The spear moved again.
Seraphine had lost count of how many times it had moved. Thrust, slash, reset. Thrust, slash, reset. The rhythm of it had become something almost hypnotic over the past hours, and she'd found herself standing here far longer than she'd intended, watching Ashen's sweat-soaked silhouette cut through the afternoon air with the mechanical persistence of a clock pendulum.
Edward stood a short distance behind him, arms folded, watching with that flat, impenetrable expression that she'd found herself hating more with each passing day.
"It's been several days already."
Lucia's voice broke the silence. Seraphine blinked, then turned to find the woman standing just to her left, arms folded, gaze fixed on the distant figure with an unreadable expression. "Is he really going to drop all the territory's responsibilities on us and keep training like a madman?"
Seraphine tilted her head. Then the realization settled. Right. For Lucia, this was new.
She and Alice had precedent. Seraphine had watched Ashen do this during the tutorial as he disappeared into himself so completely that the world might as well not exist.
She'd learned then that trying to pull him out was like trying to stop a river with your hands. Alice had gotten her own education in it during their shared captivity in the Pit, enduring the particular misery of being in the same enclosed space as someone who treated self-destruction as a hobby.
But Lucia had never seen it up close.
Alice answered before Seraphine could. "At least he still makes time to handle the major cases." Her voice was in its usual cool cadence, eyes never leaving the figure in the distance. "If we have to help him deal with the cumbersome details, so be it."
"It's not like he's lazing around in the meantime," Seraphine added, watching the sweat-dark fabric cling to his back as he thrust again.
"..."
"You two." Lucia's voice had taken on an edge that Seraphine instinctively knew she used when she was vexed. "You can only speak like that because the bulk of the paperwork lands on my desk. Why don't you try doing my job for a couple of days, then repeat that for me."
Alice said nothing.
Seraphine found a sudden interest in the sky.
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"You're doing it again. Stop thinking unnecessarily."
Swich—
"Thinking is good when you need to strategize and plan. But when you're swinging your spear, let your body do the thinking instead."
Swich—!
"Better. Now keep doing it until it becomes instinct."
Ashen couldn't muster the breath to respond. Every scrap of attention and will he possessed was funneled into the singular task of thrusting his spear one more time.
Normally, this level of exertion wouldn't have touched him. He could run for days, push his body past the threshold of most trained fighters without registering more than mild fatigue. But his current state was anything but normal.
It had started a week ago.
The night after accepting Edward as his teacher, Ashen had taken the man's advice seriously. He'd gone into the dreamscape alone and methodically dismantled every grafted technique in his body, stripping them away one by one until what remained was the version of himself that existed before any of it. A clean slate. He'd summoned the memory of that earlier self and spent hours mimicking it, overwriting muscle memory layer by layer until the foreign patterns finally fell away.
The next morning, Edward had been impressed… and then immediately shook his head.
"What you did works outwardly," he'd said. "But I can still feel the foreign influence clinging to you. It's in the marrow."
Ashen had expected as much. Almost two years of conditioning didn't dissolve overnight just because you wanted them to. The body still remembered despite his best efforts.
His teacher's answer was training.
Hard enough, long enough, and the body would naturally shed its old habits to accommodate the new ones. Muscle memory wasn't loyal to a set of techniques. It simply followed the dominant signal.
The problem was that this method required years. They'd agreed, without discussion, that years weren't available.
Which brought them to the shortcut.
Pressure.
As long as Ashen could endure pressure, whether physical, mental, or both simultaneously, while executing his spear forms and refused to stop, his body would be forced to remember faster. The old pathways would starve. The new ones would take root.
And so Ashen learned the full breadth of what his teacher could do.
It began with his body.
The hardened physique he'd built through months of Riven State… the reinforced frame that made him something more than human was stripped away with a single application of Edward's will. Like having the floor pulled out from beneath you, he felt the familiar solidity of himself simply... recede. What remained was the long-forgotten fragility of a baseline human.
Two hours into the first session, exhaustion arrived.
His breathing went ragged. Sweat rolled down his face, his neck, soaked through every pore until his shirt was plastered to his back. By the third hour, he was moving through lead. By the fourth, his hands had gone numb, his feet following suit… and that was when instinct kicked in, and he reached for his mana to hold himself together.
