The inside of the cave was surprisingly comfortable. The residual heat from Leo’s massive mana discharge had warmed the stone walls, and the scent of ozone and melted pine needles slowly faded, replaced by the dry, earthy smell of the cavern.
Aria sat on a smooth rock, her knees pulled tightly to her chest. Her shattered but now perfectly repaired bow lay across her lap, its wood still humming with a faint, residual blue static. She watched Leo with a mixture of wariness and intense curiosity as he casually sat cross-legged on the dirt, a glowing blue holographic screen reflecting in his dark eyes.
"So," Aria started, her voice quiet but steady. "You are Leo Vermis. The 'worthless bastard' of the House of Vermis."
"That's what the local database calls me," Leo said without looking up from his screen. "Though, personally, I prefer 'Senior QA Analyst.' It has better benefits. Now, hold still for a second. I'm running a diagnostic on your system profile."
"A... diagnostic?"
Before she could ask what that meant, a gentle warmth washed over her.
```
[SYSTEM DIAGNOSTIC: ARIA BLOODSPEAR (LVL 12)]
-> Checking active status effects...
-> [1] Status: 'Royal Elven Bloodline' (Active)
-> [2] Status: 'Grip of the Void Seal' (Active / High-Level Curse)
* Impact: Mana Core flow restricted by 99.9%
* Author: High Priest Malakor
* Syntax Check: Locked by Server-Side Cryptography
```
Leo frowned, his fingers tapping on the air as he scrolled through the raw data of her curse. "A server-side cryptographic lock. Gross. Whoever this Malakor guy is, he didn't just cast a spell on you; he hard-coded a restriction directly into your character profile using external authority."
Aria’s breath caught. "You know of Malakor? He is the Grand Inquisitor of the Holy Sun Sect. He... he is the one who slaughtered my vanguard and bound my magic when they exiled me. How do you know his name?"
"The system doesn't lie, Aria. It’s all written right here in your metadata," Leo replied, gesturing to the floating screen she couldn't see. "Standard magic users in this world would tell you that a curse of this level is absolute—that only the caster or a god can break it. But they don't understand how data routing works."
"What do you mean?" Aria asked, leaning forward, a desperate spark of hope igniting in her violet eyes.
"The seal is placed on your *Mana Core*," Leo explained, pointing to her chest. "It’s like a massive padlock on your main water valve. But when we established the **Synergy Link**, we didn't try to force the valve open. We literally plugged a high-pressure fire hose—my glitched mana overflow—directly into your secondary system port. We bypassed the locked valve entirely."
Aria stared at him, trying to process the bizarre metaphors. "So... as long as I am near you, I can use my magic?"
"Not just use it," Leo smirked, looking at her stat sheet. "You have access to my entire bandwidth. But we can't just run around with a physical cable connecting us forever. I need to write a local patch to make this bypass permanent."
He swiped his hand to close her profile and opened his own status sheet. He had a pressing matter of his own to attend to: twenty unallocated stat points.
```
[Unused Stat Points: 20]
```
"In any good build, you don't spread your stats too thin," Leo muttered to himself. "My physical strength and vitality are trash, but my Sandbox Engine does all the heavy lifting for combat anyway. I need processing power and reaction time."
He dumped fifteen points directly into **Intelligence** and the remaining five into **Agility**.
*Ping.*
```
[Allocating Stat Points...]
- Intelligence: 14 -> 29
- Agility: 8 -> 13
==================================
STATUS SHEET (LOCAL)
==================================
Name: Leo Vermis
Level: 7 (Class: None)
Health: 22 / 90
Mana: 45,210 / 0 [CRITICAL OVERFLOW]
Attributes:
- Strength: 5
- Agility: 13
- Vitality: 6
- Intelligence: 29
==================================
```
A sudden, dizzying wave of mental clarity washed over Leo.
The world around him seemed to slow down. The flickering shadows on the cave walls became sharper, and the cascading lines of compiler code in his Sandbox Engine, which had previously looked slightly blurry and chaotic, suddenly aligned into a beautifully organized, easily readable layout. His brain was processing data at three times its previous speed.
"Oh, yeah," Leo breathed, a wide grin spreading across his face as his eyes darted through the newly optimized code lines. "That's the hardware upgrade I needed."
With his newly boosted Intelligence, he looked back at Aria's "Grip of the Void Seal" code. Now, he could see the tiny flaws in the curse's execution loop—flaws that had been invisible to him just moments ago.
"Aria," Leo said, his voice dropping to a low, confident hum. "How would you like to test a beta patch?"