockey mask, huh? There was a masquerade at the East Ward; one of them must've been wearing something similar to a hockey mask," he said. "I want to know what you were doing there. You should've been at the royal palace, partying with the other members of Prince Adrien's faction. What were you doing in the East Ward?"

I couldn't tell him that I was chasing a shady figure that turned out to be some sort of even shadier cultist. Adrenaline shot through my veins. Byrne was asking too many questions—the right questions. Almost like he knew what was happening in that warehouse.

"What were you doing there, Robert?"

"I was… I was visiting a soup kitchen I'm sponsoring. The city guard has been making trouble since the anti-nobility movement appeared… but I didn't get to my destination. There was an explosion. Did they find someone else?"

Byrne's eyes pierced me.

"They found a lot of people, Robert. The explosion blew a whole block. Hundreds died."

I tried to call [Foresight] to know if he was lying to me, but the skill didn't react.

Byrne grinned.

"That won't work. Your mana pool took the worst part of the explosion," he said, channeling his mana into his hand and forming an emerald sword. He pointed it at me. "When the explosion hit you, your makeshift barrier drained your whole manapool in a single moment, disintegrating it in an instant."

I started to panic. No matter how much I tried to channel my mana, there was nothing in there.

I closed my eyes and dived into my manapool, but only derelict stone floated in the void where the walls covered in runes should've been. Beyond the shattered walls, millions of blue stars shone against the darkness, some small like holes made with a needle, others as big as baseballs.

I drifted down, but this time, the walls of my manapool weren't there to stop the falling.

The Fountain blinded me.

I opened my eyes, covered in sweat, and Byrne gave me a pitiful look.

"Not much of a wizard anymore, huh?"

"Ash or popsicle," I grunted, gathering Fountain mana.

The tips of my fingers froze without hurting me as I used my natural magic to draw heat away.

"Out of magic but not out of options, I see. That's good, defeatists can be a real pain when things go south," Byrne said, seemingly entertained. The emerald mana sword in his hand disappeared. "This is going to hurt."

The air became thick, as if the room had been suddenly filled with liquid. My body froze against my will, and even the light seemed to slow down, giving the room a strange yellow hue.

Runes appeared on Byrne's hands in concentric circles. I barely got a sideways glimpse of them, but the one in the center was familiar. A mental block seemed to be lifted from my brain. It was an Access Rune.

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"Have you thought about what a mana pool is?" he asked.

I couldn't move my mouth.

Byrne touched my forehead, and in the blink of an eye, I was thrown back into my shattered manapool. A younger version of Byrne floated before me, his hair combed slick back, dressed in a flowery shirt, sunglasses, and golden rings on every single one of his fingers. He held me by the collar so I wouldn't drift into the Fountain.

Byrne's presence was unbearable.

My metaphorical skin burned.

Not even in the magic plane could I move.

"Another pearl of knowledge for you, my friend. See those blue stars around us? That is the System, or rather a projection of the System. A shadow cast in a lower dimension realm, if you'd like a physics metaphor," Byrne said, seemingly unaware of the pain his mere presence was putting me through.

The Fountain pulled me down, the void extended in every direction, and among the blue stars, something moved. Something big. In the opposite direction, several other things were moving, just out of sight.

"We aren't alone out here, but they usually don't come near the Fountain," Byrne continued, looking up. "If anything, we should be thankful to the creator of the System for hiding us inside our mana pools."

I wondered if they could get us, as we weren't physically there, but in the House of Healing. Could a shadow hurt someone? I didn't want to stay there long enough to figure it out.

"We Earthlings are powerful just because the Fountain finds us interesting, but we can stand by ourselves if we attune to the language of magic well enough," Byrne continued, adopting a focused expression. "Check this out."

The chunks of my mana pool trembled. A stabbing pain crossed my body, like someone had shoved their hand into my stomach to play around with my organs. Byrne burned like a small green Fountain. Then, like a movie running in reverse, the shards came back together. The walls reformed, each piece fitting in its original spot. The Fountain and the blue stars disappeared, and we were alone in the cozy dark space of my mana pool.

Slowly, mana started gathering at the bottom.

"Entropy works differently in the magical plane. What can be done, can also be undone with the same ease," Byrne explained, but his words sounded too close to a threat. Not that he needed to make one. I was frozen in fear. Byrne was a way better Runeweaver than me. No. I couldn't even be sure he was a Runeweaver anymore.

I opened my eyes back to the clean white room at the House of Healing.

[Foresight] was back online, shouting to my ear to run away.

"You should stay away from things that don't concern you," Byrne said, walking to the door and unlocking it.

