God's Tree-Chapter 222: Merit Beyond Measure & The Ripple in the Hall

The scent of the pill still hung in the air—a fragrance so refined, so impossibly potent that even seasoned instructors found themselves unconsciously holding their breath.

Argolaith held the epic-grade pill between his fingers, the glow from its surface faintly pulsing like the heartbeat of a star. Perfect symmetry. Zero impurities. Its presence alone radiated enough ambient mana to leave subtle ripples across the floor beneath his feet.

He turned and casually placed it into a reinforced jade vial, sealing it with a light touch of his mana.

Around him, no one moved.

The instructor who had mocked him—face pale and jaw clenched—stood frozen with disbelief etched into every line of his expression. His voice, when it finally came, was barely a whisper.

"There's… there's no way that was your first time making one…"

Argolaith didn't bother answering. He just stared.

The man shook his head. "You must've trained in secret under a master craftsman, someone from the higher cities. No way a student could—"

"Stop."

The voice came from the archway.

Everyone turned.

A tall figure in silver-and-indigo robes stepped into the chamber, his crest unmistakable—Head of the Merit Exchange Division. Elder Kirell, known for being exacting, expressionless, and entirely without patience for falsehood or delay.

His eyes locked immediately on the floating fragments of residual storm-cloud still drifting above the open ceiling. Then to the pill in Argolaith's hand.

He moved without a word toward the appraisal station and gestured.

"Student. Place your pill here."

Argolaith didn't hesitate. He stepped forward and carefully set the jade vial into the center of the Merit Flame Basin—a basin-shaped device woven with crystal circuitry and powered by soulstone arrays.

It activated instantly.

Light flared upward. Blue. Then silver. Then white.

The instructors around them leaned in.

The merit system ran a rapid evaluation: alchemical grade, ingredient rarity, difficulty level, effectiveness, purity, and finally—creator profile.

One by one, the evaluation runes aligned.

A soft tone rang out.

The basin glowed platinum.

Everyone flinched.

One of the senior instructors gasped. "That's… a perfect epic-grade rating…"

Another choked, "No modifier penalties. No deduction for volatility or refinement time…"

Elder Kirell raised an eyebrow for the first time in decades.

Then the merit display projection rose.

At first, it tried to calculate a standard credit award:

[Processing]

[Evaluating: Epic-Grade Pill]

[Standard Value Range Exceeded]

[Rescaling…]

[Exceptional-tier Detected]

[Value: 8,000 Credits]

The room went still.

The average monthly credit income for a third-year alchemy student was 300.

Argolaith had just earned more than most students did in three years—in a single pill.

And worse—he hadn't broken a sweat.

Elder Kirell looked at him for a long moment.

"Your name."

"Argolaith."

"Age?"

"Nineteen."

The elder's fingers twitched subtly.

"Division?"

"Technically… undecided."

Kirell exhaled, the faintest flicker of emotion ghosting across his face.

He looked at the instructor who had demanded Argolaith prove himself. "You. Your name."

The man stiffened. "Instructor Relhan. First-year alchemical fundamentals."

Kirell nodded.

"You'll be audited."

Relhan flinched. "W-what? Elder, I—"

"Audited. Immediately. Any instructor who challenges a student of this level on protocol grounds without verifying skill is either blind, biased, or dangerously incompetent."

Several of the nearby instructors stiffened.

Argolaith watched with mild interest.

He wasn't petty. But he wasn't going to apologize for being right.

As Elder Kirell turned to leave, he paused beside Argolaith.

"The Merit Exchange Division has never assigned more than 5,000 credits to a student's individual item in a first-year submission."

He looked at the cauldron again.

At the pill.

At Argolaith.

"We'll need to rework the value ceiling. Report to the exchange desk this evening to collect your student merit token."

Argolaith inclined his head.

"Understood."

Kirell nodded and walked out.

The moment he was gone, murmurs exploded through the room.

Every instructor within earshot whispered his name now.

Argolaith didn't care.

He picked up his cauldron, dismissed the last heat rune, and stored the tools in his ring.

As he walked out of the hall, passing Instructor Relhan—who still looked like he was recovering from whiplash—he stopped for a brief moment and offered a calm, quiet sentence.

"Next time, trust the cauldron."

And then he left, and Argolaith went to look at classes to check out.

The lecture halls of the Grand Magic Academy were as varied as the students who filled them. Some were plain, stone-forged and rune-lit. Others, like the one Argolaith now approached, resembled great domes of skyglass and silverlight.

He entered without hesitation.

A few dozen students already sat in curved rows of floating desks, arranged like ripples in water. The walls shimmered with illusionary diagrams—faint echoes of spells drawn mid-cast, looping silently in pre-lecture stasis.

As the door closed behind him, heads turned.

