The sunlight entered the room and woke Arthur up. He stretched lazily, not wanting to get up, and covered his head with a pillow, hoping to get some more sleep.

"God, I've never had such a restful sleep in my life... Is this the effect of the new world?" - Arthur muttered sleepily.

He came out of the room and saw Elia lying on the sofa in the living room, watching what was happening on the television screen. She was covered head to toe with a blanket and next to her on the table there was a glass of juice she was drinking through a straw.

"Oh, who's awake? The man who doesn't come home at night. I don't care though... Are you going to watch it?" - Elia asked, without even looking in his direction.

"Hmm? Watch what?"

"I'm watching the Helios Empire Channel right now. They're broadcasting the group qualifiers at the Dominion Academy today. Eric's on there, too."

'Hmm ... is this that day? The protagonist's first major event. An attack by the cultists from the Forgotten Truth... it's a good thing I didn't transmigrate somewhere closer to Eric. Otherwise, I had to involuntarily participate.'

"Yeah, I'll check it out tomorrow..."

"Huh? Are you going out again? Didn't your guild get destroyed?"

"Mmm... no, they've already recovered quickly. There's a lot of work to be done."

Arthur wanted to end the conversation as soon as possible, so he turned around and left for the bathroom.  He had no desire to argue with his strange sister.

'I wonder... I mean, she knows Eric is about to be attacked, but she doesn't do anything about it, just lies dumbly on the couch. Let's say she knows he won't get hurt, but why did she ask me to watch with her? I mean, wasn't the original Arno a fan of his brother?  Arno obviously would have felt bad for him when he saw the threat to his life. Is Elia a sadist? '

When Elia got alone, at breakneck speed, Sofia flew up to her as if spreading her divine wings.

"Did he say anything?"

"He didn't say anything.  - Elia answered slowly, stretching out the word."

Looking at her husband's careless sister, Sophia began biting her nails.

"He doesn't come home at night, he behaves strangely...  Arno has changed a lot lately..."

'So I'm not the only one who has this feeling?' thought Elia.

"Do you think he might have... you know... men go through that phase..."

Elia looked from the television to Sophia.  She put her head on her hand and waited curiously for the rest.

"Well, I mean... another woman." - She let it out with difficulty and embarrassment.

"Huh? Another woman?  You mean a mistress?"

Sophia said nothing, but it was clear that her silence meant yes.

"Well..." - Elia smiled slyly.

"I don't think that's possible. There's certainly no other woman."

"Really?  You think so? Then why didn't he come..."

"Yes. But...  I didn't say he couldn't have an affair."

"What? But you... "- Sophia asked in a husky voice nervously.

"He might not have another girlfriend. But I didn't say there couldn't be another man. I've seen him in the guild talking to them a lot..."

Sophia's aura slowly began to change at these words.  A faint silver glow surrounded her.

"Yeah, and... I saw him in the park the other day feeding a kitten... a cute... cute kitten. What if Arno likes animals, too?"

"A kitten?  Men?  Does Arno have those desires as well? ... I've always disliked kittens, they pretend to be cute, but are insidious seducers at heart..."

Elia could no longer hold back, she covered herself completely with the blanket and began to laugh furiously.

"Insidious kittens... hahaha..."

However, the more she laughed the brighter the light from Sophia became.

"I was kidding.  Calm down.  You don't have to kill all the men in Eridanus...  and poor kittens...  Well, what kind of mistress could Arno have? He spends every day with us.  There are literally no prettier girls in this world."

"Huh? Pretty?  Yeah, right, you're right... and kittens aren't so mean... Impossible.  Arno wouldn't do that. He doesn't and can't have another girl..."

Ding! Ding!

The unexpected ringing of the doorbell made Sophia frown.  She wasn't expecting anyone today.

When she opened the door, she froze unable to move.

A pretty girl with fiery red hair and round glasses stood on the doorstep. She was holding a time-worn book in her hand, and she was actively peering behind Sophia's back, trying to see something.

