Dust was still settling over the shattered main disk.
My knees trembled so much they threatened to buckle under my own weight, but I forced myself to stay standing.
Lavinsk's freezing wind dried the sweat on my face, mixing it with the blood from a cut on my forehead.
A few meters away, the sound of stone scraping against metal echoed for the last time.
Laura was panting, leaning on her knees as the thick crimson aura retreated beneath her skin.
Arthur adjusted his shoulder with a sharp crack, his face undisturbed. The war in the skies was over.
"The blood spilled in that forest did you good," the master declared.
His green eyes weren't on me. They swept the neighboring platform, where Arthur and Laura were still catching their breath as they approached.
"Arthur, you stopped holding back the weight of your strikes, and your evasions are much better."
"Laura, your noisy hesitation is gone. The war against the elves scrubbed the dirt from your instincts."
"Today, I saw predators, not just survivors."
Laura broke into an exhausted smile, her fangs bared, sweat dripping from her chin.
Arthur replied with a slow nod, his muscles visibly relaxing after the ordeal.
Then, Silver turned his neck.
His predatory gaze fell on me, sharp and unwavering.
"And you..." he murmured, landing the words with an almost tactile weight.
"The evolutionary leap you've taken compared to the tournament is remarkable. In that arena, you were just a boy thrashing around desperately to keep from dying."
I swallowed hard.
The burning in my lungs was forgotten for a millisecond. My mind, still processing the aftershocks of adrenaline, suddenly stalled.
*Hold on...*
My eyes widened slightly as I stared at Silver's platinum face.
*He was trading blows with me at the speed of sound. We fought in freefall, tearing through the sky and obliterating clouds... and even in the midst of that cataclysm, he was paying attention to every detail of Laura and Arthur's fight down below?!* I thought.
My stomach sank in a mix of awe and silent dread.
Silver wasn't just strong; his perception operated on a plane of awareness completely unattainable for any mortal.
Without another word, the master turned his back on us.
He walked to the edge of the fractured platform and, with the casualness of someone stepping down a stair, let his body fall forward, plummeting into the abyss of clouds.
Arthur was next.
The giant marched heavily to the edge and ejected himself into the void like a lead anchor, the sound of gravity swallowing his weight.
I was still trying to regulate my breathing and process the master's scale when I felt a sharp pressure drag across my back.
Laura's nails—her silver claws already retracted but still sharp enough to be felt through my torn tunic—scratched my back in a rough gesture of camaraderie.
"You did pretty damn well against the boss monster, Suki," she whispered as she passed.
Her face, smeared with sweat and dust, wore a wicked, proud smirk.
Without waiting for a response, the girl ran and leapt off the cliff, laughing loudly as she dove into the gale toward the surface.
I was left alone in the shattered arena.
The shiver down my spine wasn't just from Laura's scratch. A vibrant, electric heat rose through my chest.
I hadn't just survived; I had traded blows head-on in my first real, unbridled fight against the greatest force in that place.
The smile that spread across my bloodied face was exhausted, but purely victorious.
I walked to the edge.
I stared at the blue vastness and the green area of Silver's courtyard thousands of meters below.
I took a step into nothingness.
The wind hummed furiously in my ears during the freefall.
I let gravity pull me, feeling the freedom of the friction tearing at my face.
Only in the last twenty meters did I open my palms.
I molded the updrafts into dense, invisible cushions beneath my body.
The deceleration was surgical. My weight was cushioned by compressed atmospheric pressure, and the soles of my boots touched the green grass of the lower courtyard with a soft rustle, without kicking up a single grain of dust.
"Getting better every day, aren't I?"
When the hall doors opened, the biting gale was left behind.
The air inside was thick, warm, and carried the unmistakable aroma of roasted meat and sweet herbs.
Kânia stood near the long dining table, her golden hair capturing the violet and golden hues of the sunset beginning to paint the glass windows.
She looked us up and down—covered in soot, cuts, and marble dust.
"You smell like destruction," she commented, a mild smile curving her lips as she placed a large bowl of celestial fruits in the center of the table.
Laura didn't wait for an invitation.
She dragged herself to the living room and collapsed onto the soft sofa, tossing her dirty boots over the armrest with a long moan of relief.
"I beat Arthur," she announced, her voice hoarse but dripping with smug satisfaction.
Arthur sat down slowly in a nearby armchair, pressing an ice pack to the side of his gray neck.
"You're a long way from beating me," he replied, without even looking up.
