Chapter 217: Scrolls
The sharp persistent electronic buzzing of the front gate intercom echoed through the quiet halls of the Silverleaf building.
Silas groaned, rolling his broad shoulders as he descended the grand staircase.
He was currently still shirtless, wearing nothing but a pair of loose, dark gray sweatpants that hung low on his waist.
His bare chest and arms were covered in a sheen of sweat from his grueling calisthenics routine.
’That I just picked up from the official LAB site...’ Silas thought.
Even with his Gold Core constantly regulating his physique, he refused to let his physical conditioning slip.
A Lord who relied solely on magic was a Lord waiting to be decapitated in the dark.
The buzzer rang again, louder this time.
"I’m coming, damn it," Silas muttered, dragging a calloused hand through his damp messy dark hair.
He crossed the foyer with his bare feet padding softly against the polished marble floor, and pulled open the heavy oak front door.
He walked down the long paved driveway with the heat radiating off the cobblestones, until he reached the towering reinforced wrought-iron security gates.
Standing on the other side of the bars was a young exhausted delivery courier wearing the crisp, standardized blue-and-gold uniform of the Lord Association’s Premium Marketplace division.
Behind him idled a sleek, corporate-issued hover-bike loaded with secure cargo containers.
Silas pressed the security rune on the wall panel. With a mechanical hum, the smaller pedestrian-sized side gate hissed open.
’I really do love these gates...’
Silas stepped into the threshold, towering over the courier.
The delivery guy looked up, and his professional customer-service greeting instantly died in his throat.
The courier’s eyes went completely wide with his face flushing an immediate shade of crimson as he took in the intimidating and flawlessly sculpted physique of the Lord standing before him.
’Fucking hell...’ the delivery guy cursed violently in his own thoughts, desperately trying to maintain eye contact and actively failing. ’Look at this guy! Fucking perfect noble genetics... Sitting in his mansion, built like a damn war god, probably sleeping with a dozen supermodels while I’m out here sweating for minimum wage! Life is so unfair!’
"Package for Graves?" Silas asked, his deep voice completely oblivious to the man’s internal existential crisis.
"U-Uh, yes! Yes, Lord Graves!" the courier stammered, frantically scrambling to pull a heavy runic-sealed metallic lockbox from his satchel, along with a glowing digital datapad. "Premium delivery from the Central Association Marketplace! I just need your biometric signature right here, please!"
Silas took the datapad, pressing his thumb against the glowing screen.
As the pad chimed to confirm his identity, Silas reached up with his free hand, casually massaging the back of his neck.
His muscles were still incredibly sore from the Secret Realm, but the small headache was finally starting to recede.
He was also mentally exhausted from the sheer psychological warfare he had waged against his sister the previous night.
After Lia had violently burst into his bedroom, screaming about the eight-million-credit price tag of the Zenith IVR parked in their driveway, Silas had been forced to deploy the greatest and most intricate lie of his entire life.
He had desperately, frantically managed to convince Lia that Elora Verinda had simply ’gifted’ him one of her incredibly old and depreciated beat-up track cars out of pity, and that the eight million figure was just the original retail price from a decade ago.
It was a flimsy duct-taped excuse, but it had barely worked.
If Lia had realized that he or Elora had genuinely dropped eight million Spirit Credits in a single evening, his sister might have actually run crazy and had a stress-induced aneurysm.
"Here," Silas said, handing the datapad back to the flustered courier.
Silas took the heavy metallic lockbox containing his eighteen elemental spell scrolls, tucking it casually under his muscular arm as if it weighed absolutely nothing.
"Thank you, Lord Graves," the courier said, quickly stowing the datapad. "Oh, wait! Before I forget!"
The courier reached back into his uniform pocket and pulled out a small, sleek, highly polished silver wristband that pulsed with a blue light as he held it out to Silas.
"The Marketplace management included this as a complimentary VIP gift for your incredibly large purchase," the delivery guy explained, his professional tone returning. "It’s a Lord Association Synchronization Band."
Silas raised an eyebrow, taking the silver band.
It felt cold and heavy in his palm. "What does it do?"
"It’s a spatial tether, My Lord," the guy told him eagerly, happy to explain the tech. "The Band can be directly, wirelessly connected to your personal Lord Inventory. Once you sync it, you don’t even have to wait for physical delivery guys like me anymore for standard-sized items! The Association can legally bypass the physical realm and send purchased items directly into your Lord Inventory through the Band’s signal."
Silas gaped a bit, his golden-ringed eyes widening in genuine surprise.
"Direct to inventory? Without a physical drop-off?"
"Exactly!" the man nodded, gesturing to the silver metal. "And it doesn’t stop there. The Band can be connected into external high-tier mechanical devices. Things like advanced smartphones, estate vaults, or luxury cars. That’s precisely why the top-tier Valoria nobles have them installed in their vehicles. It keeps their cars directly linked to their Lord Inventory, able to bring items out and store items in the trunk without having to manually summon the interface while driving!"
Silas blinked.
’No wonder,’ Silas thought, everything was instantly clicking into place. ’That perfectly explains how Elora’s supercar had the same function... She transferred those millions of credits and pulled my loot into her storage without even lifting her hands off the steering wheel. The vehicle itself is an extension of the inventory!’
Despite the incredible convenience of the technology, Silas’s paranoia instantly flared.
Giving a corporate entity a wireless back-door channel into his personal Lord Inventory sounded like a massive security risk waiting to happen.
So he still wasn’t exactly trusting of the band, regardless of how shiny it looked.
"Right. Good to know," Silas said smoothly, offering a polite nod as he casually slid the silver band deep into the pocket of his sweatpants. "Thanks for the delivery."
