"Relax."

Lucian waved his hand.

"That is very difficult when you are holding Marrow Nails."

Sarah spoke as she looked at those horrifying nails in his hands.

"They are useful."

"..."

Sarah didn’t say anything.

Lucian shrugged, he then looked at his own body and pressed the first nail into a point near his shoulder.

Sarah’s fingers twitched when she watched it happen.

The nail slipped in cleanly, locking Lucian’s shoulder, it wasn’t a complete lock, only the muscles that weren’t needed at the moment, Vivienne had taught him. His left arm lowered slightly, as if a hidden string inside it was cut, his jaw tightened for one second.

Then he took another nail and inserted it near his ribs, then another near his thigh, then another near the side of his lower back.

Each nail sealed something.

A muscle.

A nerve response.

A support line.

A part of the body most people never noticed unless it stopped working.

Sarah watched in silence.

She could tell this was not random, Lucian knew exactly where to place each one and that fact disturbed her even more.

Lucian didn’t care, he tried to roll his shoulders, the movement felt stiff, his left leg did not respond properly, his back did not twist the way it should have, his shoulder refused to rise at the right time.

And Lucian—

"Good."

He smiled.

"That is your response...?"

"It means the placement is right."

Then he moved.

He took a step forward, his foot landed too heavily, so he stopped, stepped back and moved again, this time, the weight shift was better, but his shoulder dragged behind the motion.

"Ackk!"

Lucian hissed in pain, he clenched his fists and took the full brunt, then, he repeated the movement, ignoring the little pain.

After a step forward, he started different movements, turning, crouching, striking, retreating, and then, he repeated them, again and again and again.

Each time he moved incorrectly, the Marrow Nails punished him with intense pain. His muscles locked, his nerves burned, his balance completely broke apart with even the slightest of mistakes, telling him what exactly the mistake was.

And Sarah slowly understood what was happening.

The Marrow Nails didn’t seal Lucian’s entire body, with how he applied them, they only sealed certain muscles in Lucian’s body, making some movements difficult, some almost impossible. Because of that, Lucian couldn’t brute force his way out of a mistake, he needed to learn which muscles were truly needed for a movement, which ones were only support, and which ones he was using wastefully.

The Nails were used in such a way that he could either move perfectly, or he could bear the agony that came with moving incorrectly and fall.

It was... horrible.

But at the same time, it was... genius.

Normal training taught the body through repetition, Vivienne’s method forced the body to learn through pain.

If Lucian activated the wrong muscle, pain corrected him.

If he leaned too much on support muscles, the movement failed.

If he wasted strength, the sealed parts of his body refused to cooperate.

So his body had only one choice.

Move perfectly, exactly how Vivienne wanted him to.

This was the method Vivienne Everhart had taken decades to perfect, it was not just training, it was a method that carved the correct movement into the body.

This was also how Lucian, who realised the way he moved wasted too much energy, so he went to Vivienne, learned how to move like professional hunters, a skill that comes after years of training and honing their bodies, in two weeks.

It was honestly ridiculous, Lucian was already a freak of nature, how quickly he learned things surprised even Vivienne, so when someone like him trained under Vivienne, who had spent decades researching perfect ways to train as efficiently as possible—

The result was...

This.

"Why don’t more people use this method?"

Sarah couldn’t help but question when she saw how Lucian was moving now that the Nails were gone, she could literally ’see’ the improvement, she could ’see’ the results of the training, in two absurd hours.

"Hmm? Do you want to try?"

Lucian grinned as he looked at her with one nail in his hand and very quickly—

"I am fine, thank you."

Sarah shook her head, instantly getting her answer.

No one trained like this because no one was crazy—

Except for this freak in front of her.

"Alright, can we leave now?"

She questioned with a tired sigh.

"Huh? What do you mean? We are only just beginning. I still have strength and healing training left."

"..."

Sarah turned silent.

"You can leave if you want to though."

"...I am fine."

"Aww, can’t bear to part ways with me?"

Sarah didn’t say anything, Lucian chuckled as he then carefully placed the Nails back in the case and picked up the Coffin Dial.

Sarah’s face changed.

Honestly, Coffin Dial was one of the... more normal artifacts in the case.

Of course, not normal in a sane sense, as the Coffin Dial was dangerous, easily the most dangerous one out of all.

That small black circular artifact was used to contain supernatural beings, it was fixed on sealed coffins that were used to hold dangerous supernatural prisoners, then, it increased pressure, making it so that let alone breaking the seal and escaping—

The entities inside the coffin could not even move.

It had twelve levels, allowing operators to adjust the pressure according to the prisoner’s strength.

The artifact was also frequently used during interrogations; by slowly increasing the dial, hunters could make a captive experience exactly what awaited them at higher levels, turning the threat of being crushed into a paste into a way of extracting information and compliance.

Be that as it may, because the artifact had levels, Sarah had heard of some physically enhanced hunters using it for training because their bodies were too strong for ordinary weights to matter.

Of course, even those hunters were called crazy bastards for doing it, but it still happened.

This was why it did not surprise Sarah as much as others did.

’Whatever, someone needs to check these people’s heads.’

She sighed, putting Lucian in the same group as ’other crazy hunters’.

The poor girl had no idea what she was about to witness.