Owen did it. It took a good deal more than ten attempts before she was satisfied.
He walked out of the yard with aching arms and the uncomfortable suspicion that showing Edith those transformations had just made the rest of his month considerably harder.
Edith went to Edmund’s study later that day.
Edmund set his papers aside when she came in, and she could tell he was expecting another report on Owen’s cultivation.
"His armament has another property," she said. "One we didn’t know about."
"What happened?"
"During our spar, I had his blade in a bind. He changed his longsword into a shorter sword without dismissing his armament first and used the change to get out."
That got Edmund’s full attention.
"He summoned another weapon?"
"No. It was the same armament and the same fire property. Only the shape of the sword changed." Edith paused. "Afterward, I had him show me the rest. I watched it become several different kinds of sword."
Edmund leaned forward, and his questions were as practical as she had expected. "Are the changes stable?"
"They appear to be."
"Any sign they’re draining him?"
"Not that he’s noticed, and not that I could see."
"And can he fight with all of them?"
"No," Edith said. "His longsword is good. The others vary a great deal. Some of his training carries over, and some of it doesn’t."
Edmund was quiet for a moment.
"That’s why I want to change his training," Edith went on. "If I teach him six swords as six separate disciplines, I’ll miss the most dangerous thing about that armament. I want him to understand each one well enough to switch between them according to distance, opponent and situation, in the middle of a fight."
Edmund considered it, then nodded. "Do it. But don’t put novelty ahead of competence. If one of those swords needs foundations he doesn’t have, teach him the foundations. Surprise alone won’t keep him alive."
"That was already my intention."
The corner of Edmund’s mouth lifted slightly before he picked his papers back up. Edith had served him long enough to know he was pleased, and she took it as the end of the conversation.
The first several days set the pattern for the weeks that followed.
Owen cultivated on his own every day, outside the hours he spent with Edith. His progress was still far faster than it had any right to be, but after reaching Tempered Trace, the breakthroughs no longer came every few hours. The new rank needed a great deal more refined mana to strengthen, and he could feel how much deeper his core had become each time he worked to fill it.
Combat mornings began with conditioning. Edith rotated through runs, weighted carries, grip work, footwork patterns, explosive movement and endurance drills before moving on to weapon exercises. She kept a small notebook with her and wrote down what Owen completed each day, and the next morning’s session was always adjusted to match. Owen learned very quickly that a good day in her notebook meant a harder day to follow.
The changes in his body came gradually. His forearms grew more defined from hours of grip and weapon work, and his training shirts started fitting differently across the shoulders. His legs grew stronger from constant movement drills, and his recovery between rounds improved to the point where Edith had to work noticeably harder to wear him out.
When Owen checked his Status at the end of the first week, the physical numbers had crept upward, a point or two at a time across Strength, Agility, Endurance and Perception. It was nothing like the jump his breakthrough had given him. The training built on what cultivation provided, but it couldn’t replace it.
His weapon training became more specific as well.
Edith treated the longsword as his foundation and demanded more from it than from anything else. A cut that would have satisfied her with the saber was sent back for repetition with the longsword, because she knew he could do better.
With the greatsword, she made him use its reach and leverage without turning every attack into a full-power swing. The first time he committed too heavily, she stepped around the blade and tapped the back of his neck with her training sword before he had finished recovering.
With the rapier, she made him work on placing the point and attacking in direct lines. Every time he tried to use it like a lighter longsword, she stopped him and made him start again.
The saber was about faster cutting angles and moving while he cut, and the arming sword was about compact exchanges and staying comfortable when the fight was close. The falchion hit harder than its size suggested, but its balance punished him whenever he overcommitted, and Edith spent an entire morning making him learn exactly how much he could put into a falchion cut before he could no longer recover in time.
Once he understood the basic handling of each sword, Edith stopped letting him practice them separately for long. She started calling changes in the middle of drills.
"Rapier," she would say as he advanced, and he had to change from the longsword without breaking stride. When she closed the distance, it was the arming sword. When she retreated beyond his comfortable reach, it was the greatsword.
At first, Owen had to think about every change: which sword, which grip, and where his feet needed to be. The pause was short, but Edith punished it every time. After a few days of repetition, the decision started coming faster, and the pause began to disappear.