"Have a wonderful weekend, Lord Graves!" the guy wished him goodbye.
The courier hopped back onto the saddle of his idling hover-bike, revving the anti-gravity thrusters, and smoothly sped off down the private road of the Silverleaf district.
Silas stepped back inside the perimeter with the heavy wrought-iron gate automatically hissing closed and locking securely behind him.
He walked back up the long sun-baked driveway, completely ignoring the heat on his bare shoulders, and re-entered the sprawling mansion.
He bypassed the grand foyer and headed straight toward the dining room.
Sitting at the polished mahogany dining table was Lia.
She was hunched over a massive, incredibly thick, leather-bound textbook, furiously scribbling notes onto a piece of paper.
Standing right beside her, wearing her immaculate black-and-white maid uniform, was Martha, holding a silver tray of fresh pastries and actively trying to help the teenager study.
"I don’t understand this formula at all," Lia groaned loudly, burying her face in her hands. "The Academy instructors act like we should just intrinsically know how mana degrades in a vacuum!"
"Now, now, Miss Lia," Martha comforted her gently, placing a warm pastry onto a small plate next to her notebook. "Magic theory is incredibly complex... Even the greatest scholars at the Association struggle with these foundational laws so just take a deep breath and look at the variables again."
Silas walked into the dining room, setting the heavy metallic lockbox onto the mahogany table with a loud thud.
Lia whipped her head up, pointing her silver fountain pen directly at him. "Big Brother! You went to the Academy! You took this exact class! Help me with this!"
Silas sighed, leaning over the table.
He rested his calloused hands on the wood, looking down at the incredibly complex and convoluted mathematical mana-theory equation written in the textbook.
It was a massive string of alchemical symbols, degradation coefficients, and elemental output ratios.
’Haah... I hate these questions.’
Martha showed him the specific problem, pointing to the end of the equation.
"She has to calculate the exact terminal output of a fractured pyromancy spell when exposed to a zero-oxygen environment."
Silas didn’t pull out a calculator.
He didn’t even grab a pen.
He simply tossed his head from left to right, cracking his neck with a loud, satisfying pop, before casually looking back down at the book.
"The answer is one," Silas stated simply.
Lia blinked, looking at the massive, two-page equation, and then back at him. "One? Just... one?"
"Yes," Silas nodded. "It’s a trick question... The Academy instructors use it to weed out the idiots who rely purely on math instead of practical combat experience. Fire requires oxygen to maintain itself right? In a complete zero-oxygen vacuum, the spell doesn’t degrade mathematically... it fails to ignite and so the output coefficient of a failed spell is always one."
Martha stood there, her jaw dropping open in surprise.
She looked at the towering Lord as if he had just recited the secrets of the universe.
"Master Silas..." Martha gasped. "How did you possibly calculate that so simply? I thought you were... well, a combat specialist!"
Silas smirked with an arrogant expression crossing his face.
"There’s a reason I got a full academic scholarship to Valoria Academy from the slums, Martha," Silas declared smoothly. "I wasn’t just recruited to hit things with a sword."
Ignoring their awestruck stares, Silas turned his attention to the heavy metallic lockbox.
He pressed his thumb against the runic lock... The seal hissed, and the lid popped open.
Inside the velvet-lined box were eighteen perfectly pristine tightly rolled parchment scrolls.
Silas reached in and brought out a single scroll.
It was tied with a crimson silk ribbon, indicating its pyromancy affiliation.
He untied the ribbon and carefully unfurled the parchment, laying it flat against the mahogany table.
Both Lia and Martha leaned in, looking at it strangely.
It wasn’t a standard book or a manual.
The scroll was covered in completely different kinds of text... ancient, glowing golden runes that seemed to actively shift and writhe on the paper.
It wasn’t just instructions... it seemed to be a pure magical chant.
"What is that?" Lia asked, squinting at the glowing letters. "It looks like the text is vibrating."
"It is," Silas explained, his golden-ringed eyes tracking the runes. "This is a Tier 1 spell scroll. The reason why scrolls are so incredibly expensive and highly valued in the Sovereign Realm is that, unlike standard spells, the actual chants are bound directly into the fiber of the paper so they are completely different from normal spells."
Silas tapped the edge of the parchment.
"Normally, a Lord has to spend weeks to months, sometimes yers memorizing the exact phonetic cadence, mana circulation, and visual matrix of a spell to cast it," Silas continued his lecture. "The reason I learn spells quite quickly, even without scrolls, is based solely on the processing power of my Blue Core but for most Lords, these scrolls are a shortcut."
He picked the scroll back up, holding it lightly in his hands.
"By pressing the scroll directly against your head... furled or unfurled... one instantly absorbs the complete knowledge of what is inside," Silas told them. "The magic forces the chant and the mana pathways directly into your brain so you will instantly be able to perform the spell perfectly on the very first try."
"That’s basically cheating!" Lia gasped, amazed.
"It is," Silas agreed. "And of course, there is a massive catch. The text grows significantly dimmer after that first absorption. Which simply means the next time someone tries to use this exact same scroll, the magical knowledge flowing into their brain might not be as completely perfect as the original. It degrades."
Silas sighed heavily, rolling the scroll back up.
’And that’s for the Higher Tier spells,’ Silas thought bitterly, looking at the box of cheap Tier 1 garbage. ’These cheap Tier 1 spells completely dissolve into ash after a single, full use. It’s a one-and-done consumable. Well, nothing to cry over. I’ll upgrade the scrolls To Tier 3 once I’m in the Sovereign Realm.’