The next day.
September 25, early morning.
Maybe because he had slept too much yesterday, Luke opened his eyes while the sky was still only beginning to brighten.
He stared at the ceiling. There wasn't even a hint of sunlight outside yet, and he no longer felt sleepy at all.
At his ear, he could faintly make out the steady tapping sound coming from the communicator.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Luke had only just woken up and still didn't have much energy to move, so he stayed in bed, staring at the ceiling and listening to the soft sound.
After waiting a while, he finally had the strength to get up, but the noise still hadn't stopped.
So he sat up, pulled off the cover over the communicator, and said into it in exasperation, "Why aren't you sleeping this early in the morning? Why do you keep knocking on this thing?"
A moment later, Miss Crownguard's lively morning voice came through the communicator.
"Are you awake?"
"Nope. I'm still asleep and talking to you from inside a dream."
Luke yawned and answered dryly.
The other end suddenly went quiet. Luke put the cover back on, stretched lazily, got out of bed, and started changing clothes.
Then he went downstairs to wash up, washed his face, brushed his teeth...
About ten minutes later, a bicycle rolled through the front gate into the yard.
At that moment, Luke was squatting beside a flowerbed, holding a cup in his left hand and brushing his teeth with his right. He glanced at Lux as she rode in.
Seeing how lively and bright and carefree she looked, he couldn't help thinking to himself—
As expected of Miss Crownguard. She's this full of energy first thing in the morning.
She was dressed the same as usual today, but at a glance, after yesterday's coming-of-age ceremony, she really did seem a little different.
She looked like she had a bit more of an adult air about her now.
After parking the bicycle, Lux planted her hands on her hips with a pleased look. "Starting today, I'm officially an adult!"
Luke took a mouthful of water, swished it around, then spat it all into the flowerbed.
Only then did he look at her and ask, "And?"
Lux paused. "And..."
She thought about it, only to realize there didn't seem to be any and then.
Even though she had been looking forward to this day for months.
Now that she had actually become an adult, she realized her life didn't seem to have changed at all.
If she got up too early in the morning and made too much noise in the living room, her mother still chased her around with a feather duster if she was in a bad mood.
Once the weekend was over, she would still have to go back to the academy tomorrow.
Her allowance was still firmly controlled by that tigress.
When she thought about it that way, Lux suddenly felt like becoming an adult didn't really mean much.
Instead, it seemed more like it was telling her that it was finally time to seriously think about her future.
Before this, she had never really thought about what her future self would be like.
She envied Kahina and the others. They had been able to set clear goals for themselves at a very early age.
But she had never figured out what she wanted to do in the future.
In Demacia, what could someone like her—someone abnormal—even do?
The moment she realized adulthood wasn't really good news, one worry after another about the future came rushing in.
A trace of confusion appeared in her eyes, and the energy around her dimmed.
Seeing her wilt all of a sudden, Luke smiled and offered a bit of comfort. "Don't be discouraged. Even if you didn't gain anything, at least you got another year older, right?"
Lux rolled her eyes at him, let out a sigh, and couldn't be bothered to deal with him anymore. She walked over to the rocking chair and lay down.
Looking up at the blue sky, she started thinking about her future.
No matter what she wanted to do in the future, she felt the first thing she had to do was deal with the trouble inside her body.
For some reason, it had gone out of control again last night.
It had been a long time since anything like that had happened, and even now Lux still couldn't figure out why.
Fortunately, it had only slipped out of control for a short while. At least for now, it seemed to have returned to the same stable state as usual.
But that still made Lux notice some worrying signs.
She felt this loss of control probably wasn't that simple.
At the same time, she couldn't think of any good solution, and she didn't dare tell anyone around her about it either.
She simply couldn't summon that courage.
Nor did she dare imagine how they would react if they found out she was an abnormality.
She loved her life now far too much. And because she loved it so much, she didn't want to be the one who destroyed it.
The only person who knew there was something different about her was her mother, Augatha.
But when her mother found out last time, the first thing she did was bring in a Mageseeker and try to force Lux to drink those foul-smelling potions.
Lux had always been a little afraid of those masked, gloomy people.
Now, all Lux could do was pray in her heart that things wouldn't get too bad.
