The adrenaline from Dhyriel finally got the message and evaporated.
And when it vanished, physical and mental exhaustion crashed down on my shoulders like a collapsing mountain.
I don't remember walking to the room. I only remember sinking into a soft mattress and closing my eyes.
When I opened them again, the suns of Lavinsk were already high in the sky, flooding the room with a warm, golden light.
For a split second, my body tensed on pure reflex, but my right hand didn't reach for the shaft of a spear.
The air filling my lungs didn't smell like the carnage of the Taranpus.
Instead, the hallway carried the sweet aroma of roasting herbs and fresh spices.
The feeling of not being hunted was surreal.
The house's rhythm settled into a deep tranquility.
Kânia didn't give us any room to skip meals. She placed steaming plates in front of us on the large wooden table, loaded with soft cuts of meat that literally shimmered with raw energy.
The taste was strong, rich in celestial proteins that spread immediate warmth through my stomach, forcing my torn muscle fibers to knit back together and heal at an accelerated rate.
Outside, Laura had claimed one of the large silk hammocks in the garden and refused to leave.
Her body, wrapped in luminous blankets that seemed woven from moonlight itself, sank into a sleep so heavy that her deep breathing became the only sound in that corner of the estate.
She needed every second of that lethargy to mend the fractures that had nearly killed her.
Arthur chose the edge of the balcony.
He sat cross-legged, closed his eyes, and turned into a literal statue.
He spent hours on end there, motionless and in deep silence, absorbing the thin atmosphere while the wind gently swayed his clothes, isolated in his own thoughts.
And I found the damp grass of the courtyard.
I spent most of my time lying on my back, the warm morning heat relaxing my aching muscles while the untouchable, endless blue sky swallowed me whole.
The dark steel spear Lucas had given me rested on the grass, right within arm's reach.
Every now and then, I ran my fingertips along the worn, scratched wooden shaft, feeling the rough texture of the weapon's history.
Every time I closed my eyes, the movie of the last few weeks played on a loop in my head.
*I survived all of this,* I thought, raising my hands against the sunlight.
My palms were covered in fresh calluses.
My skin bore recent scars and burn marks from the bell.
I was still a boy. My face was still the same.
But the exhaustion embedded in my bones and the way the world now moved around me dictated an undeniable truth: I carried the mantle of a true warrior.
Four dawns passed in that anesthetic, healing lethargy.
Four whole days without needing to turn the air into blades.
But on the fifth day, the truce evaporated like water thrown onto a fire.
The soft silence of the house was shattered by the dry, heavy sound of boots marching against the marble floor of the central hall.
Silver stepped into the courtyard.
He wasn't wearing his casual morning clothes. He wore baggy pants and a worn, blue combat shirt.
"You've rested enough," he declared.
His voice didn't rise in volume, but it cut through the peace of the garden like a cold blade.
"Time to get back to what matters. The body loses its edge quickly, and I don't want that happening"
Arthur opened his eyes slowly, a barely perceptible smile forming.
Laura scoffed, leaping from the hammock in a single motion and rolling her wrists, her joints popping menacingly.
I stood up and took a deep breath.
My body still held the phantom echoes of my broken ribs from the battle, but adrenaline was already boiling up through my veins.
"Yes, Master."
Silver smirked—that sharp smile that anticipated pain.
"That's what I wanted to hear."
We didn't head to the simulator on the lower floor. Silver didn't walk toward the stairs.
He crossed the green courtyard, and stopped on the grass, the wind gently playing with his silver hair for a second.
And then, the gravity around him broke.
A sonic boom shattered the morning peace. A massive gust of wind swept the balcony, forcing me to plant my feet and cross my arms over my face so I wouldn't be thrown against the wall.
When I opened my eyes, Silver was gone. A trail of silver light and distorted air tore through the atmosphere at a perfectly vertical angle, piercing the thick layer of clouds above like a missile breaking the sound barrier.
Laura didn't blink or hesitate. She bared her teeth in a feral grin. She bent her knees and detonated her own strength against the grass, rocketing upward right after, laughing loudly as the friction whipped her black hair around.