"Mmm... I'm looking for Arno. Is he here? And by the way... I almost forgot... Good morning."

********

"So this is what you wanted to give me?"

Arthur took the letter from the hands of the girl who had suddenly appeared. The envelope had a beautiful seal, showing an unknown paladin with a spear in his hand and ready for battle.

"And what is it?"  - Arthur asked, but immediately realized that he would not get an answer.  The girl was right now making some notes in her notebook and did not pay any attention to him.

"Ah... All right, I'll take care of it myself."

He opened the envelope and his eyes widened in surprise.

"An invitation?  For an assistant position at the Academy? "

"Yes," - said the girl sharply.

"Professor Faran could not enroll you as a student.  The pathetic idiots in the administration blindly follow their idiotic rules... It's his way around... He said to tell you he's sorry."

Arthur was more exhausted in the last two hours than he had been in all three trials. Communicating with this girl had been an incredibly difficult task.

The red-haired girl, dressed completely out of the weather, in a warm wool sweater, was called Mellissa. And as far as Arthur could make out from the scraps of information, she was working with Arnaud on some project.

But that was the most success he could get. She seldom answered any questions, and in general, she seemed completely immersed in some work of her own, constantly taking notes and reading the book she had brought with her.

Now they were both in Arno's studio. As it turned out, Mellissa also knew of its existence. And what's more, they worked here together.

"I got it. Arno, come here. Look at this." - An explosion of excitement swept through the room.

"Hmm?"

"Arno, get your notes... quickly."

"Hmm?"

"Ahh... what a slowpoke you are today."

Mellissa jumped up from her seat, her old apathetic mood blown away. Now she looked like a fiery bull, ready to kill anything that got in his way.

She ran up to the corner of the workshop and let her mana sink into the floor somewhere. A strange metal box slid out from below.

'A safe under the floor? Arno, did you have any other secrets?'

The girl quickly typed in the password and pulled another laptop out of there.

She turned it on, typed something for a few seconds, and then began poking the laptop in Arthur's face.

"Look. You and I were looking at this sequence wrong. We thought that [Compression Runa] had 34 symbols. But that was a mistake. There are 35 of them. You see? That's why you and I had a rune that didn't work. The energy can't go through the circuit, we need to fix the 7th symbol..."

Arthur wanted to cover his ears with his hands, the girl was almost shouting at him. And the speed of her speech and the amount of information made it completely impossible for him to keep up with her train of thought.

'What the hell? What thirty-four characters? The outline? Energy... It's infuriating.'

The girl's excitement vanished as quickly as it had begun. She slumped back in her chair, muttering to herself, and continued writing vigorously.

Now was Arthur's chance to study the hidden notebook and figure out what was going on.

'Really?'

It had been three hours since he began to examine the contents of the laptop.

Arthur found correspondence between Arno and Professor Faran mentioned by Mellissa.

Professor Faran was head of the Department of Runes Studies at the Vermilion Trade Federation Academy. And in his messages, he almost idolized Arno.

'Seriously?  Arno was able to decipher the runes that the scientists of this world have been battling over for the last 30 years? ... But even so, the academy refused to accept him because his rank was too low? What a fucking world...' - he laughed as if he had heard the funniest joke.

The runes were the language of the ancient gods and they were very rare. They could be accidentally discovered by hunters in dungeons or in the spatial sub-dimensions left by the gods - the gods' domains.

But simply finding a rune was not enough.  To use them in practice had to correctly decipher and translate the characters that they consisted.  It was an extremely difficult task, for the entire Kingdom of Lafrain was not more than 3 experts capable of working with the runes.

And one of those talented people was, as it turned out, Arno. And not just gifted, Professor Faran in his reports referred to him as nothing less than a new messiah who would reveal to ignorant people the language of the gods.

