Max still hadn’t opened his eyes – and he really didn’t want to. Something damp and soft lay beneath him, almost slimy, and the sensation was worse than the moss he had already grown used to. The worst part was that the surface under his body was moving, as if it were alive. For a brief, nauseating moment, he imagined he was lying on a giant tongue.

  Disgusting.

  He took a slow breath and caught a sharp, sour metallic smell before forcing one eye open.

  There was no doubt about it. He had entered the book of flesh magic.

  He stood in a corridor whose walls were made of dark red meat. They trembled faintly and contracted in spasms. Thick, slick strands hung from the “ceiling,” resembling hair soaked in mucus, while veins pulsed beneath the skin-like surface of the walls, filled with glowing pink plasma. Everything around him breathed.

  Max pushed himself up with effort. The floor yielded under his weight, springy and unstable, making it difficult to keep his balance. The thought that he might be inside a massive living creature made his stomach churn.

  “Well, Loub,” he muttered, “was it really that hard to leave instructions?”

  What was he supposed to do here? If the dwarf had been right, this was where Max was meant to learn flesh magic techniques. But how? And from what?

  He remembered that in the Otherworld he had been able to move instantly. He focused – and, though it took more than one attempt, he reappeared near the opposite wall.

  Good. The energy still obeyed him.

  He decided to move upward along the corridor. The air vibrated with a strange hum that rose and fell at irregular intervals. Sometimes he heard faint scratching inside the walls, as if countless tiny legs were skittering through the flesh.

  At one point, Max accidentally brushed one of the hanging strands. The walls shuddered violently, and the tunnel convulsed so hard he nearly lost his footing.

  This was not dead matter. Everything here reacted.

  Soon he saw something worse.

  Near one of the glowing veins, a gigantic eye had grown directly into the wall. It was wet and glossy, its pupil expanding and contracting as it tracked his movements. A thick network of nerves spread from the eye deep into the surrounding flesh. Max felt his pulse quicken.

  He waved a hand experimentally. The pupil snapped narrow.

  “A surveillance camera… or a trap,” he thought.

  From that moment on, he could not shake the sensation of being watched. Tiny slits flickered open in the ceiling, then sealed shut the instant he glanced upward.

  The sour, suffocating smell intensified. After what felt like an hour of walking, Max entered a wide chamber. From the soft ceiling hung fleshy stalactites connected to glowing veins. The floor was carpeted with hundreds of red tendrils that resembled worms.

  Max cautiously nudged one with the tip of his boot.

  To his horror, it latched on instantly, sticking like glue. He had to wrench his foot back with effort to tear free.

  The entire floor writhed with them.

  There was no way around.

  “And now what?” he whispered. “Is this your lesson, dwarf?”

  The tendrils writhed and stretched toward him. A chill ran down his spine. Forcing his way through would be pointless. Instead, he closed his eyes and tried to focus – not on fear, but on sensation.

  It seemed to him that he could hear them. Each tendril pulsed with its own faint rhythm, like a heartbeat. They reacted to his emotions. Beneath their restless movement, he sensed hunger. They were reaching for him because they were starving.

  If he touched them again, would they devour him?

  Max had no intention of stepping onto that living carpet blindly. Maybe I really do have to learn by experience here, he thought.

  He moved closer to the wall and focused on his left hand. A light-blue ring flared around his chest, clear and cold as ice. He guided energy through his channels, feeling it pass into the ring and transform into something thicker, heavier – the energy of flesh.

  Once the ring was saturated, he pressed the flow into the wall.

  He physically felt the wall absorb it – greedy, desperate. The surface shuddered in something disturbingly close to pleasure. Before his eyes, the passage behind him sealed rapidly with living tissue.

  “Damn it!”

  Max leapt back, but too late. A slick barrier of flesh surged forward and shoved him into the chamber.

  He fell onto the field of tendrils and was seized instantly. The red growths latched onto his clothes and skin, writhing beneath him as if testing their prey. A cold certainty settled in his chest.

  He struggled, but the tendrils were already dragging him deeper into the living carpet.

  Strangely, a measure of calm followed.