Hopefully last night had just been a brief flare-up, and from now on everything would return to normal.
Luke saw Miss Crownguard lying on the rocking chair and spacing out, but didn't think much of it. He just got up and headed inside.
Judging by the time, the others would be arriving soon. It was about time to start getting breakfast ready.
By the time breakfast was nearly done, the dining room was already full.
And the entire morning, Lux seemed distracted.
From how much she was eating, Luke could clearly tell this girl had something on her mind again.
But then he thought about it—tomorrow was the first day back at school, so it seemed perfectly normal for Miss Crownguard to be feeling down around this time.
After breakfast, he went to the front yard, lay down in the rocking chair, and silently thought, "Sign in."
[This sign-in has been upgraded to a monthly sign-in.]
[Congratulations, Host. You have obtained a high-level skill: Consecutive Slash.]
[Congratulations, Host. You have obtained a peerless miracle medicine: Five-Thousand-Year Ginseng.]
[Congratulations, Host. You have obtained a Training Card (7 Days).]
[Congratulations, Host. You have obtained 1 Realm Advancement Card.]
[Congratulations, Host. You have obtained 1 Basic Skill Upgrade Card.]
[Congratulations, Host. You have obtained 1 Normal Skill Max-Level Upgrade Card.]
[All system rewards have been automatically deposited into the system inventory. Please inspect and claim them yourself.]
A series of system notifications rang out, informing Luke that the rewards this time seemed pretty good.
[Detected learnable skill—Consecutive Slash LV3 (somewhat mastered). Learn?]
"Learn."
As the system prompt sounded, Luke silently answered again.
Instantly, he felt as if a strange energy began surging out from his heart, then flowing to every corner of his body.
At the same time, his mind gained a bit of experience related to this skill.
After a while, the sensation faded, and a satisfied look flashed in Luke's eyes.
He liked simple, direct skill names like this, just like Double Jump.
The effect of Consecutive Slash was exactly what its name suggested. Simply put, it allowed Luke to unleash a two-hit slash, a three-hit slash, or even more in extremely quick succession.
His sword speed was already pretty fast as it was, but once this skill reached a higher level, it could directly push him past his current limit.
"Not bad."
Luke praised it inwardly, then immediately said, "System, use the Basic Skill Upgrade Card to level up Consecutive Slash."
[Basic Skill Upgrade Card used successfully.]
[High-level skill Consecutive Slash has advanced to LV4 (fully integrated).]
[High-level skill Consecutive Slash has advanced to LV5 (flawless mastery).]
Very quickly, Luke felt that same energy rise up again. After about two minutes, it gradually faded away.
Once the feeling disappeared, he clenched and unclenched his fist, a little curious.
Still, he wasn't in a hurry. He would deal with the rest of the system rewards first, then go test the effects of Consecutive Slash.
The second reward was a peerless miracle medicine—a five-thousand-year-old ginseng.
There was no need to read the description. Just from the age alone, this ginseng was practically one step away from turning into a spirit.
In terms of medicinal effect, it was no weaker than the snow lotus from before. It was another miracle medicine that could save a life at a critical moment.
More importantly, this five-thousand-year ginseng was a massive tonic, and it strengthened exactly the areas men most wanted strengthened.
After a quick glance, Luke skipped over the Training Card reward and thought again, "System, use the Realm Advancement Card."
[Realm Advancement Card used successfully.]
[Congratulations, Host. Your realm has advanced to—Early Dauntless.]
The moment the system finished speaking—
Luke felt a warm current burst out of his heart like a river breaking loose, flooding through every meridian and acupoint in his body. Along with that sensation came an overwhelming feeling of comfort, so intense that he couldn't help closing his eyes and savoring it.
It felt like being constipated for two straight months and suddenly breaking through the blockage in a single glorious instant. That kind of explosive release—
It was incredible.
The feeling didn't last long, only around two minutes before it faded.
When he opened his eyes again, Luke looked thoroughly refreshed. He felt power coursing through his body, and his overall strength had clearly risen another step.
It wasn't some exaggerated doubling of his power, just a straightforward increase in physical strength, but the boost was at least around a third compared to before.
As for exactly how much stronger he was—
The first requirement for joining the Dauntless Vanguard was reaching the Dauntless stage.