Arthur was right behind her, silent and brutal, ejecting his massive granite body into the heavens like a heavy mortar shell.
They didn't look up to calculate the route. They already knew the way.
I stayed behind for a millisecond, staring at the inverted blue abyss above me.
I didn't invoke the Transformation.
I kept the white marks dormant beneath my skin. Instead, I channeled the moisture and air pressure directly into the soles of my boots. I compressed the invisible current until the wind hummed sharply, and then, I released the vacuum all at once.
The air cracked like a whip, and the impact ejected me from the balcony.
Gravity tried to anchor my bones, but I kept tearing through the freezing wind, controlling my spiral ascent until my body violently breached the white barrier of clouds.
When I emerged on the other side, the breath fled my lungs—not because of the high altitude, but because of the insane scale of that place.
The upper training grounds of Silver's estate had no walls or railings. It was a colossal archipelago floating in the void.
Titanic white marble pillars and circular polished stone platforms danced and orbited slowly in the thin air, suspended by ancient magic. The endless, untouchable sky was our only ceiling. The violent wind—which could easily rip a normal human from the stone and hurl them into a freefall of thousands of meters—was the only "floor" connecting one platform to another.
Looking at it, the green holographic area we used down below suddenly felt like a plastic playground, a joke compared to the raw danger of that open abyss.
I landed with a heavy thud on the edge of the main disk, bending my knees to absorb the impact.
I looked up.
The thick ceiling of clouds right above us no longer existed. The sheer force of Silver's landing had obliterated the atmosphere at that elevation, opening a perfect, circular crater in the sky.
The golden sunlight poured down unfiltered, illuminating the exact center of the floating arena.
Silver was there, bathed in that light. His hands relaxed in the pockets of his sweatpants, his breathing steady, his shoulders perfectly still.
His green gaze swept over the three of us. And then, the sound of him snapping his fingers echoed cleanly through the gale.
Silver walked to the center of the main marble disk. The violent, high-altitude wind curved around his body, refusing to touch him.
"Today, the dynamic will be simultaneous," his voice cut through the howling wind, clean and sharp. He tilted his chin toward the pair on the left.
"Laura will try to survive Arthur."
Then, the heavy weight of those green eyes slid slowly until they locked onto me.
"Suki... you're with me."
Arthur stopped his warm-up movements. The sound of scraping stone echoed faintly as he turned his thick neck to face the master. Surprise was a rare emotion on the giant's face, but the raised thick eyebrow and sudden tension in his shoulders gave him away.
"Direct combat sessions with you have always been my jurisdiction, Master."
Silver didn't change his relaxed posture. He merely held the granite giant's gaze.
"They were," he corrected, his tone sharp and evaluating. "But the battlefield down below changed your structure. Everyone came back with sharper fangs after that hell. However..."
The platinum god shifted his attention back to me. His predatory smile widened, as if he were facing a fascinating new prey.
"...the most drastic leap in evolution... came from our human aberration. And I want to test the limits of that up close."
Beside Arthur, the air suddenly grew thick and hot.
*SNIKT!*
A sharp, metallic hiss rang out. Five razor-sharp silver claws slid from between Laura's knuckles, reflecting the sunlight murderously. She bent her legs, lowering her center of gravity like a panther ready to pounce, and broke into a wide grin dripping with pure malice.
"Hey, Arthuzin," her voice purred, vibrating with an unchecked thirst for blood. "I'm no longer on the level of just 'trying to survive.' You'd better raise those defenses of yours, because today, I'm aiming straight for your throat."
Arthur didn't look at her right away.
He let out a long, deep sigh—a sound resembling the grinding of heavy tectonic plates. Slowly, he spread his feet. The instant the soles of his boots anchored onto the floating marble, the entire platform groaned under the invisible weight of that unshakable stance.
"Excellent," the giant murmured, his gray eyes finally locking onto the girl with cold, military intensity. "I would be deeply offended if you did anything else."
I swallowed the freezing altitude air.
If Silver said he wanted to test me directly, it meant the training wheels were off.
Playtime was over, and the risk of death had just spiked exponentially.
