The race had been a brutal, unceremonious affair. Nana had started with the faint, desperate hope that her administrative authority might somehow grant her extra stamina, but the jungle quickly disabused her of this civilian fantasy. She ran with the panicked, jerky movements of someone who has suddenly realized the floor is lava, while Lee moved like an arrow released by an expert archer—silent, precise, and terrifyingly fast.
Lee, now fully integrated with the Echo Core, was a whisper of motion. His form was a blur of efficiency, every footfall absorbing shock and driving kinetic energy forward, making his speed seem less like effort and more like a law of physics. He had covered the first quarter mile with the ease of a casual stroll.
Nana, however, was a visual manifestation of cosmic terror. After the first hundred yards, she had ditched her pencil skirt entirely, tearing the material at the seam to create rough, indecent shorts that barely covered her. Her sensible blouse was ripped, and her face was a mask of sweat, blood, and sheer indignation.
Internal Monologue: "This is a violation of the Geneva Convention! I am an accredited Principal! I should be reviewing tenure applications, not desperately trying to outrun imaginary fire-ants! This boy will have so much detention if we survive—it will span three academic years!"
She stumbled, falling hard onto her knees. The impact would have broken an ordinary person's concentration, but for Nana, it was simply a call to action.
The moment she hit the ground, the familiar, metallic heat of Blood Magic surged to answer her panic. Nana, no longer able to deny the power's existence, consciously reached for the feeling—that dreadful, forbidden command to utilize her own essence. She focused on the overwhelming Rage she felt at her current predicament, funneling the raw emotion into the fresh scrape on her knee.
A violent, sickening tackiness erupted in her muscles. It was the Gore-Grip effect, only internalized and directed at her own motor function. Her lungs screamed, but the magical force overriding them granted her a terrifying, short-lived burst of acceleration. She drove herself up and forward, sprinting at a speed that defied her age and sedentary lifestyle.
Nana (Mental Reply, breathless): Why are you making me rely on this, Hanabi? It feels monstrous!
Hanabi (A dry, amused whisper in her mind): ("Monstrous? Nonsense, little protector. Your Blood Magic is less about spells and more about physical enhancement. You require Stamina, Adhesion, and Force. Blood is the perfect toll. You lack the Mana storage of the boy, so you use the life fluid—volatile, but immediately accessible. It suits your temperament for crisis response. You are built for sudden, fierce protection, not sustained magical effort. You are simply learning to run on borrowed life. Now, push! The boy is almost out of sight!")
Nana pushed harder, the world blurring into a green-brown streak. She hated every second of it, the constant dull throb of her magical consumption and the horrifying knowledge that her strength was quite literally fueled by self-harm. She was running faster than any Olympic sprinter, yet she felt slower than a snail compared to Lee.
Nana groaned, but the protective instinct was now fully dominant. She looked at Lee, then at the invisible voice of the Empress, and with a terrible calm, deliberately scraped a new line across her arm, offering the necessary toll.
"Fine," Nana said, her voice steady now, resolute. "Let's see how long I can keep the Anchor tight, you reckless child. I may be a liability, but I am the only one keeping you alive."
The Gate remained, a silent, swirling threat. But Lee and Nana turned their backs on the Dungeon, facing the forest instead, their fight now centered on the terrifying, volatile bond they had just forged.
Trial 1: The Five-Minute Incineration Drill
Lee adopted a low, coiled stance. With a silent command, the emerald light of the Echo Core flared. This wasn't the spontaneous healing flash from before; this was a sustained, overwhelming surge of power. His silhouette sharpened, and the air around him cracked with the intensity of his Limit Breaker State. He was radiating Mana in excess—too much for his newly integrated channels to handle.
Hanabi (Invisible Echo): ("Begin. Five minutes, little protector. Anchor him.")
Nana gasped as the Mana hit her. It wasn't a gentle wave; it was a physical blow, a concussive shock of emerald energy that felt like stepping inside a burning furnace. Her skin instantly flushed scarlet, the excess Mana trying to burn her fragile, non-magical body from the inside out.
She immediately pressed the fresh wound on her arm. The metallic scent of her own blood became the only thing she could focus on. She commanded the Anchor—not a known spell, but a visceral, desperate counter-will—to pull.