The moment he did, Edward cast the second inhibition.
Mana stopped responding.
Thrust—
Swich—!
Swhoosh—!
He didn't know how long he kept going. It wasn't until something cool pressed against his cheek that the world snapped back into focus.
'The ground…'
He'd fallen at some point. He genuinely couldn't remember when. Now face-down in the dirt, the cool earth offered the most luxurious sensation he could imagine. He let himself stay there for a moment, nearly drowning in it.
Then the voice arrived.
"Is that all?"
He said nothing.
"What? You swung a stick a couple of times and planted your face in the dirt?"
He said nothing.
"Were you even planning to take a nap while you were at it?"
Edward didn't pause for answers.
"Get up."
"I…" The words came out cracked and thin. "...can't."
A silence.
"...You can't." The emotion had drained entirely from Edward's voice, leaving a flat tone. "Then aren't you just average?"
Indignation arrived before thought did. He had trained without complaint until his body literally stopped functioning. He hadn't uttered a single word about it. And this was average?
"You think I'm exaggerating?" As if reading him, Edward continued in that same matter-of-fact tone. "Among the students I've taught, there were mortals. They had undeveloped bodies… were malnourished… some of them so slight they resembled sticks more than people. When I told them to get up, they got up. They moved through sheer will alone. They still stood."
"..."
"So calling you average is me being generous, honestly."
His voice softened. "I understand the times are different now. We have arrived at a point where being defeated by exhaustion is considered normal. …Acceptable, even."
"But my dear student… average is the nemesis of dominion. Average people never rule. They never reach mastery. And you cannot rule when you refuse to master."
"Average will numb your spirit. It will steal your desperation to keep moving at all costs. Just like now."
"...And none of my students are average."
"So… Get up."
BOOM—
The word landed like an explosion in his sanity. Ashen's mind went white… and then a spike of shame arrived.
It wasn't the ordinary kind, like the mild sting of embarrassment or wounded pride. This was something Edward had been reaching into him and pulling, stimulating the deep, dormant reservoir of it until it surged forward and consumed every other feeling. It climbed. And climbed. And climbed.
Until he would have done almost anything to make it stop.
And so he forced his broken body upright.
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A zombie.
That was the most accurate description. Or perhaps a robot… since no zombie had ever moved with that kind of mechanical sharpness.
No matter his state, Edward never once permitted him to compromise his stance. Fatigue was no excuse. Pain was no excuse. The form was the form.
By the time the sun began its descent, he finally heard them.
"That's enough for today. We continue at sunrise."
thud—
"Ash—"
Seraphine's voice echoed. Then her footsteps. He felt her kneel beside him before he saw her face, her hands already warm with healing light as she pressed them to his chest.
The three of them had apparently returned from their duties not long ago. He was dimly aware of Alice and Lucia standing a short distance away, neither of them moving toward him.
He'd warned them not to interfere, regardless of what they saw. They were honoring that. He was grateful and, simultaneously, aware that honoring it was costing them something.
The proof of that was in the air itself.
He didn't look directly at Alice or Lucia, but he didn't need to. Alice's killing intent was so dense it almost materialised, while Lucia's expression looked like she had already devised a thousand torture methods.
Edward, for his part, looked unbothered. If anything, faintly amused. He even smiled.
⛧ ⛧ ⛧
The next day brought a new addition.
Alongside the stripped physique and the sealed mana, Edward began attacking him from various angles using summoned weapons that materialized from that invisible space he always drew from, coming in without warning.
Staff. Sword. Spear. Halberd. This trained parrying and evasion alongside the core forms, all under pressure. Ashen had no grounds to object, so he didn't.
The third day passed the same.
Then a week.
The only thing visibly changing was the density of resentment radiating from his three observers. Edward noted their discipline with approval... they hadn't broken. They despised what they were watching, but they were honoring Ashen's instruction with the kind of restrained self-control that spoke well of them.
It hadn't taken him long to read the situation. A couple of hours, maybe. The student had a talent for attracting exceptional women, apparently. Three of them, all watching with the specific expression of someone with personal investment in the subject of their fury.
