Chapter 6: Doctrine Decryption

The train ride to Yanaka was quiet. The neon chaos of Shinjuku gave way to the sleeping, traditional streets of Tokyo’s old town.

Aya led him to a large, traditional house hidden behind a high stone wall. It looked ancient and respectable, smelling of old wood and incense.

“Nice place,” Yuki whispered, afraid to break the silence of the sleeping neighborhood.

“It is a front,” Aya said, unlocking the front door. “Most of the structure is subterranean.”
She led him to a bookshelf in the study. She pulled a specific book—The History of Hermetic Philosophy—and the shelf clicked. It swung open silently, revealing a steel elevator door.

“After you,” she said.

They stepped inside. The elevator descended smoothly, going down deep into the earth.

When the doors opened, Yuki braced himself for a high-tech lab or a dungeon. He wasn't prepared for the reality.

He stepped out into The Archive.

Yuki’s jaw dropped. It wasn't just a room; it was a cathedral of knowledge buried in the earth. The ceiling vaulted high overhead, lost in shadow, while row upon row of dark oak shelves stretched out like a maze. The air smelled of ozone, old parchment, and dried herbs. Floating orbs of soft, amber light drifted lazily near the ceiling, illuminating glass cases filled with things that defied logic—a dagger that seemed to bleed smoke, a crystal pulsating with a heartbeat, a map of the world where the continents were shifting in real-time.

“It’s… it’s like a library from a isekai light novel,” Yuki whispered, his eyes wide, reflecting the amber light. “But real.”

“It is the accumulation of four centuries of Lefebvre history,” a deep voice boomed.

Standing near a massive central table made of polished obsidian were two people.

Jean-Luc Lefebvre stepped forward. He was a mountain of a man, wearing a cable-knit sweater that made him look like a retired sea captain. He wiped his hands on a rag and extended a massive palm.

“You must be the specialist,” Jean-Luc said. He gripped Yuki’s hand. The shake was firm, warm, and felt like it could crush coal into diamonds. “I’m Jean-Luc. I’m terribly sorry to have dragged you into our troubles at this hour, young man.”

“I-It’s okay, sir,” Yuki squeaked, trying to get feeling back in his fingers. “I was… already awake.”

Behind Jean-Luc stood Emi Lefebvre. She was slender, sharp-featured, and radiated an aura of terrifying elegance. She held a glass of red wine, looking Yuki up and down with critical eyes.

“He looks pale,” Emi noted, her voice cool. “Have you eaten, boy? Aya, have you fed the asset?”

“We consumed nutrients, Mother,” Aya said, walking past Yuki to the table. “Ramen. It was… adequate.”

“Junk,” Emi scoffed, though her expression softened slightly. “Well, at least he won't faint.”

Aya placed the black USB drive onto the obsidian table. It looked tiny and insignificant against the ancient stone.

“The data,” Aya announced.

Emi set down her wine glass. Her demeanor shifted instantly from hostess to master arcanist. She picked up the drive with a pair of silver tongs.

“Let’s see what Kenji has buried,” she murmured.

She plugged the drive into a port connected to a bank of beige computer towers that looked like they were from 1999, except these were etched with glowing silver runes.

The main CRT monitor flickered to life. A wall of nonsensical, shifting symbols filled the screen. Red, angry hieroglyphics that seemed to writhe like snakes.

“A digital curse,” Jean-Luc rumbled, leaning over the table. “Nasty work. It’s woven into the encryption key.”

“I can sense it,” Emi said, narrowing her eyes. “If we force the lock, the magic triggers a localized magnetic pulse. It wipes the drive instantly.”

“So we can't hack it,” Jean-Luc sighed.

“And we can't dispel it,” Emi added. “Because the magic is anchored to the binary code. If I unravel the spell, the data corrupts.”

They stood in silence. The parents looked defeated. The magic was too technical; the tech was too magical.

Yuki stepped forward. He cleared his throat.

“Uh… can I see?”

Emi looked at him, her brow furrowed. “This is high-level alchemy mixed with C++, boy. You will hurt yourself.”