Her Blood Magic was a dark, reactive force. Lee's Mana was pure, volatile light. The meeting point was agony. Nana felt the raw, burning Mana from Lee rushing into her body, and her own life fluid struggling to contain and disperse it. It felt like stuffing an ocean into a teacup, constantly pulling against a tidal wave.
Lee, for his part, was fighting two battles: maintaining the unprecedented physical output of the Limit Breaker State, and intentionally not fighting the drag of the Anchor. Every instinct screamed at him to push away the foreign absorption, but he knew the moment he resisted, the Mana would back up and destroy him. He ran in place, generating maximum power, focusing on the subtle, sticky counter-force Nana was providing.
Minute One: Nana was sweating blood, literally. Her self-inflicted wounds were weeping a thick, energized fluid. Her vision tunneled. Lee was moving at a speed that blurred the local foliage, a controlled lightning strike, but the emerald glow flickered dangerously at the edges.
Nana (Mental Reply, screaming): It's too much! I can't hold it!
Hanabi: ("Hold the line! A Principal never lets the school burn down! Use your Rage! Convert your fear into Gore-Dampening!")
Nana found herself tapping into a deep, administrative fury—the kind of rage reserved for parents who failed to return library books. She channeled the sheer indignation into her bloodstream, and the Anchor held, tightening the pull just enough to stabilize Lee's output.
Minute Three: Lee felt the sudden, precise tightening of the Anchor. It was like a spiritual tether, pulling his overcharged power safely out into Nana. He used the stability to unleash his strength, executing complex, high-speed maneuvers—flashes of movement that pulverized the air. His body was perfect, but his energy was being perfectly drained. Without the Anchor, he would be a corpse; with it, he was a demigod.
Nana was pale, shaking, and on the verge of collapsing from both Mana overload and simple exsanguination. Her shorts and blouse were stained scarlet. She was running on pure, terrified willpower, the taste of metallic bile rising in her throat.
Minute Five: The command to stop arrived instantly. Lee shut down the Core's Limit Breaker surge. The emerald light vanished, and he dropped to his knees, utterly exhausted, Mana channels screaming in protest but intact. Nana, deprived of the energy input, instantly collapsed, landing in a heap of bloodied fabric and mud.
Hanabi: ("Synchronization achieved: 43%. Passable. You nearly incinerated him twice, Nana, and you nearly died once. Now, you recover. We repeat this drill until you can maintain the Anchor for ten minutes with only residual blood toll.")
Trial 2: The Vertical Endurance Sprints
The next day, Nana could barely move. Her body was a roadmap of cuts and bruises, the sites of her Anchor activation throbbing painfully. Lee, thanks to his Echo Core, was physically pristine, though mentally weary.
The new task was deceptively simple: Vertical Endurance Sprints up the sheer granite cliff—the same cliff Nana had failed to climb easily the day before.
Lee was required to perform 50 non-stop vertical sprints up the 500-foot face, maintaining Limit Breaker Stateabove the halfway point on every descent. Nana, tethered to Lee by a thick, ceremonial-looking vine Hanabi had materialized (and which Nana immediately decided was a major safety hazard violation), had to Anchor the residual Mana burn of each sprint.
The challenge was stamina. Lee had to maintain the high Mana expenditure across hours, testing his new Core's ability to constantly regenerate Mana. Nana had to learn to draw power from residual Mana damage, not fresh blood.
Lee would blur up the cliff face. Nana would follow, relying entirely on the internal Gore-Grip and the terrifying magnetic pull of the vine, which acted as a conduit for the explosive Mana drain.
Nana (Mental Reply, halfway up Sprint 12): I am wearing my skin off! Why can't he just use a little less Mana?
Hanabi: ("Because a storm does not negotiate, little protector. He must learn to use his full power. You must learn to make the Anchor seamless. Stop cutting yourself! Your blood is a finite resource! Draw the power from the Mana-burn on your palms!")
Nana looked at her hands. The Mana residue from the drain was burning her skin a faint green. She focused on the pain—that searing, magical heat—and willed her Blood Magic to absorb it instead of using her own precious blood.
It worked, but the feeling was revolting: a cold, internal sucking sensation, like a sponge soaking up toxic waste. She was no longer just bleeding; she was Mana-siphoning. It was less physically draining but far more mentally taxing, requiring absolute, unbroken concentration.
