Having declared his victory, Lucifer immediately brought Ascalon and Manfred back to his house.
The backyard of the old house was a patch of wasteland, perfect for drilling Ascalon and Manfred.
Furthermore, Lucifer’s house was packed with books and scrolls—spoils of war he had gathered over the years—which they could read in their spare time to build up their education.
As they stepped inside the house behind him, Ascalon and Manfred instinctively felt a wave of discomfort.
This was especially true for Ascalon.
Having survived in the wild for so long, entering someone else’s home territory felt like an incredibly foolish move.
“Forget the beginning, forget the middle—anyway, welcome to hell.
Go find yourselves a room on the second floor.
I’ll have some bedding sent up in a bit.”
Considering that Ascalon and Manfred were just ordinary Sarkaz, and still very young, the thoughtful Lucifer had requested a range of daily necessities, ingredients, and other resources from Theresa.
Theresa had been very generous with her approval, and the supplies would be delivered shortly.
Perhaps because the royal siblings highly valued these two children, they had even approved rare seasonings like salt, sugar, and MSG for Lucifer.
Their reasoning: “No matter how tough things get, we can’t let the kids suffer.”
After picking their respective rooms and inspecting the layouts, the kids found the rooms surprisingly neat and simple.
It slightly altered their opinion of Lucifer.
They had assumed a Vampire’s house would be as messy as a cockroach nest.
“Once you’re ready, follow me.
Let’s run you through the tutorial first.”
Lucifer led the two to his personal treasury, which was packed with various trophies and spoils he had gathered from the battlefields.
Among them were all kinds of weapons, armor, and spell staffs.
“Go ahead and pick a signature weapon you like.”
Although most of them were secondhand, they were still genuine, military-grade gear, easily several tiers above the scrap metal commonly found in Kazdel.
Ascalon and Manfred exchanged a glance before beginning their search through the dazzling array of weaponry.
Manfred selected a sharp longsword.
Though it was a bit too large for his current build, the boy possessed remarkable strength and could swing a weapon designed for an adult soldier without much trouble.
Ascalon chose a pair of sharp daggers.
Such short, compact weapons were far more suited for her style of close-quarters combat.
And with that, the gears of fate began to turn.
“Let’s roll.
Time to run some target practice in the backyard first.”
Lucifer grabbed a katana from his treasury and led them out to the backyard.
Most Vampires didn’t need weapons to fight—at most, they’d carry a staff to pretend to be a primary spellcaster.
However, a Vampire’s training method obviously wouldn’t work for Ascalon and Manfred.
Fortunately, Lucifer had always dreamed of being a katana-wielding berserker, so he had never neglected his close-combat skills.
He wasn’t the type to just take his hands off the keyboard and give up the moment someone closed the distance.
“Before I start leveling you up myself, I need to check if your raw stats on paper are up to snuff.
Even if you want to become noble caster lords in the future, you can’t be so scrubby that you get captured the second someone gets close.”
Although Lucifer’s phrasing was a bit abstract, Ascalon and Manfred got the gist of it.
Sarkaz physical stats were naturally top-tier.
Even a Sarkaz mercenary caster could trade a few blows in close-quarters combat, so it would be a waste not to utilize that innate strength.
“Manfred, you’re up first.
Come at me.”
“Huh?
Me?”
Manfred pointed to himself in disbelief.
He knew Lucifer wanted to test his fundamentals, but…
a direct sparring match?
He was supposed to fight Lucifer?
For real?
“Don’t play if you’re scared, and don’t be scared if you’re playing.
Or I can send you back right now and have Theresa find you a cushy desk job.”
“No…
I’ll do it.”
Manfred bit his lip, stepped forward to face Lucifer, and gripped the sword’s hilt tightly with both hands.
With a single hand, Lucifer unsheathed his blade and tossed the scabbard aside.
Taking a deep breath, Manfred shouldered his longsword and charged straight at Lucifer.
