All Chapters of The Codex System:From Forgotten Teacher to Author of Worlds
: Chapter 41
- Chapter 50
185 chapters
Chapter 41: The Arrogant Heir
The encounter in the Banned Wing left Felix cautious, though, with a smoldering confidence too. He had faced a prehistoric terror and conquered it using his head as his chief weapon. It made the treacherous backstabbing of the Academy surface world seem almost insignificant.Almost.He was strolling across the center quadrangle, heading for a lecture on theory of elements, when he saw the crowd. It had the same ferocious, hunger-like intensity as on the day of the Ink Duel. At its core was Kael.His old rival had gained a court of followers, other physically gifted students of fighting houses who were impressed by his power and by his pride. They encircled a smaller, mouse-like student from the College of Artifice in a half-circle. The student, Elan, clutched an elegant brass creation to his chest—a multi-tool gadget clearly his own handiwork."You're trying to pass this off as a harmonic resonator?" Kael's voice was a biting, laughing growl, intended for the ears of everyone in the v
Chapter 42: Face of Defiance
Rumors about the quadrangle confrontation spread among students at blinding speed. Felix, the enigmatic probe of the Orrery, had struck again. He hadn't just beaten Kael; he'd publicly flayed him with words and turned the Storm Blade's display of prowess into a lesson in his own ignorance. The tale grew with each retelling, but through it all was the core of the truth: Felix possessed a weapon that no man could best—an intellect sharper than any sword.In the observation rooms and the faculty lounges, the event did not pass unnoticed.Archon Therus watched the saved scrying orb video in his private office. The on-screen face mirrored Felix's calm dismissal, Kael's anguished fury, the moment when the crowd's mood shifted from terror to derision. His own mouth twisted into a happy, genuine smile."Great," he remarked to the empty space. "He does not fight their battle. He changes the field of battle.".He was not the only one who thought so. In another room, a group of younger faculty m
Chapter 43: The First Convert
Liora found him in the Banned Wing. He was not reading to sit, but lying on the cold stone floor, back to the warded lectern, staring at the place where the black-covered book had rested. The air still retained a trace of its untangling, ozone-scented breakdown."You spoiled it," she breathed, half-accusation, half-wonder. She knelt, sweeping across the stone floor with loose tracing fingers the line of ash that was all that was left. "How? The wards. the nature of the creature. it should have been impossible."Felix did not look at her. "It tried to digest me. I was convinced that it was a logical fallacy."He spoke it so bluntly, so ghastly a certainty that Liora could only remain where she was. She had come with him seeking a friend, a companion to seek through the blackness. She had not come seeking a. power.I heard what you did to Kael," she said, sidestepping, but her head still reeling on the definitions of the destroyed book. "The whole Academy is abuzz. You embarrassed a Sto
Chapter 44: The Council's Suspicion
The High Council chamber was not a hall of knowledge, but of authority. A round room in the pinnacle of the central spire, the windows looking out over the dizzying view of Hafthor. The walls were lined with portraits of the former Head Archons, their disapproving eyes seeming to judge the current inhabitants. The air was thick with the weight of centuries of decision-making.Seated around a blackwood table of immense age were the seven most powerful figures in the Academy: the Council of Archons. At the head was Archon Therus, his face impassive. To his right sat Professor Lyra, her back erect, her eyes burning with cold fire. The others represented the various Colleges and the political might of the institution.On the tabletop, a silver scrying pool showed a repeating loop of images: Felix systematically dismantling the nobles in the Hall of Disputation. Felix verbally stripping Kael in the quadrangle. And finally, a fuzzy, long-distance image of Felix and Liora walking into the se
Chapter 45: The Duel of Doctrines
The Great Debate was a bi-annual tradition at the Academy, a spectacle whereby upperclassmen and visiting scholars battled over broad historical and philosophical issues. It existed in the Starfall Arena, repurposed from a test ground to an arena of the mind. This year's resolution was intentionally incendiary: "Resolved: The Sundering of Aethel was a purification necessary to eliminate magics too dangerous for a stable society."The motion was brought by a faction led by a renowned visiting historian, Archivist Valerius (the disgraced scion's cousin), who argued on the grounds of establishment security. The counter-movement was a delegation of firebrand progressives from the College of Aethrics, who argued it was an appalling overreaction that set magic back centuries.The debate was fierce, citational, and brilliantly argued on both sides. The audience of students and faculty was riveted. It was everything a Great Debate ought to be.And then Archivist Valerius, attempting to strike