"Why did you—"

"You still have a part to play, Robert Clarke."

A gust of wind slammed the door open, and Firana flew inside. 'Shot' might have been a better word to describe her movement. She didn't touch the room's floor, but shot through the portal into my bed. Even Byrne was surprised by the torpedo-girl. Then, more kids poured inside. Wolf, Ilya, Zaon, the whole Cabbage Class, plus a few cadets from Basilisk and Gaiarok, Holst, and even Ghila.

Luckily, no one yelled 'dogpile'. I wasn't sure I would be able to withstand Wolf's weight on top of Firana's. The girl must've been pure muscle under her shirt, because she felt like a huge sack of coins.

"Do you know who I am?" Firana asked, her face too close to mine.

"Yes?"

"How many fingers?"

"Three… one… seven."

"My name?"

"Firana."

"The sine of an angle is equal to…"

"The length of the opposite side divided by the length of the hypotenuse."

"Elincia's cup size?"

"C, as in 'confidential information', also as in, 'continue this line of interrogation and I'm going to flick your forehead'", I replied, trying to shove her aside.

Firana let out a relieved sigh and turned around, still sitting on top of my stomach. "Everyone, calm down! Don't panic. Everything is fine with his brain; his sense of humor remains as lame as ever," she announced.

The faces of relief were heartwarming.

I noticed that Byrne was gone.

"Can someone tell me what happened?" I asked.

Byrne's explanation had been confusing at best. Everyone looked around, trying to figure out who should answer. Many eyes fell on Holst, but he remained near the wall, doing his best not to take the hint.

"The Healers have kept you asleep for five days," Ilya finally said, pushing her way through the cadets.

I might have missed one or two parties at the royal palace, but most importantly, my lead. I was almost sure that the figures carrying the Red Crystal Shrine were Zealots. No other warriors fought with such disregard for their own well-being. Most importantly, how did Byrne fit into the puzzle?

I rubbed my shoulders to relieve pressure.

"You have been training normally, right?" I asked, examining the cadets' faces.

"Activities had been paused since the attack," Holst replied.

"The attack?"

"The explosion. The officials said it was the anti-nobility movement preparing a compound similar to Alchemist's Fire. Now that the hereditary line is blurry, it is possible they wanted to target Prince Adrien," Holst continued. "They found you a hundred meters from the epicenter between the ruins of a house, so you aren't a suspect, if that is what you are wondering."

I nodded. As far as I remembered, I was in the epicenter of the explosion. However, there was no way I had flown a hundred meters; Byrne told me my physical injuries were minimal. I closed my eyes and let [Foresight] recall the memories of that night. When the explosion happened, the Sound Bandit was by my side. The barrier must've protected him, and he must've carried me away.

Very mindful of him.

Although it was hard to read someone under a hockey mask, I remembered noticing the Sound Bandit seemed to be surprised by the Red Crystal. Was it possible he was there thinking about an easy heist instead of whatever cultist stuff that was happening inside?

"Robert? Are you okay?" Holst asked.

I had been lost in thought for a bit too long.

"Yeah, I'm fine and dandy," I replied, trying to put my thoughts in order. The first priority was to figure out what happened after the explosion. "How many dead?"

"A hundred and seven. Mostly due to the explosion, but the fire afterwards didn't help. It took three days to control it," Holst replied.

I nodded. The silver lining was that the explosion didn't cause corrupted monsters or Red Corruption in the vicinity. Self-destruction might not have been the main function of the Red Crystal, but a way to prevent people outside the cult from obtaining it.

Zealots and commoners seemed to know what they were doing with the Crystal.

Did the Quest subroutine instruct them, or was it something else?

The idea of Byrne being powerful enough to influence the System made a knot in my stomach.

I clapped my hands.

"Alright, since they've been lazing around for the past week, I have an exercise for you all," I said, noticing that Kili wasn't among the Cabbage cadets. "Go to the East Ward and assist the people there. I don't care if it is cleaning rubble or carrying construction materials. I'm sure there's plenty of work. It is not optional."

Although the line between commoners and nobles had been almost completely blurred during my classes, it would be a good exercise for Malkah and Yvain to see how regular people lived their lives. Most of the cadets seemed happy to have something to do. Being locked up, even in a place as big as the Academy, wasn't easy. Leonie gave me an earnest 'yes, sir' and guided the Cabbage class outside the room.

Ghila volunteered herself and Rockman to look after the cadets.

Holst left without a word.

In the end, it was me and my old students.

"So?" Ilya asked.

"I have an idea of how strong Byrne is," I said in a somber tone. "We need to take him out."