“It’s not alchemy,” Yuki said, his voice gaining confidence as he stepped closer to the screen. He squinted at the writhing red hieroglyphics. “It’s math. Just… really angry math.”

He pointed to a specific character that was pulsing rhythmically at the center of the chaos.

“That symbol,” Yuki asked, glancing at Emi. “The one that looks like a triangle with a line through it. What is that? And why does it reset every 0.4 seconds?”

Emi looked at where he was pointing. “That is the alchemical sign for Sulfur. But in this context, it represents the volatility of Fire. Ignis.”

“Fire,” Yuki muttered. He watched the screen for another few seconds. The symbol shifted. “And now? That square one?”

“Terra,” Jean-Luc rumbled. “Earth. Stability.”

Yuki’s eyes widened. The realization hit him like a lightning bolt.

“I get it,” he whispered. “It’s not a static lock blocking the door. It’s a cascade cipher. The magic isn't the wall; it’s the clock.”

He looked at Emi, his brain racing. “The encryption key changes every ‘tick’—every 0.4 seconds—based on the magical element active at that moment. If I try to brute force it when it’s Fire, but the lock shifts to Earth mid-attack, the system crashes and wipes the drive. I don't need to break the lock. I need to sync with the rhythm.”

He pulled out his laptop, eager to test the theory. “I can write a script to auto-inject the counter-code. Can I connect?”

Emi hesitated, then stepped aside. “Be my guest.”

Yuki sat down at the ancient keyboard. He reached for his USB-C cable to tether his modern laptop to the mainframe, but he froze.

The port on the Archive’s computer wasn't a USB port. It wasn't HDMI. It wasn't even a serial port. It was a hexagonal socket etched with glowing silver runes that hummed with a low vibration.

“Uh,” Yuki stared at it. “I don’t have a dongle for… whatever that is.”

Aya stepped forward. She pulled a heavy, braided cable from a drawer. One end was a standard USB; the other was a crystalline shard wrapped in copper wire.

“Here,” she said, handing it to him. “It is a Thaumaturgical Bridge. You cannot simply plug silicon into a spirit-circuit. You have to ground the signal.”

She leaned over him, her shoulder brushing his. She smelled of ozone and lavender.

“You have to initialize the connection manually,” Aya explained, guiding his hand to a series of dip-switches on the ancient tower. “First, set the baud rate to match the ambient ley line resonance. Currently, Tokyo is vibrating at a frequency of—”

“Wait,” Yuki interrupted. His hands hovered over the switches.

He looked at the switches. He looked at the glowing hexagonal port. Then he looked back at the shifting symbols on the screen.

“You’re doing it manually?” he asked, bewildered. “You’re adjusting the frequency by hand every time the ley lines shift?”

“It is the only way to maintain stability,” Aya started to explain. “The spirit-circuit requires—”

“No, no, no,” Yuki shook his head, a grin spreading across his face. “That’s inefficient. The ley line resonance isn't random in my observation. It’s a waveform. A sine wave.”

He plugged the crystal shard into the hex-port and the USB into his laptop. He didn't touch the switches. Instead, he opened his terminal.

“I don't need to match the frequency manually,” Yuki said, his fingers flying across his keyboard. “I just need to know the numerical base of the spell. Is it base-ten? Base-twelve?”

Emi and Jean-Luc exchanged a look of confusion.

“The Order uses the Heptamerone system,” Emi said slowly. “It is… Base Seven. Based on the planetary spheres.”

“Base Seven,” Yuki nodded. “Perfect.”

He typed a command.

> sudo init_listener --base 7 --sync auto

“What are you doing?” Jean-Luc asked, leaning in.

“I’m writing a wrapper,” Yuki mumbled, his eyes darting across the code he was building in real-time. “I’m telling my computer to treat the magic signal like a heartbeat. Every time the ‘heart’ beats—every time the symbol shifts—my script will detect the element and instantly inject the opposite variable.”

