Sitting on the patio were Kânia and Silver, untouched by the lethal atmosphere of the training courtyard. Silver and Kânia watched the scene in absolute silence while Laura yelled in the background.
Silver's arms were crossed, and his expression had lost its humorous tone, becoming indecipherable as he stared at the aura now condensing around me.
"You feel it too, don't you?" Silver asked in a grave tone, without taking his eyes off the courtyard.
"Yes," Kânia answered, her voice tense as the air around her bristled.
"A power I swore I would never feel again. His mother's power is unmistakable. And it's far too strong inside that boy."
Down in the fight, Arthur advanced. He didn't wait for me to make my attack, but his steps seemed slow to my new perception, as if the air itself bent and thickened around his granite body.
The gray fist came tearing toward my skull with enough force to obliterate me.
Time itself seemed to freeze; my breathing stopped, and I relaxed my muscles.
My aura flowed entirely into my right arm. I rotated my hips and concentrated every drop of my strength and newly-discovered magic into a single punch for the clash.
The instant our strikes were a millimeter away from colliding and destroying everything around us—
The world simply fell silent.
An immense, warm hand grabbed my wrist; another identical hand held Arthur's rocky forearm.
Silver was standing exactly between the two of us.
He didn't move fast; he simply appeared at the point of impact.
The invisible shock of our energies colliding against the master's body made the stone floor cave in and crack into a crater around us, sweeping a dust storm to the sides.
But Silver didn't move a single muscle in his face.
He nullified our absolute attacks as if he were stopping a fight between two children.
"That's enough," Silver ordered, his voice low, but carrying an authority that made my soul tremble. "That is sufficient."
Arthur gritted his teeth, his dark eyes flashing with frustration for a second.
But he didn't dare question it. He dropped his stance, lowered his arm, and took a step back, releasing his held breath.
My aura dissipated in the same instant, and the weight of exhaustion plummeted onto my shoulders.
My legs gave out, and I fell to my knees in the dust of the crater, panting heavily while my knuckles throbbed with pain.
"You went too far," Arthur muttered to Silver, rubbing his own forearm where the master had grabbed him.
"I was going to test if he could really take breaking."
"He already proved he doesn't break easily," Silver replied, letting out a nasal laugh and ruffling his own silver hair.
"As fun as this has been... we have a mission, and I don't want to have to glue Suki's bones together before sending him to his death in the south."
I looked around.
The courtyard was full of holes, riddled with smaller craters from our previous strikes.
Kânia descended the patio steps with grace.
"This was just a small test, boys, no need to kill yourselves over it," she reprimanded gently, though her tone remained firm.
She knelt down and placed her open palm against the crater we were in.
Then the impossible happened.
The deep fractures in the stone began to glow with a warm, golden light before sealing instantly.
The churned earth smoothed out. Everything rebuilt itself before my eyes as if reality itself had been inverted.
I stared at the scene in shock.
"It's like... you people can do anything."
"Come on! We need to heal you and organize the mission!" Silver called out, laughing, visibly in a good mood now that the chaos was over.
I looked at myself.
My clothes were in tatters; dust and blood covered my body.
Deep cuts spread across my skin.
But something inside me had changed during that trance. My energy pulsed differently. It was as if my cells were slowly adapting to the crushing pressure of the divine world.
Back inside Silver's house, now with the backyard restored, I went straight to the bathroom.
I turned the heavy metal knob and stepped under the showerhead.
The water fell thick, almost boiling. The exact instant the spray touched my skin, I let out a guttural groan through gritted teeth.
At first, it burned like living fire upon contact with the open cuts left by Arthur. But the pain lasted only a millisecond.
Immediately after, the heat of that enchanted water penetrated my torn muscles. A dense, warm, tingling sensation spread through every inch of my body.
I leaned my forehead against the cold wall tile, planted both palms flat, and closed my eyes, letting the stream beat directly against the back of my neck.
I watched the water on the shower floor.
First, it ran thick and dark red. Then, it faded to a light pink, until finally washing clean down the drain, taking away all the stone dust, the cold sweat, and the crust of blood from that crater.
The magic of the place was tactile. I could feel my own flesh working.
The edges of the deep cut on my face itched intensely as the tissues wove themselves together, pulling and sealing the skin until not even a pale line remained.
The swollen purple bruises scattered across my arms lightened in real-time, melting under the water's temperature.
I drew air through my nose, filling my lungs to their absolute limit.
My ribs—which ten minutes ago felt like they were made of cracked glass—gave a dull, deep, painless pop inside my chest.
The relief was so absolute that my knees weakened for a second.
The crushing pressure that kept me from breathing properly simply evaporated.
