The Weakest Mage at the World's Greatest Academy

Chapter 17: The Thing Buried Beneath the Academy

The first scream erupted from beneath the infirmary, followed by a violent tremor that threw Professor Elara Veyne against the wall and sent Awesome crashing onto his hands and knees.

Before anyone could recover, the floor split open between them. Black light surged through the widening crack, illuminating the shattered tiles with pulsing veins that resembled something alive beneath the academy’s foundations. Somewhere below, metal groaned against stone, and the entire building shuddered as though an enormous creature had rolled over in its sleep.

“Everyone, get away from the floor!” Awesome’s father shouted.

He seized Awesome by the collar and dragged him backward just as a black tendril burst through the broken tiles. It whipped through the space where Awesome’s head had been, struck the ceiling with enough force to shatter several support beams, and disappeared into the darkness above. Pieces of plaster and stone rained down around them as Awesome struggled to regain his balance.

He scrambled to his feet, his heart pounding while the system flooded his vision with warnings.

[GLOBAL AUTHORITY ACCESS: 51%]

[ACADEMY DEFENSIVE NETWORK: COMPROMISED]

[UNKNOWN CONSCIOUSNESS: AWAKENING]

[WARNING: DO NOT ALLOW THE TWO SUBJECTS TO SEPARATE.]

Awesome barely had time to understand the final message before another tremor shook the infirmary. Elara grabbed his arm and pulled him toward the emergency exit, her expression revealing a level of fear that she could no longer conceal.

“We have to get you out of this building,” she insisted.

“Out?” Awesome demanded, wrenching his arm free. “You heard what that thing said! It remembers where it buried its body. If we leave, whatever is waking beneath us could reach the entire city.”

“The city is already connected to the academy’s magical network,” his father replied grimly. “If the First Witness reaches the central authority core, distance will mean nothing. It could influence every registered magical device connected to the system, regardless of where that device is located.”

Awesome turned toward him, searching his face for an explanation that might finally make sense of the nightmare surrounding them.

“Then tell me what is buried down there.”

For the first time since emerging from the sealed chamber, his father hesitated.

That hesitation frightened Awesome more than the black tendrils tearing through the floor.

“You knew,” Awesome accused him. “You knew something was beneath this academy, and you kept it from me.”

“I knew the academy had been built over an ancient containment site,” his father admitted. “I did not know that the thing inside it had survived.”

“You keep saying that as though it changes anything!”

Awesome’s voice echoed through the damaged infirmary, carrying years of frustration that he had never been able to express properly. He had spent his life being told that his lack of mana made him useless, enduring examinations and dismissals from people who believed the numbers displayed by their instruments more readily than they believed the boy standing before them. Now he was discovering that the people responsible for his existence might have understood exactly why he was different.

Every answer seemed to reveal another betrayal, and each new revelation made him question whether anything he remembered about his life was truly his own.

Before his father could respond, a second voice rose inside Awesome’s mind.

He’s lying.

The hidden boy’s presence pressed against his consciousness. Although the boy was no longer attacking him directly, Awesome could still feel his anger, fear, and the terrible familiarity of memories that somehow belonged to both of them.

He knows more than he’s telling us, the boy insisted. He always does.

Awesome stared at his father, his suspicion deepening.

“What aren’t you telling me?”

A deafening impact shook the building before his father could answer. The infirmary doors slammed shut, and the magical lights turned black one after another, plunging the room into darkness.

Then every screen in the infirmary illuminated simultaneously.

The same message appeared across each display, written in strange characters that seemed to crawl across the glass.

WELCOME HOME, FIRST WITNESS.

Elara went pale as she read the words.

“That’s impossible,” she whispered.

Awesome turned toward her. “What is impossible?”

She backed away from the screens, shaking her head as though refusing to believe what she was seeing. “Those characters belong to a language that predates the first recorded magical civilization. We discovered fragments of it in the ruins where your father found the original containment seal.”

His father drew a silver blade from beneath his coat, holding it firmly as another tremor travelled through the building.

“And the academy’s founders used those fragments to construct the central authority core,” he added.

Awesome felt a cold sensation settle in his stomach.

“You built the academy around its prison.”

“No,” his father replied, tightening his grip on the blade. “We built it around the lock.”

The floor buckled beneath their feet, and a deep, rhythmic thud rolled through the building. The first impact shook dust from the ceiling, while the second sent another fracture racing across the infirmary floor. When the third beat sounded, every magical instrument in the room exploded.

