Beast Gacha System: All Mine-Chapter 167: A Locked Box

A day passed in a blur of effort.

Somehow, impossibly, the girl had completed five of his initiation tasks. Baswara monitored via the wandering crystal, his initial academic delight quickly curdling into something between awe and strong professional offense.

Task 1 was to fold an origami crane behind her back, without visual aid, using only ambient mana. A brutal test of fine control and spatial awareness. She’d completed it in half a day, the paper bird settling onto her windowsill at the dorm with a perfect crease.

Task 2 was to knit a scarf made of solidified mana strings, behind her back, and highlight it in a visible red hue. He’d expected this to take days. The sustained creation and color-manipulation of pure mana was advanced Vision Mage work.

She’d finished it faster than the crane. Her explanation, when prodded, was simple. "It was a repetitive and pattern-heavy task." As if that explained the sheer, willful shaping and dyeing of intangible energy!

So he’d escalated, his competitive old spirit fully roused.

Task 3, catch his wandering crystal using instantly-knit-together mana strings, behind her back. The crystal was a swift, erratic moving target. As much as it was a test of creation, it was also of reactive formation and precision trapping.

He’d sent it zipping around her room like an enraged firefly. She’d caught it on the third pass. A net of crimson mana had snapped into existence from nothing, snaring the orb mid-dive.

Baswara had stared, speechless, at his own scrying panel.

Task 4 was to conjure the four fundamental states of matter manually, using only pure ambient mana. Solid. Liquid. Gas. Plasma.

This was the heart of his ’manual creation’ philosophy, the brutal, logical deconstruction of magic that most mages bypassed with ’specialty’ and ’intention.’ It was supposed to be a week-long struggle of trial, error, and explosive failure.

She’d done it in five minutes.

A pebble of solidified mana stone clinked on her desk. A droplet of water rolled off it. A wisp of steam rose and dissipated. A brief, contained spark of purple-white plasma flared and died.

"You—?!" Baswara had sputtered into the comms of the crystal, his voice a mixture of fury and disbelief. What was her limit? Where was it?! She was dismantling his carefully calibrated curriculum like it was child’s play.

Finally, gritting his teeth, he’d issued the fifth task. The bridge. The true test.

Task 5. Find a way to augment her literal physical body using telekinesis.

The first four tasks had taught her the principles of Vision Magic, external creation and manipulation. This one was to cross into the domain of Force Magic, internal enhancement. It was the trickiest leap of all, requiring not just control, but a deep, intuitive synergy between mind and body.

The morning of the second day, Cecilia went to the academy’s open-air training ground. The dew was still on the grass, the air crisp. She selected a standard, blunted practice sword from the rack. Its weight was unfamiliar in every way.

Perhaps the Cecilia from this world, the bookish orphan, didn’t know much about moving her body with martial grace. But Cecilia from the real world knew a bit about controlled movement. More than the stiff, ceremonial steps of the yearly Saintess dance.

Her mind flashed to an absurd, long-ago reward. The Belly Dance Skill Orb.

At the time, it had seemed like a bizarre, useless sex joke from the System. Now, she couldn’t believe it would come in handy. Of course, she wouldn’t focus on the sinuous flexibility of the hips alone, but on the core principle.

Body isolation.

The precise, independent control of muscle groups. The understanding of how to initiate movement from one point and let it flow through the body. It was kinetics. It was anatomy. It was the perfect foundation.

The wandering crystal hovered at a respectful distance, observing.

Cecilia began. It started as a dance. A series of stretches and controlled rotations, her awareness flowing through her limbs. Then she added the telekinesis.

She used it to lighten her own limbs at the precise moment of movement, to stabilize her core during pivots, to add a fraction more explosive power to her leaps.

Her movements became fluid, impossibly graceful, and undeniably augmented.

When she jumped, her airtime defied gravity. She executed a salto, a full aerial flip, with the serene ease of a leaf caught in an updraft, landing with the silent precision of a cat. She turned in the air, rolled, twisted her body in mid-flight with a control that was as beautiful as it was physically improbable.

It was elegant.

And, thanks to the ingrained muscle memory of the skill orb, it was also, undeniably... erotic.

There was a sensuous flow to her isolation, a primal grace in the arch of her back and the extension of her limbs that was entirely unintentional but impossible to ignore.

By now, the morning bustle had begun. Students crisscrossed the grounds on their way to early classes or practice.

But...

Her solitary, mesmerizing performance in the training ring began to draw eyes. Whispers started. A small crowd gathered at the edges, watching the top-tier nerd move like a warrior-poet.

Those eyes... including a pair of tiger-like eyes that watched from the shadow of a colonnade.

Cecilia landed from a final, soaring leap, the practice sword held point-down beside her, her chest rising and falling with steady, controlled breaths. The morning sun gleamed on her sweat-dampened golden hair. 𝓯𝙧𝓮𝓮𝒘𝓮𝙗𝙣𝒐𝒗𝒆𝓵.𝓬𝓸𝒎

Before the whispers could coalesce into applause or gossip, the wandering crystal floating above her... clapped. Two sharp, precise taps of mana against its own surface, ringing out clearly.

"That’s it." Baswara’s voice emerged. "You come to my residence after class today. I want to test you personally."

