Chapter 44
This time, the wind surrounding her was no longer a single color, but nine—blending steel blue, moss green, lavender purple, earthy brown, soft orange, stone gray, sulky red, gold, and indigo that shimmered like an aurora from an alien world.
Each color carried a different wave of pressure, striking from every direction, creating a vortex that made the ground beneath crack subtly, as if the earth's heart were pulsing slowly.
Theo stood not far away, half his body bathed in golden light from the crisscrossing wind flashes.
A small yellow book pressed to his chest in his left hand, while his right hand gripped the still-sheathed sword tightly.
The resonance of energy in the air surged fiercely, making the scabbard tremble, though he had no intention of unsheathing the blade.
He wrote quickly on a nearly full page—recording every variation of movement, every subtle reaction from Erietta's body, every spiritual pulse emerging amid the pressure of the nine winds.
He knew this training was dangerous, far too fast for a nine-day stage, but time was a luxury he no longer had.
Every wasted day meant the manuscript diverged further from its intended path.
So, when Erietta's body moved slightly, only a strand of hair shifting from the perfect line of her meditation, Theo immediately straightened, staring sharply, and gripped the sword's hilt without intending to draw it.
The strikes he delivered were almost invisible, only thin streaks of light cutting through the air.
The One-Point Technique, Nine Acupunctures—moves meant only to test focus, had now become the most extreme form of control.
In an instant, nine points of light shot forward, touching Erietta's body, forcing her consciousness back into awareness.
Not great wounds, but small cuts marking her skin, opening energy pathways beneath the surface, while keeping Erietta balanced on the edge between life and death.
The cloth covering her body whipped wildly, torn in many places, and through the small gaps, blood fell slowly, spinning in the air, carried by the raging nine winds around her.
The scene was both absurd and beautiful simultaneously.
The colors of the wind reflected off the blood into strange shimmering lights that swirled in the sky, like stars trapped in a vortex of another dimension.
Theo stared long, wordless, letting the air hiss past his face.
He knew Erietta was nearing the brink of sanity, but that was exactly where the essence of Realm of Gloom training began to form.
Being able to endure without reacting, without thinking, without fear—that was the essence of understanding the gloom.
So Theo continued writing in his small book, black ink dripping from the pen, noting the results of the ninth day with slightly trembling hands.
In his heart, he knew the line between trainer and destroyer had become increasingly blurred, and perhaps, unknowingly, he himself was starting to sink into the gloom he was teaching.
'Day nineteen.Half her body is already covered in wounds, yet her eyes remain unextinguished.Eighteen days of basic material introduction have passed, and now she must enter the development stage.This is where other students usually give up—but not her.Perhaps because of hatred, perhaps pride, or perhaps she simply wants to prove something to me.'
Usshhh!
'Erietta Bathee, you don't even realize it yet, I'm not teaching you to win.I train you strictly so you can survive in a world that's no longer human.'
Slash—slash!!
"Theo!!This is beyond limits!!If this keeps going, I could die right here!"
"If you could die just because of this, then you don't deserve to move on to the next material."
Wuuuufh!
"Listen, Erietta.There's no reason for anyone to give up. And there's no reason for you to retreat, especially right as I'm about to teach the second material.So stand up.Walk.Keep moving, even if your body screams to stop.Because if you stop here, everything you've achieved—all your suffering—will turn to dust, never remembered by anyone."
'And I won't let that happen.'
First arc, end of episode seven.
Day nineteen arrived like a test demanding the separation of body and soul from human limits.
The sky above was dense gray, as if the world's dust had accumulated relentlessly over the previous eighteen days, marking a journey too long to measure with ordinary time.
In the midst of the plateau now littered with slash marks and cracks, Theo stepped slowly.
His footsteps made no echo, yet the air around him vibrated subtly, carrying the scent of metal and heat born from the friction of the sword's energy.
Ahead, Erietta Bathee stood, body unsteady.
Her green hair was dirty with dust, her pale face marked by new and old wounds that hadn't yet faded.
Yet her eyes—once easily shaken by fear—now stared forward, silent and rigid, like stone learning to breathe.
Though occasionally screaming under inhuman treatment.
Theo no longer asked her to sit cross-legged, nor instructed her to endure the nine-colored storm.
Today, the training was different. He gave only one order.
"Walk."
So Erietta moved, step by step, under the ceaseless rain of strikes.
Every movement Theo made was like a deadly symphony—his sword darted from the right, plunged from the left, rebounded from the air, then struck again from behind.
One swing could split the ground, and several times, Erietta was dragged backward, blood splattering from her torn arms.
She kept walking, though her legs shook, though the pain had surpassed the point of tears.
Several times, she fell, but each time, Theo only stared, cold yet calculating, waiting for the girl to rise again with the remaining strength she had.
There were moments when Theo's sword hit Erietta's leg, knocking her down.
The sound of flesh tearing rang clearly, and her knees hit the hard ground, raising dust.
But instead of stopping after screaming, Erietta extended her left hand, pressed the wound on her leg, and a soft light emerged from her skin—a pale green from Core Lu, the healing core she had begun to master unconsciously.
Within seconds, the fibers of her flesh rejoined, though with excruciating pain.
She rose again, walking with faltering steps, silently staring at Theo.
From afar, Theo lowered his gaze slightly, noting a line in his small yellow book.
"Day nineteen, she stopped screaming more than twice."
'Day twenty-seven.Her body is no longer that of an ordinary human.Wound upon wound, tear upon tear.Her flesh has learned to reunite without command, and the blood has memorized its route back to severed veins.And though her beauty has been torn thousands of times, her gaze remains the same.Flat, cold, but alive.'
Oooofhh!
'Ten thousand meters.Eight thousand new wounds.Two thousand lost limbs.And she still walks as if pain no longer has a language to speak to her.Only silence.Only continued steps.She begins to grasp a fraction of the meaning of the Realm of Gloom.Keep walking through destruction without needing a reason to stop.'
"Is my method still wrong?Is there a flaw in the technique? Or are my steps still shadowed by mistakes, my teacher Theo?"
"You have walked in the right direction, Erietta, but your determination has yet to appear."
Days twenty-seven and twenty-eight arrived with skies nearly devoid of blue—as if the world itself had lost the light worthy of illuminating Erietta Bathee.
To be continued…