Chapter 13: How Can a Scholar's Actions Be Called Stealing?
Hodell sat by the window while bright noon light spilled across his desk in clean, warm squares.
Apply to become a greenhouse assistant?
He tapped a finger lightly against the tabletop.
That would certainly create more opportunities. But to make it convincing, he would need to immediately swallow huge chunks of botanical knowledge like [Basic Botany] and related practical manuals. More importantly, if something went wrong only two days after he became an assistant, that would be the sort of coincidence even an idiot would find suspicious.
Forge a low level maintenance order?
No. The risk was too high.
He lowered his eyes and thought through the mission again from the beginning.
It was only E Level.
That meant the practical difficulty should not be absurd. Although the material itself was precious, this was Liuli Cloud Dream Academy. For an institution of this scale, three grams of Starshimmer Flower pollen should not be enough to shake the heavens.
Professor Marcus's steady voice continued from the podium like distant background noise.
"…Ancient research indicates that under a specific frequency of magical impact, Silence Stone can instantly shift from a perfect insulator into a superconductive state. This transformation is highly unstable and extremely dangerous, which is why all related applications have long since been sealed…"
Hodell's eyes flickered.
A thought flashed through his mind.
Got it.
This afternoon, under the excuse of observing luminous moss samples, he could borrow fine tweezers and inert crystal powder from the alchemy workshop.
That should be enough for the first step.
The second class was still Magic Guide Application.
Speaking of magitech, it had only truly begun to be valued after the [Star Sea Revelation] incident. From the bits and pieces he had found in books, Hodell had pieced together a rough conclusion.
The advanced civilization that had contacted Liuli Star, Halax, was primarily a technological civilization.
The Star Sea was so vast that the word vast almost lost meaning. Countless factions and civilizations were scattered through it, entangled across unimaginable distances. The level of a civilization was determined largely by one thing: how far it could move on its own.
Liuli Star was called a surface civilization for a reason.
Without outside help or advanced off world technology, it simply could not leave its own stellar neighborhood.
From small to large, the rough structure of the Star Sea went like this: Planet, Star Sector, Galaxy, Star Cluster, Star Realm.
Halax belonged to a level far above Liuli Star.
Hodell had never heard the name in the original story.
That bothered him a little.
And as for why advanced civilizations did not simply descend and colonize lower ones, or casually overwrite them through culture, technology, or biology, the answer was also written clearly in several public texts.
The [Pan Universal Civilization Contact Treaty, Seventh Revised Edition].
One of its core clauses stated that after the discovery of a sapient species, no higher civilization was permitted to maliciously interfere with the developmental process of a lower one through war, genetic manipulation, pheromonal control, or any of another hundred plus listed methods.
In other words:
The non interference act.
Was it effective?
Hodell's answer was simple.
Effective enough.
In the original, Han Xiao had started on Planet Aquamarine, a remote backwater crawling with space pirates, and that world still survived without being casually occupied by some passing advanced empire. As long as one was not unlucky enough to attract the attention of a truly deranged Chaotic Evil faction, the rule generally held.
What interested him more, however, was Liuli Star's own reaction.
After Halax revealed the greater universe, the Liuli Civilization had rapidly discovered something harsh. Against advanced interstellar weapons, the magic they had painstakingly built their civilization around looked pitifully outdated in some areas.
That should have been enough to trigger a technological inferiority complex.
Or a collapse of magical faith.
Or a full scale cultural surrender.
And yet it had not.
At least not completely.
That, in Hodell's view, was genuinely admirable.
Magic was also a form of science. A civilization that abandoned its own framework entirely in order to clumsily imitate an alien path was not evolving. It was amputating itself.
Still, he had no real faith in Halax's so called benevolent contact.
If they had truly wanted to help Liuli Star, they would have done more than descend dramatically, reveal the scale of the universe, and leave the locals terrified of stepping outside their own sky.
Of course, technology alone never decided everything.
The original had made that painfully clear with the Sunil Tribe.
The Sunil had been weak. After catastrophe, they accepted "military protection" from the advanced Gedora civilization and underwent a second migration. Gedora scattered them, stationed permanent garrisons among them, and through a combination of policy and time, gradually assimilated them until the Sunil civilization itself ceased to exist.
Once a lower civilization voluntarily placed itself under the umbrella of a higher one, the non interference act no longer protected its independence.
That road ended in quiet extinction.