More importantly, he started to understand why each change mattered. Having six swords wasn’t the advantage by itself. Knowing when one was more useful than another was.
Edith sparred with him regularly. In the first sessions, she could control him while barely giving up any ground at all.
Owen stopped measuring those spars by whether he could win, because he couldn’t. He started paying attention to smaller things instead. He noticed the first time he forced her to reposition, and the first time she abandoned a counter halfway through because his sword had changed underneath it. Eventually, there was an exchange he finished before she could decide how it would end.
Edith never said anything about any of it. She simply adjusted and kept going, but Owen noticed, and that was enough for him.
One week into the routine, Owen reached Tempered Brand during his evening cultivation. The pressure built and settled the way he now recognized, and the system confirmed it.
Ding!
[Cultivation advanced.]
[Tempered — Brand]
His reserves were deeper afterward, and the next morning his body felt a little quicker and a little stronger during the warm-up. Edith noticed before he said anything. She had him run a circulation, confirmed that the breakthrough was stable, and added a fourth set to his weighted carries.
After that, she started combining exhaustion with decisions. She would run him through conditioning first and then spar with him while he was still breathing hard.
"Choosing the right sword when you’re rested is easy," she told him when he asked why. "Choosing it when you’re tired and someone is pressing you is the part that matters."
She also began allowing him to use his fire during switching drills, although not the way he had used it against Gareth. Maximum flame was no longer the goal. Instead, she made him learn when fire was worth spending.
A brief flare at the moment his sword changed length made the change harder to read. A little heat during blade contact made her less willing to hold a bind. Fire added to an attack that didn’t need it was simply wasted reserves, and Edith made him repeat any exchange where he spent it carelessly.
It went on like that for weeks. Edith would give him something difficult, Owen would learn it faster than she expected, and she would respond by making it harder. Neither of them ever seemed to reach the end of it.
Near the end of the month, during another evening of cultivation, the pressure in his core built and settled once more.
Ding!
[Cultivation advanced.]
[Tempered — Crest]
This time, he opened his Status afterward.
[STATUS]
[Name: Owen Ferrers]
[Age: 18]
[Armament: Empty Arsenal]
[Cultivation: Tempered — Crest]
[Strength: 61]
[Agility: 65]
[Endurance: 58]
[Perception: 52]
[Core Capacity: 42]
Two substages and weeks of Edith’s conditioning had carried every number well past where it had been when he first reached Tempered.
He didn’t need the panel to see the difference, though. He was leaner and harder than he had been at the start of the month, and his hands carried fresh calluses in places the longsword had never touched, left by grips he hadn’t used before. Changing swords no longer required him to glance down and check what had appeared in his hand.
On one of the last training days, Edith sparred with him again.
Owen opened with the longsword. When she met his first cut, he changed to the rapier and drove the point along a new line. Edith adjusted, and as she stepped in to close the distance, he changed again to the arming sword.
For the first time, Edith had to give ground several times in a row instead of controlling the whole sequence herself.
Owen still lost. She found an opening a few exchanges later and ended it with her training sword resting against his ribs.
She didn’t correct anything afterward. She just looked at him for a moment and nodded, and Owen understood that she had seen what she wanted to see. The changes weren’t tricks anymore. They were becoming part of the way he fought.
"Tomorrow is your final combat assessment," Edith said as she lowered her sword. "After that, we move on to the last preparations for the subjugation."
Owen waited for her to tell him which drill to prepare for.
"No switching drills," she said. "No conditioning circuit, and no controlled exercises. We’re going to spar properly."
"What’s the objective?"
"You don’t need to beat me." She lifted her training sword slightly. "You need to push me far enough that ordinary swordsmanship isn’t enough, and make me use my armament’s power."
Owen understood immediately what that meant. In every spar over the past weeks, Edith had never once needed that power against him. He had never even seen what it was.
She returned the training sword to the rack, collected her coat and left the yard without another word.
Owen stayed where he was. The ground in front of him was covered in scuffs and gouges from their last exchange, marks left by feet turning, stepping in and falling back. He looked at them for a long time.
He wasn’t thinking about which of his swords was strongest. He was thinking about the order he would need to use them in to make Edith show him what she had been holding back all month.