Laura scoffed, grabbing a fluffy throw pillow and hurling it straight at the giant's head. He merely let the object bounce off harmlessly and drop to the floor.
I remained standing near the door. The heat of the house began to melt the hardened tension in my spine.
Silver, leaning against the doorframe, watched me from the corner of his eye.
"You're hearing everything, but saying nothing," the master pointed out.
I caught the towel he tossed on pure reflex and began to wipe my face, cleaning off the soot and dried blood.
"Just digesting," I murmured, the words feeling heavy in my dry throat.
I leaned my head back for a second, feeling the throbbing in my own temples.
"Today's training... was intense."
"It was necessary," Silver finished, his expression hardening slightly.
"Evolution rarely comes from victory, Suki. It is born from exhaustion, from the moment your body thinks it's going to break, but your mind refuses to accept it."
Laura stretched her leg from the couch and nudged my boot, snapping me out of my thoughts.
"Hey," she called, an amused glint dancing in her red eyes.
"You'll have to teach me how to do that spear recall you used at the start. I thought it was amazing."
I let out a weak laugh, feeling my ribs protest.
"I learned it by watching Lucas in the middle of our fight. But only if you promise not to aim for my throat in the process, I'll teach you."
Kânia brought more dishes, sliding steaming cast-iron platters down the center of the oak table.
Thick steam rose, carrying a sweet aroma of fresh herbs and roasted meat that made my stomach growl almost painfully.
Silver just leaned back in his chair, slowly swirling the dark liquid in his glass as he watched our ravenous hunger with a relaxed smirk.
The constant clinking of cutlery hitting plates and the dry crackle of embers in the fireplace filled the room, casting warm, dancing shadows across the walls.
I looked out the window.
The Lavinsk sky displayed the warm, orange hues of early afternoon.
I had gotten used to the breathing and atmosphere of that planet much faster than I expected.
Time there didn't just pass; it seemed to evaporate, consumed by our routine.
I silently watched the shadows of the marble pillars lengthen across the lawn, stretching further and further until darkness swallowed the training courtyard, trading the sky for a dense ocean of unknown stars.
Exhaustion numbed my muscles shortly after, and the night amounted to a heavy, silent blink.
For the first time in weeks, I slept without dreaming of monsters, blood, or battles.
When the damp morning breeze brushed my face through the window, sweeping the chill from the room, I opened my eyes.
Days in Lavinsk never dawned in a normal way.
The sun bloomed.
A soft, golden glow blanketed the horizon, making it seem as if the sky itself was blessing the white stones of the estate.
But in that almost sacred environment, the peace was shattered by the aggressive hum of black wood slicing through the air.
Sitting on a stone block further away, Laura and Arthur watched the scene in silence.
Kânia was beside them, gracefully holding a steaming cup of tea, with a maternal yet analytical gaze.
In the center of the damp lawn, I was fighting a ghost.
I surged forward, spinning the spear in a quick, deadly arc aimed at Silver's neck.
The master didn't raise his hands. With his arms perfectly crossed over his chest and his posture irritatingly relaxed, he merely tilted his torso two millimeters backward.
The dark blade scraped the void, producing a useless hiss.
"You're swinging that weapon as if it were a piece of dead wood," Silver's voice sounded impeccably calm, coming from my left, even though I could swear he'd been right in front of me a millisecond ago.
I spun on my heels, digging my boot into the grass to anchor my weight, and delivered a direct, piercing thrust.
Silver took a lazy half-step to the side, and the spear pierced only the morning breeze.
"Do you remember how your transformation came to be, Suki?" he asked, his rhythmic tone matching his effortless dodges.
I pulled the spear back and launched a low sweep to try and break his stance.
Silver lifted one foot into the air, letting the shaft pass under the sole of his boot, and landed smoothly in the exact same spot.
"Listen very closely to what I'm about to tell you, boy," he continued, his green eyes locked on every twitch of my muscles.
"Your transformation is pure, beautiful *adaptation*."
I paused for a fraction of a second, panting, sweat already dripping down my temple.
"You learned to read and manipulate wind energy long before awakening any latent power, from what I gather," Silver explained, his voice echoing across the courtyard.
"Your body was exposed to pressure, to air currents, to the need to survive in the middle of a storm. When your genetics finally adapted one hundred percent to that element... the Wind Transformation was unlocked."
He slowly uncrossed his arms.
"It didn't just give you the ability to manipulate the currents that already exist in the world, boy. It gave you the authority to *create* the wind itself."
I lowered the spear, breathing heavily as my mind absorbed the information.
