CHAPTER 213: EX 213. SUDDEN PEACE

Leon’s eyes darted across the faded ink, each word painting a picture of the world outside Shantel. The more he read, the more pieces of the puzzle began to fall into place, and yet those pieces formed a shape that made no sense at all.

The four races had always been at war, that much was obvious. Pages described bloody conflicts, campaigns that stretched over decades, the endless cycle of conquest and vengeance. That, Leon understood. Power demanded war. It demanded conquest. For different races with their own strength and pride, coexistence was nothing but a pretty lie.

And yet... it ended. Suddenly.

The book spoke of no powerful empire uniting the four races, no common enemy forcing them into alliance. There was simply a line; the races chose peace.

Leon’s grip tightened on the brittle parchment. His brows drew together. "This isn’t normal," he muttered, his voice echoing in the still library. "People don’t just drop centuries of bloodshed for nothing."

Exhaustion? He dismissed the thought instantly. That wasn’t how power worked. True power didn’t make one weary, it sharpened their hunger. Those who wielded it always wanted more. To conquer. To dominate. To rule. He knew it firsthand, and he refused to believe Pandora’s races were any different.

That meant there was something else. Something hidden behind the fragile peace. Leon etched the suspicion deep into his mind, a flag to raise again when—not if—he found the cracks in this so-called harmony.

He moved on. Among the piles of old tomes, he found maps, they were faded, curling at the edges, and barely held together. Leon didn’t waste time lingering over them. One by one, he slid them into his inventory with an absent smirk. "Four generations out of date... they won’t miss these. If anything, I’m doing them a favor clearing this junk out."

With that business done, he turned to what mattered most, the Arman Empire. His current home, and the race he’d be moving among. The texts here were thicker, and more detailed, accounts that chronicled Emperors, wars, and decrees.

The longer he read, however, the deeper his frown became until finally, his lips parted, and he spoke without thinking:

"...Keeping the imperial bloodline pure?"

The words sat heavy in the air, as if tainted with something distasteful. Leon leaned back in his chair, staring down at the page with an incredulous look. His mind flashed with thoughts, politics, inbreeding, power hoarding. None of it boded well.

"Of course," he muttered with a humorless chuckle. "Humans always find a way to ruin themselves."

But the detail clung to him like a burr. This wasn’t just some noble family’s obsession. This was the empire’s decree.

****

Leon sat hunched over the ancient tome, its leather binding cracked and brittle with age. Dust clung to his fingertips as he turned the page, eyes narrowing as the history of the Arman Empire unfolded.

The empire had existed for more than twenty millennia. Twenty thousand years. Longer than most civilizations Leon had ever heard of, and far longer than he expected from a human kingdom surrounded by predators. But the part that truly caught his attention was what came before.

Before the empire, humans weren’t rulers. They weren’t even contenders. They were powerless—mere wanderers drifting through a world brimming with beasts and races wielding strength beyond comprehension.

Leon leaned back slightly, tapping his finger against the page. "That explains it," he murmured. "Why they were nomadic. Moving around gave them a chance. If you sit in one spot, you’re nothing but a meal waiting to be eaten. But if you keep moving... you might just survive."

He could picture it: fragile tribes scraping by, ducking beneath the claws of stronger races, knowing when to bow, when to run, when to give up. They had nothing, no claws, no fangs, no special traits. But being at the bottom of the chain forced them to learn something no other race needed, how to climb.

And the man who climbed higher than anyone else... was Julius Arman.

A hermit, at first. Then a teacher. Then a conqueror. The name repeated again and again in the text, each line painting him larger than life until finally Leon whispered it aloud:

"So it was him... the first emperor. The one who created the Art System."

For the first time since he began reading, Leon felt a flicker of genuine joy curl in his chest. Not just interest, pride. The greatest form of power in Pandora didn’t come from dragons, elves, or beastmen. It came from humans. Weak, fragile humans.

He reached for another book he had set aside earlier, its spine marked with the bold title etched in a language he could now understand through the trial system: The Foundations of Art.

Leon’s lips quirked in a small, eager smile as he cracked it open. "So the other races figured it out on their own, huh? Arman didn’t share it freely. They stole it, learned it, and adapted it.to fit their needs."

He chuckled under his breath. That, too, felt right. True power was never handed down, it was seized.

And now, here he was, about to read the very roots of Pandora’s greatest system of strength. His eyes glimmered with anticipation as he muttered, "Let’s see how your Art really works."

Then he bent over the book, and began to read.

****

As Leon traced the faded ink with his eyes, pieces of knowledge began falling into place, fragments that coincided with what he already knew.

"So the beasts were the originators of the art system..." he muttered under his breath, his voice low and thoughtful.

The text spoke of beast cores. They had existed long before the Art System, pulsing with condensed life-force and knowledge. But that didn’t mean, they were revered treasures. They were still death traps.

The book even described it clearly: whenever a human or any being, tried to absorb a core directly, it poisoned them. The raw flood of knowledge, wild and uncontrolled, forced its way into their minds until their skulls quite literally split apart. The body couldn’t handle it. The spirit couldn’t bear it. To the people, beast cores weren’t blessings. They were curses.

Leon leaned back against the shelf, exhaling.

But that raised the real question: how had humans eventually turned them into power?

He flipped to the next page. His eyes froze as the answer stared back at him in bold script, a man and a pack of wolves.

The man’s name was Julius Arman.