Of course, even within the Dauntless stage, strength varied greatly.
Garen, for example, had joined the Dauntless Vanguard at a young age, and the record he set upon entering had only ever been matched by Cithria.
His overall strength among the Dauntless was on the higher end.
But Luke felt that his current self was no weaker than Garen, no matter how you looked at it.
After all, even before this, his strength had already surpassed that of many Dauntless soldiers.
Thinking of that, Luke's lips curved upward, and his mood improved.
Getting stronger without having to work for it really did feel great.
Then Luke turned his attention to the final reward.
The Normal Skill Max-Level Upgrade Card meant that one normal skill could be raised directly to max level.
After thinking about it, he realized it had been a long time since he had gotten a normal skill at all. And when he did get skills lately, they were usually already maxed out from the start.
At the moment, the only non-maxed normal skills in his skill list were Fingertip Trick, Flash of White Light, and Tiger Body Tremor, all at LV3.
After a quick glance, Luke thought, "System, upgrade Flash of White Light."
After looking them over, he felt Flash of White Light probably had the most practical value.
After all, he had used it before to fake out that old bastard running the cult.
In terms of usefulness, it definitely had its place.
[Normal Skill Max-Level Upgrade Card used successfully.]
[Normal skill Flash of White Light has advanced to LV9.]
With a system prompt, the level of Flash of White Light jumped straight to LV9.
Luke didn't feel anything special—no warm current, no surge of energy. It seemed to level up in the most ordinary way possible.
But based on his last experience using it, he knew this thing worked like a mana-consuming skill.
Now that it had been raised to LV9, the effect had definitely improved a lot, but the mana cost had probably gone up too.
And for Luke, that mana was his spiritual energy.
At this point, almost all the skills on him required spiritual energy to support them.
After dealing with the system rewards, Luke directly used the Training Card and entered its training space.
The last time he had changed the space, he had turned it into something like an ancient martial training ground.
"Bring out a practice dummy."
Standing in the center of the training field, Luke spoke casually.
At once, there was a whoosh, and a dummy wearing a Teemo hat appeared in front of him, looking almost exactly like the one in Luke's memory.
The moment he saw it, Luke drew his sword. Fully focused and holding nothing back, he slashed at the dummy with all his strength.
A few sharp flashes of white streaked out with a series of slicing sounds, and in an instant, three distinct sword marks appeared across the dummy's body.
That speed was even a little faster than Luke's serious full-strength slashes.
"So it can unleash three slashes at once?"
Luke looked at the result and felt fairly satisfied.
Three consecutive slashes were already no small feat.
And Consecutive Slash was only at LV5 right now. Once it reached max level in the future, the speed would become even faster, and the number of strikes would increase even further.
Combined with Wuju Sword Intent, wouldn't that basically make it a simplified version of Wuju swordsmanship?
After roughly testing it out, Luke dismissed the dummy and began training mode.
And just like that, the whole morning passed.
By around noon, Luke exited the training ground.
He glanced over and saw Lux lying in the chair beside him with her eyes closed. She seemed to have fallen asleep again, though it didn't look like she was having a sweet dream. Her face didn't carry the usual sugary smile it often did.
Luke got up and headed toward the backyard.
There, Fiora was training Kahina in swordsmanship, guiding her through the Swift Thunder Sword Style.
By now, Fiora had long since trained the Swift Thunder Sword Style to LV9, while Kahina, after two months, had only reached about LV8.
She still hadn't grasped the final layer of sword intent.
Objectively speaking, her talent was already quite good, but compared side by side, Miss Fiora was clearly a little more gifted.
Quinn wasn't there at the moment. She was probably over at the guard camp and would most likely be back around noon.
Since Vayne and Frey had left, Quinn was the only one managing things over there, which was honestly pretty exhausting.
As for Poppy, whom Luke had brought back—even though she was quite strong, when it came to managing people and training them, she was really not very good at it.
Luke worried that if he put the guards in her hands, they might all end up as stubbornly one-track as she was.
So he had adopted a free-range approach with Poppy, just leaving her at home and letting her do whatever she wanted.
Poppy, for her part, had no complaints at all. Every day, she threw herself into finding her new goal with endless enthusiasm.
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