Prince Adrien and Althea cowered like little children. Their natural confidence slipped away the moment they realized what I truly was. [Foresight] highlighted the details of the scene. Color returned to Prince Adrien's face, and his heart raced; the pain and exhaustion lifted from his body as adrenaline shot through his veins. Althea clutched his arm, her eyes jumping from me to the shards of the bed pillar lying on the floor. For the first time since I met them, they looked small. Neither spoke for a long time, but my brain wouldn't stop.

Maintaining my secret identity wasn't my greatest priority anymore. To face the Corruption Cycle, Prince Adrien's support might be more important than anything else, and for that, I needed to keep him alive.

"S-since when?" Prince Adrien asked as he regained the ability to speak.

"Just before the royal army arrived at the Great Hall," I replied, pointing at Althea's dress. "But only recently I managed to create things like that. Can't say the System is a great teacher. I've been figuring things out for the past two years."

Prince Adrien opened his mouth again, but any sound died before he could utter a single word. For Ebrosians, two years was an extremely short 'cultivation' period. I gave him a moment to process the situation.

"What is your quest in Ebros, Robert Clarke?"

That was a tricky question, but I decided I wasn't going to lie.

"The Fountain follows a cycle of death and rebirth. We are coming close to its death, and the System expects an era of high Corruption ahead of us," I explained, skipping the fact that the System Avatar's plan was just to fix the malfunctioning subroutines and lie low until the cycle reset. "I'm here to help people survive."

Prince Adrien blinked. Then, I felt the sensation of a thousand little needles probing me. He was using a detection skill on me. Not one like [Foresight] that only caught external stimuli, but one like [Identify] that pried into private information.

"Are you using a skill on me?" I asked.

Althea looked at Prince Adrien in panic.

"Y-you shouldn't be able to feel anything," Prince Adrien said.

The greater the mana pool, the easier it was to detect the currents of mana.

"I-I'm an Arbiter. I'm using [Lie Detection]."

Arbiter was a Prestige Class from the Scribe line. A Scribe turned into a Diplomat instead of a Scholar, and then the Diplomat turned into an Arbiter. There was little information about Arbiters in the Book of Classes—as with most of the Prestige Classes—but they were described as a support class with strong perception powers and mild magical aptitude ranging from non-elemental attack magic to illusion magic. Although not confirmed, the author of the book believed Arbiters also had hypnotic skills.

"Am I lying?" I asked.

"No, but you aren't saying all the truth either," Prince Adrien cautiously replied.

I sighed. Prince Adrien and Althea weren't ready for the truth that the System was created by some chubby dude with a sparse mustache and a strange obsession with yellow polo shirts. They weren't ready to know how much the System tinkered with one's brain. Nor the fact that the System decided to abandon this generation to their fate.

"There are more dangers lurking, but those are mine to deal with," I said.

Althea and Prince weren't prepared to know about Runeweaver-on-Runeweaver violence either.

"Our survival through the Corruption Cycle will depend on the kingdom's unity. We need someone with power over the dukedoms. Someone who can make unorthodox decisions if it comes to it."

Someone who doesn't want power. Someone I can trust.

From the moment we sealed our deal, I knew Prince Adrien was the closest to the right person I was going to encounter. The Marquis and Lord Osgiria were too greedy. Lord Gairon was too prideful. Lord Herran was too much of a loving father to put the well-being of the kingdom above his sons and daughters. Lord Vedras hated the Osgirians and was carried away by revenge. Lord Jorn and Lord Kigria didn't have enough political power to move the kingdom. Lady Evelisse was a conspirator and a manipulator.

Prince Adrien was the closest to an alright guy I was going to find among nobles.

"You need to live," I said. "Show me Baram's Runeblade."

Althea jumped forward. "Even if you sever the connection, with the amount of corruption he has … will he be fine?"

I felt the tiny needles probing my skin again, but the sensation disappeared a moment later. Prince Adrien didn't want to know.

"It's over there, Runeweaver Clarke. Please do as you want," he said, pointing over my shoulder.

"There's no need to be so formal. I'm just a school teacher from Connecticut."

Leaning against the corner of the room was an old sword in an even older scabbard. I knew the scratches on the metal were purely cosmetic. That same sword had allowed Prince Adrien, a man with a support class, to cut down hundreds of monsters during the Lich's Monster Surge in Farcrest.

I grabbed the scabbard, careful not to touch the handle. If the legends were accurate, the Runeblade wasn't locked to a certain bloodline like the Aias Sword, so I wasn't going to burst out in flames if I touched it. However, the Corruption covering Prince Adrien's body was enough warning for me to be careful. I took a deep breath and used [Identify].

Baram's Cursed Runeblade. [Identify]: A cursed sword created by Runeweaver Baram capable of cutting mountains and separating seas. Enchantment Threshold: ???/???. Status: Degrading.

