Chapter 775: Oddy Exhausted
After leaving the Headmaster’s office, Liam made his way back through the administration wing with the same calm pace he had carried when entering it, his expression unchanged and his steps unhurried, as if he had not just sat across from a man who had admitted to a decades-long obsession with dark magic.
The halls were quiet around him, the formal stillness of the administrative section slowly giving way to the livelier sounds of the academy as he crossed back toward the student areas.
Anyone who passed him saw only the usual Liam Hunter: silent, detached, and difficult to read. None of them would have known that his thoughts were still arranging Thion’s words into separate pieces, turning each one over quietly to decide which parts were useful, which were dangerous, and which were likely meant to draw a reaction from him.
By the time he reached the library, he had already placed the conversation aside on the surface, though not truly out of his mind. The library was much calmer than the cafeteria or courtyard had been, with rows of shelves rising beneath warm magical lamps and scattered students seated at long tables with books open in front of them.
Some were actually studying. Others were clearly only pretending while speaking in hushed voices. Liam ignored them all and headed toward the section he knew too well now, passing between several tall shelves until he reached the exact place where he had found the unofficial Berserker book weeks earlier.
He stopped in front of the shelf and looked at the narrow gap where the book had once been.
For a moment, he simply stood there.
Then the shadows near his hand shifted faintly.
The old book slipped out of his Void storage without sound, its worn cover appearing in his grasp as if it had been waiting there the entire time. Liam looked at it once, feeling the weight of everything that small, unofficial text had indirectly caused. It had not forced him into the eastern forest. It had not made him fight the Berserker. Those decisions had been his.
But it had been one of the sparks. One piece of knowledge that had connected with his curiosity, then with Charlotte’s warning, then with the frustration he had not properly addressed.
He placed the book back on the shelf.
It slid into place neatly, becoming once again just another old volume hidden among many others.