I lay on the melted obsidian floor of Floor 2, staring up at the dark, vaulted ceiling of the mausoleum.
Inside my chest and skull, [Endless Resilience] was finishing the last of its work, knitting together the hairline fractures in my bone. The heat from Valeska’s earlier black flames had turned the stone around us into smooth, glass-like sheets, radiating a faint, residual warmth against my back.
Valeska stood ten feet away, her featureless helmet staring toward the sealed stone gate of Floor 3. Her black greatsword was sheathed on her back, her tattered ash cape hanging motionless in the cold air.
I wiped the dried blood from my forehead, slowly sitting up.
I looked at my dual katanas lying on the glass floor, then looked up at Valeska’s six-foot-two obsidian frame.
"I would have died today, wouldn’t I, Valeska?" I asked, my voice flat.
Valeska didn’t turn her visor toward me immediately. A beat of silence passed before her grinding, iron voice echoed in my head.
"Yes," Valeska replied coldly. "Without my intervention, the Bloodline General would have decapitated you. Your dual-sword techniques were clumsy. "
I looked down at my hands. My knuckles were scarred, covered in dried blood and dirt. The System’s 10x novice buffer was gone. The easy kill-scaling was gone. If I wanted to survive Floor 3, survive the Imperial Archons, and reach 3,000 Soul Essence, my current level of skill wasn’t just inadequate—it was a suicide sentence.
I looked back up at her, my gaze hardening.
"Can you train me properly?" I asked.
Valeska turned her featureless helmet toward me. The two crimson slits on her visor burned with a quiet, intense red light, studying me for three long seconds.
"Okay," Valeska said.
I stood up, drawing both katanas from their sheaths.
There was no sunlight in the Sunken Crypt of Erebos. No day, no night, no clocks ticking on a wall. In the dusky mausoleum, time ceased to exist entirely.
Valeska didn’t draw her greatsword. She simply stepped into the center of the melted floor, her bare gauntlets raised.
"We begin with the root," Valeska commanded, her voice dropping into the stern, unforgiving register of an ancient warlord. "Your stance is too high. Drop your center of gravity by two inches."
I dropped my hips, planting my boots onto the smooth glass floor.
"Faster," Valeska said.
She blurred.
BOOM!
Before I could even raise my katanas, Valeska’s gauntleted palm slammed into my shoulder. The impact launched me twenty feet across the room, smashing my back against an obsidian pillar.
"Gah!" I gasped, blood spurting from my lip.
"You telegraphed your movement," Valeska criticized, standing right where I had been a second ago. "Your shoulder twitched before your foot moved. Against a true master, that twitch is a death sentence. Again."
I pushed myself up, wiping the blood on my sleeve, and rushed her.
The training devolved into pure, unadulterated hell.
Valeska systematically disassembled every bad habit I had picked up. Every time I held my katanas too tightly, she struck my wrists until my fingers went numb. Every time my footwork drifted off-balance, her leg swept mine, slamming me into the hard glass floor. I think we were doing that for like 5-10 hours.
CRACK!
My left collarbone fractured again but [Endless Resilience] re-knitted it while I was still in the middle of a three-strike combination. Pain became a constant background noise—a roaring fire inside my muscles and joints that I had no choice but to ignore.
Then for the next 10 approximate hours. Valeska forced me to integrate [Ashen Pulse] and [Ashen Cleave] directly into my dual-sword geometry.
"Do not treat your Aether skills as separate spells!" Valeska barked, her gauntlet deflecting my right katana. "Your Aether is an extension of the steel! Channel the kinetic force into the edge at the exact millisecond of impact, not before!"
I struck again and again.
CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!
I channeled 20 Soul Essence into my right gauntlet, swinging my right katana in a tight, upward arc—Tiao. The black kinetic shockwave of [Ashen Pulse] didn’t burst outward into a wide, wasteful wave this time. Guided by my refined blade-angle, it compressed tightly along the six-inch edge of my steel.
BOOM!
The compressed pulse detonated against Valeska’s gauntlet, forcing her armored arm back by two inches.
Through her visor, Valeska’s red slits flared with dark approval. "Better. You are no longer swinging like a drunken peasant."
[Innate Trait: [Adaptive Resonance Lv. 1] Active!]
[Physical Adaptability Increasing...]
[Blade-Geometry Synchronization: 40%]
My muscles were remembering. My body was adapting. With every broken bone, every bruised rib, and every repelled strike, my reflexes sharpened. My dual-sword movements stopped feeling like two separate weapons and started feeling like a single, fluid extension of my own arms.
Eventually, Valeska stopped holding back her speed.
She moved through the dark mausoleum like black lightning, forcing me to rely entirely on my enhanced senses and [Adaptive Resonance] to survive.
SWOOSH! SWOOSH! SWOOSH!
My katanas moved in a blur of black steel and white frost. Parry, pivot, thrust, slash. I wasn’t just defending anymore—I was counter-attacking, finding the millisecond gaps between her movements and driving my blades forward with compressed Aether.
Our souls, locked in continuous, high-intensity combat for an approximate thirty-five hours, began to vibrate on the exact same frequency.
PING!
A golden System notification expanded in my vision, glowing softly in the dark.
[35+ HOUR CONTINUOUS SOUL-TETHER COMBAT SYNCHRONIZATION COMPLETE!]
[Resonance Level: 25% -> 30%!]
[SOUL ESSENCE THRESHOLD > 1,000 APPLIED]
[Soul Essence Permanently Expanded: +120 (1,080 -> 1,200 / 3,000)]
[Progress to 2nd Calamity Unlock (Lilith): 1,200 / 3,000]
CLANG!
My right katana was knocked from my hand, spinning through the air and embedding itself in the obsidian wall behind me.
My left katana slipped from my numb, bleeding fingers, clattering onto the glass floor.
My Aether pool hit absolute zero.
[Current Aether: 0 / 1,200]
My knees gave out, and I collapsed flat onto my back on the smooth glass floor, completely and utterly depleted. Every muscle in my body was shaking so hard I couldn’t even lift my pinky finger. Blood and sweat soaked my shirt, but my chest rose and fell in slow, steady rhythms.
Valeska sheathed her greatsword, stepping over to stand beside my fallen body.
She looked down at me through her visor. Her tattered ash cape settled around her shoulders, and her fast, shallow breathing betrayed that even she had felt the strain of thirty-five hours of non-stop combat.
"You held out for quite a long time," Valeska said, her grinding voice carrying a rare, quiet weight. "You did not break, mortal."
I lay on the cold glass floor, staring up at the dark mausoleum ceiling with a tired, bloody smirk.
"I told you, Empress..." I wheezed, my voice barely a whisper. "I’m stubborn."
If we spent roughly 35 hours training, there would be around thirteen hours left until the sealed stone gate to Floor 3 would unlock.