Driven by a surge of pure adrenaline, Henry skipped the usual post-training chats and headed straight for his room.
His heart hammered against his ribs—not from exhaustion, but from the intoxicating proximity of reaching his next goal. He took a deep breath, centered his spirit, and uttered the command:
"Commence Rank Test."
The world flickered and died. A heartbeat of absolute darkness followed before he was suddenly standing in the center of a massive, rectangular clearing. The field was the size of a soccer field, surrounded on all sides by an impenetrable, ancient-looking forest.
Directly across from him stood a nightmare.
It was a wolf, but of monstrous proportions—six feet tall at the shoulders and twelve feet from nose to tail. Its fur was a ghostly, pristine white, and its predatory green eyes locked onto his with chilling intelligence. Massive canine teeth dripped saliva, framing a maw that could swallow a man's head whole. It was intimidating, but Henry drew on his memory of the mountain trolls in his previous life, which made this wolf look like a mount in comparison. He forced his breathing to steady.
A translucent blue screen shimmered into existence before him:
Trial: Foundation Establishment - Level 10
Opponent: Wind-Mana Dire Wolf (Level 10 Equivalent)
Objective: Slay the Target.
Do you accept the Trial?
"Yes," Henry voiced firmly.
The text vanished, replaced by a single prompt:
[Select Weapon of Choice].
Without hesitation, Henry called for a greatsword, placing his absolute faith in the Sinclair style he had spent a year refining. As the heavy steel materialized in his grip, a final footnote appeared:
Note: Defeating the Wind Wolf will not produce a Mana Core.
'Mana Core?' Henry thought, his brow furrowing. 'I need to get back to that study.'
He didn't have time to dwell on it. A ten-second countdown appeared, and as the final digit hit zero, the world exploded into motion.
Henry barely had time to brace himself before the wolf bridged the hundred-foot gap in a terrifying blur. It was almost on top of him before he could even take a step. He jerked his greatsword up in a desperate guard just as a massive paw, tipped with dagger-like claws, slammed into the blade.
The impact was thunderous. The force vibrated through Henry's bones, staggering him and shoving him back five feet.
He felt a flash of pride—having actually blocked it.
That pride was instantly stripped away. The beast was labeled as a level 10 equivalent, but its racial traits—inherent speed, agility, and raw power—were leagues beyond human capability. Henry found himself caught in a whirlwind of white fur and claws. Every parry felt like stopping a falling boulder, and for every strike he deflected, two more found their mark.
Lacerations opened across his chest and arms. He could feel the hot sting of blood and the dull throb of bruising, a reminder that while death in here wasn't permanent, the pain was very real. He tried to reorient himself, but the wolf was too fast. It circled him like a gale, and before Henry could even register the movement, he felt the crushing pressure of jaws snapping shut around his throat.
There was a sharp, momentary sting, a rush of cold, and then—darkness.
Henry gasped, bolting upright in his own bed. His room was quiet, the sunlight streaming in as if nothing had happened. He touched his neck, finding the skin unbroken, but the memory of the defeat remained scorched into his mind. Howard was right: Level 10 was just the beginning. Physical conditioning had opened the door, but it hadn't taught him how to survive the room.
"Commence Rank Test," he whispered, testing the limits.
Silence met his call. The system remained dormant, likely cooling down after his failure. Henry leaned back against his pillow, staring at the ceiling with a grim, newfound respect for the path ahead.
"Well," he muttered to the empty room, "it was worth a shot."
Henry retreated into his thoughts, dissecting the failure with the cold detachment of a scientist. The conclusion was undeniable: he was hitting a wall not just of power, but of identity.
The Sinclair style was a relentless engine of destruction—heavy, overbearing, and rigid. While it suited his father's massive frame and Howard's natural bulk, Henry felt a persistent friction whenever he swung the blade. He was trying to force a river into a square pipe. The Wind Wolf had exploited that exact stiffness; every time Henry planted his feet to deliver an overhead downward strike, the wolf simply wasn't there anymore.
