The Mind's Eye Diagram was not a place of physical space. It was a terrifying, endless void of absolute black, intersected by glowing golden grid lines that pulsed like a dying star.
When Krad materialized inside it, he expected to feel weightless. Instead, he immediately collapsed to his knees, clutching his chest as a blinding spike of agony ripped through his fractured ribs. His left leg gave out entirely, the sensation of his torn muscle burning like hot iron.
"What is this?" Krad gasped, coughing violently into the empty void. "I thought you said my physical body was dormant!"
High above him, Captain Kashima's voice echoed from every direction at once, strict, cold, and absolute.
"Your physical body is resting in a hospital bed, being mended by the Elven Queen. But a tactical simulation is useless if it does not account for your limitations. I have synchronized your neural pathways to remember your exact physical degradation. If you fight like you are healthy, you will die. Adjust."
A few yards away, the golden grid lines suddenly bent and twisted, weaving themselves into a three-dimensional wireframe. The frame quickly filled with color, manifesting into a perfect, terrifyingly accurate copy of Morana Blackthorn.
"Simulation Start." Kashima's voice boomed.
Krad gritted his teeth and forced himself into a defensive stance.
The simulated Morana simply raised a single pale finger.
She's going to use the floor, Krad thought, remembering her fight against Aze.
He channeled his remaining energy, activating Moon Step to launch himself backward, ignoring the agonizing tear in his thigh. He was fast. He was out of the blast zone.
But Morana's finger hadn't pointed at the floor. It had pointed at the ceiling.
A massive stalactite of absolute ice plummeted from the darkness above. Krad didn't even have time to look up. The ice impaled him straight through the spine, pinning him to the golden grid like a captured insect.
The pain was so absolute, so hyper-realistic, that Krad's mind simply shut down. The world went black.
Gasp!
Krad's eyes snapped open. He was back on his knees in the center of the grid, his heart hammering against his ribs in terror. He touched his back. No blood.
"Death One," Kashima's voice droned, entirely unimpressed. "You telegraphed your evasion before she even committed her mana. You looked at her hand, not her intent. A street brawler looks at the fist. A Slayer looks at the shoulders, the hips, and the flow of the core."
"It felt real," Krad choked out, shivering uncontrollably. "I actually died."
"You will die a thousand more times before this session ends," Kashima replied. "The mind learns fastest when it is standing on the edge of the abyss. Simulation reset."
The grid lines shifted. The massive, tattooed, gold-eyed form of Titan Forgeborn materialized.
"Begin."
Titan didn't use magic. He simply stepped forward and swung a fist the size of a boulder. Krad tried to duck, utilizing the lateral footwork Dani had taught him. But his torn thigh muscle betrayed him, causing him to drag his left foot by a fraction of an inch.
Titan's fist clipped Krad's shoulder. The kinetic force practically liquefied Krad's collarbone, sending him spinning into the void before everything went black again.
"Death Two. Adapt. Use your environment, use your enemies' momentum."
Death Twelve. Krad tried to block a simulated strike from Zarek and was turned into ash.
Death Forty-Seven. Krad tried to use Fundamental Strike against Morana, but she froze the moisture in his lungs before he closed the distance.
Death One Hundred and Three.
Up in the invisible observation space of the domain, Mist stood beside Kashima. The third-ranked Slayer watched his student die over and over, his pink eyes tight with sympathy.
"You're pushing him too hard, Captain," Mist said quietly. "He's only sixteen. His mind might shatter before it adapts."
"If it shatters here, he wakes up with a headache," Kashima said, his jagged scar pulling tight as he frowned down at the grid. "If his mind shatters in the real arena, he dies permanently. Liyab will not hold back. And worse... Xerxes will not show mercy."
Mist's hand drifted subconsciously to the hilt of his Celestial-tier sword. "Is the intel confirmed? The Corrupted Mage is actually moving on the city?"
"Yes," Kashima said grimly. "And he is not coming alone."
Fifty miles outside the protective magical barriers of Sorsogon City, the world was dead.
This was the Ashen Valley, a wasteland of gray rock where a Vanguard patrol of fifty high-level Slayers had been ambushed and slaughtered three days prior. The air here was thick and heavy, suffocating under the weight of dark, corrupted mana.
Footsteps echoed through the silence.