…
Unlike the previous day's class, today's Magic Guide Application focused much more on testing rune response under different patterns of energy input.
The assignment was straightforward.
Each student had to use a standard mana source and apply three input modes into three different test slabs: stable, fluctuating, and pulse. Then they had to record the threshold values, stability, and conversion efficiency of the rune response.
Hodell looked down at the mana source simulator in front of him, and his brow furrowed slightly.
If he forced his way through the orthodox operating method, he could probably manage something passable. But it would be slow, clumsy, and dangerously likely to expose the fact that his magical education was all scaffolding and performance.
As he was weighing the problem, his gaze fell upon one of the rune slabs.
[Glimmer].
A thought appeared.
Instead of touching the simulator, he raised his hand and placed his palm directly above the rune slab itself.
Eric noticed first.
"What is he doing?"
His expression shifted at once.
Directly guiding environmental mana by hand without a simulator required extremely high affinity and a frightening level of control.
At the same moment, the professor also noticed.
A faint line appeared between his brows, and it was obvious he was about to step in and correct such a nonstandard method.
Then the next instant arrived.
Under Hodell's palm, the [Glimmer] rune lit up.
Gently.
Steadily.
A soft glow spread across the slab.
He was not truly using mana.
He was using [Energy Simulation] to imitate mana fluctuations almost perfectly, then applying them directly to the rune itself.
It was a complete cheat.
And an elegant one.
The professor's correction died in his throat.
Hodell shifted the pattern of his output slightly, matching the flow of the fluctuating mode. The rune's light brightened and dimmed in perfect rhythm. Then, without pause, he raised the intensity a little and simulated a clean pulse response.
Bright.
Fade.
Bright again.
Stable.
The entire operation was smooth enough to look effortless. He did not even glance toward the nearby students who were still struggling to record their data.
To everyone else, it looked like absurd talent.
The kind of talent that let someone use a bare hand in place of a standard training simulator.
The professor stood silent for a beat, then slowly withdrew whatever he had originally intended to say.
He could tell that Hodell's technique was not orthodox.
The fluctuations were too direct. Too pure. Too stripped down.
But this was Liuli Cloud Dream Academy, a place crowded with geniuses, noble descendants, and strange little monsters raised inside privilege and rare resources. He had taught long enough to know when to keep some questions to himself.
Energy control is unconventional, he thought, but the result meets the standard.
That was enough.
Carlo's eyes had already gone wide.
"This works too?"
Not far away, the green haired girl quietly watched Hodell withdraw his hand, then turned her gaze toward her own simulator, which was still in the process of being calibrated.
A complicated silence settled inside her.
So this is what genius looks like.
Ordinary people stayed up through countless nights wrestling with runes and models until their minds went numb, chasing the same breakthrough over and over and finding only walls.
And the thing top students bled for through repetition and exhaustion had just appeared in front of him like it was the most natural thing in the world.
Perhaps that was why the truly strong were often the humblest.
Because only they knew how small they really were in front of someone even more unreasonable.
At this moment, Carlo only understood one thing.
Hodell was amazing.
Eric and the green haired girl, however, felt as though they had just heard the gods lean down and whisper into their ears:
Do not compare yourself to something inhuman.
Hodell, for his part, remained perfectly calm on the surface, though inwardly he let out a long breath.
That was close.
He had barely scraped past another hidden mine.
If he had failed on the third day, there would have been no point even discussing Starshimmer Flower pollen.
…
That afternoon, the alchemy workshop was bright with soft, carefully filtered light.
Hodell quietly told himself:
Please let this part be easy.
The teaching assistant managing the equipment was visibly distracted, his attention buried under a thick stack of material ledgers. When he heard the phrases luminous moss, fine tweezers, and inert crystal powder, he did not bother asking any deeper questions.
After a careless registration, he simply pointed toward the storage area.
That was all.
Hodell easily obtained two pairs of mithril tweezers fine enough to grip pollen without crushing it, along with a small bottle of inert crystal powder capable of insulating delicate energy interactions.
Good.
At least the scouting phase had gone smoothly.
He let his gaze move casually through the room, trying to pick up anything else that might prove useful later, when a familiar voice spoke beside him.
"Ryan? Are you interested in luminous moss too?"
Hodell's heart jumped, but his face only showed a mild, pleasantly timed surprise.
He turned.
It was Lula.
The quiet brown haired girl from earlier.
