The pale blue light of water mana was cold, but it didn't bite. It seeped into
the skin like a quiet stream, finding the jagged, torn edges of muscle fiber and
gently knitting them back together.
Cain sat on the edge of a wooden chair in the estate's infirmary room. His right
trouser leg was rolled up to the knee.
Aera knelt in front of him, her hands hovering just an inch over his calf. Her
eyes were closed, her brow slightly furrowed in absolute concentration. She
wasn't just closing the physical wound; she was smoothing out the chaotic,
lingering mana friction that had caused the tear in the first place.
She worked in complete silence.
Cain watched her. He didn't offer apologies for getting hurt, and she didn't
demand them. The dynamic between them had settled into a profound, unspoken
understanding. She knew he was going to push himself to the breaking point, and
he knew she would be there to put the pieces back together.
Slowly, the blue light faded.
Aera lowered her hands and sat back on her heels. She let out a quiet, tired
breath.
"The muscle is repaired," she said, her voice soft in the quiet room. "But the
tissue is still fragile. If you try to force that much mana into it again before
it settles, it will tear worse than before."
"Understood," Cain said.
He rolled his trouser leg down and stood up. He tested his weight on the right
foot. It held perfectly. No pain, no lingering stiffness. Her control over
stabilization was growing sharper every day.
"Thank you, Aera."
She looked up at him, offering a faint, reassuring smile. "Just... try to keep
the blood on the inside today."
Cain gave a small nod. "I'll adjust."
He left the infirmary and walked back out into the morning air. The courtyard
was empty. Rei and Alice were likely attending one of the theoretical lectures
the Duke had arranged for the visiting nobles, leaving the training grounds
entirely to him.
Cain walked to the center of the stone field.
He had spent the entire night analyzing his failure. The math was simple, but
the execution was flawed. His soul was operating at fifty percent capacity. When
he initiated a skill like Quick Step, the command left his mind instantly, but
the mana took half a second to travel from his core to his limbs.
If he moved before the mana arrived, his body broke under the kinetic force. If
he waited for the mana, he was too slow to survive a real fight.
He needed to bridge the half-second gap.
If his mana was too slow, he had to use something else to reinforce his muscles
in that crucial window.
Cain closed his eyes.
He didn't reach for his mana core. He reached for his pulse.
Blood Manipulation.
It was a skill he had acquired in the depths of the dungeon, born from sheer
physical desperation. It wasn't a spell that could be cast outward. It was
entirely internal. A biological override.
Cain focused on the rhythm of his own heart.
He took a slow, deep breath, and forced the organ to accelerate.
Thump-thump. Thump-thump-thump.
His heart rate doubled in an instant. The sudden surge of blood pressure rushed
through his veins, hot and violent. He directed the flow intentionally,
restricting the vessels in his upper body and forcing the highly oxygenated,
pressurized blood straight down into his legs.
The veins along his calves and thighs bulged against his skin. His muscles
swelled, hyper-engorged with blood, artificially hardened by the extreme
internal pressure.
It was agonizing.
His body felt like it was burning from the inside out.
But it was solid.
Now.
Cain routed the mana from his core, initiating Quick Step.
He didn't wait for the half-second delay. He stepped forward immediately.
The stone beneath his boot cracked.
He shot across the courtyard, crossing twenty meters in the blink of an eye. The
sheer kinetic force of the acceleration slammed into his leg muscles,
threatening to tear the fibers apart just like the night before.
But the fibers didn't tear.
The hyper-pressurized blood acted as a temporary, physical shock absorber. It
held his muscles together just long enough. A half-second later, the delayed
mana finally arrived, washing over his legs and perfectly stabilizing the rest
of the movement.
Cain came to a flawless, sliding halt near the weapon racks.
He immediately released the skill.
His heart rate plummeted back to normal. The bulging veins in his legs receded.
He dropped to one knee, gasping for air, his entire lower body trembling from
the sheer biological strain.
It wasn't a clean solution. It was brutal. It traded mana friction for physical
degradation. If he used it too many times in a row, he would burst his own blood
vessels and induce cardiac arrest.
But it worked.
He had his speed back.
From the top of the weapon rack, the shadow cat materialized. It looked down at
Cain, its silver eyes unblinking.
"A violent workaround," Elios's voice echoed in his mind. "You are using your
own blood as a substitute for a fractured soul."
Cain pushed himself up, wiping the sweat from his chin. "It buys me the
half-second. That's all I need."
"It will exhaust you twice as fast," Elios noted calmly.
"Then I finish the fight twice as fast."
Cain looked at his hands. Deep down, he knew the Black Veil was sitting there in
his arsenal. A massive, dense reservoir of power that could reinforce his body
instantly, without the need for tearing his own veins or calculating blood
pressure. It was the ultimate, frictionless tool.
And he left it exactly where it was. Untouched.
The shadow cat watched him for a long moment. Then, slowly, it turned its head.
It didn't look at Cain. It looked up, past the walls of the Valcrest estate,
toward the distant, pale blue sky.
The cat's ears twitched. Its tail went completely still.
"Cain."
The ancient, tired tone in Elios's voice was gone. It was replaced by a sharp,
absolute clarity.
Cain followed the familiar's gaze, looking up at the empty sky. He didn't see
anything. He didn't hear anything.
But the air in the courtyard suddenly felt incredibly thin.
"They are moving," Elios said quietly.
Cain's grip tightened on the hilt of his practice sword. "Who?"
"The ones bound by the laws you broke." The shadow cat's eyes narrowed into thin
silver slits. "The Executors. They have found the scent of the White Domain."
Cain didn't ask how long they had. He didn't ask how strong they were.
He just looked at the heavy stone walls of the estate, thinking of the people
inside.
"Then my time here is up," Cain said.