The god's aura fell over the arena like an anvil. The wind around us died. Even the circular platforms orbiting the courtyard locked in midair, subjugated by that divine gravity.
"You're no longer the boy I brought here, Suki," Silver said, his deep voice piercing the heavy silence. "But don't fool yourself. You're still far from being a god."
I took a deep breath. My heart hammered against my ribs, but my mind was pure ice.
*Wind Transformation.*
I cranked the valve of the energy well inside my chest with everything I had.
White, translucent marks tore across my skin, radiating like rivers of stars beneath the fabric of my tunic. The air vibrated with deafening violence. The surrounding clouds were swept away in a hundred-meter radius, and an invisible shockwave made the entire massive platform shudder, forcing marble fragments to levitate around my boots.
I made the wind return once more.
Laura's red eyes went wide, her feet sliding half a step back from the sudden shift in atmospheric pressure. Arthur uncrossed his arms, his gray eyes focused on the weight I had just generated.
But my attention was locked entirely on Silver.
I expected that sadistic, restrained smile of his. I expected a taunt.
But that wasn't what happened.
The god's green eyes widened for a mere fraction of a millisecond. His relaxed posture vanished. The muscles in his neck tensed, and his platinum face hardened, taking on an expression so dark and serious that the air grew thin.
*Why did he get so serious all of a sudden?* I thought, cold sweat rolling down the side of my face. The reaction made no sense.
The ensuing silence was suffocating. I opened my mouth to say I was ready, but Silver's voice cut me off before a single sound could leave my throat.
"It's a transformation."
Silver no longer wanted to just test me; he was genuinely interested in fighting me.
The killing intent leaking from his body was so heavy that my knees trembled out of pure survival instinct. The metallic taste of fear flooded my mouth. I had just pulled a dangerous trigger inside a warrior deity.
"That's a massive leap in energy, boy," Silver said, his voice echoing across the marble. "But the question is..."
He vanished from my sight.
The air where he had been standing didn't even ripple.
The God erased his presence from space and time.
And before my brain could even register the break in reality, his freezing whisper brushed against the skin of the back of my neck.
"...how long will you manage to stay on your feet?"
I bent my knees, my body following the natural flow of an updraft. I channeled the brilliant white of my marks into my fingertips, twisted my hips in midair, and fired a massive blade of wind, cutting the air in a perfect arc straight toward him.
Silver didn't blink. He raised his right hand and, with his bare fingers, pinched the center of my blast. The destructive blade of energy dissipated into two limp halves of harmless breeze, dying against the clouds behind him.
"You'll have to do better than that if you don't want to die."
The smile vanished from Silver's face. The air temperature plummeted.
The space between us vanished.
The first punch came for my skull. I didn't try to block; I threw my body down. His fist grazed past me, but the atmospheric pressure generated by the movement sliced my cheek like an invisible razor blade.
I spun on my heels and attempted a quick counterattack at his abdomen, but the god's free hand slapped my wrist with a dry crack, deflecting my force and pulling me forward.
The next moment, his silver knee sank into my guard. I crossed both arms in front of my chest, condensing a thick, solid wall of wind.
*BOOOM!*
The air barrier shattered. The brutal impact pushed me back, dragging the soles of my boots across the marble and leaving two smoking grooves in the stone. The bones in my forearms trembled, threatening to fracture under the tension.
Silver wasn't evaluating anymore. He fought with cold, surgical brutality, wasting not a single millimeter of movement. Every punch, every knee strike, was designed to annihilate. He was a natural disaster compacted into the body of a man.
He advanced again, an unbroken storm. I dodged a hook that cracked the floor beside me, blocked a low kick that nearly dislocated my tibia, and was forced to retreat, step by step, toward the edge of the floating precipice. I was fighting just to avoid dismemberment.
I needed reach. I needed my weapon.
I gritted my teeth, swallowing the pain, and expanded my aura far beyond the arena. I channeled the connection of the *Wind Transformation* directly to my room, miles below us. I created a vacuum tunnel, a summons pulling on my own energy imbued in the dark steel.
Far from the carnage in the skies, in the quiet corridors of the Lavinsk mansion, Kânia walked gracefully, holding a small cup of steaming tea.
