Reality had long since ceased to surprise Kael. As he gazed upon the golden grimoire floating in his mindscape - its pages whispering secrets that made his neurons fire like festival fireworks - he embraced the absurdity. The Codex Aeternum's presence felt inevitable, like the final puzzle piece snapping into a cosmic jigsaw.
His mental fingers brushed the cover. The tome erupted into a constellation of glowing runes that rearranged themselves into comprehensible patterns. Entire disciplines unfolded before him - metallurgical formulae for orichalcum alloying, grammatical structures of High Elvish declensions, alchemical recipes that made his nose twitch with phantom herbal scents.
"Elementary containment matrix," Kael murmured, selecting a basic hydromancy formula. The incantation flowed from his lips like forgotten poetry. Reality warped - air molecules dancing to his will as aqueous chains materialized mid-air, their crystalline structure refracting rainbow patterns across the walls. The successful cast left him trembling not from exertion, but revelation.
The Codex's limitations became apparent during feverish exploration. Advanced chapters remained sealed behind shimmering wards resembling celestial mathematics. Kael's probing consciousness encountered mental feedback akin to biting into lightning - the grimoire's higher mysteries demanding payment in spiritual currency he couldn't yet mint.
Dawn found him slumped over Ethan's obsidian training floor, drool pooling beside charcoal sketches of runic arrays. The old archmage's arrival triggered automated cleansing spells that evaporated both saliva and diagrams with judgmental efficiency.
"Up, sluggard!" Ethan's staff-tap sent seismic waves through the stone. "Today you demonstrate progress or become fertilizer for my herb garden."
What followed redefined magical pedagogy.
Kael's opening salvo shattered expectations. A [Tempest's Fury] spell coalesced in 1.7 seconds - three standard deviations faster than Guild-certified benchmarks. The atmospheric blades left smoking crevices in enchanted granite that normally resisted dragonfire.
Ethan's carefully maintained frown cracked when Kael chain-cast [Stellar Ignition] without pause. Superheated plasma orbs traced mandala patterns overhead, their containment fields humming with dangerous perfection. By the twelfth consecutive spell - a terrakinetic [Earthshaper's Band] that raised defensive bulwarks from solid bedrock - the old mage's diagnostic monocle had melted from mana overflow.
"Sufficient... for crude field applications," Ethan managed through tight lips, secretly dispatching emergency dampening teams to stabilize the academy's trembling foundations. "Your theoretical framework remains laughably primitive, of course."
Kael accepted the backhanded praise with monastic calm. His attention lingered on phantom equations from the Codex that now overlay reality itself - a heads-up display of arcane variables only he could perceive.
The evaluation concluded with Ethan practically hurling a spatial pouch at his protégé. "Provisions. Map. Currency. Now begone before you collapse my wards entirely." The dismissal held unexpected warmth. "Return when you've outgrown provincial challenges."
As Kael disappeared beyond the horizon, Ethan activated ancient observation arrays. Crystal orbs flickered to life showing multiple angles of his student's journey. A single tremor marred the archmage's steady hands as he poured celebratory elixir into a goblet forged from a fallen star's core.
"One month to surpass three decades of training," he toasted the empty chamber. "Let the old fools clutch their dusty titles. Soon they'll kneel to a storm they never saw coming."
Deep within the Codex Aeternum, eldritch seals began crumbling. Kael's unconscious magical expenditure during the test had unknowingly siphoned enough energy to breach its first containment layer. New chapters unfolded like poisonous blossoms - [Bloodline Transmutation], [Soulforge Protocols], [Entropic Reversal]...
The grimoire hungered for more.