  They had not devoured him immediately. That meant something. If everything went wrong, he could teleport away at any moment.

  He only needed to understand what this place was trying to teach him before it swallowed him whole.

  “Interesting… Is it dragging me toward the very heart of this horror?” the thought flickered through his mind. “Fine. Let’s see. If there’s a giant set of teeth waiting for me, I’ll teleport out immediately.”

  Max exhaled, forced himself to relax, and let the tendrils carry him. They didn’t tighten or try to suffocate him. They simply pulled him forward with steady purpose, slick bodies sliding across his clothes and skin. Their hunger was still there – palpable, almost pitiful.

  The only question was how they intended to consume him.

  Fargus Rond opened his eyes the moment the book awakened.

  That was how its magic worked: the story began exactly where it had been written. This was meant to be an introduction to flesh magic.

  Although “introduction” was a misleading word. The author had never drawn a clear boundary between training and torture. For flesh mages, the two were nearly identical.

  Fargus remembered himself. He had been granted awareness that he was merely part of the book’s narrative, yet the memory of his former life remained intact. He knew flesh magic. He understood its essence. His purpose was to teach – painfully, but effectively.

  What sharpened one’s awareness of the body better than pain? Pain guided energy, fused organs, attached new limbs or hearts. Through pain, true understanding of flesh was achieved.

  He remembered his city – a living labyrinth where every organ was part of him. He felt thousands of channels, every creature moving within its walls. All of it had been himself, part of a single system. That was how he had gained power. That was also how he had lost his sanity.

  How could anyone remain sane while feeling an entire city as their own body?

  Now he sensed an intruder.

  A foreign presence, like a virus struggling inside his tissues. Weak. Clumsy. Using magic without technique.

  Who had given this human the book? Had he come here to destroy him? Even better. Rond would test every principle he knew on him.

  But as he examined the intruder more closely, something gave him pause.

  The human used magic crudely, without woven patterns – yet a pure ring shone around his chest. Untouched. Empty. Not a single technique inscribed within it.

  That was rare.

  Most students littered their rings with chaotic symbols, half-formed patterns, desperate experiments.

  Fargus tilted his head.

  There was potential in such purity. He could not remember the last time he had taught someone from the very beginning. If this boy learned correctly from the start, he might become something more than food for the city of flesh.

  A human could be shaped into anything. He could begin with any technique. In theory, the boy might even master from the outset the one technique that would eventually fill his entire ring. Rond himself had possessed such a technique. His living city was proof of it.

  He had controlled everything through a single weaving. Over time, he had stopped perceiving it as merely a pattern in his ring. It had become him. Perhaps most of him now existed outside his body – in this city of flesh.

  And there was something else.

  The boy’s ring had formed in his hand. His first and only ring.

  Fargus saw immediately that there was no ring around the boy’s core.

  How had he accomplished that? The answer would not survive beyond the confines of the book’s narrative, but curiosity stirred within Rond. This human had to be studied – even if he had arrived by accident or stolen the tome.

  Max drifted deeper, surrounded by the soft rustling of tendrils. It felt as though he lay on his back while an unseen current carried him through a living artery.

  He stared upward.

  The ceiling pulsed gently, veins glowing with dim light. The sight was grotesque – yet strangely mesmerizing.

  “Maybe flesh mages used to meditate here,” Max thought. “Merging with living tissue. Searching for truths.”

  If this was a lesson, then perhaps observation was the first step.

  Eventually, the current slowed and faded. The tendrils stopped pulling and began spinning him in slow circles, as if he were a toy suspended at the center of some organic clearing. He could not tell whether he was in a chamber, a stomach, or something else entirely.

  He still could not free himself from the sticky appendages. It was not time to escape. So he waited.

  Then the ceiling shifted.

  A familiar mushroom-like eye opened above him. Then another.

  They fixed on him without blinking.

  The flesh overhead stretched downward, forming a long stalactite that lowered until it hovered directly above his face. The surface split open in an oval seam. Inside, something soft and glistening swayed slowly.

  A tongue.

  It was a mouth.

  A mouth without teeth.

  Max’s heart pounded. Being swallowed whole did not appeal to him.

