Power of Runes

After Eric left the Soul Space, Eva didn’t spend much time thinking about what had just happened and soon returned her attention to the task she had been handling from the beginning.

Ash’s cultivation was still progressing.

The first World had already completed its formation and remained suspended within the endless Inner Universe, while the countless Runic Symbols surrounding it continued revolving without pause.

With the first World successfully formed, Eva could now begin preparing for the second.

There were still other massive bundles of World Energy within the Inner Universe that were gradually adapting to Ash’s energy signature, while more World Energy continued entering from outside, giving Eva everything she needed to continue the process once they were ready.

Her plan from this point onward was simple.

The second bundle of World Energy has already finished adapting, she would now use it to form the second World, and while that was happening, the next bundle would continue adapting in preparation for the third.

If everything continued smoothly, this would gradually turn into a continuous cycle where one World would begin forming after another without leaving unnecessary gaps between them.

It wouldn’t happen instantly, but Eva had no intention of stopping after creating only a few Worlds.

The first World had already proven that the method worked, and from this point onward, all she needed was enough World Energy and time to repeat the process again and again, slowly filling the enormous Inner Universe with more Worlds.

Only then it would deserve the name it currently possess.

An Inner Universe.

As for the tiny World Tree that had begun evolving after the formation of the first World, there had still been no noticeable change.

Unlike everything taking place within the Soul Space, the World Tree was inside Ash’s Inner Universe and therefore remained completely unaffected by the Soul Space’s difference in time, making it impossible to speed up it’s evolution.

It could finish soon, or it could take far longer than Eva expected, but since there was nothing she could do to speed up the process, she simply left it alone and continued focusing on Ash’s cultivation.

While all of this was happening on one side, somewhere else, a clone possessing 50% of Ash’s strength finally arrived before the Eden Realm Academy.

**

[A Clone’s POV]

I’ve reached the place, Eva.

Ash’s clone thought as he looked at the Academy before him, feeling slightly relieved after finally reaching his destination, because simply finding the actual location of the Academy had turned into a far greater headache than he had initially expected.

The Academy’s true location was completely hidden from ordinary people, while almost everyone who actually knew where it was happened to be powerful enough that Ash’s many abilities related to the mind and memories wouldn’t work on them easily.

Using those abilities on the Academy’s students was equally useless, because even they had no idea where the Academy was actually located.

Whenever students wanted to enter or leave the Academy, they had to use teleportation formations and pass through two or three separate teleportation checkpoints before finally reaching their destination, while those checkpoints changed every single day, making it nearly impossible to simply follow the same route and sneak inside.

However, several days of patience had finally paid off.

Recently, the Eden Realm Academy had held a new admission exam where anyone who met the requirements could participate, giving Ash the opportunity he had been waiting for.

He took the place of an orphan and participated in the exam under her identity, going through a long series of tests that somehow managed to be even more annoying than the ones he remembered from Starlight Academy.

Still, they were only annoying, not difficult, and passing them while controlling his performance was easy enough.

In the end, he deliberately placed himself somewhere around the middle of the successful participants, neither performing well enough to attract praise nor badly enough to stand out, because he had long since learned that the people at the very top and the very bottom often attracted the most attention, while those in the middle were usually forgotten soon after anyone looked at them.

As for the orphan who was originally supposed to participate in the exam, Ash had manipulated her memories before sending her to another corner of Eden, far away from the Academy, where a wealthy family without a child lived.

He altered their memories as well, making them believe that the girl had always been their daughter, while the orphan herself believed that she had finally returned to the family she had always belonged to.

In the end, an orphan received parents, while two childless parents received a daughter.

That was a good enough payment for taking her place.

{Oh! You’ve already reached the place. That’s nice. Let me take over now, and thank you for your good work.}

The moment Eva finished speaking, the wisp of consciousness that had been controlling the clone quietly fell into slumber, while Eva’s consciousness took its place and assumed complete control of the body.

She remained still for a few seconds as she adjusted to the unfamiliar body, moving her fingers one by one before taking a few steps and feeling the strange sensation of controlling a physical body entirely on her own.

This was precisely why Ash had gone through so much trouble to find the Eden Realm Academy in the first place.

Eva wanted to experience academy life for herself.

She couldn’t leave Ash and enter the outside world with her own body, so after thinking about it for a while, she decided to use one of his clones as her proxy, allowing her consciousness to control it while her actual self remained where she had always been.

That was also why Ash hadn’t simply taken the identity of any random student he could find.

Since Eva would be the one living through the clone, Ash had specifically chosen the identity of a girl before morphing the clone’s body to match her appearance, something that had made the entire admission exam far more annoying for him than it otherwise would have been.

He simply wasn’t comfortable walking around in a girl’s body.

Having to remain in that form throughout the admission process while going through one test after another had only made the experience worse, but despite all his complaints, he had still gone through with everything because he understood better than anyone just how much Eva had missed while constantly remaining by his side.

For almost everything Ash had experienced, Eva had been there with him, yet being there and experiencing those things herself were two completely different matters.

This time, she wanted to experience them herself.

Going to classes, learning alongside other students, wandering around the Academy without any particular purpose, and simply living through the ordinary days of academy life were all things she had never experienced before, but even those weren’t what Eva was looking forward to the most.

More than anything else, she wanted to meet new people.

She wanted to make friends on her own, talk with people who knew her simply as herself, and experience all the little things that came naturally to an ordinary child growing up among others, whether those experiences turned out to be fun, embarrassing, troublesome, or completely meaningless.

For once, she didn’t want to experience the world through Ash.

She wanted to experience it herself.

