Approaching the End

Klein sat in his chair for a while longer.

Nelisa hadn't used the communicator to contact him. That was worth pondering.

A communicator was faster and more convenient, and the Silver Scale Chamber of Commerce didn't lack such resources. Yet she chose a handwritten letter and specifically sent Eric to make the trip.

Nelisa was a clever person. A clever person wouldn't choose a slower method without a reason.

Klein spun the envelope in his hand once before setting it back on the coffee table.

Since the other party had chosen this path, there was no need for him to change it. He would reply with a letter, using the same channel and the same method. Rules were a two-way street.

“Ophelia.”

“Yes?”

“Go and call Raymond for me.”

Ophelia gave him a look and turned to leave. She didn't ask why, nor did she ask what he wanted him for.

Klein stood up and walked to the desk, pulled open a drawer, and fished out a blank piece of parchment. He dipped his pen in ink, thought for a moment, and wrote the first line.

The reply was very short. No pleasantries, no small talk; it just conveyed two points—the invitation was received, and the timing would be decided later.

As for that name, he didn't mention a single word.

Some things became a stance once written on paper. Not mentioning it was a stance in itself. Nelisa would understand.

After finishing, he blew the ink dry, folded the parchment, placed it in an envelope, and sealed it with his private seal.

By the time Raymond walked in, Klein had already placed the envelope on the corner of the desk.

“Find someone trustworthy to deliver this letter to the Silver Scale Chamber of Commerce,” Klein said, pushing the letter over. “There’s no need to rush, but don't delay for too long.”

Raymond took the envelope, his thumb pressing lightly on the sealing wax to ensure it was secure.

Without asking further, he nodded and withdrew.

After the door to the guest hall closed, only two people remained in the room.

Ophelia leaned against the doorframe, her arms crossed over her chest. She had gone to call Raymond and hadn't stepped further into the room upon returning, staying right in that spot.

“Nelisa didn't give a specific time,” he said.

“I saw.”

“So there’s no rush.” Klein cracked his knuckles, the joints popping twice. “However, there is something that needs to be done beforehand.”

Ophelia didn't respond, but her gaze shifted toward him.

“The sirens.”

Ophelia’s arms dropped from her chest.

The weight of that word in this room required no explanation.

To him, it was a research subject; to her, it was something else entirely.

Her left hand still bore the marks left by those things.

“You want to do it ahead of schedule?”

“Before going to the royal capital, I want to finish what I can do here first. Once we’re there, the environment will be uncontrollable, and the equipment won't be as suitable.” Klein leaned back against the chair, his eyes fixed on the ceiling. “And who knows when news will come from Nelisa’s side. I don't feel comfortable leaving things here unfinished and rushing off.”

Ophelia walked over. Her footsteps were light as she came to a stop beside Klein’s chair.

“We look at the cube first,” she said. It wasn't a suggestion, but a confirmation.

Klein gave a small smile.

“Right. According to our previous agreement, we look at the container first and don't touch what’s inside.”

He traced a square in the air with a finger.

Ophelia looked at him.

“You want to go up right now.”

It was a statement.

He chuckled and didn't deny it.

“Let’s go,” Ophelia said, heading for the door first. She paused after two steps. “I’ll go get my sword.”

“You shouldn't need a sword to study a sealing device.”

“Just in case.”

Klein didn't say anything else. He stood up from his chair and stretched his neck.

...

After pushing open the door to the third-floor laboratory, Klein went in first to light the lamps.

Ophelia followed behind, leaning her sword against the wall by the door before pulling up a chair and sitting down.

She had been to this laboratory many times. Each time, the things on the table were different, but the level of clutter remained remarkably consistent. Flasks, distillers, several open notebooks turned face down, and a stack of unorganized blueprints. The boundary between Klein’s living area and work area was roughly defined by the standard of “whether one could lie down.”

Klein took out the cube and placed it in the center of the workbench.

Calling it a cube wasn't entirely accurate. Every face was covered in extremely fine engravings; to the naked eye, it looked like a dull, gray square stone, but once Klein used a detection spell, those engravings came to life—layers of nested sealing arrays, at least seven in total, with the anchor points of each layer interlocking with the trigger conditions of the next. Individually, each layer wasn't complex. Together, they were so intricate it made one’s scalp tingle.

The light of the translucent magic arrays rose, peeling back the structure of the seal layer by layer for him to see.

Ophelia didn't speak, just sat beside him. This was the position she had assigned herself—close enough to Klein to see what he was doing, and close enough to the cube to react immediately to any anomaly.

Her sword was within arm’s reach.

Klein’s fingers moved slowly above the magic array, his eyes squinted, occasionally muttering syllables as if talking to himself or someone else. He had always had this habit; he couldn't keep his mouth shut when he was absorbed in research.