Though he had almost no combat experience, Manfred’s explosive power, speed, and strength were outstanding compared to other kids his age.
Putting all his weight behind it, Manfred swung the longsword down toward Lucifer.
But Lucifer merely raised his katana, easily deflecting the strike.
The recoil sent Manfred stumbling back two steps.
Without giving the boy any time to catch his breath, Lucifer raised his blade with his right hand and delivered a simple, unadorned downward slash.
Manfred snapped back to attention and hurriedly raised his sword to block.
Clang!
The collision of blades kicked off a shower of sparks, leaving Manfred’s blade vibrating with a loud hum.
But Manfred himself fared much worse.
“Urgh!”
The sheer force behind Lucifer’s seemingly casual strike brought Manfred to his knees, and the sword nearly slipped from his grasp.
Seeing Lucifer lift his blade again, Manfred’s survival instincts kicked in.
He scrambled backward in a scramble to open up some distance.
Lucifer didn’t press the attack.
He already had a solid grasp of Manfred’s current level and flaws.
“Haah…
haah…”
Manfred panted heavily, already sweating bullets.
After just two exchanges, he felt on the verge of exhaustion.
If Lucifer had chosen to follow up, Manfred wouldn’t even have the energy left to block, let alone run.
“Composure lacking, experience lacking.”
Lucifer gave his assessment.
Lacking technique and experience, Manfred had been thrown completely off balance by nothing more than the recoil of his own deflected strike.
His mindset was just as unstable.
Under the immense pressure of facing Lucifer, Manfred had subconsciously wasted a huge amount of stamina, causing him to tire out rapidly.
“It’s fine.
We can fix all of this later.”
Lucifer shrugged.
Granted, the people he usually dealt with were either ancient high-tier monsters or absolute stat anomalies—or at the very least, individuals with decent mechanics and talent like Warfarin and Ermengarde.
Still, that didn’t mean Lucifer looked down on Manfred.
After all, the boy wasn’t even eighteen yet.
Besides, Manfred had plenty of raw potential.
Once he grew up, he was bound to surpass Warfarin and Ermengarde.
Even if he couldn’t match Theresis or Lucifer, he wouldn’t be any weaker than the other Sarkaz princes.
After wrapping up his review of Manfred, Lucifer turned his gaze toward Ascalon, who had remained silent the entire time.
“You’re next, Ascalon.”
Ascalon let out a deep breath as she steadied herself.
She stepped forward, reversing her grip on her two razor-sharp daggers.
Whatever happened, as long as she could grow stronger and gain power from Lucifer, she wouldn’t complain about whatever he did to her.
Having grown up in the wilderness, Ascalon had always lived by a single rule: the strong ruthlessly humiliate the weak.
Whoosh…
A howling wind swept across the clearing.
Lucifer and Ascalon stood facing each other barely ten meters apart, looking like cowboys or martial artists in a classic showdown, ready to clash at any second.
Gulp…
Standing to the side, Manfred swallowed hard, his eyes glued to their every movement.
Gua…
so this is what a master’s presence feels like.
The wind seemed to die down, and in that exact instant, Ascalon made her move.
Low to the ground, her back arched like a coiled spring, she lunged forward, blurring into a residual image.
The cold gleam of her daggers flashed as they lunged straight for Lucifer’s heart.
Theresa had told Ascalon that Sanguines possessed incredibly tenacious life forces, so she put everything she had into this strike.
If Lucifer couldn’t even block this, then he had no right to be her teacher.
As expected, Lucifer effortlessly deflected Ascalon’s aggressive onslaught.
Ascalon initially tried to push Lucifer’s blade aside, but she realized her strength couldn’t budge him even a millimeter.
Instantly changing her tactics, she attacked from a different angle.
Relying on her agile, lithe movements, Ascalon launched a barrage of surprise attacks aimed at his vitals, but Lucifer blocked every single one.
Logically, her petite build and compact daggers should have given her an advantage in close-quarters combat.