Awesome raised his arms to protect his face as glass and metal scattered across the chamber. Through the ringing in his ears, he heard Elara shouting his name, but her voice seemed to come from a great distance.

His vision filled with another system warning.

[STRUCTURAL INTEGRITY: 63%]

[CONTAINMENT LOCK: ACTIVE]

[CONTAINMENT LOCK: BEING OPENED FROM THE INSIDE]

Awesome swallowed hard as he read the final message.

Something beneath the academy was not merely waking up. It was actively trying to escape.

“Being opened from the inside?” he repeated. “You said the First Witness was trying to find its body. If it is trapped beneath us, how can it open the lock?”

His father stepped toward the cracked floor and studied the black light spilling through the widening gaps.

“Because the lock was never designed to keep the First Witness out.”

Awesome felt the hidden boy stir inside his consciousness.

Ask him what the lock was designed to keep in.

His father could not hear the voice, but something in his expression suggested he had anticipated the question.

“The First Witness was discovered in a place where magic should never have existed,” he explained. “It could observe magical laws, understand how they operated, and eventually alter them. However, it had no stable physical form, so it needed a living vessel capable of surviving the transfer of its consciousness.”

“And you gave it one?” Awesome asked, his anger sharpening with every word.

“No. We stopped the experiment before the transfer was completed.”

“Then why does it keep calling us its children?”

His father remained silent for too long.

Elara stepped between them, apparently realizing that the truth could no longer remain hidden.

“Because the experiment was never abandoned,” she confessed. “Lyra continued it after your father disappeared.”

The revelation struck Awesome harder than the tremors shaking the building.

His mother had not merely known about the First Witness. According to Elara, she had continued the research after his father vanished, while Awesome grew up believing that his inability to cast spells was a personal failure. He had blamed himself for being different without knowing that his life might have been shaped by an experiment designed long before he understood what magic was.

“What did she do?” he demanded.

Elara lowered her gaze toward the fractured floor.

“She discovered that the First Witness could not enter a consciousness that possessed a completely independent identity. The original subject had to be separated from the vessel before the transfer could succeed.”

Awesome’s fingers curled into fists as he remembered the boy who had fought him inside the white room.

“The original subject,” he whispered.

The hidden counterpart answered before Elara could continue.

Me.

For a brief moment, Awesome felt the boy’s memories pressing against his own. He saw a white chamber, a woman standing behind reinforced glass, and a small hand reaching toward a door that would never open. The images disappeared almost immediately, but the grief they left behind was so intense that Awesome struggled to breathe.

His father slowly lowered his blade.

“Lyra believed she could save both of you,” he explained. “She separated the original consciousness from the body and created a second identity to occupy the vessel. She thought the First Witness would mistake the new identity for the original subject and leave you both alone.”

“You thought?” Awesome snapped, turning toward him. “You all thought? Did any of you ever consider asking us what we wanted before you decided what our lives should become?”

The hidden boy’s anger surged through their shared consciousness, but this time it did not feel like an attack. Awesome recognized the emotion as agreement, a shared rejection of the decisions that had been imposed upon them before either of them could understand the consequences.

Then the floor split open.

A section of the infirmary dropped several inches, and a massive chain burst through the opening. Its enormous links were covered in ancient symbols, each one glowing a sickly blue before darkening to black. The chain pulled downward with such force that the surrounding stone began crumbling, threatening to tear through the foundations.

Elara grabbed the edge of a broken examination table to keep herself from falling.

“That’s one of the containment anchors!” she shouted. “If the others break, the entire seal will collapse!”

Awesome turned toward her. “How many anchors are there?”

“Seven.”

A deafening crack echoed from somewhere below, followed by the sound of enormous metal links grinding against one another.

His father’s face tightened.

“Six now.”

Awesome looked at the system as its numbers began changing too quickly for him to follow.

[GLOBAL AUTHORITY ACCESS: 56%]

[CONTAINMENT ANCHORS: 6/7 ACTIVE]

[CENTRAL AUTHORITY CORE: OVERRIDE IN PROGRESS]

He activated his analytical ability, allowing the layers of magical information hidden beneath the physical world to spread across his vision.

The infirmary disappeared behind an intricate web of glowing structures. He could see the academy’s defensive barriers as interlocking geometric patterns, each connected to a central formation buried deep beneath the ground. The ancient chains were not merely restraints; they functioned as channels that distributed the pressure of the sealed consciousness across seven separate points.

However, something was wrong with the arrangement.