“...This anchor point uses reverse attenuation, but the decay cycle isn't fixed; it follows the magic fluctuations of the outer layer... so the inner seal is actually 'alive,' it's adaptive...”

His speech became faster and faster.

“There’s a buffer structure between the fourth and fifth layers, but this buffer isn't passive; it’s actually the power source for the sixth layer—wait.”

Klein stopped.

He enlarged the magic array, focusing on the junction between the fifth and sixth layers of the seal. He watched it for about ten seconds.

“Beautiful,” he said, his voice filled with unconcealed admiration. “This energy supply circuit—she grafted the energy consumption of the sixth layer directly onto the magic leakage of the sealed subject itself. The more the siren struggles, the tighter the seal becomes. If the siren doesn't move, the seal enters dormancy, consuming almost no energy.”

He turned back to look at Ophelia.

“Do you know what this means? Theoretically, this seal has no time limit. As long as the sealed object still has magic, it will not fail.”

Ophelia understood. Or rather, she understood the important part.

“So she made a permanent seal.”

“Yes—and it’s a permanent seal achieved with the minimal amount of material and the simplest structure.” Klein turned back to stare at the magic array, clicking his tongue twice. “If the people at the academy saw this design, they’d probably fall to their knees right in front of it.”

Ophelia’s gaze shifted from the magic array to her left hand.

It was only for an instant.

She quickly looked away, saying nothing.

...

The research was indeed smooth. More successful than expected.

For three days, Klein barely went downstairs. Raymond brought his meals up; once, when it was cold by the time it arrived, Raymond silently took it back to reheat it. Klein didn't even look up while eating, chewing on bread with his eyes still fixed on the magic array.

Ophelia, naturally, stayed there every day as well. She didn't rush him or interrupt, occasionally standing up to catch a pen that rolled to the edge of the table or to refill the lamp oil that was about to burn dry.

By the afternoon of the third day, Klein was actually able to replicate the entire cube using his own magic.

He had also grasped most of the core principles—what remained wasn't a question of “whether he could learn it,” but a matter of “needing two more days to figure out the last few details.”

The interesting part was the process itself.

While deconstructing the sealing structure, Klein repeatedly encountered a sense of familiarity.

It wasn't the kind of familiarity like “I’ve seen this spell before.”

It was something deeper.

The approach to material selection, the preference for node layout, even the habit of handling redundant structures—he flipped through his notebook and found a sketch of an alchemical circuit he had drawn six months ago.

He laid them out together.

The complexity of the structures was vastly different. But that underlying logic, that “pathway” for solving problems, was too similar.

It was like—you don't know the person who wrote this article, but you can tell at a glance that you know the person who taught them how to write.

Klein put down his notebook and leaned back against the chair.

He didn't speak, staring at his own six-month-old sketch for a long time.

That sketch was very rough, with a dried drop of potion on the corner and wrinkled paper.

But the skeleton of the layout—and the skeleton of this sealing device before him that was enough to make academy professors kneel—were from the same mold.

It was just that one was a student’s exercise, while the other was a master’s handiwork.

“What is it?” Ophelia asked. She was wiping her sword and looked up at him.

“Nothing.” Klein rubbed the back of his head, a faint, inexplicable smile on his lips. “I just feel—the creator of this cube probably learned alchemy from me.”

Ophelia’s hand wiping the sword paused for a moment.

She didn't press further.

But there was something more in the way she looked at Klein, something hard to define, likely of the same nature as the smile on Klein’s face.

In that case, the alchemy teacher of their daughter was Klein himself.

Well... if his own daughter liked alchemy, Klein would naturally teach her everything without reservation.

Then the reason she came back—

Klein’s train of thought reached this point and he slammed on the brakes.

Very hard.

Because he realized it wasn't that he didn't want to keep thinking about it. On the contrary, he wanted to far too much. That black-robed girl, her eyes, her voice, her way of speaking that was clearly cold yet hid an awkward warmth—he wanted to know what she had been through, why she had come back, and if she was living well in that “future.”

But the Sage’s words still rang in his ears. The voice from beneath that black robe had been very clear: the more you know, the easier it is for the future to lean toward what you know.

The law of causality was not something to be tested.

He pushed that thought back down. Pushed it deep, pressing it into an out-of-the-way corner of his chest.

Then he picked up his pen again and marked the parameters of two nodes he had newly deconstructed today on the blueprint. His hand was very steady.

“Everything should be settled by tomorrow,” he said without looking up.

Ophelia gave an “mm” and continued wiping her sword.

The laboratory fell silent, leaving only the rustle of the pen tip across the paper and the occasional soft sound of cloth rubbing against the blade.

Outside the window, the sky had already darkened.