Upon using the skip on an alt to go straight to Zereth Mortis, you start off with Pocopoc already active. At this point, the Cypher console is unusable because the initial point in Metrial Understanding is not there (and you technically have its benefit already), but everything else depends on having put a point into it.
So one part of me thinks this might be an add on thing for you, because I just did the alt skip and I 100% have the unlock there, but my frame looks WAY different to yours (it has a background etc), while yours appears transparent.
Once I logged back into my main (for whom the first trait under Metrial is now researched), going back to my alt now lets me put points in and shows under Aealic that it’s being researched on another character (my main).
I wonder if it’s something with how the account-wide aspect is being surfaced to the UI? Or maybe there was a fix done.