The cold, calculating words had barely left the Duke's lips when Sephorae let out a humorless chuckle. "Prove myself? Father, after all this time, you still think a little scuffle will change your mind? How quaint." He barely had time to finish the taunt before the world exploded around him. The Duke didn't move, but the ground beneath Sephorae's feet liquefied, then instantly crystallized into jagged, shifting stone. One moment solid, the next a grasping maw that lashed out, wrenching his ankles and sending him stumbling . Lucian Vespera's power, Ground Control, was an SS+ rank ability, and he wielded it with the terrifying precision of a master sculptor.
"So, the whelp still has a tongue," Lucian's voice boomed, devoid of warmth. He advanced, each step causing the very earth to tremble. With a casual flick of his wrist, a pillar of stone erupted from the ground, striking Sephorae in the chest and lifting him off his feet. The air was driven from Sephorae's lungs as he crashed back down. He tried to summon his own Aether Energy, but it was like trying to start a fire in a hurricane. His S-rank power was a flickering candle against the Duke's raging storm. "You talk of strength, but you can't even control the ground you stand on!" Lucian roared, bringing a fist wreathed in A-rank physical power crashing down. Sephorae barely managed to roll away, the punch pulverizing the flagstones where his head had been.
The "fight" was a brutal, one-sided lesson in humility. Lucian was relentless, a storm of earth-shattering power and overwhelming force. Sephorae, for all his previous arrogance, was reduced to a desperate, scrambling child. He tried to land a hit, to use his own energy, but it was useless. Every attack was parried, every move anticipated. His father wasn't just beating him; he was dissecting him, exposing every weakness, every flaw. Sephorae's jokes died in his throat, replaced by gritted teeth and the coppery taste of blood. Finally, with a contemptuous snarl, Lucian slammed a hand onto Sephorae's chest. A sickening crack echoed through the courtyard as a spike of stone impaled him from below, pinning him to the ground. "Your potential was only A+. A pathetic failure." Lucian's hand glowed with a dark energy, and he drove it into Sephorae's stomach.A cruel, melodic chime cut through the brutal sounds of the fight. From the shade of the castle's grand archway, Selene Alarissa Vespera raised her gleaming, crimson-hued phone, a smirk playing on her lips. With a few taps, a live stream titled 'The Vespera Weed's Pruning' went live across the continent's major networks. Every eye, from the highest noble to the lowest commoner, was now a witness to this spectacle of family shame.
Trapped against the ground, the stone spike grinding into his back, Sephorae felt the dark energy from his father's hand sear into him. It wasn't just pain; it was a violation, a cold, invasive force that sought the very center of his being. "You think a worthless E+ rank power like Molecule Manipulation makes you special?" Lucian sneered, his hand glowing brighter. Sephorae could only gasp as he felt the connection to his own power, his core, begin to fracture like cheap glass. This wasn't just losing a fight. This was permanent. A shattered core meant a life without Aether, a life as a powerless shell, worse than death to a Vespera despair, cold and absolute, began to set in. The academy, the future, any hope of changing his fate—it was all being shattered along with his core. "This ends now," the Lucian declared.
But even as the final cracks spiderwebbed through his energy, a defiant, manic grin split Sephorae's bloody lips. With the last strands of his consciousness, he focused his pathetic E+ power not on the massive constructs around him, but on the microscopic dust and grit beneath his bleeding form. It was useless, a flea's strength against a god, but it was all he had. As Lucian poured on the pressure, intending to shatter the core into dust, the ground Sephorae lay on shifted by a millimeter. It was barely perceptible, but it was enough. The trajectory of the Duke's killing blow to his core was altered just enough, causing the energy to miss the absolute center of Sephorae's core.