A crash of pulverized wood echoed from one of the rooms.
The bedroom door exploded outward. A missile of black wood and dark steel tore down the hallway at supersonic speed, ejected by atmospheric pressure.
Kânia didn't stop walking.
She didn't change her expression; she merely tilted her neck back millimeters, with lethargic elegance.
The colossal spear zipped past a hair's breadth from her face, obliterating the window glass at the end of the hall and shooting in a vertical climb toward the clouds.
The goddess took a sip of her tea, her brown eyes peacefully tracking the trail of wind and shattered glass rising into the stratosphere.
"Children," she murmured, a soft smile curving her lips.
In the sky, my guard was crumbling.
Silver broke my stance with a violent slap to my hands and cocked a straight punch, his silver aura concentrated in his knuckles, aiming for the center of my chest.
That strike would blow right through me.
But a sharp hum tore the air right behind me.
I reached my right hand back without even looking.
The rough, heavy shaft of the spear slapped violently into my palm.
I squeezed my fingers around the wood. The weapon's massive weight anchored my inertia. In the exact instant Silver's punch surged forward to crush me, I rotated the spear with both hands, using the supersonic momentum of the weapon's flight itself to deliver a brutal ascending slash against his fist.
The dark steel collided against the god's bare skin.
*KRAKOOOM!*
The training ground in the skies became the epicenter of a natural disaster. The shockwave of our collision swept across the floating archipelago, cracking the main platform in half.
Our silhouettes turned into blurs of white and silver light colliding in midair.
With every impact between the dark steel of my spear and Silver's bare knuckles, a crown of sparks and superheated air tore across my vision. The movement of his arms vanished completely; all that remained were trails of silver light and the sharp pain in my own shoulders as I forced the wooden shaft not to yield under the colossal weight of each block.
Physics around us fractured. The sound of our first clash only whipped against my eardrums when I was already defending his fourth or fifth punch—a succession of deafening, delayed booms, where the flash of friction blinded the eyes long before the thunder cracked and compressed the stomach.
Below and around us, the thick ocean of clouds wasn't just blown away; it was physically disintegrated. The vacuum generated by the force of our attacks swept the moisture with such violence that it opened gigantic craters in the atmosphere, revealing the clean blue of upper space.
The pressure of our strikes boiled the thin air, and the continuous sonic hum made Lavinsk's floating marble structures groan and release stardust into the vastness of the void.
Meanwhile, dozens of meters below on the secondary platform, Laura roared.
Her animalistic sound tore the air. Her retractable claws popped out from her knuckles with a sharp *snikt*.
Months ago, the metal in her hands was nothing more than cold, polished silver. But now, the living steel reflected the hell she had traversed.
The near-freezing nights during Sillys' tactical training, the primitive bloodbath of tearing Taranpus throats in the dark of the Black Forest, and the heavy impact of having her own bones pulverized against the tower by Elfhing hadn't broken her. They had forged something new.
The metal now pulsed, wrapped in a thick crimson aura. An energy so dense, red, and hot that the very oxygen around her hands sizzled and boiled, visually distorting the nearby marble pillars.
Laura broke into a wide grin, teeth bared, and let out a hoarse, guttural laugh as she felt the new echelon of her own power vibrating in her veins. She hadn't just survived the abyss; she had evolved within it.
And, with this new strength cracking in her fists, she leapt from pillar to pillar, ricocheting like a beast, carving luminous grooves into the marble with every pounce in her attempt to rip Arthur's head off.
But Arthur... was the void.
Whenever Laura's trajectory was about to tear open his chest, the granite figure didn't use any tricks or illusions.
Arthur defied the laws of physics with raw reaction speed and density.
He shifted his torso back at the last moment, letting the red arc of the claws slice only the wind, or raised his bare forearm as a shield. The silver blades clashed against his gray skin with the deafening clang of swords striking a solid steel anvil. Sparks flew, but he didn't yield a single centimeter.
Absorbing the kinetic force without even blinking, Arthur exploited the openings in the girl's blind advance to counterattack. He responded with short, sharp, and technically perfect strikes that crushed joints and forced the oxygen from her lungs.
