After spending some time with Rose, I let her drift off to socialize with others while I made my quiet exit. Her perfume lingered around me, a pleasant reminder of the afternoon's diversion—but one I couldn't afford to dwell on.
I had more important things to do.
The moment I was alone, my mind settled back into one singular thought—strength.
No distractions. No detours. No pointless socializing.
I needed to get stronger.
I arrived at the training facility, swiping my I.D. card at the scanner. A soft beep, a quiet whirr, and the door slid open.
The private training rooms at Mythos Academy were, of course, state-of-the-art, the kind of thing most warriors could only dream of. A personal training chamber, reserved exclusively for every Class A student.
This was where legends sharpened themselves.
And this was where I was going to break myself.
But first, I needed to ensure complete privacy.
I walked to the control panel, my fingers dancing across the holographic interface with practiced precision. Surveillance disabled. Environmental monitoring reduced to basic life support alerts only. Emergency protocols set to manual override.
The room was now truly mine. No watching eyes, no recorded data, no questions about what happened within these walls.
Perfect.
Step One: Evaluate Arthur Nightingale.
Not as a protagonist. Not as a swordsman with potential. Just as a body with stats that needed fixing.
First problem—no Art. Combat Arts were essential, sophisticated techniques passed down through legacies that dictated a warrior's style, power, and efficiency. I had none.
Thankfully, as a Class A student, I would receive a Grade 5 Art automatically. Problem solved.
Second problem—no Gift. That was worse. Gifts were natural-born abilities—inherited talents, bloodline blessings, cheat codes for reality. I had none. Every other Class A student had at least one.
This, however, I could fix. The solution? Beast Will acquisition.
Third problem—low mana rank. And this? This was the real issue. The rest of Class A stood at mid-Silver, high-Silver, or even White-rank. Meanwhile, I was comfortably sitting at low Silver, which was another way of saying I was a lamb among wolves.
This wasn't something I could afford to ignore.
I knew a way to fix this. Unfortunately, that method was torture.
The growth of a mana core—at least until Integration-rank—was determined almost entirely by talent. The speed at which one absorbed ambient mana, purified it, and reinforced their core dictated everything. For most people, this was a slow, steady process that took years of careful cultivation.
But I had read about something else. A technique mentioned only briefly in the later volumes of the novel, when desperate Silver-rankers resorted to increasingly dangerous methods to advance. The author had called it "Core Renewal Meditation"—a euphemistic name that masked its true brutality.
The principle was simple, if insane.
Deliberately wound your own mana core, then force it to heal stronger than before.
Like breaking a bone to let it set denser, but infinitely more dangerous. Your mana core wasn't just an organ—it was the foundation of your entire magical existence. Damage it wrong, and you'd either die or become a magic-less cripple for the rest of your shortened life.
But if done correctly, with surgical precision and perfect timing, the healing process would strengthen not just the core itself, but the entire network of mana circuits connected to it.
Most people never attempted it because the risk-to-reward ratio was astronomical. The margin for error was measured in millimeters and milliseconds. One wrong move, one moment of lost focus, and it would all be over.
But I wasn't most people. I was desperate.
And desperation, I had learned, could make you do impossible things.
I drew my sword, the familiar weight settling into my grip like an extension of my will. The blade gleamed under the training room's artificial light, perfectly balanced, perfectly sharp.
I sat cross-legged in the center of the room, placing the sword across my knees. The ambient mana hung thick in the air, invisible threads of power that would soon be put to a very different use than intended.
This was madness. I knew it was madness.
But madness was just another word for doing what others couldn't.
I closed my eyes, feeling for my mana core. There—nestled behind my sternum, a steady pulse of silver energy that kept my magical existence anchored to this world. It felt warm, stable, completely unaware of what I was about to do to it.
"Sorry," I whispered to myself. "This is going to hurt."
I lifted the sword, angling the point toward my chest. Then, with exquisite care, I began to coat the blade with my aura.
This was the most critical part. Too much aura and the blade would become crude, uncontrollable. Too little and it wouldn't be able to penetrate to my core without killing me in the process. I needed surgical precision wrapped in deadly force.
The aura settled around the blade like liquid light, condensing into a razor-thin edge that could cut through mana itself. Perfect.
I pressed the point against my chest, just left of center, angling toward where I knew my core resided. The blade's edge bit through fabric, then skin, then muscle, guided by the aura coating that let it phase partially through physical matter while remaining solid enough to cut.
Pain blossomed immediately—sharp, clean, exactly what I'd expected. I gritted my teeth and pushed deeper.
The sword slid through my chest cavity with unnatural ease, the aura-coating allowing it to bypass organs that would have been fatal to pierce. I could feel it moving through my body like a cold finger of death, seeking its target with deliberate precision.
Deeper. Deeper.
There—the tip of the blade kissed the surface of my mana core.