Chapter 46: Legacy Restored
The aftershocks of the Great Debate rocked Hafthor for days. Felix's public image was now that of a polarizing figure. He was either a hero of vision who had the courage to speak truth to power, or a heretic whose views were dangerous and undermining the social order.He kept to his routine, haunting the library, though now he was never alone. Whispering followed his heels. stares bored into his back. He ignored them, seeking refuge in the oldest sections, the ones dealing with the immediate post-Sundering era, hunting for any scrap of evidence for his inflammatory theory.One day, as he trailed a finger down a census report from the First Reconstruction, a shadow loomed over him. He glanced up, expecting a hostile student or an annoyed professor.There, however, he found an old man. The style of his robes was antiquated, ancient, of surpassing, faded elegance. His back was stooped, but his eyes were clear and bright, with a suffering so deep it was as though it had been seared into h
Chapter 47: The Invisible Ink
The Selyr Mnemonic was a quiet weight in Felix's pocket, a smooth, cool stone secret that seemed to pulse against his thigh in time with his heartbeat. He could feel it even through cloth, a constant, gentle pull on his attention. It was not a summons, but an invitation—a shut door for which he now held the key, if only he could find the silence to turn it.He hid not in the Banned Wing, whose silence now seemed to hum with the echo of his own near-death experience, but in the one place he knew Kael would never go: the Academy's vast Scriptorium of Poetic Metrics. A hall dedicated to the magic of words, the power of meter and rhyme in spellcraft, it was generally considered the most tediously academic of all the libraries. The air was perfumed with dust, stale ink, and complete lack of interest.It was here, between the treatises on iambic pentameter in invocation rituals and the symbolic meaning of vowel sounds, that Felix was anonymous. He found a carrel buried in a forgotten aisle,
Chapter 48: Kael's Scheme
The revelation of the "other Codices" filled Felix with a general sense of paranoia. Any shadow in the library seemed to hold a glint of evil green. Any glance from any professor was like an assessment from a hidden, ancient intelligence. He moved through his days like a ghost, his mind reeling with the vast, terrifying new scale of his life.This distraction was a weakness. And Kael, for all his crudeness, was an excellent hunter of weaknesses.He hadn't forgotten the embarrassment in the quadrangle. The jeering whispers that now followed him—the "Storm Blade who got schooled by a probie"—were a poison in his veins. But he had learned. A straight-up fight was what Felix wanted. It played to his strengths. Kael would have to strike from an angle Felix would never see coming.He watched Felix from a distance, his distraction, his jumpiness. He saw Felix spending more time than usual in the libraries, but his focus seemed divided, desperate. Kael didn't know what Felix was searching for
Chapter 49: Counter Rewrite
Chapter 49: Counter RewriteThe Red Annotation seared in Felix's vision like a bloodstain on the universe: Asset Compromised. The violation was deeper than any flesh wound. Kael had not just stolen an object; he had stolen a piece of a language that organized Felix's very interaction with being. The shard [Appraise], a fundamental operation of the Codex, was now a splinter in his enemy's soul, a keyhole into a sanctum that should have been inviolate.Panic was a cold fist in his heart. He could feel it, a far-off, jarring thrum on the edge of his perception—a discordant note within the harmony of the Unseen Tide. Kael's storm-clouded core was now suffused with a splinter of the void's own purpose. The potential for catastrophe was endless. What if Kael, in his blundering rage, succeeded in activating it somehow? What if the other Codices, sensing the misuse of the shard, decided to take action themselves?But as the initial shock wore off, it was replaced by a colder, more intellectua
Chapter 50: Graduation of Chaos
The final term at the Academy passed in a silence of tense suspense. Kael was gone, his family had taken him away under the cover of night, shamefaced. He was not expelled; his record simply registered a "voluntary withdrawal for personal reasons." What had happened in the Refectory was a story too dangerous to tell in whispers, and yet a story that everybody knew.Felix became a ghost. Fears. Admired. Avoided. He was a walking paradigm shift, and most students and faculty didn't know how to interact with him. He did his final exams not with explosive spectaculars, but with quiet, devastating accuracy. His answers weren't just correct; they were foundational critiques that left his professors with more questions than they'd posed.He had no friends, aside from Liora, whose loyalty was now as enduring and absolute as the silver cord that tied her to the Codex. She was his single and first disciple, her once-broken center now a wellspring of calm, focused power, a reflection of the wint