  The opening exhaled a wet hiss.

  “Fhh-ssshh…”

  “Hello!” The word burst out of Max, his voice cracking into an embarrassing squeak. Goosebumps crawled down his spine, but logic forced him to keep speaking. If this was a training book, then there had to be a teacher – no matter how horrifying he looked.

  Above the mouth, another opening formed, framed by a rounded fold of flesh.

  An ear.

  “Good afternoon?” Max tried again, less confidently.

  “Imperial! Ha!” The mouth laughed, lively and almost delighted. “I am Fargus Rond! But… my apologies.”

  The tendrils around Max suddenly jerked his leg.

  He did not even understand what was happening before a tearing agony exploded through his body. Something ripped free. The pain locked his muscles in place, paralyzing him. They were tearing his leg off.

  Max tried to scream, tried to shift into a bodiless state, but the pain hit like a tidal wave and swallowed his consciousness whole.

  He regained awareness because of a different sensation.

  His leg… was growing back.

  A surge of heat flooded his veins, dulling the agony. Flesh knit together before his eyes. Tendons reattached. Veins fused. Skin sealed over raw muscle.

  “What the – ”

  Cold terror surged through him. He had to get out. He had already begun focusing on a teleport point when the mouth spoke again, almost politely.

  “Forgive me, human. That was… my greeting. I must do it once more. Otherwise, there will be complications.”

  Once more?

  Another violent yank.

  This time the pain was distant, muted. The strange substance still coursed through his bloodstream. Max forced his head up and saw his severed leg held delicately by the tendrils, pressed back against the stump. Muscles aligned. Nerves reconnected. Energy channels fused with terrifying precision under the master’s control.

  Nausea rose in his throat. His vision swam.

  If he had anything in his stomach, he would have vomited.

  Then it ended.

  A strange indifference settled over him. Something had entered his blood – that much was obvious – but it no longer seemed important. It felt… pleasant to lie there. Interesting things were happening. Fascinating things.

  He calmly watched his leg finish reattaching as though this were a minor inconvenience.

  There was no pain now.

  Why had he been so afraid? Why was he even here?

  His sister.

  The thought cut through the haze like a blade.

  Clarity snapped back into place.

  “Enough!” Max shouted. “I’m not here for this! I came to learn! I have to help my sister!”

  Even Rond seemed taken aback. He checked the composition of the boy’s blood through the living channels of the city. The sedative concentration was still high. And yet the human had broken through it.

  Interesting.

  “Ha! A human with a flesh ring in his hand who knows nothing, yet seeks to save someone? A worthy objective.” The mouth widened, stretching its soft interior. “Very well. But what is a master who fears pain? We have time to learn. You must forget fear and understand pain. Do you agree, human?”

  “You said your name was… Horkus?”

  “Fargus Rond!” the voice snapped sharply. “Every student, every bearer of a flesh ring knew that name. You must have been born too late. Tell me – what do you know about the body?”

  Max exhaled slowly.

  “Is this part of the lesson?” He forced his thoughts into order. “The body is a system. A structure of bones, muscles, blood, controlled by the brain.”

  “Leave mechanisms to the dwarves!” the mouth thundered. “But flesh – organic matter – living tissue! That is where we begin. Flesh grants sensitivity and conductivity. It carries plasma, energy, substances… even other organisms. And do you know the best way to understand that?”

  “To guide energy through the body?” Max ventured.

  “No. Through pain.”

  The tendrils snapped toward his leg again.

  This time Max reacted instantly. Space folded around him, and he teleported two meters to the side. He landed hard on another patch of sticky appendages, sucking in air.

  “Enough!” he shouted. “I came to learn, not to be butchered!”

  The mouth opened and closed in visible surprise.

  Where had this boy learned space manipulation? How had he moved inside the book’s body? There were only two possibilities: either he possessed an unusual affinity – or whoever had placed him inside had granted him partial control over the narrative itself.

  That suggested a knowledge mage of exceptional caliber.

  Yet there was a reason such freedom was rarely given to students. If one could escape at any moment, one would never endure real training.

  One would flee.

