The resolve had been iron-clad. The theory was memorized. The risk was accepted. The first, logical step was a diagnostic. First, I need to know how much Aether is in my body. If it's too much it could lead to uncontrollable magic that may cause damage. I needed a baseline. A reading. A number to work from.
The assumption was a comforting one. Of course since I'm a noble I should contain high Aether right?.... It was the foundation of everything—the superior genetics, the latent strength, the expectations. My body was a noble vessel; it must be filled with noble power.
My next foray into the hidden library had a single, clear objective. I went into the library again to find how to calculate Aether in the body. I bypassed the spellbooks and histories, seeking the dry, technical manuals. After scanning shelves in the dim moonlight, I found it: a slim, unassuming volume titled "Quantitative & Qualitative Aethermetrics: A Practitioner's Guide."
Back in the shed's moonlit shaft, I opened it. In the book ' How to calculate Aether' there were papers. Tucked into a parchment sleeve at the back were several sheets of a strange, stiff material. It wasn't paper; it was smoother, denser, with a faint fibrous shimmer. It is said that Aether was to flow in these papers and that would lead to calculation of Aether.
The papers were rectangular. About the size of a playing card. One short edge was marked with a small circle. The tester is meant to touch the smaller side of the rectangle. And the page will absorb Aether.
I read the instructions carefully. It seemed straightforward. But a flaw in logic snagged my mind. But that would lead to calculation of flow of Aether not the amount. If it absorbed Aether I consciously released, it would measure my output control, not my capacity.
I reread the passage, then the next page, my eyes scanning the precise, clinical text. The book explicitly stated that the paper calculated the quality of Aether. The flow of Aether was calculated as how far it goes into paper to the other side of the rectangle.
Oh, so this is how it works! It was a litmus test and a ruler combined. The user touched the marked edge. The paper would actively draw Aether from the point of contact, pulling the Still Aether from the user's body and converting it via contact. The Aether would then flow through the material. The distance it traveled before stopping indicated the "flow rate"—a measure of how readily one's Aether could be mobilized. Now the flow rate is checked on how fast the aether is absorbed. Higher absorbing meaning the user has faster flow rate thereby faster magic speed. More importantly, the color the paper turned at the point of contact revealed the "quality" or purity of the Aether.
There are 7 colours of quality of Aether. They were VIBGYOR. Violet being the lowest. Red being the highest. A rainbow hierarchy of power. Violet was mundane, the faint trace of Aether found in all living things on this world. Indigo, Blue, Green, Yellow, Orange, each representing a greatest density, a higher "grade" of internal energy. Red was legendary, the quality ascribed to demigods like Aurelia and the Superior Dragons. Most nobles, the book noted, fell into the Blue to Green range. A true genius might touch Yellow.
The test was elegant. It required no skill from the user, just physical contact. The paper did all the work, acting as a siphon and a spectrometer.
My heart beat a steady, expectant rhythm. This was it. The moment of truth. I took one of the cards, holding it by the edges. I took a breath, focused my mind on my fingertip as the meditation guides suggested, and pressed it firmly against the marked circle.
I started the test. I grabbed the paper.
I waited. I felt nothing. No tingling, no warmth, no sense of drainage. The paper remained inert, a pale rectangle in the moonlight.
A few seconds passed. A few minutes. Nothing happened. No colour. No change. Nothing.
Confusion, then a spike of annoyance. Why is Aether not flowing into this paper? Was the paper old? Defective? I tried another card. Same result. I tried pressing harder. I tried a different finger. I tried touching it to my palm, my forehead. Nothing.
Is this because I don't have the ability to let Aether flow out of my body? The thought was absurd. The paper was supposed to pull. It didn't require voluntary release.
Tch… is this for real?. A cold trickle of doubt began in my stomach. I carefully returned the book and the unused cards to their shelf, my movements mechanical.
The next month was a study in stubborn denial. I trained my body with a vicious intensity, as if I could beat the truth out of it. I consumed more of the nutrient paste, hoping it might spark something. I practiced the meditation techniques for hours, sitting cross-legged in my crib, trying to feel the Still Aether within me, to sense its latent pool.
I waited patiently for 1 month and tried it again. It failed. I tried it again. It failed again.
The paper remained a stubborn, unresponsive blank. The moonlit shaft in the shed felt like an interrogation room, and the silent cards were accusing me.
What's happening?... I don't have the ability to let the Aether flow?? But that wasn't the test. The test was about having it. The paper was the magnet. I was supposed to be the iron. What if I wasn't iron?
Shit! Why is this happening to me!
Panic, raw and deserved, began to claw at the edges of my discipline. I snatched the book from the shelf again, my hands trembling slightly. I didn't need to see the pages; I had them memorized. But I needed to read them again, to find the flaw in my understanding.
I turned to the description of the test. It said that the paper 'ABSORBED' Aether.
The word glared at me. Absorbed. Not "accepted." Not "channeled." Absorbed. A passive, drawing action.
A horrible, dawning comprehension began to crack open in my mind, like ice giving way underfoot.
Wait ,wait, wait ,wait ,wait….. Is it because…
My mind raced, connecting the theory. Still Aether was internal, inert. Flowing Aether was external, active. The paper was in contact with my skin. It wasn't asking me to convert Still to Flowing; it was using the contact point to create a local, forced conversion. A bridge. It was siphoning the Still Aether directly, and changing it into Flowing.
No, no no no no no …!
The conclusion was monstrous. Unthinkable.
NO! NO!!
This … is … unacceptable!
It's suggesting that I… NO!...
I forced myself to think, to follow the logic with the cold precision I'd use on a broken line of code. The paper will absorb Aether no matter what even if you don't have the ability to let Aether flow. Because it changes Still into Flowing, and directly takes Still.