The one called Sabrina had shown the least reaction, likely because she'd absorbed the lion's share of the territory's day-to-day management and had less time for visible resentment.
It was none of his business. His job was to teach, so he kept to it.
⛧ ⛧ ⛧
TWACK—!
A staff sweep threatened his ankle. He caught it on the butt of the spear.
Stance reset. Thrust. Slash.
A sword angled for his wrist. He stepped aside... barely.
"Focus."
A spear came from the left, aimed at his neck. He tilted his head. A thin line of heat followed and blood traced a path down his collar.
"Focus."
Thrust—
Slash—
A halberd dove at his flank, moving to cleave. He straightened the spear shaft and caught it with an inch to spare.
"Yes. Discard all distractions."
Ding!
"Stop thinking about dreams and aspirations."
Clank—!
"Don't think about goals and promises."
Crash—!
"Don't think about tomorrow. Don't think about the time until respite comes. Don't think about the words you'll share with your lovers."
CLING—!
"Only think about now."
CLANG—
"Only this moment matters. Move as if it's your last."
Ashen's eyes had long since lost focus. It wasn't just the exhaustion anymore. Edward had extended the pressure into the mental space, manifesting a constant throbbing behind his eyes.
The world was tilting and smearing at the edges as dizziness pressed down on him like a mountain. Three days without sleep couldn't have felt worse than this. His brain kept attempting to shut down, and his eyes kept trying to go dark.
Only the voice held him.
He repeated it in his skull like a litany.
Focus.
Focus.
Focus.
Focus.
Focu—
THUD.
He was on the ground again. He didn't know when he'd fallen. There had been no intermediary step... one moment he was upright, the next the dirt was in front of his face and the world was sideways.
"Get up."
The shame rose immediately, like a reflex by now. He was already moving before it peaked, commanding his body with the full weight of his will—
He made it to sitting.
And stopped.
Not a single muscle would cooperate further. They'd been wrung past the point of shame, past the point of will. They'd simply... disconnected.
"It's not that your body is refusing." Edward's voice came from somewhere above and behind him. "It's that you're not allowing it to."
Me…?
"The key is faith."
He blinked at the ground.
"Faith is an immense force. It can move mountains. Birth empires and cause wars. But most people lack even the most basic faith in themselves."
"Just like now."
"Somewhere in the depths of your mind, there is a thought telling you that you've already reached your limit. That this is beyond you. That your body is done."
Ashen's eyes dragged upward. Edward was looking down at him with that same flat, impenetrable expression.
"That thought is a lie."
A thought…
"Where's your faith?"
My faith…
"Where's your belief?"
My belief…?
"Stop working against yourself." A pause. "...Let go."
Move.
The word surfaced from somewhere beneath conscious thought.
Move.
It found a rhythm, small and steady.
Move. Move. Move. Move.
He stopped directing it at any specific muscle... Stopped trying to think about the mechanics of standing... Stopped negotiating with his own exhaustion. The word just kept turning.
Move. Move. Move. Move. Move.
Louder now, as if the word was booming in his head.
MovemovemovemovemoveMOVE—
Crack—
His left hand found the ground.
Move.
The fingers pressed into the dirt.
Move.
The arm began to shake with a deep, violent tremor from the shoulder down but it pushed.
Move.
His right knee lifted, dragged forward, planted.
Move. Move.
The other arm. The other knee. He was on all fours, and his whole body was rattling like something held together with thread, but the word didn't stop.
MoveMoveMoveMove—
One foot under him.
MOVE.
The other.
The legs straightened... slowly, agonizingly, shaking so badly that the spear in his grip was tracing small erratic circles in the air... but in the end... they straightened.
He stood.
His chest heaved. The world tilted, steadied, tilted again. Blood dripped from his nose. His hands were shaking badly enough that he had to grip the spear with both just to hold it.
But he was standing.
His feet found their width. His spine corrected. The stance locked imperfectly and raggedly.
despite that... Edward laughed.
"Ha."
He looked at Ashen with something that hadn't been there before. Something that might, in a certain light, have resembled respect.
"You have finally acquired the terminal velocity required to break free from the atmosphere of mediocrity."
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