The exhaustion that weighed on my shoulders like an anchor of melted lead dripped down my skin along with the water, mixing into the hot steam that fogged up the entire bathroom.
I stayed there for almost an hour. Motionless under the water jet, listening only to the echo of drops hitting the floor, totally surrendered to that silent privilege of having my own body rebuilt from scratch.
And then I muttered, "I need to get stronger."
When I stepped out, I found a set of new clothes perfectly folded on the bed. I got dressed, and afterward, I sat alone in the living room for a while, but my thoughts inevitably returned to the fight.
That guy's strength was absurd. And his technique was flawless. Every movement he made was perfectly calculated. He fought as if his body and the air around him were a single entity.
My left hand trembled slightly.
I can't let this happen again. On the mission the Queen gave me, if I meet someone like Arthur... I'll be a punching bag until I die.
I clenched my fist tightly.
Then I stood up and walked straight to the training room.
It was night.
The enormous chamber was silent, illuminated by a soft, ethereal blue light. Everything there felt alive. Dormant holograms on the ceiling, hyper-dense training dummies scattered across the cold metal, and shelves full of perfectly aligned weapons.
This was the temple of strength inside the house of the strongest god.
I stopped in front of the first training dummy in the row. Its material was dark, smooth, and seemed to absorb the room's light like raw obsidian.
I took a deep breath and unleashed the first strike.
A right straight thrown with the full rotation of my hips, aiming exactly at the center of the chest. The force of the impact ricocheted, traveled back up my arm, and popped in my shoulder.
The dummy didn't even flinch.
I gritted my teeth and picked up the pace.
I followed up with a quick jab to head height, immediately followed by a brutal left hook.
I pivoted my weight on my supporting foot and launched a high roundhouse kick that whipped against the side of the structure's "neck" with the force of a baseball bat.
No reaction.
I advanced, closing the distance, blinded by frustration.
I unleashed a lethal storm of close-range combinations: two violent hooks to the dummy's ribs, a front knee driven straight into the sternum, and finished by launching my body into the air to bring down an elbow strike with absolutely all my body weight.
The sound of the impacts was dry, muffled, echoing throughout the courtyard.
Like beating bare hands against the hull of a lead submarine.
The hyper-dense dummy didn't retreat a single millimeter. It didn't sway. It didn't emit any sound of yielding metal.
The merciless friction against that impenetrable surface began to take its toll.
The thin, newly-healed skin on my knuckles tore open again with a wet sound. I kept hitting, ignoring the burning, until thick lines of hot blood began to run down the backs of my unprotected hands, dripping onto the metal floor and staining the machine's dark surface with my bright red.
But the structure remained there.
Completely intact and oblivious to my fury.
I let my arms drop to my sides.
I stared at the machine, violently pulling air into my burning lungs.
"Even a fucking dummy... is stronger than me?"
"It isn't stronger than you," a calm voice answered from a dark corner of the room.
I jumped back immediately, my instincts on maximum alert.
"I didn't know you were there."
"I was here before you arrived," Kânia replied, stepping out of the shadows with a gentle smile and crossing her arms.
"I like the green and blue tones of this room; they help me think."
I pointed to the dummy stained with my own blood.
"If it isn't stronger than me... then why doesn't it even move?"
Kânia approached slowly. Her steps didn't make a single sound against the metal floor. She stopped in front of the machine and slid her fingers delicately over the cold, dark surface.
"Because your attacks are superficial," she corrected, her voice soft but carrying an instructive weight.
"A physical strike without a soul is just a pretty movement through the air. Pure brute force only affects what is more fragile than your own bones. Arthur and Silver don't break rocks just with muscles."
She turned her serene face toward me.
"You are throwing your power against the shell," Kânia explained. "When you punch, your energy and your body weight travel with your arm. But at the exact moment of impact, that force gets scared. It hits the hyper-dense barrier and spreads to the sides, like water exploding against a stone wall. That's why your skin tore and your bones hurt, but the dummy absorbed almost nothing."
I frowned, absorbing every word, forgetting the pain in my hands for a moment.
"Flow, compression, and intention," she said, turning back to the dummy.
Kânia pulled back her right hand and pressed just the tip of her index finger against the center of the structure's chest.
"True power isn't born in the arm, it's born in your base," she continued, her voice sounding almost like a hypnotic whisper in the empty room.
"You suck the energy from the ground through your feet, let it twist through your hips like a whip, travel up your spine, and condense into a microscopic needle at the point of impact."
An absurdly dense golden light, no bigger than a raindrop, began to glow exactly at the tip of her index finger.
The air in the tiny space between her skin and the machine's dark material began to vibrate. A sharp, dangerous hiss hurt my ears.