"Stop running!" she screamed, her voice distorted by frustration as her boots skidded across the stone after missing yet another charge.
Arthur didn't smile. His hands remained relaxed as he gracefully slid aside, letting a spiraling strike pass inches from his neck.
On the outside, he was the perfect picture of an unshakable battle companion. But on the inside, the giant's mind was light-years away from that courtyard.
His cold, gray eyes didn't see the determination in Laura's aura. They saw only a target. The vision of the fighting girl was replaced by the recent, sticky memory of the warm blood of the elven guards dripping down his granite knuckles.
He remembered perfectly the sound of necks snapping in the shadows, clearing the way for the two hooded figures to emerge from the dark and seal the deal.
*My time in this ridiculous little theater is over,* Arthur thought, his perfectly sculpted face set in apathy as he evaluated the prey before him. *I'm wasting my days playing ally with this group. I should have broken her legs and handed her over to them by now.*
"I SAID DON'T RUN!"
Laura roared, raising her leg and bringing her heel—wrapped in crimson energy—down against the floor with insane brutality.
The floating platform cracked and split down the middle under the pressure. Golden shards of marble and stardust exploded, plummeting into the infinite void of Lavinsk.
The irrational excess of force broke her stance for a thousandth of a second.
It was the perfect opening for a kill.
Arthur didn't retreat this time. He dove through the suspended dust with the coldness of an executioner. Infiltrating her completely exposed guard, he drove a flat, open-palm strike directly into the center of Laura's stomach.
The impact made no sound, but the shockwave instantly ejected the oxygen from the girl's lungs and compressed her internal organs.
Laura's eyes widened to their limits. The crimson aura flickered and died. She collapsed to her knees, vomiting air and clutching her own stomach, her entire body trembling, completely paralyzed by the surgical touch.
Arthur remained motionless in front of her. The shadow of his gigantic body swallowed the kneeling, defenseless figure of the girl.
For a fraction of a second, his gray fingers tingled with the primal urge to simply grab her by the hair, drag her off that field, and finish the job.
But Silver's piercing gaze still weighed on the arena from the main disk.
The moment couldn't happen now. He needed to uphold the mask for a few more days.
"You waste a lot of energy," Arthur said, his tone deep, monotone, and frighteningly hollow. "Get up. If you keep swinging blindly like that... it won't be any trouble at all for the real enemy to drag you away from here."
Laura closed her eyes. The golden dust settled slowly around the kneeling girl. The silence lasted for long, heavy seconds.
Her desperate panting began to calm, settling into a deep, methodical, and dangerous rhythm.
When she finally opened her eyes, the bright, explosive scarlet had condensed. The red was dark, focused, looking like molten amber. And the smile curving her lips was no longer that of a crazed beast, but of a calculating predator.
"Then catch this," she whispered.
The chaotic aura retracted and clung to her skin like a second layer of boiling armor. The atmospheric pressure on the platform shifted.
Round two had begun.
High above, where the blue of the sky began to bleed into the pitch-black of space, oxygen simply grew scarce. Every breath I took felt like inhaling ice needles.
But I wasn't backing down anymore.
My body spun on its own axis, abandoning brute force and embracing the fluidity of reverse gravity. I wasn't trying to see Silver's fists anymore; I was reading the microscopic flaws his speed tore into the atmosphere.
When his silver heel came down like a guillotine aiming for my collarbone, I let the wind pull me half a step back.
The strike sliced the space millimeters from my nose. In the same flow, I used the vacuum left by his movement to propel my elbow straight into the god's ribs.
Silver blocked with his forearm.
The sound of the impact was a sonic boom that dissipated the clouds around us in a perfect ring.
The internal clock in my head beeped, relentless.
I had been fighting at high speed against the deity for over five uninterrupted minutes.
The *Wind Transformation* still burned beneath my skin. The white, translucent lines didn't flicker chaotically like in the hot springs of Dhyriel; they pulsed in a dense, steady rhythm. Secure.
Silver noticed.
When our arms crossed in a double block, I saw his neutral expression crack.