She held several thick botanical references and notebooks in her arms, and her clear eyes were bright with the unmistakable joy of having found someone who shared her interests.
"Lula."
Hodell smiled politely.
"Yes. I find their changing luminosity under different environmental conditions very interesting."
"I knew it!"
She brightened immediately.
"I've been recording the light cycle of Liuli Moss lately, and I found that it is most sensitive to very specific energy bands, especially when exposed late at night to certain bioluminescent plants. I think this may be related to a special type of light conducting crystal cell in its structure…"
She continued speaking, increasingly animated as the subject pulled her along.
Hodell wanted to bury his face in his hands.
So I cannot even think something dangerous without setting a flag now?
He secretly gritted his teeth and began the art of surviving an academic conversation while knowing far less than the other person assumed he did.
"I see."
"That makes sense."
"That's very possible."
"This periodicity might indeed connect to energy absorption efficiency."
He gave small, careful responses, using just enough intelligence flavored language to keep the rhythm going.
Lula, however, was getting more and more engaged.
"By the way," she said, "what method are you planning to use to isolate and cultivate your luminous moss samples? I've tried several growth media, but they all seem to affect the natural glow to some extent. Since you borrowed inert crystal powder, are you planning to construct a simulated energy field environment?"
Hodell's fist tightened inside his sleeve.
A simulated energy field?
He had borrowed the powder for the crudest possible use: stabilizing pollen long enough to move it.
That was it.
He had never even considered anything as respectable as controlled environmental simulation.
For half a second, he truly wanted to lie down on the floor and stop participating in reality.
Instead, he smiled.
"Constructing a stable energy field is a fairly advanced topic. My current idea is more preliminary. I mainly want to isolate interference first and determine the basic light sensitivity threshold. The finer structure of the setup is still… under consideration."
Then, before Lula could dig deeper, he struck back first.
"Actually, Lula, since you've clearly thought a lot about field construction, I have something I've been wondering about."
She blinked.
Hodell continued with perfect seriousness.
"If inert crystal powder is used to build an isolation field, is it possible that the field itself would distort the specimen's original energy feedback? After all, what we're observing is bioluminescence, not a purely abstract energy reaction."
Lula froze.
Her fingers unconsciously tightened against the edge of her notebook.
"Distort the original feedback…?"
She repeated it slowly, her expression turning thoughtful.
"I… I've mostly been recording phenomena so far. I haven't really gone deeply into field interference…"
"I only thought of it suddenly," Hodell said with a timely, gentle smile as he slipped the tweezers into his pocket. "It seems I should go to the library first and look up the literature on interference fields. Shall we continue this discussion another time?"
Lula nodded almost blankly, still lost in the new problem he had just dropped onto her.
As Hodell walked away, he heard her murmuring softly to herself.
"So I also have to consider field interference…"
Of course you do not, he thought. I invented it.
Leaving the alchemy workshop, Hodell followed his original plan and passed near the magical botany greenhouse district on the way back.
He walked at an ordinary pace, like any student wandering through campus after class, but his eyes quietly recorded everything.
The material access corridor.
The patrol nodes.
The positions of the security routes.
The old ventilation line concealed behind overgrown vines.
By the time he reached the dormitory district, the setting sun had already stretched his shadow long across the path.
…
Deep in the night, Hodell slid soundlessly out of a ventilation duct.
Liuli Star had no moon, but its stars were dazzling. The academy's nighttime illumination was adequate in the practical sense, yet the world still felt dim enough for shadows to matter.
His movements were light and careful, catlike in their restraint.
In the inner pocket of his coat, a crude suppression box reinforced with inert crystal powder held his body heat close. Inside it were a little over three grams of Starshimmer Flower pollen.
The collection process had not been elegant.
It had nearly gone wrong twice.
But in the end, it had succeeded.
He had thought the timing through carefully.
Tomorrow was the official maintenance window, which also meant it would be the main period for formal inspections after any irregularity was detected. Since he had no overwhelming advantage in stealth or disguise, acting tonight before anyone was fully alert made the most sense.
Even knowing the mission was only E Level, he still felt a deeply human sense of moral discomfort.
Stealing really was bad for one's nerves.
He did not head straight back to the dormitory.
Instead, he made a detour to a secluded artificial lake near the edge of the grounds. There he carefully cleaned away every trace of soil, pollen, and plant scent that might cling to him. The tools he had used were weighted with stones and sunk into the lakebed.