"You don't punch the surface of matter, Suki. If you want to destroy something superior to you, your energy can't stop at the blockade. You focus your aura so that it only detonates inside the target. The soul of the strike doesn't push the opponent. It pierces them."
She pressed the single illuminated finger lightly against the dummy's chest.
An absolute explosion detonated.
The high-pitched sound tore through the room, forcing me to cover my ears.
The black, hyper-dense material of the dummy didn't just break; it disintegrated instantly from the center outward, transforming into a cloud of dust and wind that whipped across my face.
Absolutely nothing was left, just the twisted support pillar.
Moments later, magical mechanisms inside the room hummed, condensed the particles back together, and restored the piece completely.
"Focus your strength," Kânia explained in an instructive tone, taking a step back. "Not just in your flesh, but in your aura. Let it flow to the point of impact. Maybe you won't destroy the dummy immediately, but with enou—"
Before she could finish the explanation, I moved.
BOOM.
My aura flowed, and my fist pierced straight through the dummy's chest in a single explosive strike, opening a perfect hole through it.
Fragments of the hyper-dense material ricocheted off the room's walls.
Kânia stopped talking entirely. Her serene brown eyes widened with genuine surprise.
"You learn frighteningly fast..." she murmured softly.
"Thanks for the advice," I replied, pulling my free arm from the ruined dummy. "I was distracted by anger. My thoughts... were controlling me."
That was one of the first things Silver taught me, to channel my energy.
Seeing the boy in front of her looking somewhat downcast and sad, Kânia had an idea to distract him.
Kânia raised a hand.
A simple steel sword materialized in the air and flew straight toward me.
I caught it by pure reflex, the hilt fitting perfectly into my palm.
I looked at the blade and then at her.
"A sword?"
"The dummy is no longer enough for your learning pace," Kânia declared.
Her sweet look vanished, replaced by a predatory determination that sent chills down my spine.
"From now on... I will be your opponent."
I raised the blade toward her, hesitating.
"You don't have a weapon?"
Kânia just smiled. That graceful smile somehow made me much more nervous than Arthur's scowl.
"It's fine. Don't say I didn't warn you."
She vanished forward in an imperceptible blur.
Her right hand moved open-palmed through the air, tracing an absolutely perfect cutting motion.
I raised the sword diagonally to block—
—and the thick forged steel blade shattered into dozens of splinters the exact instant it collided with the bare skin of her wrist.
I tried to retreat, but it was already too late.
Her strike passed millimeters from my face, opening a deep cut that stretched from my neck to my cheek, torn open merely by the wind pressure of the movement.
Hot blood immediately trickled down my skin.
"We aren't done yet," Kânia said calmly, her voice unchanged.
She reached out her free hand, pulled another sword from the shelves, and tossed it toward me.
I caught the weapon in the air. The leather hilt smacked against my palm, and this time, I didn't back down. I didn't let despair blind me.
Flow. Compression. Intention.
Her words still hung in the room. I closed my eyes for a fraction of a second and sank my boots into the metal floor.
I pulled the energy from the ground, let my aura spiral up my spine, and violently injected it into the blade of that common sword, exactly like in the competition.
Concentrate, Suki! I thought.
The steel resonated in my hands, humming with a dark density.
When I opened my eyes, Kânia was already advancing.
Her right hand descended in a heavy, vertical arc, aiming to cleave my shoulder open.
My instincts screamed instantly; I knew that angle. It was the exact axe motion Kimiko had used to try and split me in half in the arena.
I raised the blade diagonally, gripping the hilt with absurd firmness, and concentrated absolutely all the density of my aura at the point of impact.
CLANG!
The sword let out an ear-piercing metallic shriek. A wave of sparks exploded between her bare skin and my steel.
The force of the impact pushed my feet across the floor, leaving marks on the metal due to the sheer power.
But the blade didn't crack. I didn't break.
Kânia didn't stop her assault.
Using the inertia of the collision, she spun her body with fluid grace. The fingers of her left hand joined together like the tip of a spear, thrusting straight toward my throat.
Kaichin's piercing thrust!
My blood boiled. Adrenaline clogged my ears, and suddenly, I was back on the shattered earth of the arena, fighting fiercely for my life. But this time, I was lucid.
I smacked the flat of my blade against her wrist, deflecting the lethal blow millimeters from my neck. In the same motion, I twisted my hips and unleashed an aggressive horizontal slash, aiming for her waist.
Kânia leapt, light as a feather, passing right over my sword.
Her bare feet touched the tip of my steel for a millisecond, using my own weapon as a springboard to land behind me.
"Very good," her voice whispered at my back. "You survived the tournament. But..."
I pivoted on my heels, already raising the sword for the final block. Her right hand was coming like lightning straight for my chest.
I poured everything I had into the defense.
