No! I don't want to be a Super Necromancer!

*A/N Feedback from a reader, I'll stop using Damien Bloodbane and simply use Damien instead*

But unlike before, nothing happened.

Damien exhaled slowly, letting the ambient mana settle into his body.

"That's right," he thought wryly. "My death energy is already the purest there is. Devouring runes made by someone else won't have any effect."

He allowed himself a half-smile. He wasn't here to consume anything anyway. He was here to learn.

His thoughts shifted unbidden to the truth he'd just uncovered. Not just about runes, but about the rungs of power that shaped the world. For the first time, the vague hierarchy he'd sensed in the background all his life began to take form.

Space.

His mind conjured the image of Germany's iron-handed ruler, the infamous Space Sovereign. The woman who folded battlefields and waged silent war across continents. Cold, distant, calculating.

"She wields half of the Emperor Element," Damien murmured to himself. "Space…"

And then another memory surfaced, uninvited but sharp.

The net café. The ringing of bullets. The panic. And then… stillness.

That black-robed mage who had rescued Athena, stepping into frozen time like it was a puddle on the ground. No wasted movement. No excess energy. Just presence.

He had wielded Time like a maestro conducting silence itself.

Not power. Mastery.

Damien frowned.

He was strong. Stronger than most.

And now, with the Living Library at his fingertips, he had secrets, tools, and knowledge no one else in the Institute possessed.

But that didn't make him the strongest.

It made him… a candidate.

There were others out there. Wielders of the Royal and Emperor elements. People who operated above the battlefield, across nations, behind curtains of space and time.

Some were known. Most were not.

But all of them shared one terrifying truth: they had stepped beyond what the world defined as possible.

Now, so had he.

Damien looked up at the glowing runes orbiting lazily through the air above him—fire, earth, light, time.

The world still believed spellcasting ended with incantations and mana flow. They had no idea magic could be written, etched into the very bones of reality like a script authored by will.

He raised his hands and began to trace each rune in sequence. Feeling the rhythm in the air. The subtle push and pull of elemental resonance as he guided them through form and intent.

His power didn't spike.

But his versatility?

It doubled.

Tripled.

Suddenly, he could shape his darkness energy into anchors that drained spell velocity. He could combine fire and water into high-speed mist illusions. He could graft death onto wind and make razors that never stopped flying.

No new mana.

Just new methods.

The difference between a man with a sword and a man with a forge.

And that's when it hit him.

This place, the Living Library, had never been accessed before.

No footprints. No disturbed mana threads. No signs of any presence.

This knowledge was his alone.

No one in the Institute knew. No instructor. No general. No mage.

Apart from others across the world who might have discovered places like this, he might be the only one who knows the secret of the Runes.

And he would keep it that way.

With that final thought, Damien sat down cross-legged on the smooth, rune-inscribed floor. The ambient mana cradled him, warm and heavy like a weighted cloak. He closed his eyes and fell into quiet meditation.

He stayed like that for hours, letting his soul settle, letting his mind reorganize everything he had learned. The Living Library hummed around him, content. As though it, too, was resting.

Time passed unnoticed.

Until…

His stomach growled.

His stomach growled.

Loudly.

Damien opened one eye and exhaled.

"Right," he muttered. "Human problems."

The runes above him flickered softly, almost in farewell, before fading into the ceiling. The glow of the Living Library dimmed. Books gently shut themselves. Scrolls retreated into the walls. Even the mana threads curled inward like silk being tucked away for another dreamer.

He stood, brushing nonexistent dust off his uniform, and turned back toward the stone archway where he had entered.

The rune-carved door slid open with a whisper, revealing the dim hallway beyond. Cold, quiet stone. Almost mundane after the sacred weight of what he had just seen.

He slipped out, let the door close behind him, and with it, every trace of what lay within.

No one would know.

Not yet.

He navigated the halls of Pearl Institute with the casual stride of someone used to moving unnoticed. The corridors were quieter now, painted gold by the descending sun. Students were winding down. Some trained. Some socialized. Others crammed for theory exams they barely understood.

Damien headed straight for the cafeteria.

His stomach rumbled again.

"Relax," he muttered. "I'm already going."

The moment he stepped through the entrance, the warm scent of mana-roasted meats and seasoned rice hit him like a spell to the chest. It was loud, busy, and chaotic in the way only a student cafeteria could be—noise layered over laughter, the clatter of plates, arguments over pudding, and at least two people practicing silent casting under the table.

He barely had time to process it before—

"Target locked!"

Damien blinked.

A tray smashed down in front of him.

Athena.

Golden-haired chaos with sea-blue eyes and a shark's grin, already sliding into the seat across from him as if summoned by the scent of guilt.

"Big brother! Where have you been?" she asked, dramatically tearing open a juice box like it had insulted her ancestry.

Damien blinked. "I was—"

"Don't answer," she cut in. "Let me guess. You were meditating. Deeply. In isolation. Surrounded by the echo of forgotten time, pondering the fate of the universe."

"…Yes."

"I knew it," she beamed. "I'm psychic."

Before he could respond, a soft rustle came from behind him.

"Move," came Jiang Xiao Yu's voice, cool, quiet, and somehow even more dangerous.

Damien shifted reflexively just in time to avoid being clotheslined by a tray.

Jiang Xiao Yu slid in beside him without fanfare, her expression placid but her tray fully loaded with enough food to suggest she hadn't eaten in weeks. She didn't say anything more. She just started eating like a soldier who'd been personally offended by hunger.

Athena leaned over the table with a teasing glint. "You know, you could've invited us to your meditation session. Share a little knowledge. Bond. Grow closer."

"Eat your noodles," Damien said dryly.

Jiang Xiao Yu didn't look up. "He was avoiding us."