  “Then perhaps this will not work,” the mouth sighed, almost disappointed. “You may leave. Do not waste my time.”

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  From the fleshy stalactite above, a thin tentacle extended lazily and scratched near the ear.

  The gesture was so absurd it momentarily broke the horror of the scene.

  Max felt the tendrils tighten again, sticky as a spider’s web.

  “How can training possibly be based on pain?” he shouted, fighting down his revulsion.

  “I will answer,” Fargus’s voice rumbled, deeper now. “Flesh magic governs the organism. Those who never felt their own deviations either died – or became monsters. Pain is the only precise signal that tells you what is wrong, and where.”

  “I need to heal my sister, not build your ‘systems’!” Max snapped.

  “Heal? Hm. Very well, let us call it healing,” the mouth conceded. “But tell me – how will you guide energy to the correct place if you cannot feel where it hurts?”

  “You mean… to heal someone, I have to feel their pain?” Max asked, stunned.

  “Exactly!” the voice rang out triumphantly. “Otherwise, you risk turning a person into a mutant. And correcting that is far more complicated. They fight. They resist.”

  “So you’re a doctor?” Max asked cautiously.

  “Ha! No. I am a flesh mage. But every flesh mage is, in a sense, a healer. More than a healer. A flesh mage can restore what ordinary mortals cannot even imagine.”

  “And you know how to rebuild energy channels? If they’re damaged?”

  “Of course. That is my favorite task. Growing new channels from flesh… a marvelous process. Extremely painful. You will enjoy it.”

  “I doubt that,” Max muttered. “You should try it yourself.”

  “Oh, I felt your pain perfectly while you were in symbiosis with my body.”

  “You connected to me through those tendrils?” Max asked in disbelief. “Why?”

  “What reminds one of life better than pain?” Fargus whispered. “And I must understand you. What you are. Who you are. If only you knew how many impurities and toxins fill your body. It will be interesting to remove them.”

  Max shuddered. Symbiosis with this monstrous organism was the last thing he wanted.

  “Can we do this without symbiosis?” he asked, unable to hide his disgust.

  “We can,” Fargus replied. “But then you will simply go mad from the pain. Would you like to attempt that?”

  “No…” Max said quietly.

  He thought of Kristina. No one else could help her. No one on Earth. No one here.

  “But I truly need to learn.”

  “Excellent!” the voice boomed with satisfaction. “Then we shall proceed. Remember this: restoring channels is the most dangerous stage. Flesh must be transformed into pure energy. And pain is the price.”

  A tendril coiled around his finger and yanked.

  The pain was so intense that Max felt as though his vision would shatter. He gasped, unable to breathe. His finger regrew – and the agony vanished instantly. He barely had time to inhale before it happened again.

  “Enough!” Max shouted. Summoning the last of his focus, he tore space open and teleported back into one of the dark corridors. His heart hammered violently. His hands trembled.

  This is impossible. No one can learn like this.

  And yet… Fargus’s words contained truth. Pain did pinpoint what was wrong. Could he find another book? Had Loub known that this one taught through suffering? If not… then perhaps this truly was his only chance to save Kristina.

  Max pressed a hand against the damp wall and drew a slow breath of the heavy, metallic air. Fear twisted inside him – but retreat was not an option.

  He knew how to think clearly. And once he chose a path, he followed it to the end.

  If the best training came through pain, then so be it. If it gave Kristina even the slightest chance to live, he would endure as much as he could. He would extract every fragment of knowledge from Rond and learn as quickly as possible.

  But he was afraid.

  He did not want to go back.

  He had to.

  A moment later, he stood once more at the edge of the lake of tendrils. The soft growths lifted him and laid him down gently upon the writhing surface. A fleshy stalactite descended above him. Blood-red pupils stared down without blinking.

  “So,” Fargus hummed, “where was I? Ah, yes. Human, I have reconsidered. I will not tear anything off you again. But do not flee.”

  A flicker of hope stirred in Max – brief and fragile.

  The walls began to illuminate with pulsing channels of light. The chamber breathed in heavy rhythm. Veins swelled across the enormous eye until it looked ready to rupture. Rond tried to restrain himself.

