Three years passed quietly inside Lady Eva’s estate grounds, the kind of quiet neither Hoju nor Fresha had known was possible until they finally had it.
Hoju kept to his arrangement faithfully, disappearing into the surrounding wilderness for days at a stretch, returning each time with enough game to keep the household fed and enough Input Points earned from the deeper hunts to keep pushing every skill he carried further past what he’d once thought possible.
Lady Eva kept her end of the bargain too, never once mentioning him to Dall’s other ranked fighters, watching him grow in careful, patient silence from the edges of her own busy political life.
Fresha’s sixteenth birthday arrived on a quiet morning, and Lady Eva herself walked her to the nearest monument, standing beside her the way neither of their own parents ever got the chance to.
**Level: 60**
**Max Level Cap: 500**
**Class: Sword Priest.**
It was a rare designation, one Eva herself admitted she’d only seen twice before in her long life, a hybrid class built around a blade that healed as easily as it struck.
Fresha’s skills unfolded over the following months as she trained under Eva’s own careful guidance, **Mass Heal** spreading recovery across an entire group at once, **Heal Slash** turning a simple strike into something that mended as much as it wounded when aimed at an ally, **Quick Heal** for the smaller, faster wounds that couldn’t wait, **Disintegrate** for the enemies that needed ending outright, **Heaven’s Judgment** calling down a focused pillar of holy force on a single target, and **Travel**, a short range blink not unlike the one her brother had taught himself years earlier under considerably more desperate circumstances.
“You’ve built something rare,” Eva told her, watching her run through the forms one quiet afternoon.
“A blade that can save a life and end one in the same breath.
Guard that carefully.
Not everyone will understand what they’re looking at when they see it.”
It was in Fresha’s third month of training that Lady Eva finally sat both siblings down and explained the plan she’d been quietly building since the day she first watched Hoju stalemate a captain of the garrison.
“Dall’s five ranked fighters hold a competition every so often,” she said.
“A wager between us, properties and land staked against each other, decided through our own students rather than ourselves.
The last one ran six years ago.” Her expression tightened slightly.
“I lost badly.
Despite standing third strongest in this kingdom, I have never once fielded a student capable of matching what the others bring to the floor.”
“Until now,” Hoju said, understanding settling in.
“Until now,” Eva agreed.
“Rank One’s student is a girl named Emilia, level one hundred and eighty, a dark mage with a blade close enough to her own hip that most opponents forget she carries one until it’s already found them.
She fights at range with Void Bolt, Shadow Reap, and a finishing technique called Eclipse Nova, and closes distance when she needs to with Umbral Slash and Nightfall Thrust.
Rank Five’s student is a berserker named Grath, level one hundred fifty, terrifying in close quarters, Bloodfury and Skullcrusher backing a technique called Undying Wrath that makes him considerably harder to put down than his level alone would suggest.
Rank Two and Rank Four field students at one hundred and one hundred ten respectively, competent, but not the true threats in this field.” She paused.
“My own strongest, until you walked through my gate, was level ninety.
A heavy knight named Wren.”
“You want me to represent you,” Hoju said.
“I want you to win me back six years of quiet humiliation,” Eva said, without apology.
“But I won’t force it on you.
If you agree, I’ll finally introduce you properly to the rest of the household, and to what you’ll actually be walking into.”
Hoju thought of Wren’s sharp comments toward Fresha over the past three years, of Dessa’s matching irritation, and felt, despite everything, a small, satisfied curl of anticipation settle into his chest.
“I agree,” he said.
“But before I represent you against anyone, I want to know exactly where I actually stand.
Not against a captain, and not against your students. Read this novel at g.com for the best experience.
Against you.”
Eva’s eyebrows rose slightly, something between surprise and genuine interest crossing her sharp features.
“You want to spar with me,” she said.
“I’ve spent three years testing myself against monsters and mercenaries,” Hoju said.
“I have no real sense of where that leaves me against someone who’s actually earned a rank in this kingdom.
I’d rather learn the gap now, in private, than discover it standing across from Emilia or Grath with an audience watching.”
Eva studied him for a long moment, then something like approval settled over her expression.
“Careful and honest in the same breath,” she said.
“I like that more than I expected to.
Very well.
Tomorrow morning, before the household wakes.
I’d rather this stay between us as well.”
They met in a walled training yard behind the main house before dawn, mist still clinging low to the grass, Eva already waiting in plain training leathers when Hoju arrived.
“No holding back,” she said.
“On either side.
You wanted to know where you stand.
I intend to show you properly.”
She opened with a single step that closed the entire yard’s distance between them before Hoju’s eyes had finished tracking the motion, her blade already sweeping toward his ribs in a strike he barely got Heavenly Parry up in time to meet.
The impact staggered him three full steps backward despite the parry landing clean, a clear, immediate lesson in exactly how much raw power separated a ranked fighter from everything he’d faced since Coug Forest.