"Wait..." I murmured, curiosity pulsing stronger than my exhaustion.
"Are you saying my body adapted to the element? Does that mean the transformation works for... anything? If I adapt to another element, can I create another type of power?"
Silver stopped two meters away.
He rubbed his chin, his eyes gleaming with an almost scientific curiosity.
"Probably," he replied.
His tone carried a rare, uncertain guesswork coming from an untouchable god.
"Your lineage is an anomaly. I can't give you one hundred percent certainty, but I wouldn't rule out the possibility of your blood molding itself to new, extreme stimuli."
The possibility made my brain spin.
The idea that my body was a constantly mutating reactor opened up an abyss of options.
But Silver didn't give me time to daydream. The pressure of his aura pressed down on the grass around us.
"But there's no point dreaming about the future when you're still pathetic with what you have in the present," he ordered, his voice adopting a chilling edge.
"Activate the Transformation and attack with everything you've got. I want you to try and hit me with actual intent to kill."
I didn't hesitate.
I pulled the energy valve inside my chest, now feeling more fired up.
White marks tore across my skin, illuminating my arms and neck like streaks of living light.
The air around me shrieked, sweeping away dust and dry leaves.
With my body suddenly light and my muscles loaded with condensed oxygen, I shot forward like lightning.
The spear became a beam of violent white light. I was conjuring a catastrophe.
I advanced, grinding the grass beneath my boots, and fired a sequence of supersonic thrusts.
The wood whipped the air, and every strike that failed to find Silver's skin exploded in a deafening sonic boom.
I twisted my hips, anchoring my foot to the earth, and brought the dark steel down in a massive vertical slash, chaining it into a spiraling spin that ejected a circular burst of destructive wind across the courtyard.
The thick blades of pressurized air tore past Silver.
He merely tilted his neck and torso by absurdly calculated millimeters, letting the furious vacuum pass right by him and continue on its path.
The impact of my failures erupted straight into the rear guard.
The shockwave swept over the stone block where the others were watching.
Arthur had to tense his entire back, digging his heels into the ground and anchoring his colossal weight just so he wouldn't be dragged from his seat by the gale.
Beside him, Laura let out a low growl, lowering her torso and digging her fingers into the rough surface of the rock, her arm muscles trembling as she fought not to be ejected by the atmospheric pressure.
Amid the chaos my mistakes were generating, only Kânia remained a statue of pure tranquility.
The fierce gale violently whipped her translucent hair backward, but the goddess didn't even tense her shoulders.
She didn't move a single inch, taking a sip of her steaming tea with the tranquility of someone enjoying a light summer breeze.
I was shattering the oxygen around us, but against Silver... the outcome was exactly the same.
My frustration began to bubble and boil, not just from Silver's evasion, but from the silent humiliation crushing my ego.
*I am faster,* my mind screamed, cold sweat stinging my eyes as I pressed the jets of wind beneath my boots to accelerate even more.
*I am much stronger. This is the speed I used to obliterate platforms in the sky. Why can't I land a hit? Not even a scratch. I have to land a hit!*
With every millimeter the master dodged without breaking a sweat, I poured in more brute, irrational strength to try and compensate for the failure.
My muscles began to lock up.
The once-graceful movements grew tense, heavy, and purely rage-driven. The dark blade struck too hard, missing the target and opening deep, jagged trenches in Lavinsk's perfect grass.
Inside my head, the math of that fight made no sense.
Blood throbbed in my temples, bringing echoes of the battles that had nearly killed me.
When I fought Lucas in the White Castle of Elfhing, the skill gap between us was terrifying.
I was weak and inexperienced, but even fighting for my life in desperation, my steel had met his spear.
There was a clash.
There was friction and impact.
When I faced the colossal size and insane carnage of the Mother Taranpus in the Black Forest, dread had paralyzed my bones.
But my wind had reached out and cut her flesh. My power had drawn blood and fury from the monster.
Despite the difficulty, I landed a hit.
But here... against Silver... I was attacking a total void.
There was no resistance, no collision.
The god was a formidable opponent; he was a ghost armored by an untouchable calm.
I was being reminded that my newly acquired strength meant precisely nothing before him.
"Damn it!" I snarled through my teeth, missing a cross attack and losing my balance for a shameful millisecond.
The instinctive, savage brutality I'd used to survive in the blood of past battles was completely swallowing my fluidity and calm.
*If normal speed can't reach him, the whole area will!*
*THAT'S IT!*
I took half a step back and channeled every ounce of the courtyard's atmospheric pressure into the darkened blade of the spear, the air around me whistling sharply.