  He failed.

  At last, he exhaled slowly.

  “On second thought… no. Forgive me.”

  Max’s index finger flew off without pain. He didn’t even notice when the tendrils had latched onto it. The finger regrew – only to be torn away again. An anesthetic was clearly flowing through his blood.

  But how? Rond had insisted that training required pain.

  Max let out a weary breath.

  “You see, I have been studying you,” Fargus’s voice grew calmer, colder. “You possess flesh magic, yet you do not understand it. You must learn to command your own body. I intend to conduct a small trial of your organism, apprentice. I will observe. It should take no more than a month.”

  The slime covering the floor rose and enveloped Max from head to toe. His body was sealed within a living cocoon.

  Disgusting. Slimy. Revolting. He would never feel clean again.

  It took him several seconds to realize he was not suffocating. He didn’t need to breathe. Oxygen seemed to flow directly into his bloodstream. Yet instinct forced him to attempt an inhale, which only heightened his frustration. He couldn’t open his eyes, but a faint glow filtered through his eyelids.

  A burning sensation spread across his skin, as if his body were being dissolved from the outside.

  Are they digesting me?

  At first, he assumed it was some form of endurance test. Then he remembered: Rond had spoken about learning to control flesh. And flesh was everywhere around him now.

  Max did not know how long it took to steady himself, to stop fighting the sensation of not breathing, to gather his thoughts. Eventually, he directed energy into his flesh ring and attempted to dominate the substance surrounding him. Power flowed through the ring, down his arm, and dissipated uselessly into the cocoon.

  What was he doing wrong?

  For hours he struggled, wasting strength, achieving nothing.

  “No. This won’t work,” he muttered. “I need to control a fragment. Just one small piece.”

  He concentrated on a patch of flesh directly before his palm and began slowly, deliberately saturating it with his own energy.

  Yet his core did not empty.

  On the contrary, power flowed endlessly – as if not from the outside world, but from something deep within him.

  Three hours passed without interruption.

  Then he felt it.

  A pulse.

  Like a heartbeat.

  The foreign flesh shuddered.

  In pain.

  And this time he felt it – clearly. It was connected to him.

  Another push – and the cocoon convulsed violently, then expelled him. The burning sensation vanished.

  “What an unpleasant energy you possess,” Fargus thundered. “Even in the world of the living, I would not consume you. I expected you to spend months within my cocoon, studying how flesh shifts and yields to your ring, learning to reshape it… And instead, you simply burned out a channel! You cannot proceed like that, fool!”

  “You don’t need to eat me!” Max shot back.

  “Eat you?” Rond boomed in disbelief. “Foolish boy, no one was consuming you. You were inside one of my energy cocoons. It is the gentlest method of teaching flesh control. Within it, channels are concentrated, and flesh responds easily to the ring. There are no limitations – it can become anything. You simply needed to replace my energy with yours and guide it properly. Instead, you poured in such a torrent that a channel collapsed. I do not know where you are drawing so much power from, but that is not the method!”

  Tentacles slid forward from the darkness and brushed against Max’s arm. He shuddered at the sensation of cold, foreign flesh.

  “You destroyed part of my cocoon,” Fargus said, astonished despite his irritation. “Your energy should have been exhausted long ago. Where is your accumulator? Did you swallow a Great Spirit?”

  “I thought… you were supplying it,” Max replied before realizing he had shifted into a casual tone. That unsettled him even more than his own power.

  “Hm. Interesting.” Rond’s voice softened. “You have no auxiliary rings. No accumulation techniques. No artifacts. Only a single blue ring – and it is pristine.”

  Max said nothing. He merely clenched his fist.

  “With such reserves, you could achieve remarkable feats,” Fargus continued. “Shall I teach you to craft living constructs? Furniture that purrs? Chairs that hurl intruders across the room? You would rival ancient kings in wealth.”

  “I need one thing,” Max cut him off. “To heal my sister.”

  Silence stretched between them.

  Finally, Rond exhaled.

  “As you wish. I must still assess the magnitude of your energy.”

  A tentacle lined with suction cups coiled firmly around the arm bearing the ring.

