They stood together in a loose semicircle. Lysameria walked slowly in front of them. She stopped in front of Narisva and looked her up and down.
"So, have you made your decision?"
Narisva inhaled once, steadying herself, then nodded.
"I have. I'll be a mage."
Lysameria's lips curved upward.
"Good."
"I use my Divinity far more than my scythe. Forcing myself into weapon combat just because I can is inefficient. Being a mage fits me better."
She extended her hand.
"That's a solid reason. Now, your Divine Weapon."
Narisva summoned it instantly. The scythe appeared in her grip in a flash. Its blade shimmered with distorted space. She handed it over without resistance. Lysameria examined it like a craftsman would before she pressed her fingers against the shaft and released a pulse of unfamiliar energy.
The scythe reacted.
Metal groaned. The blade liquefied as the weapon began reshaping itself with a deep hum. The shaft elongated, thickened and morphed into something straighter. When the light faded, the scythe was gone.
In its place stood a mage's staff two meters tall—exactly the same height as Vastarael's Calimostria— with its surface forged from a star-flecked metal that looked like a slice of night sky hammered into shape Lysameria turned back to Narisva.
"Do you have a miniature sun in your inventory?"
Narisva froze.
"Yes. How did you know?"
Lysameria shrugged lightly.
"I can sense most things, especially absurd ones."
With a flick of her fingers, Narisva summoned the sun she made for her Fist Sacred Trial. The blue miniature sun appeared above her palm. It was the size of her hand yet so impossibly dense and hot that gravity visibly bent around it. Even Adelasta felt her crimson flames stir uneasily in response. Lysameria raised her hand, forming a perfectly circular ring of water around it. The water obeyed instantly, compressing into a transparent halo that contained the star's heat and gravitational pull without effort.
She lowered the miniature sun onto the top of the staff.
The metal shifted again, flowing upward and outward, forming an elegant C-shaped tip that cradled the blue sun at its center. The staff settled into its final form.
Then Lysameria released it.
The staff struck the ground with a thunderous impact that echoed through Aquamarine, cracking stone that hadn't fractured even under the crushing pressure of the deep ocean during endurance training.
Milliania whistled softly. "That floor survived the ocean pressure."
Leon crossed his arms. "And lost to a stick."
"That staff contains the density of a miniature sun. Not metaphorically but Literally."
Lysameria bent down, grasped the staff, and lifted it effortlessly, then dropped it again with another earth-shaking thud.
"Narisva, you cannot lift it because you are not strong enough. And before you get clever, no, you cannot use Spatial Divinity to cheat."
"Why not?"
"Because the sun is embedded into your Divine Weapon. Any Spatial manipulation you attempt will treat it as part of yourself. So you'll only be lifting using your strength as part of training. Just because you are a mage does not mean your body becomes irrelevant. If you want to wield that staff, you will train your physical strength until you can lift it."
Narisva stared at the staff, then stepped forward and tried. Nothing happened. The staff didn't budge, not even a millimeter. Lysameria watched with clear satisfaction.
"Good. That frustration means you understand."
She turned to the rest of them.
"Endurance training resumes. When she can lift the staff, she may use it. Until then, she earns it. When she can finally lift it, that's when her mage training will begin."
°°°°°°°
They didn't know when days and nights came and ended. According to Lysameria, the Sea of Origin follows a different time structure so trying to figure out day and night might try to make them insane. All they knew is that they were here for an equivalent of seven to eight months.
Also, what amazed them was that they didn't remember normal days that easily. It was as if the concept of time was destroyed inside Aquamarine. What felt like weeks of training was hours to them.
Every day began the same way. The dome would dissolve, the water would rush in with the weight of an entire world and pressure would slam down hard enough to pulverize unprepared bodies into paste in less than a second. Bones cracked instantly. Lungs imploded. Blood boiled in places it was never meant to move. At first, endurance was measured in seconds, then minutes.
Anamorsia and Milliania were the first to transcend it.
By the second month, ninety minutes under full deep-ocean pressure had become standard for them. Their bodies adapted in terrifyingly different ways.
Milliania's Soul Energy became dense and stable, wrapping her internal organs in layered reinforcement that redistributed pressure instead of resisting it outright. When the dome restored after an hour and a half, she didn't collapse, she simply stood there, exhaled once and adjusted her posture like she had finished a light warm-up.
Anamorsia was worse, or better, depending on perspective.
Being part Hydroborn, the ocean wasn't an enemy to her. It was a hostile environment she had learned to negotiate. Lysameria had to end her sessions manually not because Anamorsia failed but because the training objectives were already met and continuing would only deepen her adaptation beyond what was necessary.
"You're overdoing it," Lysameria told her once.
Anamorsia shrugged as she wiped the water off her hair.
"It's relaxing."
Milliania snorted when she heard that.
"Only you would call abyssal pressure relaxing."
They kept going anyway because endurance was the point of their training, and both of them were evolving faster than expected.
Leon and Leones followed next. They hit their limit at one hour and stopped there. Their Aeterium bodies had already adapted as efficiently as possible. Leon spent most of that time refining his stance and internal balance by practicing sword movements in his mind while the ocean tried to break him. Leones mirrored him, focusing on control rather than brute resistance.
By the third month, Lysameria dismissed them from endurance training entirely. So they became overseers, correcting posture and dragging unconscious bodies out of the water when time ran out.
Adelasta, Elyonari, and Narisva were another story. They could endure an hour but it came at a price. Every session ended the same way. They were unconscious every time.
Narisva had it the worst.
Endurance training alone wasn't enough for her. The staff waited for her every day to be pulled. Between pressure sessions, she trained her body mercilessly. Her hands bled. Her muscles tore and rebuilt over and over again. She would stagger out of the ocean pressure unconscious, wake up barely an hour later, and force herself back into physical training before her body fully recovered.
Leon watched once with concern etched into his face.
"She's going to break herself."
Lysameria shook her head. "No. She's forging herself."
Months passed like that. Hell became habit.
Pain became progress. Bodies that once shattered under seconds of pressure now stood firm for hours.