[Host, itâs morning. Your body has gone over 20 hours without nutrition. You require sustenance. Also, itâs a new day you have Academy today,] the system chimed softly, trying to pull Razeal out of his intense trance-like training.
But he didnât even look up.
"Leave it. Iâm busy," Razeal muttered sighing.
He hadnât slept or eaten. All he had done was die. Die, revive, and train.
[Youâre going to skip the Academy?] the system asked, genuinely surprised.
The system paused. It wasnât surprised that he wanted to skip. Razeal never cared for the lessons, the ranks, or the staff. But he always went for one reason: to keep appearances. He couldnât let people think heâd given up.
But this time... he had other priorities.
Razeal didnât pause.
"The people who need to know I didnât run away," Razeal said, "already know Iâm here. Or they will soon enough."
His voice was flat. Resolute.
"As for those whoâll misunderstand... Let them. Theyâll hear my name, loud and clear. On that day. When it matters."
He exhaled slowly, making up his mind completely. "Iâm not wasting even one more minute."
[Very well, As you wish. However, I recommend you at least eat something. Your biological body, despite your physical body stronger now, still requires maintenance if not more then before. Starvation impairs training.]
"Itâs not like I havenât been hungry before," he said with a shrug. "Not to say itâs just one day"
Then he paused.
"Wait... monster cores and elemental cores shouldâve arrived by now, right?"
He turned away from his training ground and instantly accessed the external interface, exiting system space briefly to handle business.
He appeared in the shop, where his assistant..Levy was already waiting ofcourse.
"Deliveryâs here?" Razeal asked bluntly.
Levy gave a half-scowl. "Yes. The 10,000 third-rank elemental cores, and 20 fourth-rank monster cores."
"Good."
After that, Razeal converted the 10,000 third-ranked elemental cores into third-ranked fire arrows and told Levy to sell them again.
Levy flinched. "Didnât you promise me an illusion-type skill this time?"
Razeal didnât even blink. "Not yet. Iâm busy."
The coldness in his tone made Levy back off. Dissatisfied or not, he knew better than to argue.
Razeal didnât explain himself. He had no reason to.
Razeal didnât care about the feelings of his employees. To him, Levy was basically a slave... for now. Not that Levy knew.
Razeal grabbed the 20 monster cores and turned.
"Also," he said over his shoulder. "Get food ready. Something high-protein. High energy. No delays."
Levy nodded reluctantly.
Before leaving, Razeal issued one last command:
"From now on, only collect monster cores from stealth or assassin-type monsters."
He couldnât outright say shadow affinity, because the concept didnât officially exist in this world. But thanks to system intel, he knew stealth- and assassin-type creatures had the highest chance of carrying it.
Back in his private room, Razeal absorbed the 20 fourth-rank monster cores.
System confirmed the result.
[Absorbed: 20 C-ranked monster cores.]
[Affinity Gained: Blood Affinity. Increase: Low medium.]
His face fell slightly.
"Tch. All blood affinity? Again Not even one shadow?"
His luck continued to spit in his face.
Still, there was some gain.
His blood affinity ticked up more than it ever had before.
But the real prize?
Mana.
[+2,000,000 MP Gained.]
[Mana Pool: 2,499,560 / 10,000,000]
Rank Up: Mana B-Rank Achieved.
The surge of power pulsed through him like adrenaline.
He grinned slightly.
"Not bad."
He didnât linger.
He grabbed the food Levy had left at the door, ate quickly with one hand, and returned to the system space without hesitation.
No wasted movements.
No distractions.
Time was a currency.
And Razeal refused to spend even a second on anything.
***
Inside system training space
[Tectonic Drift Uptake: 1%. Reduction of 99% achieved.]
It sounded like success. It should feel like progress. Ninety-nine percent of the kinetic pressure removed hell, that was a miracle. But even with just one percent of that monstrous force flowing through him, he was barely holding on.
Razeal wiped sweat from his forehead. "Still gonna explode... even with just one percent," he muttered.
Because that
one percent
?
It wasnât a joke.
Tectonic plates didnât just
move
. They
heaved
. Each one carried the weight of continents septillions of kilograms in motion. Even one percent of that energy was like holding the raw inertia of a falling moon in your spine. He tried syncing with the flow, letting it pass through him, trying to
ride
it, but it kept turning him into a ticking bomb of kinetic feedback.
"Feels like Iâm trying to balance on a nuke... while itâs mid-flight," he grunted.
It wasnât even about control anymore. The
math
alone was killing him. Every moment, his body had to calculate exact directional flow, speed variance, gravitational angle, and mass conversion. And one wrong decimal? Boom. System reboot.
He was training inside the System Space because the real world wouldâve vaporized him by now.
[System Advisory Detected]
"Depends on if you can take the burden and pressure of this host. If you were highly proficient in Flow Ability, it wouldnât have mattered you could have synced with any movement perfectly, so no pressure, no burden. But with your current level..."
The Systemâs voice had no emotion, but Razeal could still
feel
it judging him.
"Even a trillionth of a miscalculation would result in death. Thatâs the price of this technique. Yes, it is powerful, and yes, it grants immense advantage but the disadvantages are just as lethal."
"I recommend you stop trying to force the percentage down. Instead, perfect your Flow Handling. Right now, youâre brute-forcing it reducing the weight instead of improving your ability to carry it. Even if you reach 0.1%, your body might still fail when it counts."