  “Channel the flow here. Evenly. Slowly. Maintain control.”

  Max obeyed. The stream wavered – surging, faltering, surging again. He forced it steady, lost control, corrected it once more. He had never truly directed energy with precision before. But stubbornness anchored him.

  When he watched the flow with open eyes, it was easier. When he closed them and tried to feel it, it destabilized – yet from the surrounding darkness came an approving murmur.

  “Ha.”

  Hours passed.

  Max’s awareness narrowed until nothing remained but the flow. No stray thoughts. No fear. Only him and the ring – like a deep, unbroken meditation. The more energy he released, the more unsettled Fargus became. He searched for a flaw in the pattern, some hidden trick.

  He found none.

  Even the greatest knowledge mages could not bend the laws of the world and grant someone inside a book an infinite reserve of power. The boy had a source. A true one. Rond was certain of it. Max concealed something fundamental, yet refused to explain. In the end, Fargus forced himself to dismiss the curiosity. Every being had the right to secrets. He himself carried many – some that no one would ever uncover.

  By the second month, Rond still had no answer.

  A human – an ordinary human – was advancing at a pace only ancient clan prodigies could rival. The boy’s channels doubled in width, then quadrupled, then expanded eightfold. A blue ring under such strain should have fractured.

  Instead, it shone brighter.

  As though it were drinking from an endless river.

  What is he hiding? Rond wondered. No one accepts a ring without a primary one. It defies the structure of existence. And yet he stands before me as the exception. Why does he have so much energy? What is he?

  If his suspicions were correct, perhaps ignorance was safer. Fortunately, he was only an echo within a book. His conclusions would never leave these pages.

  Still, as he observed from above, gazing into the living darkness of his city, he felt something disturbingly close to fear.

  Compared to the vast currents coursing through the city-channels of Rond’s body, Max’s output was not colossal. But for a blue ring, it was absurd.

  Eventually, the boy released so much energy that even the city’s reservoirs struggled to absorb it.

  If Rond’s own channels resembled an endless forest of tangled pathways, the boy’s were becoming something else – smooth and unified, like tempered glass. Transparent. Even. Unbroken. The structure increased the speed of energy transmission in his body by an immeasurable margin.

  What will this boy become?

  Fargus intended to push him to the brink. Growth occurred under pressure. There had to be a limit. The ring could not change color inside the book. So eventually, the boy would refine his blue ring to its peak and depart. Rond expected it to turn green the moment Max stepped outside and fully established elemental resonance.

  But the limit did not appear.

  It began to feel as though there was no limit at all.

  “When do we start learning techniques?” Max asked again, impatience edging into his voice.

  If Fargus had possessed a face, he would have buried it in his palm.

  Then he reconsidered.

  Why not create one?

  He condensed energy into a crude formation near a tentacle – something approximating a forehead with brows – and slapped it sharply. The sensation registered as a clean nerve impulse. No pleasure. No true discomfort. For a fleeting moment, he contemplated striking the human instead. In Max, pain was still vivid. Still alive.

  And that amused him.

  “What did I tell you?” Rond snapped. “You have nearly limitless time here.”

  “And I told you I need to help my sister,” Max shot back.

  “How dare you address your teacher in that tone?” Fargus thundered. “You will learn techniques when your internal structure is prepared! The technique depends on it. The stronger your system, the more effective the weaving. And the more effective it is, the faster you will heal your sister. That is your goal, is it not?”

  “We’re going to create a technique?” Max asked, startled.

  “Did you imagine techniques manifest spontaneously?” Fargus scoffed. “Only fools adopt another’s weaving without adaptation. Of course we will create your own technique. We begin with foundations – what supports it, how it conducts energy, how it manifests energy into action.”

  He exhaled heavily. The boy understood almost nothing. They would have to begin from the very first principle.

  Then came the most instructive phase – the one that had always given color to Fargus’s existence and refined control better than any lecture.

  Pain.

  The volume of energy coursing through Max’s channels began to exceed the tolerance of his physical frame. The channels stretched, strained, tore microscopically, and repaired themselves. Heat surged beneath his skin like internal fire.