Only after that did he return to the residential area, walking at the pace of an ordinary student who had stayed too late at the library and come back with a trace of pleasant exhaustion.
The moment he closed the dormitory door behind him, he let out a long breath.
Then the system prompt appeared.
[You have unlocked the skill [Pickpocketing Lv.1].]
[Pickpocketing: Increases the success rate of theft.]
Even that nearly made him jump.
"…Huh."
After a second, he remembered.
Han Xiao had eventually possessed the same skill in the original story.
Funny coincidence.
Or maybe not.
Abilities and real experience often overlapped. Someone who knew how to do something in reality had a good chance of triggering the corresponding game skill.
If someone had military training, they might naturally awaken basic combat and firearms skills.
And now here he was.
A proper thief.
He stared at the panel and muttered inwardly with all the dignity he could manage:
How can a scholar's actions be called stealing?
Still, once the humor faded, his thoughts grew serious again.
He ran through the entire theft step by step, checking for omissions, errors, or any overlooked detail that might later become a noose around his neck.
Then his mind drifted back to the false identity he was wearing.
What am I now?
An undercover operative?
A compromised witness?
A coerced participant?
From his current perspective, the organization was exercising restraint. Otherwise the mission would not have been this simple. They did not want full obedience yet. They wanted the first stain.
Once his hands were dirty, the next step would become easier. Then the next. And eventually, he would go from being coerced to being involved.
From involved to invested.
From invested to unable to leave.
He rubbed his brow.
But looking at it another way, he had little room to complain. The panel still existed. The main storyline still existed. And as long as he remained in a favorable position inside the unfolding chaos of this planet, his growth rate would remain far above what it would be if he ran off alone into the world.
Strength first.
Everything else after.
He had just reached that conclusion when another thought flashed through his mind.
Wait.
Why am I mentally setting up future disasters again?
The next day passed under bright sunlight.
Classes proceeded normally. At least on the surface.
But if one paid close attention, subtle differences were already there.
Before the magic guide lecture, he overheard several students whispering near the window.
"Did you hear? Security around the botany greenhouse has been increased."
"Really? I did not notice. Is some rare specimen being transferred in?"
"No idea, but the atmosphere feels strange."
During lunch at the dining hall, students were unexpectedly given a survey.
A harmless looking [Student Activity and Interest Questionnaire].
Most people filled it out casually.
Hodell read every line.
Some of the questions were ordinary.
Some were not.
[Are you deeply interested in magical botany? Yes / No. If yes, briefly describe the direction of your interest.]
[Have you noticed any unusual behavior or habits among the students around you? If so, please describe briefly.]
When he saw those questions, he actually relaxed a little.
Good.
That meant they had no obvious leads.
If they had found direct evidence, they would not bother circling around with fishing methods like this. The academy clearly wanted to keep the theft quiet and was still investigating in secret.
Hodell answered using a classic method.
Montage style lies.
The trick was simple.
You used real pieces of information and arranged them into a false total picture.
For example:
She divorced me. She is with someone else. I hit her.
When the real order was:
I hit her. She divorced me. She is with someone else.
The facts remained individually true.
The implied narrative did not.
Hodell knew the Erhai School would eventually learn how the academy reacted, so he calmly filled out the survey with carefully arranged truths and distortions until the overall image pointed in the wrong direction.
That afternoon, he returned to the vicinity of the ornamental greenhouse to deliver the pollen.
The same dark gray uniformed man was there again, still pruning shrubs that somehow never seemed to run out.
"The item."
He did not waste a single extra word.
Hodell handed over the suppression box.
The man took it and tucked it into his coat without even opening it.
Then, from another pocket, he produced a tiny black bottle no larger than a thumb. Inside were several pills that glowed with a faint ghostly blue fluorescence.
"This is an additional reward for completing the mission," the man said flatly. "If you have an important magic guide class, an assessment, or a period where your energy feels low and concentration becomes difficult, take one."
His gaze remained indifferent.
"It will sharpen your thinking. Clear your mind. Heighten your sensitivity to energy and improve the precision of your control."
A perfectly measured hesitation appeared on Hodell's face.
The man saw it.
A cold smile, barely there, touched the corner of his mouth.
"Relax. It is only an auxiliary substance."
His voice turned almost mocking.
"Whether you use it or not is entirely up to you."
.....
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