Years passed bit by bit inside the Time Field.
By the eleventh year, the Duskbane warriors had all received their tattoos.
The process had been brutal. Kaelith's veterans gritted their teeth through the rejection burns, enduring pain that would have broken many. But these were Edge survivors, warriors who'd faced demon hordes and lived. It was not hard for them.
Once they recovered, training with the Origin warriors began.
It brought instant changes.
These Duskbane warriors carried scars from countless Edge sieges. They knew demon tactics, void corruption, the chaotic rhythm of true war. When they sparred with Origin warriors with the same advantages of the tattoos, the difference was stark.
"Block high, you idiot!" a grizzled Duskbane warrior barked, slamming his training sword through a young Origin warrior's guard. "Demons will rip your throat before you blink!"
The young warrior stumbled back.
The Origin warriors absorbed every lesson. As years passed, their combat instincts sharpened.
Adrian personally oversaw this integration.
He walked through the sparring grounds daily, observing, correcting, guiding. When he saw a warrior hesitate mid-cast, he'd pause them, reshape their essence flow with a touch, then step back.
"Again."
The warrior would try, fail, and try again. Adrian never rushed them. He simply waited until comprehension bloomed behind their eyes.
...
Meanwhile, all this was going on, Adrian also used this time to train himself.
The battle experience he'd gained in the structure had been against brainless essence beasts, powerful, yes, but predictable. Now he sparred every day against Kaelith, a dual-essence Stellar who'd survived decades on the Edge.
He suppressed his power deliberately, wielding only fire and ice to match her. He wanted to fight as an equal, to test his limits without the crutch of Source or even his other affinities.
In the initial days, Kaelith dominated him completely.
Her twin domains crushed his defenses before he could adapt. Her spell transitions were seamless, flowing from frozen terrain to scorching eruptions without pause. Adrian's attacks, which he thought improved so much, felt clumsy in comparison, his timing off, his essence manipulation still raw despite his Source Veins.
"You're thinking too much," Kaelith said after slamming him into the arena floor for the third time that day. Ice crawled up his legs, pinning him. "Sometimes, mindless attacks could also work."
Adrian stood, dissolving the ice with a pulse of heat.
In every sparring match, Adrian learned from Kealith.
Every defeat, he refined his approach. Every move she used, he dissected, adapted, improved upon.
By the fifth year, their duels became even.
Kaelith blocked his frozen spear, countered with a wave of flame, but Adrian was already shifting the ice beneath her feet and fire above her at the same time, forcing her to split focus. Their domains clashed in brilliant sprays of steam and frost.
"Better," she admitted, "Much better."
By the thirteenth year, something changed.
Kaelith stumbled across from him, her twin domains cracked and trembling. Adrian's control had sharpened to impossible precision. His spell-casting speed was blinding now, each attack folding into the next before she could even think.
She launched a dual-essence strike, fire and ice spiraling together in lethal harmony.
Adrian stepped into the attack, his own fire and ice flowing around hers, redirecting the spiral back toward her with a casual flick of his wrist.
Kaelith barely raised her guard in time. The impact shattered her domain entirely, sending her skidding across the arena floor.
Silence.
She looked up and saw Adrian standing calmly, not even winded.
That day, for the first time, she lost.
Adrian merely smiled, extending his hand to help her up. "You went easy."
Kaelith shook her head slowly, accepting his hand. "No, Adrian. You've surpassed me, completely."
What she didn't know was that every spar had refined the flow of Source Veins spreading through Adrian's arms. His mastery of essence control had grown beyond natural limits, carving neural pathways that turned instinct into art.
...
While Adrian honed himself in battle, his people grew in a different way.
The humans of Earth, once weak compared to alien races, struggled the most at first. They had courage, but no experience.
When they learned of the deployment to Drakthor, many despaired.
During the second year, Lyra sat with her head in her hands. "We could die there, you know that, right?"
Damon leaned against the wall, "No, with all the things we have now, if we trained hard, we can survive."
"Train harder?" Lyra laughed bitterly. "We're decades behind everyone else here."
Kai spoke quietly from the corner. "Don't forget Adrian started with us; if he can do it, we can also do it."
Everyone turned to him.
His eyes burned with quiet determination, "We've been helpless before. On Earth, every single day was survival, but we survived anyway."
