While the heavy vibrations of Gajeel and Damian's battle continued to ripple through the stone walls of the guildhall, Albion stood in the absolute silence of the library.
He had spent the last hour conducting a series of experiments. The results were clear. His Innate Attribute was an information-based magic centered around understanding the world.
Since his awakening, his field of vision had been altered, allowing him to perceive the countless of invisible, pale blue strands extending from every object in the room.
He now understood the primary governing rule of his magic: the greater the understanding of a target, the greater the influence he could exert over it.
By processing the data within the threads, Albion acquired absolute knowledge regarding an object's physical composition and its magical properties.
By isolating the books in the library and analyzing them one by one, he had successfully extracted the foundations of magical theory.
He didn't need to learn every advanced concept yet. The baseline was sufficient.
Thanks to the awakening, his instincts had cataloged four fundamental laws regarding his power:
First, the threads hold all knowledge. Second, information is eternal; nothing is ever lost. The data he absorbed would never fade from his memory.
Third, to understand an object is to connect with it. This connection was what allowed him to manipulate an object's structural properties through its thread, moving it through the air with a precision that resembled telekinesis.
Fourth, too much knowledge will destroy him.
Albion stared at his palms, his brow twitching slightly. He didn't understand the exact boundaries of that final law yet. He didn't know how much information constituted "too much."
He had already absorbed the contents of numerous volumes, and his mind remained stable. He dismissed the question for now. The limit would reveal itself through continued experimentation.
Walking back across the polished floorboards, Albion stopped directly in front of the massive Lexis Orb. He held out both hands. In response, a translucent, shimmering keyboard materialized in the air before him. His small fingers moved across the light in a steady, silent blur.
"Attributes of magic," he said aloud. His voice was flat, quiet, and devoid of childish excitement. He was simply stating the information he had entered.
The moment he finished typing, a small, leather-bound volume slid from a high shelf across the room. It cut through the air soundlessly, slowing down until it hovered precisely at his eye level.
Albion reached out, catching the spine with his left hand. With his right, he firmly grasped the pale blue thread connected to the cover.
The connection snapped into place. Instantly, a heavy torrent of raw information forced its way straight into his temple.
The sensation was cold, invasive, and deeply unpleasant. But because he had repeated this process dozens of times over the past hour, his mind had already begun adapting to the friction.
He didn't gasp. He didn't fall to his knees. He simply held his ground, his eyes staring blankly into space as the text downloaded into his consciousness.
After several seconds, the flow stopped. Albion released the thread and stepped back.
His face remained pale, his expression characteristically neutral as he sorted through the new data. But despite his rigid control, a tiny, rare fracture appeared in his emotional restraint.
A quiet, genuine smile broke across his face before he even realized it.
The library was silent, save for the faint rustle of turning pages. Albion looked down at his small hands, checking the steady pulse in his wrists.
"The rules are clear," he murmured. His voice was quiet, just a simple observation. "I understand how it works now."
The things he had learned from the book were already perfectly clear in his mind. An Attribute defines how a Mage's power behaves when it's released into the world.
But those advantages weren't absolute. Winning a fight comes down to control, power, experience, and outsmarting your opponent.
He also knew that raw magic was just chaotic energy, and spells were the formulas used to shape it. There were only two types:
Caster-Type, where the magic comes straight out of your own body, and Holder-Type, which requires an object to trigger the spell.
Suddenly, a thin, high-pitched frequency pierced Albion's ears. In a loud room, it might have been easy to ignore, but in the quiet archive, the ringing grew until it filled his head.
He pressed his palms flat against his ears, wincing as his brow twitched.
Right after the sound, a heavy pressure built up directly behind his eyes. It pulsed slowly—throb, throb, throb—making it hard to think. Blinking felt heavy.
When he tentatively raised a finger to touch the skin around his eyebrow, it felt tender and bruised.
His body was telling him to stop.
"I feel sick," Albion whispered, his voice tightening from the pain. "Is this my limit?"
The smart choice was to sit down and let the headache pass. But he didn't want to wait. He needed to understand his magic, and he wasn't going to let a little pain stop him from getting stronger.
"I can't stop now," he said to the empty room.
For a split second, the dark, unsettling image of Amon flashed across his mind. Albion's gaze drifted downward, tracking the stark black letters tattooed across his fingers: K I N G. They were simple markings, but they stood out sharply against his youthful skin.
"A true king doesn't give up," he whispered, his voice turning colder and quieter. "I won't surrender."
He turned back toward the Lexis Orb, planning to use it again, but stopped. His eyes locked onto the glowing blue lines coming out of the glass sphere.
Connected to it was not one thread, but two. They twisted around each other like pieces of string.
'Two threads,' Albion thought, staring at the anomaly. 'Everything else in the library only has one. The chairs, the books, the walls. This is the only one that's different.'
He studied the dual lines carefully.
'The orb is a magic item. That must be why. It's more complicated than a regular book.'
The heavy pulsing behind his eyes grew sharper, a blunt warning that he was pushing his luck. He knew it was dangerous. If the rule about absorbing too much knowledge was real, touching this might hurt him.
'It's going to hurt,' he realized, his hand hovering just inches away from the glass. 'But I need to know what happens.'
With quiet resolve, Albion reached out, closed his fingers around both pale blue threads, and gripped them tight.
When Albion's fingers closed around the two twisted threads, the cold, unpleasant rush slammed into his head again—but this time, it was far heavier.
The sheer mass of the data forced him to pull his hands back, instantly breaking the physical contact.
He let out a soft, sharp groan.
'The orb isn't like a regular book,' Albion thought, pressing a hand to his temple as he tried to steady his breathing. 'It's an active magic item. It holds both physical information and magical properties. It's too dense.'
