"So that's what happened," Soren finished.
He slumped back in his chair in Lilliana's office, the words leaving him with a tired sigh.
The small staff room smelled faintly of herbs and old paper, sunlight spilling in through the narrow window and casting soft light over the stacks of documents piled on her desk.
Lilliana stared at him for a long moment, then pressed her fingers to her forehead.
"How do you always get yourself into these situations, Ren…?" she asked, sounding both exasperated and resigned.
Soren lifted his hands helplessly.
"Don't ask me. It's not like I try to."
He genuinely didn't.
He had never once woken up and thought, "I'm going to piss off a martial idiot today and get dragged into a duel."
It just happened.
Lilliana's shoulders slumped.
"Sigh… I know," she muttered. "You're the type disasters chase, even if you're standing still."
"Rude."
"It's true," she said flatly. "So? What did you want help with?"
Her tone shifted from complaining to businesslike in an instant.
No matter how much she grumbled, the moment he asked for help with magic, she always focused.
Soren straightened slightly, meeting her gaze.
"Please teach me how to use [Hemokinesis]," he said.
He had been learning blood magic from Lilliana for just over a month now.
Because of how critical [Blood Absorption] was, all their effort had gone into that spell.
It was only the first step in blood magic, but it was a brutal one.
Until now, he had barely touched [Hemokinesis] itself.
"I guess it's about that time," Lilliana said quietly.
Her eyes softened, a complicated look flickering across her face.
The reason she agreed so easily wasn't just because he asked.
It was because he had finally crossed one of her internal thresholds.
Soren could now absorb the blood of others, human and monster alike, so long as there was proper contact.
When he pushed himself at the edge of his limits, he could feel the spell wanting to go further, his proficiency brushing up against that next invisible line.
Lilliana had explained before: once [Blood Absorption] stepped firmly into C-rank proficiency, it would begin to unlock blood at a distance.
That was what she called "battle-ready".
The point where blood magic wasn't just a painful, self-harm training routine, but a tool he could use on the battlefield.
He wasn't there yet, but for someone who had obtained blood magic barely a month ago, his progress was unnaturally fast.
It made Lilliana proud.
And it terrified her.
"What are you wanting to use blood magic for, Ren?" she asked.
Soren blinked.
"What do you mean?" he asked.
She rested her elbows on the desk and laced her fingers together.
"Do you want to use it for attacking, defending, or supporting?" she asked. "You can't just say 'all of it' and expect that to work right now."
"I'm not sure? Can't I just do all three?" Soren tried.
Lilliana's ears twitched in quiet disapproval.
"You can, eventually, but for now, you need to prioritise a single direction, or you'll grow at a snail's pace."
Her tone held no room for argument.
It wasn't her being stubborn; this was experience talking.
Soren slumped into silence.
'What do I need the most…?' he thought.
He tried to phrase it more honestly in his head.
'No, that's not right. What do I lack the most?'
When he went over his battles one by one, the answer surfaced quickly.
He could support himself.
[Heal] and [Minor Blessings] kept him standing when he should have dropped.
[Blood Absorption] had even given him a way to extend that even further.
He could defend himself.
[Shield], [Divine Barrier], the way he used his handaxe as a moving wall, none of it was perfect, but he had options.
He could stall.
He could survive.
But when it came to finishing a fight…
He had nothing reliable.
[Ignition] was barely more than an upgraded spark.
It wasn't a finisher, just something to harass weaker enemies or ignite surroundings.
[Shock] was useful, but it wasn't designed to kill.
It disrupted, paralysed, created openings, but it wasn't lethal.
Every time he replayed his encounters, the same thing stuck out: his lack of decisive firepower.
"I want to use it for attacking," he said finally.
Lilliana nodded without surprise.
"I thought you'd say that, then let's start right away."
She reached across the desk and pulled a notepad and pen towards her, scribbling bullet points with quick, neat motions.
"The first step is learning how to control the blood," she explained. "Not just in your veins, but once it's outside your body. You need to be able to treat it as an extension of yourself, not a foreign object."
Her pen tapped on the page, underlining something.
"The second step is solidifying it. Making it hold a shape on command, blades, needles, shields, it doesn't matter yet. You just need to learn how to freeze that form without letting it collapse."
"The last is transforming it. Compressing, shaping, rotating, and changing its properties with mana. That's the step where you start getting true spells instead of crude tricks."
She looked up at him.
"Does everything make sense so far?"
"It does, but… won't this take too long?"
"Hmmm…" Lilliana leaned back, ears drooping faintly as she thought. "I reckon you could finish the first step by the duel. I'm unsure about the rest. It depends on how much effort you're willing to put in, now that you don't have to worry as much about blood loss during training."
She watched his face carefully as she said it.
Soren felt a flicker of disappointment at the idea that blood magic wouldn't be fully ready by the time he stepped into the arena, but it didn't put out the flame of his interest.
His enthusiasm for magic, for learning new systems and pushing them as far as they would go, wasn't fake.
It had never been.
"That's fine. Even if I can't use it in the duel, it's still worth learning now, isn't it, Lilly?"
Lilliana's eyes softened again.
"It is," she said quietly. "But you still have to be careful. Even if you can now absorb blood easily, that doesn't mean you're invincible. I don't want to suddenly be told that you ended up in the infirmary because you couldn't look after yourself properly…"
"That won't happen," Soren said.
It was an automatic answer, the kind people said without thinking, but he meant it in his own way.
He wasn't planning to be reckless.
Just… efficient.
Lilliana didn't look convinced, but she let it go with a sigh.
"Alright, let's get started then. Use the spell, and I'll give you some pointers."
"Got it." Soren straightened, rolling his shoulders. "「Hemokinesis」."
Heat stirred beneath his skin, a subtle pulling sensation echoing through his veins as the blood responded to his will.
A sphere of deep crimson slowly lifted from a shallow dish on the table, separating itself from the pooled liquid below.
It wobbled in the air like a half-formed drop of water, edges trembling, shape threatening to collapse at any moment.
Lilliana stepped closer, watching with a serious expression.
"Good. Now hold it steady. Don't force it. Guide it."
Soren gritted his teeth, sweat beading faintly at his temple as he tried to keep the blood in a roughly spherical shape.
It twitched.
Flattened.
Threatened to splatter.
"Don't clench," Lilliana said calmly. "You're tightening your mana too much. Blood is stubborn when you try to crush it. Think of it as… coaxing a nervous animal, not squeezing a stress ball."
"That's a weird metaphor," Soren muttered, but he adjusted the pressure of his mana all the same.
The trembling lessened.
"…Better, now… move it."
The floating blood crawled forward through the air, uneven and shaky, like a drunk trying to walk in a straight line.
It reached the edge of the dish and dipped suddenly.
"Careful," Lilliana said sharply.
"Working on it," Soren grunted.
He pulled, nudged, and corrected.
The blood lurched back into position.
Hours passed like that, tiny adjustments, failures, corrections, repeated guidance.
Lilliana's gentle voice, Soren's mounting frustration, and his stubborn refusal to let it fall.
By the time they stopped, his head pounded, and there was a faint metallic taste in his mouth from overusing the spell.
But when he finally left her office, he could at least make blood float on command.
Crude, unstable, limited to small quantities, but it was a start.
And the duel day crept closer.
————「❤︎」————