Not all. But some.

Whispers didn't start—not this time. No one dared speak loud enough to break the silence.

A few students stared. Others froze. A handful nudged their friends subtly.

"That's him."

"The new one. The one who broke the sky."

"The one with the cube…"

And just as quickly, those same students sat up straight, facing forward like their lives depended on it. Books open. Quills ready. Faces as studious as stone.

They didn't know why it mattered.

But they were sure of one thing:

If Argolaith saw them taking the class seriously, maybe—just maybe—he'd respect them.

Argolaith, for his part, said nothing.

He took an empty seat near the middle tier—close enough to observe, far enough to remain unnoticed. He leaned back slightly, blue eyes calmly taking in the shifting diagrams floating above the instructor's podium.

He hadn't even checked what the class was about.

But his curiosity stirred when he saw the glowing symbols etched across the sky-dome: runic convergence gates, spatial folding theory, and mana-pathway distortion curves.

Teleportation theory.

Moments later, the room's ambient lights shifted.

The doors hissed open again.

And a tall woman in layered robes stepped briskly to the center of the stage, her presence immediate and focused.

Long raven-black hair was tied into a braid laced with silver runes. Her spectacles gleamed with focus-enhancing glyphs. Her movements were practiced, efficient.

Instructor Arvail. Department of Dimensional Mechanics.

She didn't wait for introductions.

She didn't need to.

"Is everyone present?"

No one answered.

She didn't ask again.

Instead, she lifted her hand—and the diagrams above her began to rotate.

"Today, we'll be reviewing the theory of short-range and long-range teleportation, as well as the principal dangers associated with high-precision spatial movement."

Argolaith's interest sharpened.

The floating symbols adjusted to display a map of an island suspended in space.

"Teleportation is divided into two major classifications: anchored teleportation and free-space displacement. Anchored teleportation requires a pre-set rune or structure. It is the safest and most common. Free-space displacement, by contrast, uses pure mana signature imprinting to leap between coordinates without a set gate."

She tapped a rune midair, expanding the illusion.

A humanoid figure appeared—its body breaking down into glowing fragments, then reforming meters away.

"The primary benefit of teleportation is, of course, speed and evasion. Instant movement in combat. Long-distance travel across continents. Escape from deadly situations. But…" She raised a finger.

"There are three major flaws."

She waved her hand, and three glowing sigils appeared:

Instability Inaccuracy Interference

"Instability refers to poor rune construction or weak mana control, which can lead to limb loss, fragmentation, or—if unlucky—total molecular shatter."

A student two rows up paled slightly.

"Inaccuracy is common in novice users. If a rune or spell matrix is incomplete, you may teleport into a wall. Or underground. Or worse—half in, half out."

A murmur moved across the room.

**"And finally, interference—perhaps the most dangerous. Mana currents shift constantly. One flawed anchor or a cross-resonant spell nearby, and your teleportation may redirect, scramble, or send you into pocket dimensions… or void zones."

She paused.

Then turned toward the class.

"This is why true teleportation is rare. It's a beautiful theory. But few will ever use it practically."

A hand went up near the back.

A second-year, judging by the crest.

"But Instructor, how hard is it to actually teleport? Can't you just… learn a few spatial spells and do it with a token?"

She nodded slightly, but her expression remained sharp.

"Teleportation tokens are rare and resource-heavy. They require void-blood ink, stabilized star-iron, a personal mana seal, and a directional anchor rune. Even then, each token has only one use."

She gestured to the illusion again.

"For most mages, teleportation is an end-game pursuit—something you learn after mastering six or seven disciplines. Unless…"

She looked over the class.

"…unless your magic, awakened by your five trees, is rooted in dimensional mechanics. Even then, it would take hundreds—perhaps thousands—of years to refine your understanding and survive the risks."

She turned back to the diagram.

"In this Academy, perhaps one in every five thousand students will ever attempt it."

A long silence followed.

Then, from the center of the room, a calm voice spoke.

"What year is this class taught to?"

The room turned slightly.

The instructor blinked once, adjusting her spectacles.

"This is a Fourth-Year specialized elective."

Her gaze found the speaker—Argolaith—sitting quietly, not even pretending to take notes.

"You're… not listed on my roster."

Argolaith nodded. "I'm new."

Instructor Arvail stared at him for a long moment.

The other students braced themselves. Tension rose like a tide.

But all she said was:

"Then you're welcome to stay. We don't turn away minds that listen."

And with that, she resumed the lecture.

As the class went on, Argolaith leaned back, eyes fixed not on the diagrams, but on the gaps between them—the little inconsistencies in space, the structural flaws no one else seemed to notice.

It wasn't impossible.

Not for him.

He wasn't sure how he knew.

But he felt it.