The sensation was indescribable. Like touching a live wire with your soul, a connection so intimate and violent that my entire magical existence screamed in protest. My core pulsed erratically, sensing the foreign presence, trying to retreat from the obvious threat.
But there was nowhere to run.
I took a shuddering breath, sweat already beading on my forehead from the effort of maintaining perfect control. One wrong move now and I'd either puncture my core completely—instant death—or damage it so badly that I'd never cast another spell.
The margin for error was nonexistent.
With surgical precision born of absolute desperation, I pressed forward just a fraction more. The sword's tip penetrated the core's outer membrane.
The world exploded.
Pain unlike anything I'd ever experienced tore through my entire existence. It wasn't just physical—it was spiritual, fundamental, the agony of having your very essence violated. My mana circuits, intimately connected to the core, spasmed and cracked as foreign energy disrupted their delicate network.
Silver light blazed from the wound, leaking mana into my chest cavity in ways that should have been impossible. My vision went white, then red, then collapsed into flashing fragments of sensation that had no names.
I forced myself to hold the position for exactly three seconds—long enough for the damage to set, not long enough for it to become irreversible.
Then, with the last of my conscious control, I withdrew the blade.
The sword clattered to the floor as I collapsed forward, gasping, shaking, feeling my life essence pour out of the tiny wound in my core like water from a cracked dam.
This was the moment of truth. Either my body would adapt and heal stronger, or I would die here, alone, in a training room with no surveillance to record my final moments.
I forced myself upright, legs trembling, and began to meditate.
The healing meditation was different from anything I'd practiced before. Instead of the gentle, nurturing energy cultivation I was used to, this required me to guide my body's natural healing response while simultaneously forcing it to rebuild stronger than before.
I reached out with my remaining mana, carefully gathering the silver energy that had leaked from my core. Instead of letting it dissipate, I began to weave it back into the damaged pathways, using the trauma itself as a roadmap for improvement.
Where circuits had cracked, I reinforced the repairs with compressed mana. Where the core membrane had torn, I rebuilt it with denser, more resilient spiritual matter. Each healing iteration was an opportunity to upgrade, to evolve beyond my previous limitations.
The process was excruciating. Every breath felt like swallowing glass, every heartbeat sent fresh waves of agony through my compromised magical system. But slowly, incrementally, I could feel the changes taking hold.
My mana flowed differently now—not just faster, but cleaner, more efficient. The core that had once felt stable but limited now pulsed with expanded capacity, like a small room that had suddenly grown into a cathedral.
Time became irrelevant. I existed in a state of controlled regeneration, my consciousness split between monitoring the healing process and enduring the impossible pain of having my magical foundation rebuilt from the inside out.
The training room's life support systems registered my vital signs but, as programmed, remained silent. No alarms, no alerts, no interference. Just me, my blade, and the thin line between evolution and extinction.
Hours passed. The immediate damage healed first—the physical wound closing as if it had never existed. Then came the deeper repairs, the fundamental restructuring of my mana pathways that would determine whether this insane gamble had been worth it.
Gradually, incrementally, I felt something shift. The silver light of my core burned brighter now, its pulse stronger and more stable than before. The circuits that had been damaged were indeed stronger, able to handle energy flows that would have overwhelmed my previous configuration.
But even as I felt the improvements, I acknowledged the brutal truth: this method had limits.
I could only do this till White-rank, after which the mana core begins to disintegrate.
But for now, it was enough.
When the healing process finally stabilized, I opened my eyes. The training room looked exactly the same, but everything felt different. The ambient mana was more vivid, easier to perceive and manipulate. My own magical signature had deepened, become more complex.
The cost had been agony beyond description.
But it was progress.
I stood slowly, testing my body's responses. Everything ached, but it was a different kind of ache—the deep, bone-deep exhaustion that came from fundamental change rather than mere physical exertion.
The clock read 11:30 PM. Four and a half hours of controlled self-destruction and regeneration, compressed into what felt like both an eternity and an instant.
"Progress," I said to the empty room, my voice hoarse but steady.
It wasn't enough. Not yet. It would never be enough until I could protect the people who mattered. But it was a start—a foundation built on desperation and precision, cemented with an unimaginable amount of pain.
I picked up my sword, noting how the blade seemed to respond more readily to my aura now. Even my weapon recognized the change in my magical capacity.
Tomorrow I would need to find other methods. This technique could only carry me so far, and each use brought me closer to permanent damage. But for tonight, I had proven something important.
I was willing to literally stab myself in the heart for power.
And if that wasn't desperation enough to close the gap with the monsters in my class, then nothing was.
The door closed behind me with a soft hiss. One breakthrough down, countless more to go. But the path was clear, and I would walk it regardless of the cost.
Physical suffering was temporary. Weakness was forever.
And I refused to be weak again.