I didn't like the last part, but if the sword had existed for centuries, I could only assume it would last a few more. I focused on the handle and activated [Rune Identification].

Many System prompts popped in front of my eyes with Rune names. User. Activation. Detect. Depletion. Repel. Release. Echo. Resonate. Guide. Absorption. Bind. I also gained insight into many more Rank I Runes that I haven't encountered before. Pulse. Dampen. Transform. Aura. Amplify. Shape. Even with all the known runes, my brain couldn't make sense of what I was seeing. We used the same alphabet, but Baram's Runeweaving looked like constellations in the sky.

The sudden surge of information made me dizzy, so I had to close my eyes for a second while the System kneaded the knowledge of the runes into my brain. When I opened my eyes again, I found myself in front of a small universe of runic circuits. Although it wasn't a physical sensation, I could only describe it as the Runeblade screaming like a live wire, and considering the amount of power flowing through the sword, it might be a live mana wire as well.

The more I focused on the runes, the more my vision blurred, as if my brain refused to make sense of the higher rank runes engraved in the metal. Runeweaver Baram was either a genius or a monster. I couldn't envision myself conducting so much magical energy into a single enchantment circuit.

I tried to recall the sensation I felt when I used the Vampiric Rune on the Mage Killer Gloves to extract the Red Corruption from Rup's body. More than a sensation was an understanding of the rune. Vampiric was just a label for a deeper meaning I couldn't grasp with my mind alone.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

I relaxed, letting my eyes run free over the runes. Huge chunks of the enchantment made no sense to me. More than half of the runes were just smudges in the periphery of my vision. Other chunks were eerily familiar, although I couldn't say with certainty what their purpose was. Byrne had told me the Runeblade was an anchor between Earth and Ebros, but that didn't make the enchantment any clearer.

I was absorbed by the runes. No matter how hard I tried to count them, there were always more. Thousands, if not hundreds of thousands. Then, when I thought I couldn't go any deeper, I saw it. Like a curtain being pulled aside, I saw a mana spire floating in the middle of nowhere. The environmental mana curved down into the void, following the spire's direction.

I was a tiny speck of dust in front of a black hole.

The spire roared as my mana sense quivered. I kicked my metaphorical feet to get away from the swirl. I flew up just to get away until I reached the top of the spire. There was a person there. Or the projection of a person. I recognized him.

Prince Adrien was fixed in place with chains that came out of nowhere, the spire seemingly protruding from his chest. His body was transparent white, made out of mana, and his mana pool—a swarm of small mana particles—was exposed in the middle of his chest. A powerful flux of mana passed through Prince Adrien's astral body, powering the spire.

I followed the flux up into the void just to find a lone distant star. The Fountain.

No wonder Corruption had killed Prince Ragna and was now eating Adrien's body alive. Prince Adrien was the convex lens that gathered the mana necessary for the anchor to work. He channeled more power than any ordinary human should.

"Avatar! Are you there?" I called.

"I am," a feminine voice replied behind me.

When I turned around, I found a woman dressed in office clothes, her hair in a high bun secured with a pencil. I recognized her instantly. She was Rebecca from HR, the woman with hypnosis skills who had enslaved a flock of dragons and wanted to become the queen of the world, and one of the original Earth humans to arrive at Ebros.

"Don't look at me like that, it's me, the Avatar," the woman added.

Strangely enough, she—he?—'felt' like the Avatar.

"Why do you look that way?"

"It doesn't matter. I'm not really here. I'm seeing through your eyes and speaking into your mind… and it's quite interesting," the Avatar said, looking at Prince Adrien's astral projection. "Baram was more resourceful than I expected."

The Avatar was seeing something I didn't.

"What do you mean?"

"There are Runes that are difficult to trigger if not done by a living being. The Runeblade needs a wielder to anchor our worlds. Look. Prince Adrien is the channel between the Runeblade and the Fountain. Each second, millions of mana particles pass through his body to feed the enchantment."

That much I had guessed, but it seemed it was the first time the Avatar had seen the Runeblade in action.

"What a waste of magic. No wonder the Fountain is dying," the Avatar said.

"Then why did you tell Runeweaver Baran to create it?"

The Avatar gave me a sad smile.

"Isn't it obvious? I'm just following my directive: keep the System going. To do that, I needed to bring our worlds closer. Get more people to fall into this world, convince them to become Runeweavers, and fix the piling errors that accumulate in the System," he said. "The first earthlings arrived in this world by accident. Then Baram, also by accident. But I couldn't wait for another accident to happen. The fact that Byrne, you, and the other Runeweavers arrived here is more than proof that I was right. Bringing the two worlds closer was the right choice."

I shook my head. If I wanted a self-sustaining system that didn't bring the Fountain to the edge of collapse every thousand years, the Runeblade needed to go. For the Runeblade to go, I needed to come up with an alternative and convince the Avatar to trust it.

