After being beaten by his father, Adam lay on his back, covered in bruises and sweat.
He had tried to resist his father's attacks as much as he could... but when his body reached its limit, Zephyr showed no mercy. He could sense that his father enjoyed beating him.
Damn, sadistic older man.
He sighed and sat down.
He reviewed everything that had happened during this brief training session—torture. And he couldn't be more satisfied; he managed to see each of the attacks, the posture, the weaknesses, and the improvements, things that he could only intuit before.
He noticed that his father's fencing skills still had a lot of room for improvement, despite already being quite good.
Adam had no choice but to believe that everything about this mysterious system was real.
Now he has an SSS-rank talent for fencing! Which meant that for magic, too, but at the moment, he has no way of knowing.
I need to open my mana channels to begin the initial preparations.
As he sits up, he feels the gaze of Asterin, who is floating nearby.
"Is something wrong?"
She puts her hand on her chin, deep in thought, before answering.
"It's just too painful to see you waste your talent like that. Even though you have good reflexes and intuition, you waste a lot."
"What do you mean?" Adam asked curiously.
"Look," Asterin gestured, manipulating the mana in the air with incredible mastery, forming the figures of Adam and his father.
Soon, these two figures made of pure mana began to reenact the battle between Adam and Zephyr.
What incredible manipulation of mana.
Adam was amazed at how easily Asterin manipulated the mana in the air, something he couldn't do no matter how hard he tried.
"Look at this part: you made this move, which was completely unnecessary." Asterin's voice snapped him out of his thoughts, and he noticed the two figures made of mana.
He began to pay attention to her words as she pointed out each flaw in his posture during the training match against his father, as well as Zephyr's.
He absorbed all the explanations like a sponge, and he couldn't help but marvel at the way Asterin pointed out each of his mistakes.
After the explanation, she undid the two mana figures with a simple gesture.
"Do you understand now why you've been wasting your talent?"
Adam nods and asks.
"How did you do that?"
"That's easy, but first you have to access your mana. I can teach you a method that will allow you to do that."
He nodded, knowing that he had to open his mana channels first.
He sighed; he had a lot to do now, but he wasn't in a hurry.
Haste is man's worst enemy.
He never knew where he heard that phrase; it was as if it had been with him from the beginning, but... in the end, it didn't matter.
So, without further ado, he left the training ground while chatting with Asterin, who floated around him.
...
After about twenty minutes, Adam was fully dressed. He looked at himself in the mirror for a moment and then turned his gaze to the window, where he saw the gardeners, along with some of the mansion's servants, walking around and watering the flowers, among other tasks.
The sun was already setting on the horizon, painting the sky an orange-red hue, while the west darkened like the mouth of a wolf.
He looked away from the window.
Adam watched as his mother gave instructions to the maid, for it was almost time for dinner.
After giving orders to the maids, Alisha approached Adam with a serene smile. She looked at him closely, her gaze sweeping over every fold of his attire, as if in those details she could find the certainty that everything was fine.
However, the memory of what had happened before still weighed heavily on her heart.
Although Adam was now sixteen, for her, time had not changed the essential. In her eyes, he was still that fragile, delicate child she had once held in her arms.
Because a mother's love knows no age, it doesn't matter if her child is twenty, forty, or fifty years old: to her, they will always be her baby.
And Alisha was no exception. With Adam, her maternal instinct defied the passage of time, reminding her that even when children grow up, a mother's heart never lets them go.
Just then, Alisha stopped, as if something important had just crossed her mind. She turned to him and said casually, almost in passing:
"Son, I forgot to tell you that your fiancée is arriving tomorrow."
Adam turned slowly. He frowned for just a moment; he had erased her existence from the surface of his mind, as one forgets things that hurt too much.
However, as he thought about her, the memories that had been shrouded in a thick fog began to stir, gradually dissipating.
I see... so tomorrow is the day.
A faint smile, laden with sadness and guilt, played on his lips. He remembered the woman who loved him unreservedly, even when he himself did not know how to love himself.
His gaze shifted to the window, where the daylight seemed to be slowly fading, as if the world too were falling silent before his thoughts.
In his reflection, he saw not the young man he was now, but the man he had been... and whom he had failed.
This time will be different.
He promised himself silently.
I won't let you die that horrible way. Not again.
He knew that the reunion would not be easy, that it would reopen wounds that time had not healed.
Because tomorrow would not only be a busy day.
It would be the beginning of a second chance.