  At some point, Max ceased questioning whether he could endure it.

  He simply remained.

  Present.

  Allowing the ocean of mana to move through him.

  Will he turn into a being of pure energy? Fargus wondered. Am I about to create a new spirit from a physical body?

  The boy was easy to steer. Whenever Max started to complain or beg for mercy, Fargus needed only one reminder:

  “Your sister is waiting.”

  And Max endured again.

  Any other student who had ever entered this book would have broken long ago. Some had died. Some had been pulled out in time. But this one… this one was a treasure.

  Nearly a year passed.

  For that entire year, Max lived only for training. He immersed himself in the strange methods of this place, dissected its logic, and studied the rules Fargus laid before him. Once, he had seen Rond as a harsh mentor. Now he almost considered him a friend.

  Kristina remained his light in the darkness. She was the reason he never hesitated and never stopped.

  Over time, shaping a technique began to feel like programming. Each block resembled a module in code. Once you understood how it worked, you could combine it with others. The process fascinated him. Entire worlds of variations and endless combinations opened before him.

  In the last few months, however, Fargus had begun avoiding him more and more often. Max had drained him with endless questions, squeezing nearly every fragment of knowledge from him. Sometimes Rond hid for weeks, trying to rest, but it felt as if this student was slowly driving him mad.

  The worst part was that Max now understood the city of flesh almost as well as its master. He could call Fargus through the flesh itself, no matter where Rond tried to hide.

  Fargus fondly remembered that one good week when he had convinced Max that he needed sleep. It had been peaceful. Unfortunately, the boy eventually realized that sleep was not truly necessary.

  “So if I don’t add a stabilization block, the structure collapses?” Max asked while shaping another pattern. “And if the power block is too strong, the stabilization suppresses the weaker modules?”

  Rond remained silent. Some of Max’s questions required experiments, not explanations. So the boy experimented in chambers he created himself, because even for Fargus much of this was new.

  Gradually, Fargus began to feel less like a teacher and more like a student.

  He hated that thought.

  Max focused on his main goal: a healing technique.

  He wanted to build a universal structure capable of fully restoring the body – nerves, energy channels, even tissue density. Not only to heal his sister, but to make her stronger and healthier than before.

  The technique now occupied his entire ring. He wove in stabilizers, control blocks, and protection against mutation. He inscribed it not just on the surface, but deep within the ring itself, so that the pattern passed through every layer. It was woven into its very essence.

  Watching this, Fargus could only clutch his head.

  “This will not work!” he barked. “You crammed everything into one technique and expect it to function? Three simple techniques would be better than one monstrosity like this!”

  Max replied calmly, “I only modified the immortality technique you gave me.”

  “It cannot be modified!” Fargus trembled with outrage. “Simplicity is the ally of weaving. And what is this?” He jabbed a tentacle at one of Max’s modules.

  “Stabilization for extracting foreign particles.”

  “There was no such branch!”

  “I added it when I introduced aura properties.”

  “The property of what?!”

  Max patiently explained each added element. Fargus had no choice but to listen, because the boy’s thinking was unconventional – and it worked.

  At last, Rond sighed heavily.

  “Very well… activate it. Let us see what you have done.”

  When Max triggered the technique, an aura formed around him – a sphere about a meter in radius, visible only to flesh mages. Within that sphere, Max gained full control over flesh. The speed of control was limited by his blue ring, but the authority itself was absolute.

  “This is impossible…” Fargus whispered. “Your blue ring should not be capable of this. Any other flesh mage at your level could barely accelerate the growth of nails or hair. And you restored a finger.”

  Max only smiled.

  “But restoring nerves and channels is still very slow. I’ll have to treat my sister for at least a week.”

  “The important thing is that your technique stops degeneration,” Fargus admitted at last. “That alone is a miracle.”

  Yet deep inside, he felt fear.

  The boy had not simply created a working technique. He had created something new – something even Fargus did not fully understand. The aura could influence even Rond’s own body, gradually weakening his control within its radius.

  It became clear to Fargus: this boy was dangerous. And perhaps he would change the world.

  Just as the Sovereign once had.

