The old man stared at Lucian for a long moment. That disappointed expression hadn’t faded.

"Come on," he said, leaning back in his chair. "You have such a powerful bloodline. This is the era where bloodlines reign. Don’t you desire to reach the peak of cultivation? Become the most powerful?"

Lucian thought about it. The question wasn’t simple. Power for its own sake had never driven him. He’d never dreamed of standing at the top of the world. He’d dreamed of a small house. His sister. Quiet.

But quiet didn’t exist anymore. Maybe it never had.

"I want to reach a level of power," Lucian said slowly, "where nobody can hurt me or the people I care about."

The old man’s disappointed expression shifted.

"Good." He picked up his tea. "Would you like to be my disciple?"

Lucian studied him. He couldn’t sense the man’s cultivation with his natural senses — everything was still offline, human-level perception. His Eyes of the Eternals were suppressed along with everything else. But the way the entire coliseum had gone silent when this man walked in. The way every instructor sat down without a word.

This man was one of the strongest in the academy. Possibly the strongest.

Why not accept? Is not like he had anything to lose. Instead, it seemed like he had a lot to gain.

The old man was waiting. Sipping his tea patiently.

"I accept," Lucian said.

The old man smiled. Then his eyes closed again, and he murmured, "Fuck, my eyes hurt already just from activating it for a few minutes."

Lucian blinked.

"My name is Allistar Flint," the old man said, setting down his cup. "From now on, I am your master."

He reached into a storage ring on his finger and pulled out a sword. A-Rank by the faint mana glow around the blade. Plain handle, simple guard, no decorations.

"Your first task." He placed the sword on the table. "Swing this in a forward slash a thousand times."

Lucian stared at him.

"After all," Allistar said, picking up his tea again, "you must have a lot of stamina for a vampire. You must have a lot of sex since you’re still so young."

A deadpan expression appeared on Lucian’s face.

He looked at the old man. Allistar was already whistling softly, cradling his tea like nothing had happened.

Is he drunk?

Lucian picked up the sword. It was light. Comfortably light. The balance was good. He could swing this a thousand times without breaking a sweat.

He started.

Forward slash. Downward. Clean form.

One. Two. Three. Ten. Twenty. Fifty.

The sword felt good. Smooth. Each swing was effortless.

By the hundredth slash, the sword started feeling heavy.

Lucian frowned but kept swinging. His arms were fine. His shoulders were fine. The sword itself seemed heavier — not physically, but somehow. Like the air around it was thickening.

Two hundredth slash. Definitely heavier now. His wrists adjusted. His grip tightened.

Three hundredth slash. The sword was very heavy. Each swing required real effort. Lucian’s brow furrowed. This was an A-Rank sword, but it shouldn’t feel like this. Not to him.

"Is something wrong?" Allistar asked from his chair. "I’m pretty sure that sword is quite light for a superior-blooded vampire such as yourself."

Lucian ignored him. He was sure the old man did something to the sword.

hundredth. Five hundredth. Sweat beaded on his forehead. His shoulders burned. His forearms ached.

Six hundredth slash. His arms hurt. For a vampire, that meant something. The sword now felt like it weighed as much as a steel beam.

Fucking hell. This old man.

Seven hundredth. Eight hundredth. Lucian’s breathing was ragged. Each swing was a battle — not against the sword’s weight, but against something deeper. Like the sword was resisting being moved through the air itself.

Eight hundred and forty-first slash.

His arms gave out. The sword clattered to the wooden floor. Lucian dropped to one knee, then both knees. His entire upper body trembled.

"Come back tomorrow," Allistar said.

Lucian pulled himself up. Grabbed the table for support. Walked out on legs that felt like jelly.

Behind him, Allistar sipped his tea. He watched Lucian leave through the open doorway, the young man’s silhouette disappearing down the path toward the academy.

"Hope he’s the one I’ve been waiting for," the old man murmured to himself. "He seems quite disappointing. Some of his abilities appear to be nerfed. And his bloodline is still sealed. I wonder..."

Three days passed.

Lucian returned each morning at dawn. Each day, he swung the sword. Each day, the weight increased — not the sword’s physical weight, but that invisible resistance that made each slash harder than the last.

Day one: 841 swings. Day two: 912 swings. Day three: 1,000 swings.

On the third morning, Lucian stood in the clearing outside the wooden house. Shirtless. Sweat pouring down his chest and back.

He’d done it. One thousand forward slashes.

Allistar sat in his rocking chair on the porch, drinking tea. He didn’t look impressed.

"Come here," he said.

Lucian walked over. His legs were steady now — the sword swings had somehow strengthened his entire body, not just his arms.

Allistar set down his tea. White energy gathered around his right arm — pure, clean, so dense it made the air hum.

"What is this?" Allistar asked.

Lucian studied the energy. "Pure mana."

Allistar nodded. The white energy flowed from his arm and condensed in front of him, shaping itself. Lengthening. Forming a blade, a guard, a handle.

A sword made entirely of pure mana.

Lucian’s eyes widened. Not at the sword itself — he’d seen mana constructs before. But the control. There was no wasted energy. No flickering. No instability. The sword was as solid as steel, as smooth as glass, as sharp as a concept.

Allistar raised the mana sword. Swung it outward in a single casual slash.

Nothing seemed to happen.

One second passed. Then two.

Then Lucian heard it — a deep, resonant crack that came from far away. Very far away.

He turned.

Across the lake, past the waterfalls, in the distant mountain range that bordered the academy’s territory — a massive vertical slash appeared. It cut through rock, snow, and cloud alike, a line of destruction that stretched from the mountain’s base to its peak.

Lucian’s mouth opened slightly.

He activated Eyes of the Eternals — his passives had returned two days ago — and focused fully on the distant slash. The system fed him data. The cut was clean through the molecular level. No jagged edges. No residual energy. Just a perfect severance of matter.

The mana control required to do that from this distance was...

Beyond anything I’ve seen.

"This is what refined mana control looks like," Allistar said casually, sipping his tea. The mana sword had already dissolved. "Arthur has maybe ten percent of this. Clara has five. You have less than one."

Lucian didn’t respond. He was still staring at the mountain.

Then a thought struck him. Two days had passed since his abilities returned. He’d been so focused on the sword training that he hadn’t done something obvious.

He turned his Eyes of the Eternals toward Allistar.

He tried to view the old man’s status.

Pain.

Immediate and blinding. Blood dripped from Lucian’s eyes and nose. The system interface flared red — not with a notification, but with a warning so fundamental it was almost primal.

[ERROR — ACCESS DENIED — SUBJECT BEYOND SCAN THRESHOLD]

The red glow burned his vision. His legs buckled. The ground rushed up.

He hit the wooden porch floor and everything went black.

He didn’t see anything. Nothing. Except a single line of text that burned itself into his fading consciousness before the darkness took him.

Name: Allistar Flint.

Then nothing.

Lucian lay on the porch. Blood pooled beneath his face from his eyes and nose. His body was completely still.

Allistar looked down at him from his rocking chair. He took a slow sip of tea.

"Oh," he murmured with a small smile. "An eye ability. Quite the wrong person to use it on."