The moment the thought finished, a blinding pain stabbed directly behind his eyes. Albion winced, stumbling backward until his shoulders hit a heavy wooden bookshelf. The impact rattled the frame, sending a few thick volumes sliding off the shelves to hit the floor with loud, echoing thuds.
The headache sharpened into a cruel throb. The ringing in his ears grew deafening, and a sudden wave of nausea made the entire library tilt around him.
He gripped the edge of the shelf, his knuckles turning white. "I feel sick…"
It was the only way he could describe the raw, physical discomfort. He wasn't a machine experiencing an error; his five-year-old body was hurting.
Yet, even through the haze of pain, his mind couldn't stop analyzing the results of his experiment.
'The more complex the information, the more it hurts my head,' he deduced.
Everything in the world seemed to have a thread. A single thread meant something simple—a chair, a rock, an ordinary book. But two threads meant the target was moderately complex. A magic item.
He stood perfectly still against the shelf, taking a few deep, deliberate breaths to let the nausea pass. The headache was annoying, but it was manageable.
Compared to being slammed into black water or taking an injury so violent his face bled, a throbbing head was something he could easily get used to.
As the room slowly stopped spinning, an unwanted memory surfaced. He could still hear his other self's voice speaking to him in that quiet, unsettling tone.
"[I think whatever this power is, it allows you to grow at an unnatural rate. Mentally. Emotionally. Maybe even physically.]"
["You lack knowledge. Experience too. Yet you constantly throw yourself into situations far beyond your level… and somehow, you still manage to get through them."]
"[It's almost like your mind adapts under pressure. Like the harsher the situation becomes, the faster you evolve in response to it.]"
A bitter taste rose in Albion's mouth. He clicked his teeth together in quiet irritation.
"Why do I have to remember his words right now?" he muttered to the empty room.
It frustrated him deeply because the words felt completely accurate. Especially the final line that haunted him.
"[You are not human."]
Albion's hand curled into a tight fist. He squeezed it so hard the skin strained over his small knuckles, a tiny vein throbbing against his youthfully thin skin.
'He's wrong. I am human. Even if my body is different, I know my heart and my soul are human.'
He closed his eyes, forcing the rising anger back down into a cold, quiet place.
'Nonsense. Don't waste energy on distractions.'
Standing up straight, he forced his mind clear. He had learned enough about the mechanics of his magic for today. He hadn't given it a name yet, but that didn't matter. He could do that another time.
"Before I leave this place… I need to make sure of something."
Albion walked back over to the Lexis Orb, his small feet clicking softly against the floor. He stopped in front of the glowing, translucent keyboard and rested his fingers over the light.
'This orb's only purpose is to locate, organize, and retrieve information from the library archive,' he reasoned. 'If Mother was a member of Phantom Lord at some point in her life, this machine should have a record of her.'
His logic was entirely direct. If he could use the Lexis Orb to understand magic, he could use it to understand his own past. And the person who held the keys to his origin was the woman he called Mother.
But as his fingers hovered over the keys, a critical flaw halted him.
'What is my mother's name?' Albion stared blankly at the glass sphere, diving deep into his oldest memories. He forced himself to look back five years, searching for the very first moments he could recall in that cold laboratory.
Her specific words echoed clearly in his mind.
"[I would be a fool to grant you my true birth name. I am a criminal, after all."]
"[You may simply call me Mother. And since I am your parent… your very life belongs to me."]
"[Oh, that's easy, I can always just claim I was assaulted by some incredibly powerful wizard. Yes… that excuse will do perfectly. People absolutely love tragedies like that. They ask far fewer questions.]"
Albion let out a quiet, empty sound from his throat—a ghost of a chuckle that lacked any real warmth.
"She never did tell me her name," he whispered. "She said she was a criminal. Was she running from someone?"
His thoughts cut deeper, connecting the threads of his past.
'If she was actively running from the law, she wouldn't have ties to a legal guild like Phantom Lord. A massive guild wouldn't take in a wanted fugitive. Which means she must have been a normal wizard here first, before she became a criminal.'
Suddenly, a memory of Master José's furious voice flashed across his mind, making his eyes sharpen.
"[Not your fault? You sound like a child caught in a pathetic lie. Was it not you who became pregnant? Was it not you who fled the guild?]"
'Fled the guild…'
The pieces clicked together with sudden, jarring clarity. His mother didn't run away because the guild turned on her. She fled the guild on her own, and whoever made her a criminal did it after she left. José didn't even know she was a criminal.
And then there was the lie about his father.
"[The boy! His father was a powerful wizard!]"
"[...If that's true, then there's a chance he might possess an impressive Innate Magic.]"
She had explicitly fabricated the story about a powerful wizard father just to convince José to take Albion into the guild. Albion had no memory of a father because she had adopted him.
She knew he would eventually undergo a powerful awakening, but why bring him to Phantom Lord before it even happened? If she knew he had that potential, it would have been safer to keep him hidden until he was older.
'Why lie to the Master about where I came from?' Albion thought, his brow furrowing. 'Unless… it has something to do with the person who branded her a criminal in the first place.'
He shook his head roughly, cutting off the spiral of thoughts. He hated this. Every time he figured out an answer, it just created three more questions.
It felt entirely deliberate. As if he, José, Phantom Lord, and Amon were all being forced to march down a twisted, pre-written path that had been set in motion years before he was even born.
He refused to leave without at least one concrete fact. Albion focused his gaze back on the translucent keyboard. His small fingers moved across the glowing keys in a steady, deliberate blur, typing out a single, calculated query.
The terminal blinked. The screen refreshed.
Albion's eyes widened.