His green eyes plunged into a silver, ancient glow, exuding a danger that made every hair on my arm stand up.
He picked up the pace.
The master erased his presence and turned into a silver blur. The air beneath my boots imploded.
I felt the atmospheric pressure plummet beneath me, announcing an ascending strike that would split me in half.
I opened both hands, channeling all the air around me into my palms, and detonated three massive, thick wind slashes in an 'X' shape straight toward the invisible floor.
The wind collided against his physical force. The explosion lit up the skies. I used the shockwave of my own energy and fired a blast of super-condensed air under the soles of my boots, ejecting my body like a missile even higher, tearing through the final veil of the stratosphere.
We stopped at the apex of the jump.
We hovered face to face in the silent void, suspended at the exact limit where the world's gravity tried to pull us back and the freezing cold of the universe began to bite at the skin.
My chest rose and fell with brutal violence. The sweat running down my face evaporated before dripping, consumed by the white furnace of my aura. My lungs burned, and the blood thundered in my ears like war drums.
"Was... this what you expected of me, Master?" I asked, my voice cracking, torn by the thin air and sharp muscle pain.
Three meters away, floating in the starry vacuum, Silver didn't show a single drop of sweat. His breathing was as calm as if he were reading a book in his living room.
But the god's impassive coldness finally gave way.
He lowered his fist and uncrossed his arms. A true, sharp, and purely proud smile tore across his platinum face.
"No," he replied, his voice echoing clear in the cosmic silence. "This is much more than even you thought you could give."
The smile then vanished in a fraction of a second. Lavinsk's non-negotiable killing intent returned to crush the space around us.
Then I advanced again, and gravity swallowed us back.
We descended together like two meteors pulled toward the planet's core. The freezing wind began to burn against our faces, but the descent wasn't an inert fall; it was a vertical warzone.
We began exchanging insane blows at terminal velocity. I wasn't defending myself from the inertia; I was punching through it. With every punch of Silver's I blocked with my forearm, with every cross-kick our legs locked into, a sphere of kinetic shock was ejected from us.
*BOOM!*
Our fists collided again. The superheated air burst into an orange flash from the friction of freefall, dissipating the dense cloud layers below like thin smoke. Continuous sonic cracks boomed in the Lavinsk skies, sounding like an entire minefield being detonated in sequence, causing the floating marble columns on the surface to tremble.
We broke through the last barrier of heavy air, tearing the sky like a double comet, and collided directly against the center of the main disk.
*KRAKOOOM!*
The golden stone of the platform exploded. Ton-heavy marble slabs were hurled aside. A massive cloud of white dust, stardust, and pulverized rock devoured the entire field in a tectonic roar.
For long, heavy seconds, silence crashed down upon the floating courtyard.
Lavinsk's natural wind slowly swept the curtain of debris away from the crater's epicenter.
When the smoke cleared... I was there.
Standing.
My legs trembled violently, my thigh muscles twitching under the stress of absorbing that meteoric impact. My breathing was a faltering, bloody wheeze. The limits of my physical body were screaming, on the verge of a total collapse induced by extreme magic.
But my eyes remained open. Focused.
The lines of living, white energy running down my arms and neck had not shattered.
My mind remained an intact lake of ice. The power still obeyed me.
I hadn't been consumed by the monster of my own aura.
Five meters away, standing on the edge of the crater without a single grain of dust staining his training clothes, Silver raised his face.
Untouchable as always, the god dropped his shoulders and gave a slow, solemn nod.
"You can shut off the valve," he commanded, his tone devoid of irony. "You beat your own limit today."
The instant his words registered in my brain, the order was sent to my energy core.
The white light beneath my skin retracted instantly, fading into my veins.
Relief and exhaustion ran over my spine all at once. My knees gave out, crushing into the potholed stone as I panted desperately, trying to process that I had survived that without losing my mind.
Far away, in fight two, Laura and Arthur finished with a massive flash of sparks.
And in that destroyed field, drowned in the deafening chaos of the heavens, beneath Silver's silent, severe gaze, the three of us showed, in blood, sweat, and thin air, what it meant to grow.