The days passed in a steady, relentless rhythm. Damien immersed himself in training as if his very survival depended on it—because in truth, it did. Each morning bled into night inside the secluded training chamber, where silence was broken only by the sounds of fists striking reinforced dummies, the low hum of circulating energy, and the occasional faint sound of pages turning as he read through the system's guidance once more. His world had narrowed down to a single focus: his body and his mind.
Every day, without fail, Senior Evraine came to him. Sometimes she carried trays laden with food that carried the subtle fragrance of herbs and spices, food prepared with care by the academy kitchens. Sometimes she trained beside him, practicing her spells with the elegant precision of someone born with both talent and discipline. There was something oddly grounding in her presence—he who had spent so much of his life alone, who had grown used to silence and isolation, now found his days marked by the sound of another person's voice, by her gentle reminders that he had to eat, to rest, to not completely destroy himself in his relentless pursuit.
By Saturday night, when the academy's clocks tolled the last hour before midnight, Damien realized how far he had come. Tomorrow, he would stand before Professor Isabelle Veyra and give her an answer—whether or not he would take on the Dreadmore name. It was a choice that weighed heavily on him, though not in the way it might for others. For Damien, this wasn't about prestige or legacy. It was about whether he should use the name as a weapon, whether he should wield it like a shield, a blade, something to carve open the path toward vengeance.
His soul had healed a great deal over these days. What was once fractured and riddled with cracks had now mended itself slowly, painfully, stubbornly. Where before every practice session of the Mind Castle felt like a knife twisting into his spirit, he now felt sturdier, capable of enduring, of pushing past the agony. With every repaired fragment of his soul, his willpower seemed to grow sharper, his determination harder, like tempered steel.
And as his soul healed, so too did his progress accelerate. His body and his mind advanced at a rate that astonished even Albert, whose voice in Damien's head was rarely without criticism. Damien noticed it himself too—his outlook was shifting. The gloom that had always clung to him like a second skin was peeling away, little by little, replaced by something sharper, clearer. His expression no longer held only the heaviness of grief. There was confidence in the way he carried himself now, though it was still cloaked by that dangerous edge that kept others at a distance.
Even his intelligence seemed to climb higher with every breakthrough. The Mind Castle, once a maze of impossible complexities, was now unfolding before him with an almost frightening simplicity. He could see the logic behind the layers, the patterns beneath the confusion. His reaction time grew keener as well, his instincts more refined, until he felt that his entire being was operating on a higher plane.
Aura control had followed naturally from such intense training, becoming sharper, steadier, far more refined than before. Yet his body control remained a frustrating battle. Each time he learned to master more of it, his cultivation surged, strengthening him further, and the delicate balance slipped away again. He hovered between forty and fifty percent control, endlessly chasing that moving target.
It was only yesterday that his soul had nearly reached completion, reduced now to a single lingering crack that resisted his efforts. Yet progress had become torturously slow. His Mind Castle was stuck stubbornly at nine percent. His physical cultivation was nearly at the peak of Rank One, his growth sitting at ninety-nine percent. By now, Damien had already surpassed everyone on this continent in terms of foundation at Rank One. His training was mad, his determination monstrous, but it was vengeance—the long-suppressed desire burning inside him—that truly drove him.
Even among the so-called geniuses of the universe, those touched by heaven's favor, Damien knew he now stood shoulder to shoulder with them in terms of foundation. None could be above him in this, only at his level. And yet, it wasn't his own progress that shocked him the most.
It was Evraine.
When he had reached ninety percent progress, when his aura had grown so frightening that it surpassed even the best peak-stage cultivators of this continent, she had calmly told him not to advance. Albert had been stunned into silence. Knowledge like this simply did not exist here.
When he questioned her, she brushed it off with casual honesty. She confessed she herself had reached the peak of Rank One(80%) far too quickly, and instead of rushing forward, she chose to linger as she took the feelings of her friends seriously and didn't want to demotivate them by advancing quickly. And she kept training at Rank one, until she felt a strange, explosive moment of completion, as though something within her had locked perfectly into place. Only then did she advance. She told him to do the same, to wait for that moment at every level.
Her words haunted him for an entire day. Even Albert, shackled by the system's rules and unable to speak freely, was inwardly roaring curses, spitting profanities at Damien's ridiculous luck. To stumble upon such a genius, someone even Albert himself found shocking, was beyond fortune and yet this boy was making moves on such a genius and seems to be succeeding! Damien, meanwhile, could only mutter under his breath that perhaps this was what a true genius looked like.
Now, as Saturday night deepened, Damien sat once more in the Mind Castle, eyes closed, sweat dripping from his chin, fighting against the stubborn last crack in his soul. No matter how he tried, it would not yield. Frustration coiled in his chest, his teeth grinding as his efforts ended in failure again and again.
From across the room, Evraine lowered her hands, her spells dimming as she watched him. She had been quietly training, but when she saw emotions he was radiating through her talent, she walked closer. Her voice was calm, firm, but not unkind.
"Damien, come here with me for a second and stop training."
He opened his eyes and turned toward her, his face glistening with sweat, his breathing heavy. "Stop training?" His voice was rough, doubtful.
"Yes." She gestured toward the sparring area of the chamber. "Come. Attack me with everything you have."
He froze, staring at her confused. "Senior…You follow the path of energy. You're not—"
She cut him off, a spark of confidence in her white eyes. "I am not as fragile as you think. I have trained my body as well. And a mid-rank mystic cultivator's body is not weak. You won't break me. Fight me, Damien."
He hesitated, but his gaze drifted to the training equipment scattered across the room—weights, barriers, constructs that had clearly been designed to withstand intense physical strain. He could see it now. She had been training her body all along, even if it wasn't her main focus.
Slowly, the hesitation bled away. He exhaled, steadying his heartbeat, and moved into a stance. His body loosened, his fists tightening, his aura sharpening like a blade unsheathed.
Evraine smiled faintly, lifting her own hands, energy crackling faintly around her fingers.
For the first time, Damien would fight her.