One of the connections did not lead toward the central authority core.

Instead, it stretched directly toward him.

Awesome stared at the glowing line extending from his chest into the depths beneath the academy. The connection pulsed in time with his heartbeat, and every time it brightened, the black mark on his palm responded.

“Why am I connected to the lock?”

His father turned sharply. “What do you see?”

“A channel running from my identity signature to the containment system.”

His father went completely still, while Elara looked as though someone had struck her.

“Lyra used his identity as the final anchor,” she whispered.

Awesome took a step backward, refusing to accept the implications of her words.

“You mean my life is keeping that thing imprisoned?”

“Not your life,” his father replied, although his voice had lost its earlier certainty. “Your identity signature. The lock recognizes you as part of its structure.”

“And what happens if the First Witness removes me?”

His father hesitated before answering.

“The lock may fail.”

The hidden boy spoke inside Awesome’s mind, his voice suddenly quiet.

That’s why they separated us.

Awesome finally understood the cruel logic behind the experiment. His identity had been turned into a living key, while the boy whose original identity had once belonged to the vessel had been hidden away. Their separation had not simply protected Awesome from the First Witness; it had transformed him into the final component of a prison he had never known existed.

His mother had built his life around a secret, and now that secret threatened to destroy everything.

Another system message appeared before him.

[IDENTITY ANCHOR DETECTED.]

[SUBJECT: AWESOME VOSS.]

[AUTHORITY TRANSFER REQUIRED.]

[PLEASE PRESENT THE ORIGINAL IDENTITY.]

The hidden boy recoiled inside Awesome’s mind.

No.

The single word carried a terror Awesome had never heard from him before. Beneath the anger and resentment that had defined their relationship, the boy was still haunted by the memory of having his identity taken from him once already.

Do not let it take my identity again.

Before Awesome could respond, the black light beneath the floor suddenly disappeared.

For one impossible moment, the academy became completely dark and still. Even the alarms seemed to fall silent as though the entire building were holding its breath.

Then every voice in the room spoke at once.

“FOUND YOU.”

The sound did not come from the screens or the shattered instruments. It emerged from the bones of the building itself, vibrating through the walls and floor. Awesome felt the strange voice pass through his chest, searching for the connection between his identity and the ancient lock.

His father lunged toward him, but an invisible force hurled him across the infirmary.

Elara raised both hands, forming a barrier of silver light around Awesome. The protective spell barely had time to take shape before black symbols spread across its surface and devoured it, leaving her magic scattered into harmless sparks.

Awesome’s analytical vision flared.

For the first time, he could see what was moving beneath the academy.

It was not a single body.

A vast network of pale limbs, enormous ribs, and translucent faces stretched through a chamber so deep that even his analytical ability could not calculate its dimensions. Ancient chains pierced the enormous structure at seven separate points, binding it to the earth. Every chain pulsed with fading energy, and the surrounding stone cracked whenever the creature beneath them moved.

Where its head should have been, a hollow opening pulsed with golden light.

Inside that opening sat a throne.

And someone was already sitting on it.

The figure slowly lifted its head.

Awesome could not see its face, but he recognized the outline of its shoulders, the shape of its hands, and the familiar scar running across its left wrist.

It looked exactly like him.

His hidden counterpart screamed inside his mind.

That’s not me!

The figure beneath the academy smiled, and Awesome felt the same smile forming against his will. His lips began to move even though he had not chosen to speak, and a cold pressure spread through his chest as the connection between his identity and the ancient lock tightened.

The system flooded his vision with warnings.

[CRITICAL ERROR]

[ORIGINAL IDENTITY RECORD: RESTORED]

[CURRENT SUBJECT: AWESOME VOSS]

[AUTHENTICATION FAILED]

[WARNING: THE BODY HAS RECOGNIZED ITS ORIGINAL OWNER.]

Awesome staggered as something seized the connection running through his chest. His analytical ability tried to resist the intrusion, but the ancient system treated his resistance as an error that needed to be corrected.

His father dragged himself upright and shouted across the ruined infirmary.

“Awesome, whatever happens, do not answer when it calls your true name!”

The figure beneath the academy opened its mouth.

Awesome felt the hidden boy fighting beside him, desperately trying to hold their shared consciousness together as the ancient presence pulled harder at the connection.

Then a voice emerged from the depths, carrying the gentle warmth of a mother calling her child home.

“Awesome Voss,” it whispered. “Come down and meet the person you were created to replace.”

Beneath the academy, the final containment anchor began to break.