I planted my boots in the shredded grass, rotated my hips to apply maximum centrifugal force, and spun my body on a perfect three-hundred-and-sixty-degree axis.
"Tatsumaki!"
A hurricane of invisible blades exploded from me. The slicing spiral of massive wind tore through the air in all directions simultaneously, swallowing the surrounding space and advancing like a colossal, untamed buzzsaw straight toward Silver.
The courtyard grass was ripped out by the roots, and the soil was sliced open.
And it was at that exact moment that Silver's arm finally moved from its relaxed, crossed posture.
"You're frustrated because your speed has increased, but your effectiveness has not," Silver pointed out with chilling coldness, his voice sounding crisp and clear even over the deafening howl of my attack.
He effortlessly stretched out his arm and exposed the back of his bare hand directly to the storm of blades.
My Tatsumaki—the special technique that could cut through solid rock and slice any creature in half—collided against his skin with a hollow, pathetic smack.
The gigantic wind spiral was literally split down the middle, dissipating instantly into a warm, harmless breeze before it could even mess up the master's silver hair.
The shock of that defense completely neutralized the force of my most devastating strike.
The recoil from the parry traveled brutally up the wooden shaft of the spear, making my entire arm go numb up to the shoulder, nearly forcing me to drop the weapon.
"Every transformation has stages, Suki," the master continued, his tone devoid of any strain as he still held up the hand where my ultimate attack had died.
"The higher the stage, the more definitive and unquestionable your authority over the element. What you are forcing your body to unleash right now with such rage to form this tornado... is only Stage One."
I stepped back, driving the base of the spear into the earth, panting desperately as the white light pulsed chaotically across my arms.
"And how... how do I move to the next one?" I asked, my lungs burning.
Silver crossed his arms again, his gaze unwavering.
"There are two ways I know of. The first is pushing more power, forcing your body to treat the Transformation and its strength as normal, usually awakening it during life-or-death battles."
"And the second way is comprehension. The more you understand the essence of your power, the more you *feel* its nature instead of treating it like a hammer."
"Your aura needs to dance with your mind, not fight against it."
Twenty meters away, the constant sound of the wind explosions billowed Laura and Arthur's clothes.
The girl crossed her arms, scoffing.
"He's lost control. He's just punching the wind. The old man broke his brain."
But Kânia didn't agree.
Slowly, the goddess lowered her teacup. Her serene gaze vanished, replaced by a deep, analytical gleam.
She tilted her head a few millimeters.
"No," she murmured, her voice soft but heavy with sudden anticipation.
"Something is changing."
Laura frowned, her red eyes sweeping the entire arena.
"Changing? What do you mean, changing?" The girl sniffed the air in confusion.
"I'm feeling nothing but sweat, frustration, and dust. He's just beating himself up."
Arthur, with his unshakeable granite posture, also narrowed his gray eyes in my direction.
"His aura is a mess, Lady Kânia," the giant pointed out in his deep voice.
"The weight of the energy fluctuates, and his stance is ruined by rage. I don't feel any threat coming from him."
Kânia didn't take her eyes off me. A tiny, chilling smile curved the corner of the goddess's translucent lips.
"You're trying to feel the wreckage," she explained in an almost inaudible whisper.
"Stop looking at the tip of the blade and look at the center of the well... It's coming."
On the field, I stumbled over my own momentum. My spear struck the earth so violently that the shaft vibrated and slipped from my sweaty hands.
I fell to my knees on the shattered ground.
My vision blurred, and my physical body couldn't withstand another millisecond of that forced overload.
Stage One was killing me.
The wind was furious around me, battering against me, heavy and reactive.
That was when the math finally made sense in my head.
*I'm trying to hold back a storm with my bare hands,* I thought, the sound of my own heartbeat echoing slowly.
*The wind isn't a hammer, Suki. Let's go with option two,* I thought.
I closed my eyes.
Instead of pushing the energy out of my chest like an explosion, I shut off the pressure valve.
I stopped fighting the weight of the air, stopped forcing it out as a weapon. For the first time, I let it flow through me—I started creating it.
The change wasn't explosive; it was a surgical cut in the reality of the courtyard. The sharp, deafening sound of the gale vanished.
Laura's eyes went wide in the background, making her take an involuntary step forward. Arthur uncrossed his arms at the exact same moment.
All the dust and pebbles that had been floating wildly around me stopped falling.
The blades of grass suspended in the air began to levitate in a dense rhythm, mirroring perfectly the exact cadence of the air entering and leaving my lungs.