All my energy, all my focus, all my tenacity condensed in the center of the steel.
Our forces collided.
The blade withstood the colossal impact.
My chest swelled with triumph.
"...it isn't enough," Kânia finished the whisper, her face mere inches from mine, sporting a sweet, dangerous smile.
That was when I realized the fatal mistake. By focusing one hundred percent of my aura, tension, and attention on my upper body to hold back that monstrous impact on the sword, my lower base was left completely forgotten and soft.
A simple movement. Fast and cruelly precise.
With my sword locked up high, Kânia swept her leg and kicked my supporting heel from inside my stance.
The world spun instantly. I was swept off my feet and thrown flat on my back against the metal floor with a violence that made the room shake.
The impact forced all the air from my lungs with a dry snap.
The sword rolled uselessly away from my hand.
Before I could even gasp for oxygen, Kânia's delicate hand was already wrapped around my throat.
She crushed my trachea with the force of a mechanical vise, pinning me to the ground.
"If you don't know how to distribute your strength, boy, and throw all your focus into a single blocking point, the rest of your body becomes your blind spot," she explained calmly, squeezing my throat just enough to make me see stars.
Her brown gaze was cold, yet strangely comforting and didactic.
"And then... you die on the battlefield."
She loosened her grip and let me go, turning her back and walking toward the shadows of the room.
I remained lying there, panting heavily on the metal floor and covered in superficial cuts while staring at the ceiling in silence.
I ignored the physical pain.
She's a monster just like Silver and everyone else in this house, I thought.
With an enormous effort, I got up.
After quickly bandaging my new wounds using the first aid supplies in a corner of the room, I resumed training.
This time, without dummies or goddesses.
I replaced the methods with the central hologram machine. It projected hyper-realistic holographic simulations of past battles recorded by the members of the house.
The first hologram appeared in the center of the hall.
Kânia and me.
Every flawless movement she had just made, every pathetic attack I attempted.
The moment my sword survived her attack, frozen in the air in glowing blue for my analysis.
I scrolled the logs on the light panels further back into the past.
Arthur fighting Silver.
Laura fighting Silver, losing in seconds.
Laura against Arthur, a bloody battle.
Laura against Kânia.
I didn't settle for just watching.
I paused, rewound, and mirrored each bluish projection in the center of the room until my muscles burned committing the effort to memory.
I copied Laura's footwork, forcing the soles of my feet to glide soundlessly across the metal floor, correcting the angle of my heel millimeter by millimeter with every evasive spin.
I imitated Arthur's unshakeable base, testing energy weight distribution by transferring my aura from my shoulders straight to the center of my hips, almost losing my balance and falling flat on my face on the first few tries until I finally stabilized the posture, though I still preferred my own.
I sliced the void with the sword hundreds of times.
I practiced feint strategies by throwing my shoulders forward to bait an invisible enemy's block, only to violently break my own combat rhythm and explode into a counterattack from another angle.
Sweat dripped from my chin and stung my eyes as I dissected and stitched into my own flesh, through sheer force and exhaustion, forcing myself to adapt to the standard of that house.
Then... I pulled up an old log.
The machine whirred and displayed a battle I didn't recognize.
A girl appeared. Short hair, red as living fire, and yellow eyes completely devoid of any emotion.
She wielded an enormous combat scythe, with a curved blade almost as big as her.
And, judging by her height and features... she was roughly my age.
The hologram showed her fighting an adult woman I had never seen before.
The opponent had dark brown hair tied back in tight, complex war braids so it wouldn't obstruct her vision.
She didn't wear heavy armor, just an agile indigo leather suit reinforced with blackened steel plates on her shoulders and forearms.
Her musculature was lean and sculpted.
In her hands, she sported only her closed fists, moving with the precision of a dancer.
Their duel was frighteningly beautiful.
Not a single millimeter of movement was wasted. Every step was calculated for the kill. Every swing of that gigantic scythe was the perfect arc for a decapitation.
That red-haired girl seemed as lethal, untouchable, and cold as Laura and Arthur combined. Maybe even worse.
I stared at the projection spinning in the air, fascinated by her fluid violence.
"Who is... she?" I whispered to the empty hall.
I adjusted the machine's commands to display only the redhead's combat profile.
The solid blue hologram of the girl formed in the center of the room, waiting.
There she stood. Breathing calmly. Cold and motionless expression. Waiting silently for my digital command to start the combat simulation.
I walked over to the shelf. I picked up a simple but balanced steel sword.
I took a deep breath. Wiped the sweat and blood dripping into my eyes.
Then, I positioned my feet on the floor markings, using the same stance I had learned hours ago.
My voice came out firm. Completely determined.
"Alright..."
I gripped the sword's hilt with both hands.
"START!"