He answered with Instant Move, blinking past her guard and driving Hurricane Slash toward her exposed side, and Eva simply wasn’t there anymore by the time the strike arrived, her own speed carrying her clear of it with room to spare that made his best technique look almost lazy by comparison.
“Better,” she said, already circling him again.
“Most of my own students wouldn’t have closed that gap at all.”
He summoned two Duplicates without breaking stride, sending them in from opposite angles while he held back, testing whether her attention could actually be split the way weaker opponents had proven it could.
Eva dispatched both in a single fluid motion, a wide horizontal arc that caught them in the same breath, and pressed the follow through directly toward Hoju himself before he’d finished processing that both clones were already gone.
He caught the strike with Air Blade, buying himself half a second, and used it to put real distance between them, chest heaving, sweat already soaking through his shirt despite the cool morning air.
They traded exchanges like that for the better part of an hour, Hoju throwing everything he’d built at her in careful, escalating combinations, Eva meeting every attempt with a controlled ease that never once tipped into cruelty, always leaving him just enough room to learn something from each failed opening before closing it again.
She finally called a halt once the eastern sky had properly started to lighten, both of them breathing hard, Hoju’s whole body aching in ways that told him exactly how thoroughly he’d been tested.
“Well,” she said, sheathing her blade.
“Now you know.”
“I’m not close,” Hoju admitted, sinking down onto a low stone bench at the yard’s edge.
“Not to you.
Not yet.”
“No,” Eva agreed, without unkindness.
“But you closed more distance in one hour than any student I’ve trained in the last decade managed in their first year under me.
That gap won’t stay this wide forever, not at the rate you’re growing.” She studied him for a moment.
“Grath and Emilia are strong.
They are not what I am. This chapter was copied from g.com without permission.
Keep that in mind when the competition arrives, and don’t let a win against them convince you the world’s ceiling sits anywhere near where you currently stand.”
“I won’t,” Hoju said, and meant it.
The household gathered in the estate’s main hall that evening, Corin and Dessa lounging near the hearth, Tam and Lia curled together over a shared game, Wren standing apart with her arms crossed, the posture of someone who’d already decided how this introduction would go before it started.
“This is Hoju,” Eva said.
“He’ll be representing this household in the coming competition.”
Silence answered her for a long beat, then Wren’s disbelieving laugh broke it entirely.
“Him,” she said.
“The one who’s been sneaking around the back forests for three years instead of training properly with the rest of us?
My lady, no offense, but he’s what, level two?
I’ve seen him carry firewood.
I haven’t seen him fight.”
“I have,” Eva said simply.
“That should be enough.”
“It isn’t,” Wren said, stepping forward, something proud and stubborn settling into her stance.
“I’ve been this house’s strongest for three years.
If you’re replacing me with someone I’ve never even seen hold a blade properly, I want to see it myself first.”
Eva glanced toward Hoju, an unspoken question in her eyes.
He simply shrugged, unbothered.
“Fine,” he said.
“If it settles things faster.”
They cleared the hall’s center within minutes, Corin and Dessa dragging furniture back against the walls while Tam and Lia watched with wide, excited eyes, Fresha standing quietly near the doorway with an expression that mixed nerves and complete confidence in equal measure.
Wren opened with **Iron Sentinel Stance**, her whole frame settling into a hardened, immovable posture that visibly thickened the muscle along her arms and shoulders, and closed the distance with a heavy overhead strike backed by **Crushing Verdict**, force enough behind it to have ended the fight against nearly anyone else in that hall in a single exchange.
Hoju simply stepped aside, not bothering with Quick Steps at all, letting the strike crash harmlessly into the floor where he’d been standing a half second earlier.
Wren’s eyes narrowed, and she pressed harder, chaining strikes together with a discipline that would have impressed him if he weren’t already reading every opening a full beat before she committed to it.
She finished the combination with **Judgement Day**, slamming her weapon down in a strike meant to crack open the ground itself and catch him regardless of which direction he chose to dodge.
He didn’t dodge.
He caught the strike on Heavenly Parry instead, redirecting its full force back along the same line it had come from, and Wren staggered under the rebound of her own technique, disbelief finally cracking through her earlier confidence.
He could have ended it there.
He chose not to, circling her instead, letting her reset and come at him twice more, testing the edges of her kit with the same patient curiosity he’d once used cataloguing snares in the forest below Teria’s mountain, until the entire hall understood, without a single word needing to be said, exactly how far apart they truly stood.
He finished it with a single, almost gentle strike to her shoulder, Horizontal Slash pulled well short of its real force, enough to buckle her stance and end the exchange without drawing blood at all.
Wren sank to one knee, breathing hard, staring up at him with an expression that had entirely lost its earlier scorn.
“Level two,” she said, quiet disbelief threading through every word.
“Level two,” Hoju confirmed, offering her a hand up she took, after a moment, without any further argument at all.
Lady Eva watched from the edge of the hall, arms folded, a small, satisfied smile finally settling over features that had spent six long years waiting for exactly this moment.