By the end of the sprint session, Lee was performing the vertical ascents faster than gravity, achieving the 50-run goal with only minor fatigue. Nana was hanging from the vine, hallucinating about a comfortable desk and filing taxes, but she hadn't collapsed, and the Anchor hadn't failed.
Trial 3: The Lake of Volatile Mana (Concentration and Endurance)
For the final 12 hours of the trial, Hanabi led them to a hidden, stagnant lake deep within the forest—a naturally occurring pool heavily saturated with the toxic green Mana residue escaping from the nearby Gate.
Hanabi: ("The final test requires Concentration and Sustained Endurance. You will both tread water for six continuous hours. Lee, you will maintain Limit Breaker State, Stage 1, while standing stationary in the Mana-saturated water. Nana, you must maintain the Anchor without using any fresh blood—you will draw the necessary toll from the volatility of the lake water, absorbing the external Mana to stabilize Lee's internal channels.")
Lee stepped into the dark green water. The Mana immediately enveloped him, flowing into his integrated Core, feeding the system. He activated the Limit Breaker, the emerald glow stabilizing instantly. The Mana around him seemed to coil, reacting to his power.
Nana followed, the water feeling icy and sickeningly thick. She focused on Lee's glowing silhouette, her concentration absolute. This was the ultimate stamina test for her. She had to maintain the Anchor and constantly filter the Mana-toxins from the lake, using her Blood Magic as a complex, two-way regulator.
Internal Monologue (Nana): "The water is trying to enter him, and he's trying to expel his Mana, and I have to be the invisible accountant making sure the books balance. This is worse than end-of-year auditing."
The silence of the task was broken only by the sloshing of the poisonous water and the quiet, desperate whimpers escaping Nana's lips. Every minute felt like an hour. Her muscles were rigid from cold and strain. Her brain struggled to process the dual flow: pulling Lee's excess Mana out, and pulling the lake's ambient Mana in, using her own emotional capacity for concentration and control.
Lee, seeing her struggle, had his own battle. His perfectionist instincts urged him to ease his power, to make it easier for her. But he knew that failure to maintain maximum output would be failure in a real fight. He used the sheer dependency as fuel, pushing his Limit Breaker to the absolute edge, relying on Nana's administrative rigor to save him.
The six hours dragged by—six hours of Nana fighting the cold, the contamination, and the relentless, two-way power surge. She felt the skin on her hands crack from the Mana-burn, but she didn't collapse. She didn't bleed fresh blood. She fought with the silent, terrible endurance of a Protector who has everything to lose.
Synchronization: The Unspoken Bond
When the six hours were finally up, Lee and Nana emerged from the lake. They were both shivering, covered in the viscous, green Mana residue, but neither had failed. They collapsed on the shore, inches apart, too exhausted to speak, too synchronized to feel alone.
Lee turned his head and looked at Nana. She was a ruin—bruised, scratched, covered in drying blood and Mana-toxin—but her eyes, though weary, held a brilliant, fierce light that had been absent for twelve years. She had successfully completed Phase Two: Sustained Hell.
Hanabi (The Invisible Echo, softer now, almost satisfied): ("You have done well. Anchor-Liability Dynamic is 98% stable. You understand the toll, little protector, and you have mastered the drain, Lee. You are now ready for the next lesson. But first, you must eat, and you must rest. The true meaning of the death game is longevity, not merely destruction.")
Lee managed a weak, genuine smile, fueled not by Mana, but by a weary, shared victory. He reached out and gently touched Nana's shoulder, a silent acknowledgement of her sacrifice.
Nana nodded, too tired to even groan about the violation of personal space. She had just survived the most grueling physical and magical endurance test imaginable, running on Rage and Adrenaline, bound to a reckless boy by a constant, life-threatening flow of forbidden energy.
"First," Nana whispered, her voice rough and cracked, "we find that chocolate bar the wolf left. And then, Lee, you will draft an executive summary detailing the optimal rest cycle for Limit Breaker users. I need paperwork."
Their bond, forged in exhaustion and agony, was unbreakable. They were no longer Principal and Student, Shadow Guard and Nephew, but Anchor and Core, ready for whatever Hanabi—or the chaotic storm—threw at them next.