He looked up at Emi. “Okay, I need the sequence. The order of the elements. Just tell me the cycle once.”

Emi looked skeptical, but she obliged. “It follows the Hermetic Law of Density. Ignis (Fire), Aer (Air), Aqua (Water), Terra (Earth). Then it inverts. Spiritus (Spirit), Luna (Moon), Sol (Sun).”

“Fire, Air, Water, Earth, Spirit, Moon, Sun,” Yuki repeated, typing them as variables into an array. “Base Seven loop. Got it.”

He finished the script. It wasn't a long, complex program. It was elegant. Simple.

“If this works,” Yuki said, “we don’t need to chant. We just need to hit Enter.”

The Lefebvre family stood in silence. They were masters of an ancient art, warriors who had fought in shadow wars for decades. And they were watching a teenager in a hoodie dismantle their enemy’s greatest defense with twenty lines of Python script.

“Impossible,” Emi whispered. “The harmonic destabilization alone should—”

Yuki hit Enter.

The screen didn't explode. The drive didn't wipe.

Instead, a text box appeared on Yuki’s laptop screen: SYNC ESTABLISHED.

On the main monitor, the angry red hieroglyphics stopped writhing. They froze in place.

“It’s synced,” Yuki said, leaning back in the chair. “My script is reading the current symbol—Ignis—and feeding it ‘Water’ logic before the system even realizes it’s being queried. It’s tricking the drive into thinking it’s unlocking itself.”

He pointed to the screen. “Watch.”

The red symbols began to turn green, one by one, in a cascading wave.

Ignis… Verified.
Aer… Verified.
Aqua… Verified.

The speed increased. The symbols blurred into a green stream of data. The computer let out a happy, mechanical chirp.

> ACCESS GRANTED
> DECRYPTION COMPLETE

The wall of chaos dissolved. It resolved into perfectly legible, neatly organized files and folders.

Silence fell over the Archive. The only sound was the whirring of the cooling fans and the frantic beating of Yuki’s own heart.

He spun the chair around. “Done.”

Emi Lefebvre stared at the screen, her mouth slightly open. The glass of wine in her hand was tilted dangerously close to spilling.

“He… he bypassed the ritual component entirely,” she breathed. “He turned a Grandmaster-level binding spell into a… a math problem.”

Jean-Luc let out a long, booming laugh. He clapped a massive hand on Yuki’s shoulder, nearly driving him into the floor.

“You did it, son! You got us through the door without even knocking!”

He looked from the screen to Yuki, his expression grim but filled with a profound new respect.

“I have seen arch-mages struggle with locks half this complex,” Jean-Luc said. “You have a terrifying talent, Yuki Amano. I am both very grateful, and very sorry that you are now a part of this.”

They opened the first file: the Order’s public-facing doctrine. It was slick, corporate, and utterly benign. It was the perfect camouflage for a monster.

Yuki rubbed his eyes. He checked the time. It was nearly 4 AM.

He was running on fumes, his mind buzzing with a mixture of exhaustion and lingering adrenaline.

“It is far too late for you to travel home,” Jean-Luc said, his voice firm. “The trains have stopped, and it isn't safe. We have a guest room. You will stay the night.”

Yuki looked at Aya.

She was looking at the computer screen, then at him. There was a calculating look in her eyes, but also something else. Pride?

She nodded. “It is the most logical course of action. Operational security.”

Yuki was too tired to argue. He simply nodded.

“Okay. Thank you.”

As Aya led him down a quiet hallway to a small, comfortable room that smelled of lavender, Yuki realized his life was now irrevocably split.

There was the Yuki who went to school and played video games with Rina.

And there was the Yuki who cracked magical encryption codes in a secret underground library while a family of witches watched in awe.

He lay down on the bed, staring at the ceiling. The contract was no longer just a deal. It was a new operating system for his entire life.

And as he closed his eyes, drifting off to sleep in the heart of the witch's lair, he realized he didn't want to uninstall it.

She led him inside. It was dark and quiet. Parents are away, Yuki reminded himself, his heart rate picking up.