I opened my eyes.
The dark irises of my eyes had been completely washed out, becoming pure white, shining and translucent like the heart of a cyclone.
The thick, jagged marks that had burned chaotically across my skin melted away.
The light retreated into my pores, and in the blink of an eye, it redesigned itself. Fine, precise, perfect lines branched across my arms, back, and neck, looking like electric veins or roots of starlight synchronized with my pulse.
They were lighter and didn't hurt like the first ones, tracing a pattern that felt like a deliberate blueprint rather than the random mess of before.
The adaptation had finally reached one hundred percent.
I stood up from the ground. The oppressive weight of my exhausted muscles vanished.
I gripped the shaft of my spear and rolled my wrists. There was no harsh, sonic friction like before. The air gently parted for the blade to pass, molding to my will even before the movement was complete.
Right in front of me, Silver was watching. His relaxed posture gave way to a nearly imperceptible tension in his shoulders.
The god's eyes gleamed, recognizing the birth of that elemental authority.
Without saying a word, the master raised two fingers. The earth roared, and a pillar of soil and steel tore through the ground. It was taller than me, blocking the view of the field.
*Okay,* I thought.
I took a single step, vanishing from where I stood in a muted flash. My body levitated ten centimeters off the ground, and the spear spun in a calm, fatal, purely concentrated arc.
The shaft brushed the center of the giant pillar.
There was no sound of a thunderous collision.
Just a whisper.
The colossal earth began to unravel from the inside out. The absurd density of that cut didn't just break the structure; it separated the atoms of the stone.
The entire pillar disintegrated into an ultra-fine silver dust, peacefully carried away by the breeze orbiting my body.
At the far end of the courtyard, the invisible shockwave of that annihilation swept over the lawn.
Arthur, who had been watching with an unshakable posture, clenched his jaw, rigid as a gargoyle.
The giant was forced to bend his knees and dig his boot into the earth when the atmospheric pressure I exhaled tripled in a fraction of a second, weighing on everyone's shoulders like a lead anchor.
"The air density..." Arthur murmured, his deep, methodical voice faltering slightly for the first time.
"It's as if the very space around him has gained mass."
Beside him, Laura swallowed hard.
The girl's survival instinct screamed so loudly that the silver claws in her hands gave an involuntary metallic *snikt*, threatening to spring out.
She took a half-step back, feeling the oxygen thin out and squeeze her lungs as if she were suddenly at the bottom of an ocean.
"What the hell is that...?" she whispered, her red eyes wide and fixed on the silver dust raining down on the field.
"I can barely pull in any air."
I slowly set my feet down on the grass.
The white light retreated beneath my skin, leaving the marks dormant. And this time, I felt no pain when I turned off my transformation.
Silver walked over to me.
He didn't look at the dust still raining across the courtyard. He looked at the translucent trail evaporating from my arms.
"Stage Two," the master noted.
His usual coldness had vanished, replaced by a rare, solemn respect.
"You didn't force the storm. You finally understood its true nature and danced with the wind, instead of trying to chain it."
I was undeniably stronger, faster, and much more dangerous than I had been when I first set foot in Lavinsk.
But then, I raised my eyes and faced Silver.
The platinum god stood there, less than two steps away, without a single scratch on his skin, his training clothes intact, his breathing as calm as a statue's.
The image of his bored, millimeter-perfect dodges, executed just minutes ago with his arms crossed, instantly crushed my sense of victory.
And right behind that recollection came the terrifying memory of our fight yesterday, above the clouds, where he acted like a true cataclysm, disintegrating the air and shattering solid gold platforms with nothing but the impact of his bare knuckles.
Having the sharpest blade in the universe didn't matter if I could never touch him.
Being as fast as a hurricane would do me no good if the space around me was crushed by the pressure of a god.
If what Silver said about me was true... if my mother's lineage was an anomaly and my blood truly possessed the insane capacity to mutate and adapt to any extreme scenario... then I was going to push it to the utmost limit.
I didn't want just a wind weapon anymore. I needed an anchor.
I needed a body that could withstand the end of the world, something to keep me standing and unbreakable when the sky itself tried to crush me.
I tightened my grip around the spear.
I lifted my face toward him, panting hard. Sweat dripped from my chin, falling onto the shattered earth, and an exhausted yet dangerously ambitious smile broke across my lips.
"Yeah..." I murmured, my voice hoarse, locking my eyes with unwavering certainty onto the master's green irises.
"But it's still not enough."