He stood. "This feels the same, but we're not helpless anymore. We have knowledge and resources now, and we have time. If we still cannot become stronger, then the problem is with us."
Marcus cracked his knuckles. "Then let's get back to work."
That defiance became their greatest weapon.
Humanity trained harder than any species in the Origin Capital. While others rested, they drilled.
Day by day, year by year, the humans adapted to the galaxy's cruel pace.
By the twenty-first year, the impossible happened.
One by one, humans began ascending to SSS-rank.
Kai broke through first, his space affinity condensing into a seed during a meditation session. He didn't celebrate, simply continued his training.
Seraphina followed weeks later, light essence blazing around her as she crossed the threshold.
Then others…
Dozens of Earth's defenders reached SSS-rank, each of them through sheer endurance and the will to never remain helpless again.
They used natural treasures to create their essence seeds, accelerating their growth, since it was the only way for them to do it quickly enough.
Kai once said during a group training session, "Even if it's with a natural treasure, I'm still an SSS-rank. Even if it's very little that I can contribute, that's enough for me."
That thought spread like wildfire.
It wasn't just Kai. It was the mindset of all the humans from Earth. Adrian and the core clan members were doing everything they could; the other defenders saw it every day. And now, even though the little help they could offer didn't amount to much, they still wanted to do it.
The other Origin warriors noticed this shift, but most paid little attention.
Out in the galaxy, beings who used natural treasures to ascend were always considered lesser. Only those who couldn't comprehend their own concept would resort to shortcuts. In the long run, they'd remain weak.
But things started to change.
First was Elara.
On the twenty-third year, during a routine practice, golden-red fire exploded across the training field. Elara stood at the center, a fully manifested Stellar domain rippling outward.
She'd comprehended fire and created a domain with it.
Thomas watched from the sidelines and smiled.
It was soon followed by Selena and Kael.
Selena's gravity domain collapsed an entire training zone into a compressed sphere before she released it with a laugh. Kael's space domain folded space, creating pocket dimensions within the arena.
The other warriors stared in shock.
Gravity and space domains are so rare that even empires counted holders on one hand.
And these humans had just… comprehended them in a few years?
Not just this, they soon saw more changes.
Even the newly ascended SSS-rank like Kai became one of the strongest at their rank.
Kai's spatial cuts could bisect Duskbane veterans in sparring matches. Seraphina's light barriers held against multiple powerful strikes.
It wasn't just them.
Helena, Renard, Scarlett, Ironwood, all of the humans that came from Earth broke through, each one became stronger than expected in such a short time.
And especially the Celestials.
Max finally became a Stellar with his water concept. This was mainly due to a stellar from Kaelith's clan. A top clan at least had dozens of stellars in their ranks, managed by stellar lords like Kaelith.
When it came to stellar warlords, it was too few; even the entire galaxy knew fewer than 15 warlords till now, it was extremely rare.
Adrian and Kaelith made a deal, and he shared the imprint skill with the Duskbane clan, which allowed the stellars from her clan to create the knowledge spheres, which benefited him and his entire clan.
And the deal was made in a way that it didn't affect the origin clan's business. Duskbane clan cannot sell knowledge spheres, but they now don't need to buy from the origin clan; rather, they can create their own and distribute them among themselves.
In a way, this deal benefited both the clans; the origin clan got knowledge of some advanced galactic concepts it didn't have, and this would benefit the origin clan in the long term. And the Duskbane clan now has the imprint skill, which they can use not only for exchanging concepts, but also for other memories. In the long term, the Duskbane clan benefited most with this, but Adrian didn't mind it.
With this, the origin clan also got access to the advanced galactic concept of lightning, which helped Septimus to become a stellar.
Lucian also comprehended his shadow affinity, eventually becoming a stellar.
Sentinel, Cassian, and Draven didn't have access to their own concepts' advanced knowledge, so they trained harder than others in a new concept, which all 3 selected fire, and ascended to stellar rank with it.
They grew this much in the span of thirty-six years.
Kaelith watched silently from the observation deck, troubled.
She was also human. She commanded many others back on her home planet. But these humans from Earth felt different. Even with all these resources, it was not possible for someone to grow this fast.
But still, against all the odds, they kept growing.
"Does the planet Earth have something special in it to produce beings like this?"
She didn't have an answer.
But one thing was clear.
No one dared underestimate them again, even if they'd merely used natural treasures to ascend.