  Within two days, Max fully restored the energy channels in his right arm – the same ones Rond had damaged and altered for testing. That should have been the final trial.

  It was not.

  The most dangerous experiment, in Rond’s opinion, was severing the channel between Max’s core and his left arm – the arm bearing the ring. The logic was simple: energy from the core had to feed the ring directly.

  Even that changed nothing.

  Energy continued to appear from nowhere, filling the boy’s entire body. It manifested even within the left arm itself. It felt as though, if that arm were cut off, a new human – a new Max – might grow from it.

  This defied all explanation.

  And most importantly, it was not a property of the book.

  It came from the boy himself.

  Rond began to suspect that some higher force – or a powerful knowledge mage – had deliberately written into the book a character who defied the laws of reality, simply to drive him insane. There was no other explanation for these anomalies.

  Max left the book only when he was certain he could heal his sister – only when he had learned everything it could offer and pushed his ring to its current limit.

  Most likely, it would change color the moment he stepped outside.

  He said a warm farewell to Fargus, who had given him all the knowledge he possessed. Yet even after several years inside the book, the ring’s color had not changed there. It obeyed not the artificial laws of the book, but the true laws of time and the world itself.

  Max took a deep breath and focused on the desire to return.

  It felt similar to moving through the Otherworld – simply will it, and the world shatters.

  Old Lub nearly dropped his mug – fortunately empty – when the boy appeared out of thin air in front of him.

  “How do you keep doing that?!” the dwarf clutched his chest. “Why scare poor old Lub like this?”

  Lub glanced at the hourglass on the table.

  Right before his eyes, the glass crumbled into fine sand, which almost instantly vanished. Judging by the amount of sand, barely two hours had passed.

  Two hours?

  Inside the book, that should have been two years.

  Impossible.

  Oops, the dwarf thought.

  Lub studied the boy carefully. After that much time, the lad should have gone mad. What a shame… Lub had even begun to feel less irritated with him – especially after receiving that fascinating book on computer science as a gift.

  And now this.

  The boy did not move.

  His mind must be gone. The guards would have to be summoned to dispose of him.

  Lub felt irritated with himself. He forgot about time only in two situations: when immersed in something truly interesting – or when reading.

  And that new computer science book had indeed been captivating. He should have deactivated the time artifact earlier and pulled the boy out.

  Meanwhile, Max stood completely still.

  He focused on his senses as he stared at the library before him.

  Had he truly returned?

  After two years.

  A memory flickered through his mind: the endless shelves of this very library, where he had stood what felt like a lifetime ago; the scent of old parchment; the flicker of lamps. It felt like another life.

  Two years – but it felt longer. In the book, he had taken his first real step into magic. He had endured trials of body, soul, and power. He had changed.

  Now he stood once more in the real world – as if only a couple of hours had passed.

  He felt energy pulsing within his body. It was no longer foreign. It was part of him now, as if the world itself breathed through his lungs.

  He summoned the ring on his left arm.

  Before his steady gaze, the ring of flesh shifted from bright blue to light green.

  Max had expected it.

  The ring had absorbed far too much power to remain blue. According to Fargus, it had passed through all three developmental thresholds without Max even noticing. He could have inscribed three full techniques into it – but instead, he had woven one vast structure.

  It was good that the ring had turned green. It would handle the healing. And ahead lay a long path of developing the green ring further.

  Already, the aura’s radius had expanded, and its strength had increased several times over.

  Max tested the aura.

  It worked.

  Two years…

  He could still see the city of flesh before his eyes – the living walls, Rond’s constant muttering. It felt strange now to look at these square stone walls. They were still. Lifeless. He could no longer sense the breathing of a living city around him.

  This world felt emptier. Less alive. Less harmonious.

  Max sighed quietly. He would never see the city of flesh again. It would remain inside the book.

  “I have to help my sister,” he said firmly, and there was no trace of a child in his voice.

  Lub let out a slow breath. Perhaps he should have told the boy the truth – that the book had been created by someone close to the Sovereign, someone obsessed with the mad idea of building a living world.

  But the words froze on his tongue.

  Before the dwarf could say anything, the boy vanished.