Yet Lucifer’s reaction times and speed were far beyond anything she could have imagined.
With an upward slash, Lucifer deflected Ascalon’s thrust once again.
Unlike Manfred, however, she didn’t lose her balance in a pathetic display after a single parry.
She regained her footing in the blink of an eye.
Yet, whether by coincidence or design, the moment she reestablished her balance, Lucifer’s counterattack was already upon her.
As if anticipating the exact moment she would be unable to dodge, Lucifer unleashed that same supreme auto-attack that had flattened Manfred.
The strike was already in front of Ascalon’s face, forcing her to block it head-on.
“Ugh!”
Ascalon crossed her daggers to block Lucifer’s heavy downward slash.
Surprisingly, she wasn’t forced to her knees.
Although her arms and legs were trembling violently, her body didn’t buckle under Lucifer’s weight.
She had successfully defended against the blow.
“Omoshiroi.”
Lucifer’s lips curled into a faint smirk, as if he had just witnessed something amusing.
It was like running a max-level character in a starting zone and encountering a low-level mob that didn’t die from a single basic attack.
Fortunately, Lucifer didn’t act like a toxic gamer and whip out some ultimate combo of divine spells to instantly vaporize her.
Instead, Ascalon somehow still had the strength to counter.
“Hah…!”
Tapping into her inner shounen protagonist, she slowly pushed Lucifer’s blade back, then suddenly let go of her force, slipping aside to dodge the descending edge.
Having slipped away, she immediately threw one of her daggers straight at Lucifer’s eyes.
Unsurprisingly, he casually swiped it aside with his sword.
Using the feint to exploit his recovery frames, she lunged into his inner guard.
Gripping her remaining dagger with both hands, she drove it viciously toward his kidney.
Did I get him?!
Excitement flared in her mind, but she momentarily forgot that Lucifer had only been playing against her with his single sword-wielding hand.
Screeech—
Lucifer extended his left hand and pinched the incoming blade.
No matter how hard she pushed, the dagger wouldn’t budge.
“Barehanded…
no, with just two fingers?”
Ascalon’s expression grew increasingly astonished.
She had never expected that her all-out attack could be stopped by Lucifer using nothing but his index finger and thumb.
Even Manfred, who was standing on the sidelines as an observer, gaped in sheer shock.
Lucifer, however, didn’t think much of it.
He had a hundred ways to stop her attack, but he had chosen the most “humiliating” one.
Who told her to target his kidney?
It had instantly triggered his PTSD.
And as everyone knows, Sanguines are notoriously petty.
“To think she could force me to use my second hand…
Truly terrifying.
Such a talent…
must not be allowed to grow!”
A theatrical look of ruthlessness flashed across Lucifer’s face.
Startled, Ascalon tried to pull back, only to realize her dagger was locked in his grip and couldn’t be withdrawn.
Snap!
With a simple flick of his two fingers, Lucifer snapped the dagger’s blade in half.
Ascalon stared at the broken dagger, her eyes filled with disbelief.
From their brief clash of weapons, she knew the quality of her daggers was top-notch.
Yet Lucifer had snapped it barehanded?
She looked up at him, only to see a knowing, enigmatic smile on his face as he casually ground the broken tip of the blade into fine dust.
That elegant yet incredibly powerful figure left a profound impression on Ascalon’s mind.
And that overwhelming, dominant strength sparked a sense of longing within her.
Yes, she had lost.
Even though the fight had been unfair from the start, Ascalon was completely, utterly defeated.
To anyone else, such a crushing defeat and massive gap in power would have shattered their resolve, but Ascalon was different.
Imitating the formal etiquette she had observed from others as best as she could, she bowed her head to Lucifer and uttered a title she would likely remember for the rest of her life.
“Master…”
Lucifer merely smiled, keeping quiet to maintain his aloof, master-class persona.
But in truth, he was the only one who knew how it felt to hear Ascalon speak to him with such complete submission.
Thanks, that really hit the spot.