With that thought, Eva looked down at the body that would be hers from this point onward, taking a moment to examine the appearance Ash had prepared for her.

The girl appeared to be around 17 years old, with a slender body that was neither particularly tall nor short for her age, while her proportions were ordinary enough that nothing immediately stood out about her figure.

Shoulder-length dark brown hair fell naturally around her face with a slight wave near the ends, while a pair of light green eyes gave some color to an otherwise simple appearance.

Her features were pleasant and naturally attractive without being breathtaking, giving her the kind of beauty that could draw a few lingering glances from people nearby without becoming the center of attention wherever she went.

Eva touched her face for a moment before looking down at herself once again, and as a small smile gradually appeared on her lips, the excitement she had been holding back finally began to surface.

From this moment onward, her academy life had officially begun.

The excitement within Eva only grew stronger as she looked around at the nearly ten thousand students standing alongside her upon the enormous teleportation formation, some curiously observing their surroundings just like her while others were already talking among themselves after becoming familiar during the admission exams.

Only moments ago, all of them had been gathered at the final teleportation checkpoint, but after another flash of spatial light, they had finally arrived at their destination.

The Eden Realm Academy.

"Everyone, remain where you are for now and don’t wander away from the formation."

The voice of the teacher who had accompanied them through the final checkpoint spread across the entire area with ease, reaching every student without becoming painfully loud, and the restless crowd gradually settled down as their attention turned toward him.

They didn’t have to wait for long before several figures approached from the distance, led by another teacher wearing the Academy’s uniform, who exchanged a few words with the teacher who had brought them here before accepting a small crystal from his hand.

"These are the students who passed through the western admission route, and their information has already been recorded within the crystal. There were no problems during transportation, so I’ll leave them in your care from here."

"Understood. I’ll handle everything from this point onward."

With his responsibility completed, the first teacher stepped back onto the teleportation formation alongside several others who had accompanied him, and after another brief flash of spatial light, they disappeared from the Academy just as quickly as they had arrived.

The new teacher waited until the formation became silent again before turning toward the thousands of students gathered before him.

"Welcome to the Eden Realm Academy."

Those simple words immediately caused the atmosphere among the students to change, because although they had technically become students the moment they passed the admission exam, hearing those words after finally reaching the Academy made everything feel far more real.

Eva naturally felt the same way.

Her gaze had already wandered away from the teacher and toward everything surrounding the teleportation formation, taking in the Academy she had gone through so much trouble to reach.

The first thing she noticed was just how enormous the place actually was.

The teleportation formation itself rested within a vast stone plaza large enough to comfortably hold the thousands of students who had arrived together, while several other formations of different sizes were spread across the surrounding area, constantly flashing as groups of students, teachers, and other people appeared or disappeared from them.

Beyond the plaza stood buildings that immediately reminded Eva of the academies Ash remembered from his younger days, yet the scale was completely different.

Tall stone structures stretched across the distance with wide windows, decorated pillars, sloping rooftops, and enormous archways connecting different sections of the Academy, while crystal lamps and various magical devices had been built naturally into the older architecture, creating a strange mixture of ancient fantasy and advanced technology without either side feeling out of place.

From Eva’s perspective, everything was new.

She had seen far greater cities through Ash’s memories, witnessed places infinitely more beautiful than this, and even possessed knowledge of things that made the Academy before her appear insignificant by comparison, yet none of those memories belonged to her.

This was the first time she was standing here herself.

The sounds surrounding her weren’t something she was hearing through Ash, the cool air brushing against her skin wasn’t something another body was feeling for her, and the thousands of unfamiliar faces moving around the plaza were people she could approach and speak with whenever she wanted.

For another student standing several meters away from her, however, the same Academy looked completely different.

The young boy had come from an ordinary family and had spent most of his life within a small city, so the moment his eyes moved beyond the teleportation plaza and caught sight of enormous structures disappearing into the distance, his mouth remained slightly open as though he had forgotten to close it.

A girl beside him wasn’t looking at the buildings at all, because her attention had been completely stolen by the students flying through the sky above them, some moving through the air on their own while others travelled upon various artifacts, occasionally disappearing behind the distant towers before another group emerged elsewhere.

Several students from powerful families appeared far less impressed, with some quietly judging the people around them while others had already begun searching through the crowd for familiar faces, potential rivals, or anyone worth knowing during the years they would spend here.

There were also those who simply looked nervous.

For many among the ten thousand students gathered here, this was the first time they had travelled so far from home, and while the Academy represented an opportunity they had fought desperately to obtain, it also marked the beginning of a life where the families, servants, friends, and familiar places they had always relied upon would no longer be waiting just outside their rooms.

Eva quietly watched all of them.

Excitement, nervousness, arrogance, curiosity, fear, happiness and countless other emotions surrounded her from every direction, and strangely enough, she found herself far more interested in those reactions than the enormous Academy itself.

These were the things she had wanted to experience.

"All right, everyone, start moving."

The teacher’s voice pulled the students’ attention back toward him as several assistants began guiding the enormous crowd away from the teleportation formation.

"Your identities have already been registered, but you still need to receive your Academy identification, residential assignment, class information, and several other things before you’re free to explore the grounds, so follow the assigned route and don’t separate from your group until everything is finished."

The crowd finally began moving, slowly leaving the enormous plaza as Eva naturally followed among them, her light green eyes constantly wandering from one place to another while the small smile on her face refused to disappear.

For everyone else around her, this was their first day at the Eden Realm Academy.

For Eva, it was something much simpler and far more important.

It was her first day living a life of her own.

**

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