Nikoi was cold. Despite being Russian, he’d never liked the cold. He clutched his hands tightly, his body shivering as he tapped his foot slightly. He gnced around the room he was seated in, having ushered into it by one of the bouncers at the entrance of the club he’d come to after he had said exactly what his brother had told him to. Something about a bck spiral.

  It was a VIP room with a dark bck interior, brightened by strips of red neon lights highlighting its corners, and he was seated on one of the two red sofas facing each other with a glowing red table in between.

  Nikoi pinched his lips as his eyes swept over the scenery and his eyes fell onto the red logo of a spiral on its bck wall. Had he really made the right decision coming here? Yes, he wanted to prove that he was good enough to his brother, but was this really the right thing to do? He kept feeling like he was here for something shady, and one’s instincts were, most of the time, never wrong.

  I should leave… He told himself, but he couldn’t stand up. If he left and went back to the Academy, what would he tell his brother? That he couldn’t do it? That would just make him come off as ungrateful. His brother was trying to make him stronger. This was all for his sake, and no one else’s. Even if it required an arm, he had to do it.

  The door to the room opened then, the loud sound of club activity pouring into the room in a disorienting manner, before it was shut out by the door closing again. Nikoi jumped to his feet at once and bowed deeply to the two people who had walked in.

  “G-Good evening. My name is Nikoi Volkov! I was sent here by—”

  “Sit.”

  A single word, and Nikoi felt like he had been spped hard at the back of his head. He gnced at the dy who had said it as he gulped. She had bck short hair, exquisite but terrifying purple make up, and was dressed in all leather. He shut his mouth. She was even far more intimidating than his brother.

  “Mouse, can you refrain from speaking to our guests like that?” Those words came from another. He looked way younger with bck hair and a lean build. In fact, not much older than Nikoi himself. If Nikoi was to guess, he would say the d was no older than nineteen. However, he gave off a certain air of authority despite coming off as rather jovial. And those were the kind to be afraid of. “Don’t take her manner to heart, Nikoi. I’m Lee Jiho. Nice to meet you.”

  “Nice to meet you too,” Nikoi replied.

  Jiho gestured at the sofa. “You may have your seat.”

  Nikoi nodded. “Thank you.”

  The two who had entered sat down across from him. They did nothing but stare at him for a few seconds, causing Nikoi to feel even colder than he already was. Then the silence was finally broken.

  “Your Mage Css?” Jiho asked. It was a rather abrupt question, but Nikoi had already prepared his manner in that regard. His brother had told him not to lie—not to even a single question.

  “D-Css Mage, sir,” said Nikoi, his gaze lowered.

  The silence stretched on again.

  “And what do you want?” Jiho asked once more.

  Nikoi swallowed. This was the first step forward. He had to answer this question with resolve. He looked up, hardened his gaze, and stared right into Jiho’s eyes.

  “I want to become stronger,” he said. “I was told that coming here can make that possible.”

  Jiho tilted his head and leaned back into his couch. “You’re young. Why are you so hasty to become strong? If you train for a few more years, I’m sure you will be a lot stronger than you are now.”

  “But so will others,” Nikoi said with a clenched chin. “Everyone else stronger than me now will also be training, so they, too, will go stronger, which means that I’ll still be weaker than my peers down the line. I don’t want that.”

  The dy called Mouse narrowed her gaze. “So this is some sort of childish quest to show off to your mates?”

  Nikoi blinked and gnced at her. That was not it.

  “No,” he said. “My brother. I want to repay my brother. I am fine with being weak, if I get to live a normal life, but…my brother has done so much for me and I don’t want to fail me. For some reason, he wants me to get strong quickly. He has not told me why, but I believe that it’s urgent.” He gnced down at his palms. “I don’t want to be a disappointment to him when the time he needs my help arises.”

  “I see.” Jiho nodded. “Fine. I’ll help you.”

  Nikoi’s eyes shot up. He grimaced. Really? So easily? He had thought they would have had more questions in store for him, and potentially rejected him. But… They were going to help him.

  He couldn’t believe it, and he blurted, “Why?”

  “Why?” Mouse asked with a tilted head. She then chuckled. “You don’t want the help.”

  Nikoi waved his hands. “No. It’s not that. I just thought I would be rejected since I don’t have any lofty goals or the likes.”

  “Who told you that you had no lofty goals?” Jiho asked with a smile.

  “Uhm… I don’t know,” Nikoi replied. “I just thought none of my reasons were good enough.”

  “We’ll be the ones to decide that,” Jiho said.

  Nikoi thought of asking at that moment what their retionship with his brother was, and how they were able to do something like empower a Mage, but he knew better than to turn the interrogation from himself towards them. He decided to think of whatever would be happening as simply taking supplements, and his brother simply knew a dealer. Thinking about things that way made him a lot more at peace.

  “However…” Jiho continued, leaning forward. “It isn’t free.”