The gauntlet had been thrown down, and she had not only picked it up but fashioned it into a crown. The remote phase was over.

Cecilia smiled and nodded at the crystal. "Yes, Professor."

"Actually, I have no important class today. Only some final class preparations. I can notify the professors for leniency," Cecilia said into the crystal. The window was open; she would not wait. "I will arrive before nine."

***

Angela had, of course, delivered a full, furious debrief about Ruby. The skulking, the crystal, the near-miss in the alley. It was valuable intelligence, a reminder of the petty and persistent threat buzzing at the periphery.

But it was background noise now. A secondary plotline.

Her priority was Oathran.

The teleportation gate deposited her near the professor’s remote residence with a soft pop of displaced air. Knocking on the heavy oak door, she expected the old man’s gruff bellow or at least his grumbling presence.

Instead, the door was opened by a woman she had never seen before.

She was tall, with a kind of timeless, austere beauty. Her hair was a light, benign brown swept into a severe but elegant knot. Her eyes were strikingly violet with inherent sharpness.

"Aah, are you Miss Araceli? The professor had to go and do some preparations outside for now. You come in."

Cecilia bowed, her mind racing. She’d come alone, banking on Oathran being tied up with his own classes. This was already perfect. But the professor being absent too? It felt less like luck and more like the universe offering her a loaded gift. The sealed box on the high shelf called to her like a beacon.

"Hello. My name is Cecilia Araceli."

"Nice to meet you. My name is Serayu," the woman said, stepping aside to let her enter. "I’m the professor’s acquaintance. I’m proud to say I’ll be the first one he calls whenever he needs help."

The phrasing was interesting. Not ’assistant.’ Not ’colleague.’ Acquaintance. A word that could hide multitudes.

Cecilia offered a smile. "That is wonderful. I’m glad he had you, umm, Madam Serayu."

The name, the face, the bearing, the subtle, unnatural grace. Whoever this woman was, she might’ve also been a dragon in the real world. She recalled she once heard of that name too. Perhaps... also Oathran’s acquaintance.

She committed every detail to memory.

Serayu led her to the familiar, cluttered study-saloon where she’d first met Baswara. "You can wait a bit. I will get you some snacks."

"Please, don’t busy yourself..."

"It’s okay." Serayu waved a slender hand. "You’re that old fart’s first acknowledged disciple after all."

The title, acknowledged disciple, sent a jolt through Cecilia. It was a weighty term. Her eyebrows rose.

"Not Mr. Alicei?" she asked, her tone light, probing.

Serayu’s reaction was instantaneous and telling. She flinched, a minute, full-body recoil that was there and gone in a heartbeat, but the warmth in her eyes cooled several degrees. "Ah. No." Her voice was softer now, careful.

"Mr. Alicei is... too special for anyone to teach."

Too special. Not ’too brilliant’ or ’too advanced.’ Too special. As if his very nature placed him beyond pedagogy, in a category of his own.

Cecilia merely blinked, storing the reaction away. "I see."

With a final, graceful nod, Serayu glided out of the room, presumably toward the kitchen.

Alone.

The house was quiet, save for the distant, faint clatter of dishes. It was the most perfect, most dangerous opportunity she would likely ever get.

She didn’t hesitate.

She went straight to the high shelf. The wooden box, plain and unadorned, sat exactly where her psychic scan had detected it. She didn’t touch it with her hands. She enveloped it in a sheath of her will, a telekinetic glove that masked any direct magical signature.

First, an examination. The sealing magic on it was old, intricate, and woven with solemnity. Using the principles Baswara had just taught her, the manual, logical deconstruction of magical effects, she probed its structure.

It was a lock based on intent and bloodline, but it had a failsafe, a backdoor keyed to... a specific, authorized magical resonance. A resonance that, thanks to her bond with the real Oathran, her own magical signature now able to mimic.

She focused on harmonizing with it. She poured a thread of her will into the keyhole.

CLICK.

It resonated through her bones.

Ah.

It was finally unlocked.

Her heart hammered against her ribs. She glanced at the doorway, listening. Only silence.

Working quickly, she used her telekinesis to lift the lid just enough. She didn’t remove the box. Instead, she willed the contents to rise, one by one, floating silently across the room to where she now stood in a shadowed corner between two towering bookcases.

A stack of documents. A journal.

She caught the journal as it drifted into her waiting hand. The leather was soft, worn.

The other papers, identity documents for Oathran Alicei. Name of parents. Physical descriptions. A startlingly sparse medical history that noted only ’robust constitution’ and ’unusual metabolic stasis.’

Her eyes scanned, hungry, discarding the bureaucratic chaff. It was the journal she needed. She opened it to a page marked by a faded ribbon.

Baswara’s handwriting, bold and angular, filled the pages. Notes on theories, musings on magic. Then, nearer the marked section, the tone changed. It became... paternal. Worried.

Her gaze fell on a string of words, a paragraph that seemed to have been written in a moment of profound despair or fatalistic acceptance. The ink was darker here, as if pressed with great force.

"To keep the world intact... the key will die... the same year of his twentieth birthday... first fall of snow..."

"And the key’s existence... the memory of them... their proof of presence..."

"...will be completely erased..."