The realization stung. He needed a style that valued fluidity or precision, like Adar's. But with Adar gone for two years into the Willder Mountains, Henry was effectively stranded. In a frontier barony like the Sinclairs, the Sinclair style was the only style practiced by the trustworthy.
At dinner that night, the atmosphere was thick with the scent of roasted venison and Howard's smugness. His brother had been through the Level 10 trial himself, and he wasn't about to let the chance to tease Henry go.
"So," Howard said, tearing off a piece of bread with a grin. "How was the 'Great Beyond'? Did the trial monster tuck you into bed, or did it just kick you out of the room before you could say hello?"
Henry's grip tightened on his fork. He could still feel the phantom pressure of the wolf's jaws on his neck. "It was... faster than expected," Henry replied curtly.
"It always is," Howard chuckled, leaning back. "Most people take six months just to figure out how to stand their ground in there. Don't feel too bad, little brother. Not everyone can be a natural."
"I'll get it next time," Henry said, his voice flat and determined.
Howard just winked. "We'll see. The trial doesn't just complete itself because you ask it nicely."
Henry knew he couldn't just work harder; he had to work deeper. The next morning, he made a radical executive decision.
He didn't skip the morning block led by the knights—that was his foundation, and he needed the eyes of Dante and his brother on him to make sure he wasn't making mistakes in his training. But the moment the formal session ended, he scrapped his supplemental strength and endurance drills.
No more weighted laps. No more endless sets of squats or high-rep calisthenics.
Instead, Henry stayed in the back courtyard with a heavy wooden practice greatsword. For hours, he simply practiced the Sinclair sword style over and over again. But he wasn't just looking for power. He was looking for the seams in the movements. He spent the entire month focused on learning how to shift his center of gravity mid-swing so he wasn't a static target, figuring out how to turn a missed heavy strike into a secondary parry without resetting his stance, and forcing his mind to stop thinking of the style as a set of different moves and more as a language that connects words into sentences.
He was obsessed. He was trying to master a style that felt wrong for his soul, hoping that through sheer repetition, he could find a way to make it right enough to kill that wolf.
By the end of the month, Henry's movements had lost some of their jagged and awkward edges. Just in time for the waiting period to expire.
The second attempt felt like a dance in a thunderstorm. Henry lasted five minutes—three minutes longer than the first time—but the result was a crushing sense of deja vu. He managed to nick the wolf's hind leg, drawing a small spray of blood, but the beast simply snarled, its eyes glowing with what looked like annoyance as it tore through Henry's defense with a vertical strike that sent him back to his room.
The next month was a blur of gray. Henry became a ghost in his own home. He was physically present at meals and walked with Mia in the evenings, but his mind was trapped in that rectangular field, endlessly replaying the moments when his blade met nothing but air.
His mother, Sarah, watched him with a pained expression over her tea, and Mia often lingered a second longer when she handed him his water, her eyes searching his for a spark of the Henry who had joked with her on his birthday. They knew him well enough to know that words of comfort would only annoy him. Success was the only remedy.
Four more months bled into each other. Four more times, Henry uttered those words: Commence Rank Test and four more times he was met with failure.
Six failures in total.
Henry sat on the edge of his bed after the sixth defeat, his breath coming in ragged, imaginary gasps. Half a year had passed since his seventeenth birthday. In his last life, this would have been the time he was drowning himself in wine, but in this life, he was drowning in a different kind of failure.
The slight improvement was the most agonizing part. He was getting better—his footwork was tighter, his grip more certain—but he was improving at a linear rate. The wolf, fueled by mana and instinct, was a nonlinear predator.
He was hitting the limit of what practice could do. The Sinclair style was a hammer, and he was trying to use it to catch the wind. He was stronger than he had ever been, his muscles hard as iron and his reflexes honed to a fine point, but as he stared into the darkness of his room, the cold truth finally began to sink in.
"I'm missing something," Henry whispered, his voice cracking with six months of accumulated frustration.