For Arthur, of all this, the only thing that mattered was the practical value of the runes. And he realized how much potential they hid.  So, for example, creating a weapon of the highest level (legendary) could not do without the use of runes.

And one such weapon was located right in the Arno's workshop.

Arthur came to the table, on which on a special stand stood an interesting-looking gun.  He found in his notes that Arno, following some idiotic logic of his own, had named it [Blade of the Void].

'Arno, you had a disgusting sense of name...' Arthur complained.

Taking the [Blade of the Void] in his hands, Arthur immediately felt its power. It fit perfectly in his hand and was very light.

'If I'm going to go hunting, I could use it. I'll have to practice with it.'

"Hey, Selina Two, let's go."

He walked over to the table and placed an open palm on it.  Selina Two, who was standing next to her, did not respond to his command in any way.

"Jump into your hand, you stupid spider. Listen to your master."

Only after repeated words did Selina Two obey and climb into his hand, but she remembered to scratch him painfully.

"... What if... if this symbol moved to the 3rd row, it would increase efficiency by 30%," Mellissa muttered, sitting in the corner of the workshop, almost invisible.

"Ouch... stupid spider... Hey, Mellissa, I'm gonna step out for a second. Okay?"

"Mmm," the girl nodded, not looking away for a second.

Arthur sighed and walked out.  His route was to a remote, abandoned building.

He had arranged with Stephanie, the local headman of the Tearful Slums, to rent the place.  Here he was going to practice shooting and controlling Selina Two.

Bang!

"Terrific." - exclaimed Arthur as the shot left a deep hole in the wall.

"[Blade of the Void] has an excellent piercing ability. But it only fires single shots. And the battery only lasts for 10 rounds. I don't know what level this gun is, but I think I can hunt F or even E-rank monsters easily."

The sun was already behind the horizon, and Arthur was still practicing his shooting. Each shot was a concentrated blob of mana flying at breakneck speed toward the target. But it was difficult to aim accurately in the right place.

Arthur discovered that this weapon had one feature that made it unique in the world of Eridanus.

In that world, any weapon other than grenades required its core of mana to be used. Mana from a person's body entering a firearm would further concentrate and turn into an energy bullet.

But Arno just fucked all those rules.  [Blade of the Void], on the other hand, worked on simple mana batteries, such as those used in the Arboreans' breathing masks.  That's why Arthur was able to use it.

'This is the problem... Arno created a weapon that doesn't require a mana core. Doesn't that mean that the entire aristocracy and any state with only a limited number of people with a core in their bodies would lose their power? Now even mere Eridanians and Arboreans will be able to use such weapons.'

'I have spent so much time studying the world situation. There are so many powerful forces here who would love to have such a gun.  But it would cause such chaos in the world... I don't know what's better, staying poor or watching everything go up in flames... ' Arthur reasoned.

Arthur spent the next few hours training his naughty spider. Selina Two clearly had a mind of her own. She could either calmly obey a command or simply turn around and walk away if she didn't like it.

"Stupid spider. If you weren't of interest to me, I'd have taken you to a famous mountain and thrown you into a volcano instead of a ring... Selina, [Energy Blow] on that stone pillar."

The little spider turned toward its target. The beast's mana stone embedded inside it glowed purple and a thin arc of mana flew toward the pillar. It was the spider's only skill.

Compared to [Blade of the Void], the blow was clearly weaker. But even so, it left a pretty good cut on the wall.

'If such a blow hits a critical point, a monster of rank G can be killed even without my involvement... I like it,' rejoiced Arthur.

Tomorrow he had scheduled a trip to a very dangerous place to hunt. It was already time to raise the level of the system and open the Original Powers. So Arthur practiced shooting and controlling the spider all night, again without going home.

"Ah... With items like that, I'm sure I'll level up tomorrow. But now I'm confused by another question... Arno, are you a pathetic loser despised by everyone or a damn genius who for some reason hid your talents from others?"