"Eventually, the energy required for later stages will be so immense that no physical body, no matter how enhanced, can withstand it. Your current advantage is your physicality but that will stop mattering. If your Flow Proficiency doesnât improve, youâll cap out. And die."
"Right now, your Flow Usage is below Basic Level. If you reach Intermediate, you might be able to truly carry this burden, not just suppress it."
Razeal didnât argue. He just let out a long sigh.
"Yeah, yeah. I get it. But even that pathetic dowm one percent... is enough for now."
He stood up again.
"What the hell would I even do with a full-powered tectonic drift slash? Crack open a continent? Slice off a piece of atmosphere? Iâm a villain, sure... but I need a planet to live on too."
Iâm still not fighting FUCKING gods yet itâs just a fucking 16-year-old, or maybe someone around 30 am going to fight them just a few days. I donât believe I need that much power this fast... and this is the fastest way to get it.
You think I donât know what path Iâm on?
Iâm trying to rely on my body to get it fast. I know itâs the wrong way.. but itâs the fastest.
He laughed quietly to himself, a bitter edge to the sound.
"And Maybe one million kilograms of force... thatâs more than enough for now. Hell, thatâs enough to send a mountain flying."
He cracked his neck and walked back holding sword swinging at coming ice pillar at him. No countdown. No reset. Just him and the relentless, crushing pressure of tectonic motion.
No shortcuts. No hacks. Just pure grind.
He positioned himself again. Closed his eyes. Reached for the flow.
It came like a tsunami of force.
He let it
touch
him not consume him. Let it skim across his awareness. Like a blind man feeling the shape of a god with his fingers. He felt his heartbeat sync with the rhythm. His knees buckled. Veins bulged. Blood leaked from his ears.
But he
stayed standing
.
"Letâs go again," he whispered.
And just like that four days passed in outside world.
In the real world, that was nothing. A weekend. A nap.
But inside the System Space where time is 10,000 times the outside four days felt like eternity.
He doesnât even know how much time exactly had passed.
And still, Razeal was standing.
Flow: Slightly improved.
***
Taking a deep breath, Razeal suddenly steadied himself, reviving just seconds after being completely
parished
.
Just as he appeared
A massive ice pillar, the size of a tower, erupted toward him from Glaciermightâs direction. It roared through the air with lethal precision, freezing the wind around it as it closed in fast.
But Razeal didnât care.
He exhaled slowly, calmly, as if the living mountain fucker wasnât throwing a building-sized projectile at him. He closed his eyes, tuning everything out no sound, no wind, no weight of reality just that faint, pulsing ripple.
The brown flow.
That ever-present tectonic rhythm that had become his obsession.
His entire focus funneled into it. He didnât think. He didnât resist. He flowed.
The moment that ripple passed beneath him he moved.
His sword swung not too fast, not too slow. No effort wasted. It was a perfect curve, a match to the invisible pulse only he could feel. As if his blade had slipped into a groove carved into space itself.
The tip of his basic training sword tapped the oncoming ice pillar.
Tap.
A soft, almost pathetic sound. Like a stick brushing a stone.
And then
Silence.
Time stilled.
The massive pillar, mid-flight, hovering like it had forgotten what it was meant to do.
Then came the unraveling.
A slow shiver cracked through the structure, like a string of glass fracturing under moonlight. The entire ice pillar began to crumble not shatter but disintegrate. Fine, dust-like particles peeled off from its edges.
And then light.
A vertical beam of white burst from the impact point, shooting skyward. A seamless line of pure kinetic fury, invisible until the air itself responded, roaring upward in a cyclone of light and force. It wasnât just destruction. It was erasure. As if reality refused to remember the pillar ever existed.
Razeal stood motionless, eyes still closed.
But the corners of his lips curled.
"Itâs starting..." he whispered. His voice barely audible beneath the dying howl of air. "Finally..."
But then ..crack.
He felt the weight vanish from his hand.
Razeal opened his eyes.
The sword.. his sword was gone. Not broken or dropped but disintegrated.
The handle, the hilt, the blade all of it had turned to floating cosmic dust, consumed in the very moment it struck. no surprises here
And not just the sword.
He looked down and froze.
His right arm was gone.
No, not gone transformed.
From fingertips to shoulder, all that remained was sleek, ink-black obsidian bone. No muscle. No skin. No blood.
A skeletal arm made of obsidian Agony the material darker and scary than death itself.
For a moment, he could only stare.
No pain.
No bleeding.
Just... absence.
It was the first time he had ever seen his own bones so clearly. They shimmered in the light like polished jet. Beautiful. Terrifying.
He flexed the fingers what was left of them and watched the black joints shift with eerie silence.
"The strike took my arm with it..." he muttered. His voice dry.
He shouldâve been panicking. But he wasnât. There was only focus. like.. well its just temperory itâll return anyways..
"Maybe I need to tone it down a little more..."
He let out a tired chuckle.
"Itâll be perfect when it doesnât erase part of me every time I swing it."
He clenched the skeletal fist.
The power was real.
Now, he just have to perfect it.
---
Hey guys, I thought skipping most of the training part would be good, right? Since itâll be really boring I mean, itâs just one application and most of you already got the gear of it, right? Itâs hard, but worth it.
If anyone has words like "it took him this much time," then I would like to remind you: itâs an SSS-ranked ability. Even if learned the wrong way around, it will take centuries.. yes.
Anyways, if anyone is confused, please just tell me. I can explain more specifically and deeply in further Chapters.
And well, now the next focus will be on the Killing Intent ability. Some Chapters more, then weâll be on to the duel.
Thanks for reading.
---