  “Oh, yeah.” Nikoi snapped back from his thoughts. “How much will the process be?” He fumbled for his wallet. “I’m not sure I have enough with me at the moment, but I can go and come back ter with the money. Haha…”

  Mouse smiled. “We don’t want your money.”

  “Huh?” Nikoi’s brows twitched.

  “We would like you to do something else for us instead,” said Jiho as Mouse brought out a slim case and opened it on the table. It possessed a syringe bearing a green murky liquid that almost seemed as dense as mercury.

  Nikoi stared at the syringe, unsure what to think. “Am I to inject that into someone?” he asked, confused.

  Jiho gnced at Mouse and both of them ughed.

  “No. That’s what will boost your abilities,” said Mouse.

  Nikoi frowned. “Wait, what? I haven’t paid yet, though.”

  “Yes, you haven’t,” said JIho. He pointed at the syringe. “Which is why this one is more like a test. It will only st for a short amount of time, serving as a taste for what you could gain if you received the real dose.”

  Nikoi gulped, his hands itching to reach for the drug. It was right in front of him, the path to becoming stronger. If he could just hit the drug into his veins, he would become powerful, even for a moment. He wanted to feel it, take a glimpse into what he could be. But he held himself back.

  “What do I have to do?”

  Jiho smiled. “You’re a student of Prestige Academy, aren’t you?” Nikoi nodded. “We want you to bring someone to us.”

  Dissecting one’s mana down to its cellur level was not as easy as it might seem when simplified into words. At least, Merlin wasn’t finding it any easy. He didn’t know about Chima and Hakyun, and he couldn’t break out of his trance now to figure that out. He had to focus.

  Hakyun’s theory on the process had simply come about by comparing the act to slicing the cabbage for a kimchi. Merlin had failed woefully in that aspect, but he was apparently a fast learner. He had just figured that out now.

  Mana was a composition of countless flowing cells that mingled with the molecur structure of a Mage’s internal system. It always appeared as a surge of energy because the cells were so minute, just like light. And mana had shown certain simirities to humans. They were sentient, had their own consciousness, and, well, were rather aggressive. In other words, their cells had to share some common characteristics as well, like possessing three yers, the membrane, the cytopsm, and the nucleus. They were to make their way towards the nucleus, and to reach there, they had to carefully peel apart the membrane and the cytopsm without coming across as dangerous to the cell so that the mana didn’t react defensively. This was where the delicacy required in quartering a cabbage and removing its core came in.

  Merlin was so gd he had intellectuals as roommates, because he was unsure if he would have ever thought of this process all on his own.

  However, the practicality of it was rather daunting. Like the countless particles that made up light, the cells of one’s mana were countless. To get past every single one was practically impossible. But one didn’t know until they tried. And Merlin tried. He had wondered if something as daunting as this would finally get the System to give him a quest. He hadn’t gotten one in a while and he was getting rather anxious concerning its silence on that part, but he had come to a conclusion that its Red Quests simply pertained to Dungeon raids. After all, the two times it had happened was when he was within a Dungeon. If that was the case, then that made things easier.

  Merlin shook the head of his ethereal body. Don’t jinx it.

  He conjured a knife into his hands from pure imagination alone as he approached the flowing cells of his mana. He had realized that within his subconscious anything could be conjured. He could create cities, realities, anything. He was like a god. It reminded him of a movie he’d watched a while back, but now was not the time to think about movies.

  He grabbed a cell; the little blue thing wriggled like an earthworm sprinkled with salt, which made it hard for Merlin to dissect it. He gritted his teeth and tried to settle the thing down, but the more he got riled up, the more the cell shook. Then he realized that the little thing was probably reacting to his emotions. He took a deep breath and exhaled. His heart rate slowly calmed down, the pounding that had been echoing all around him settling, and surely the cell rexed bit by bit. Then it was totally still.

  Now came the hard part.

  Merlin gulped and slowly took his knife towards the membrane of the cell, letting its tip slide slowly and gently over it. The yer came undone bit by bit. Merlin’s pulse made an attempt to race, which startled the cell he held, but he quickly reined it in before things got out of hand. If he made a mistake here, he would be attacked, because he had begun slicing the cell apart. Nothing had to go wrong here. Nothing.

  Gently, he removed the membrane, and found the cytopsm. He gently peeled that apart as well, mentally imagining himself sweating, and then a bck orb shining with the brilliance of countless stars etched into it like jewels appeared before his eyes. A sense of success filled Merlin’s mind. He gulped, smiled, but then realized that he was unsure of what to do here.

  Was he to slice the nucleus open as well? What would that do? This was his goal, and he had not thought that there was anything within the nucleus he had to reach for.

  He decided not to slice it. That would probably kill the cell if he was being honest. So he thought of something else, and as his knife disappeared like mist he stretched his fingers into the cell, reaching for the nucleus like he was trying to pick a jewel from a narrow gap.

  As soon as his fingers connected with the nucleus, Merlin felt a cold wave wash over him; he shrunk in size, and in a matter of seconds disappeared into the nucleus.