"We will talk about this later," I said, turning towards Prince Adrien's astral body. "I need him to live. Help me break him free from the mana flux."

The Avatar shook his head.

"I can't Runeweave, Robert. I'm just a copy of the personality of the Creator… but I might be able to do something. A favor for a favor," he said, leaving the words hanging in the air. His expression changed, like he was deep in thought. "I don't know what you plan to do to fix the Corruption Cycle, but I need you to promise you won't shut down the System."

His request caught me by surprise.

"Can you save him?"

"I can ease his burden, but it will be only a temporary solution."

A temporary solution was good enough for me until I could figure out something permanent with my Runeweaving.

"Alright. I wasn't planning on shutting down the System anyway."

Even if the System wasn't reading my mind, shutting down the System seemed like a good way to be responsible for a lot of people dying.

"You also have to promise you will find a way to keep it working," the Avatar-Rebecca said. "You might downscale it, edit it, add and remove functions, but you have to keep the core alive."

Alive.

I wondered if the Avatar feared death, or if that was the bare minimum his programming allowed him to bargain. As the System Avatar had said many times before, his sole goal was to safeguard the integrity of the System.

"I promise to keep the core of the System alive," I said, stretching my hand.

The Avatar-Rebecca shook it with a relieved expression.

"What are you going to do?" I asked.

So far, the Avatar's faculties had been rather limited.

"Says the one who uses Mana Mastery to solve ninety-nine percent of his problems," the Avatar grunted, reading my mind. "I'm going to couple the prince's manapool with his lover's. That way, the effect of the curse should be equally distributed."

I gave the Avatar a confused look.

"His lover?"

"She likes him. A lot. I know you are anal about consent, so I picked someone willing to sacrifice a part of their lifetime for the prince's sake."

"Let me ask her."

The Avatar-Rebecca gave me a disappointed look.

I felt like the world around me was starting to slip away.

"Did you see the Red Corruption?"

"I've seen through your eyes, but it was the first time I've seen something like that. The Quest and Security subroutines are doing stuff to prevent it, but keep an eye on it nonetheless," the Avatar said, his voice muffled like he was talking under the water.

Then, the world blurred, and I slipped into darkness. My head felt like a ripe melon about to crack. I slowly opened my eyes to find the white ceiling of Prince Adrien's bedroom. The Runeblade lay on the floor beside me.

Althea leaned over me, while Prince Adrien sat on the edge of his bed with a worried expression. His thinness worried me. My body ached like I had gotten corrupted. A quick examination of my mana pool revealed I was as healthy as ever. I just must not have been used to glancing into the astral plane or whatever that was.

"Althea…" I muttered, but my mouth was painfully dry. I cleared my throat. "Would you share Prince Adrien's burden?"

She blinked, confused.

"Of course I would!"

Before she could utter the last syllable, the environmental mana quivered. Althea froze, and the Runeblade changed form. The sheath was torn apart by an invisible force, revealing a wide black blade with golden runes along the fuller. Even without a hand wielding it, the Runeblade channeled mana. Althea fell to her knees, stifling a scream, and clutched her chest.

Prince Adrien jumped from the bed, his weak body crumbling over the marble floor, and reached for the sword.

It was too late.

"What did you do?!" Prince Adrien asked through gritted teeth.

As if the weakness had abandoned his body, he jumped to his feet and knelt by Althea's side, undoing the straps of her dress. She didn't look good. Corruption tendrils covered her right shoulder and climbed into her neck. Dark circles appeared under her eyes, and her skin paled to the point it was hard to tell the veins from Corruption apart. She was in pain, but she didn't utter a sound.

At the same time, the Corruption on Prince Adrien's body withdrew until his face and hands recovered their usual color.

"What did you do, Scholar!" Prince Adrien asked louder, his teeth still gritted.

"He did nothing," Althea said in a weak voice. "I saw the Embodiment of the System. I asked him to do this."

My heart raced.

With a little makeup, Prince Adrien could make public appearances again without anyone suspecting how far the corruption had advanced. Still, Althea worried me. Her mana pool was hundreds of times less developed than Prince Adrien's. Her tolerance of Corruption was way worse.

You know what to do.

I nodded in silence.

"This was me after my first fight against the Lich," I said, using [Mirage] to create the picture of my past Corrupted self in full color.

Althea and Prince Adrien gasped.

Luckily for the three of us, the members of the Scribe evolution line were not restricted in the number of titles they could earn by simply studying a field of knowledge. Advanced and Prestige Classes, after all, kept the benefits of the previous classes. That included Diplomats and Arbiters.

"How did you heal?" Prince Adrien asked.

"Leveling up and getting titles," I replied.

They looked at me in horror. Leveling up while corrupted wasn't something a normal person could do. At least not if they trusted only in the System.

"I will send you some study material."

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