If you had Still Aether in your body, contact with the Aether-reactive material would trigger a transfer. It was a physical law, like osmosis. You didn't need to do anything. You just had to be.
Because the paper didn't turn into any colour it's suggesting that I don't have any Aether.
The sentence formed in my mind, each word a hammer blow.
If I would have, it would have changed colour even faintly. But it didn't at all…
A faint violet haze. A whisper of indigo. Anything. There was nothing. Not the faintest hint of a spectrum. The paper was as blank as the white chamber I'd been born in.
If the user doesn't have any Aether how would it calculate it!?
The book didn't cover that. It was an impossibility. A contradiction in terms. A living being on Aetheria without Aether was like a fish without water. A building without a foundation.
A sound escaped me, a dry, choked rasp that was supposed to be laughter. Hahahahaha…. This is Crazy…
The verdict was in.
I don't have Aether!
The denial shattered. The truth flooded in, cold and absolute. It explained everything and nothing. My rapid physical development? That was just superior noble biology, muscle and bone operating without the magical enhancement that was their birthright. My photographic memory? A quirk of neurology, not an Aetheric augmentation.
HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE?!
The question screamed into the silent archive. Is this what the system meant by …' Extreme Nightmare '? I'd thought it meant a harsh, realistic world with no game-like cheats. I was wrong. It was far more specific, more cruel.
Reality. No system. No Aether.
I was a null. A void. A living creature born without the fundamental component that made this world work. I was a phantom in the machine, a zero in a universe of positive integers.
How am I even alive?... Aether is a building block right?.... I should have died… The history book had said it plainly: "Without it, the planet won't survive." Did that apply to individuals? Apparently not. The planet needed Aether in its matrix. But a life form… could be an accident. A cosmic typo.
Is this because of the soul percentage being 87?... Or my soul is incapable of sustaining Aether. The messages from the white chamber echoed. Soul-Data: Kaito Tanaka. Integrity: 87%. Was I damaged goods? A soul from a non-Aetheric universe, transplanted into an Aetheric body, and the wiring didn't match? Was the 13% loss the part that should have allowed me to interface with this world's energy?
Driven by a frantic, morbid need for confirmation, I began to scour the shelves. I started to read the book to find any clues about humans without any Aether. I found passing mentions in medical texts, in philosophical discourses on the nature of life. Finally, in a dusty compendium of rare physiological conditions, I found a heading.
I turned the page. Humans without Aether.
The text was brief, almost dismissive.
It is a very rare genetic mutation. It's not a disease or anything. A fluke. A dead-end branch on the evolutionary tree.
It is said that Aether is a building block. That's true. But if someone is born without Aether they can live their life because Aether is not necessarily the building block in humans. You can survive without it. Of course it wouldn't harm you at all. Breathing Aether, jumping in pure Aether. Aether entering your body… wouldn't do anything to you. It will be expelled out. It's like nitrogen gas in the atmosphere. Flowing Aether attacks like fire, wind and any other Kin will definitely harm the body.
So I was inert. Aether flowed around me and through me, but it didn't stick, didn't react. I was a rock in a river. The river didn't care.
The next lines were the true sentence.
But it comes with lots of disadvantages. The people who have Aether can climb high and high… while non Aether people struggle to climb even one step. That is why they died very quickly.
It was a metaphor, but a literal one. In a society where power was Aether, where strength, speed, longevity, and social status were all tied to one's capacity and quality… I had none. I would be left behind at the starting line. Forever. I could train my muscles to their genetic limit, but that limit was a child's toy compared to what a Green-quality Aether user could achieve by adolescence.
If you try to take Aether out of the body that has Aether as a building block that person will die. A final, grim footnote. There was no cure. No implant. To give me Aether would be to kill the body that had formed without it.
Do I really have no Aether? The question was answered. The evidence was irrefutable.
Why is this happening to me!?. The old, useless cry. It wasn't happening to me. It was me. This was my condition. My parameter in the Extreme Nightmare.
So this is how the world of Extreme Nightmare Difficulty is…
It wasn't about monstrous enemies or constant battle. It was about being fundamentally, irrevocably less. It was being born into a family of demigodlings as a mundane. It was having the mind to understand the summit but lacking the legs to climb it. It was knowing that every sibling, every rival, every guard in this spire held a potential inside them that I would never, ever touch.
What the fuck I did for the year?.....
The despair curdled into a white-hot, self-directed rage. The past year of meticulous study, of memorizing spell forms and channeling diagrams—it was all a grotesque joke. I'd been studying advanced aerospace engineering while being born without wings. I'd wasted time gathering blueprints for a engine I could never fuel.
I should have focused on the physical body!! The regret was a physical pain. If I'd known, I would have pushed the physical training even further, sought out pure martial techniques that didn't rely on Aether enhancement. I would have studied politics, economics, poison, anything that didn't require the one thing I didn't have.
Shit! This time I am really dead.
The finality of it was absolute. In a house that valued power above all, a son with zero Aetheric potential wasn't a weak heir. He was a stain. A mistake. A living insult to the Theodore bloodline. My father's assessing looks weren't to gauge my potential; they were to confirm a defect. Lyra's attack on the ceiling… Was she sensing my absence? A void where a noble's Aetheric presence should have been?
There's nothing I can do without magic …. fuck! ....
I sat in the dark shed, surrounded by the knowledge of a power I could never wield. The grand, terrible history of Aetheria, the intricate politics of the 4 powers , the hidden techniques of battle—none of it mattered.
And for the first time since the bus fell, I had no plan, no training regimen, no stolen book that could possibly fix this. I was, in the most fundamental sense, powerless.