Xerxes walked among the scattered, broken bodies. The Corrupted Mage wore deep crimson robes that seemed to drink the ambient light. His eyes, glowing like fresh blood, swept across the massacre with a look of mild, clinical boredom.
"A waste of good material," Xerxes murmured, his voice smooth and cultured, contrasting violently with the horrific aura he projected.
Behind him stood a small retinue of corrupted beasts, massive wolves with extra limbs and exposed ribs. But Xerxes waved them back with a flick of his pale, aristocratic hand.
"The Earth Shift is nearing its apex," Xerxes said to the empty valley. "And the Red God demands perfection for the new world. I cannot march a horde of rotting corpses into Sorsogon City to extract the Moon Eater. The tournament security is too tight. Titan Forgeborn and the Vanguard would incinerate them at the gates."
Xerxes stopped in front of a body.
It was Jace, barely older than Krad. He wore the standard light armor of a Wind Magic specialist. A gaping, fatal wound tore through his chest, his unseeing eyes staring up at the gray sky.
"I need spies," Xerxes whispered, a twisted smile pulling at the corners of his mouth. "I need eyes in the Colosseum. I need ghosts who can walk in the daylight."
Xerxes raised his hands. He did not cast a standard necromancy spell, for standard necromancy simply puppeteered dead flesh. What Xerxes practiced was divine corruption, a gift from the Red God himself.
Crimson light poured from Xerxes's fingertips, raining down onto Jace and twelve other fallen Slayers scattered across the rocks. It soaked into their skin like water into parched earth.
Slowly, horrifyingly, the fatal wounds began to close. Muscle knit together. Skin reformed, unblemished and healthy. The gray pallor of death washed away, replaced by the warm, flush tones of the living.
Jace took a sudden, violent gasp of air.
The young Slayer shot up into a sitting position, clutching his chest. His eyes darted around frantically, completely lucid, completely aware.
"I... I was dead," Jace stammered, his voice trembling. He looked at his hands, feeling his pulse pounding in his wrists. He remembered the ambush. He remembered the pain of a corrupted wolf's claws tearing through his heart. He remembered his mother waiting for him back in the Southern Provinces.
"You are alive," Xerxes said warmly, stepping into Jace's field of vision.
Jace scrambled backward, his instincts screaming. He recognized the crimson eyes. He recognized the monster who had orchestrated the ambush.
"You!" Jace yelled. His original personality, his righteous anger, and his heroic spirit flared to life. He channeled his mana perfectly, summoning a razor-sharp blade of compressed wind in his right hand. With a furious cry, Jace launched himself at the Corrupted Mage, aiming to decapitate him.
Xerxes didn't dodge. He simply kept smiling.
Just inches from Xerxes's neck, Jace's arm violently arrested itself in mid-air.
"W-What?" Jace gasped, straining with all his might to push the wind blade forward. But his arm refused to obey.
"It is a fascinating piece of magical theory, is it not?" Xerxes said, calmly walking around the paralyzed boy. "You have your own soul. Your own memories. Your own free will. You can laugh, you can cry, you can love."
Xerxes snapped his fingers.
Jace cried out as his own arm moved against his will, turning the wind blade inward until it rested directly against his own throat.
"But your nervous system, your mana core, your very existence, belongs entirely to me," Xerxes whispered smoothly. "If I tell you to sleep, you sleep. If I tell you to bleed, you bleed. And if I tell you to act like a perfectly normal, traumatized survivor of an ambush..."
Xerxes waved his hand, and Jace's arm dropped. The wind blade dissipated. The young Slayer fell to his knees, tears streaming down his face as he realized the absolute, inescapable horror of his reality. He was a prisoner in his own living body.
Around the valley, the other twelve revived Slayers were waking up, experiencing the exact same horrifying realization as their bodies moved against their screaming minds, bowing perfectly in sync to the Corrupted Mage.
"You will return to Sorsogon City," Xerxes commanded the weeping teenagers and veterans. "You will claim you survived the ambush. You will infiltrate the crowds, the merchant stalls, and the tournament waiting areas."
Xerxes's crimson eyes narrowed, thinking of Mist's report, thinking of the golden-eyed boy who had somehow slain the Cursed Queen.
"You will find Krad. You will watch him. And when the time is right, you will bring the Moon Eater to me, even if you have to tear your own limbs off to do it."
---
"Death One Hundred and Forty-Two."
Inside the Mind's Eye Diagram, Krad lay flat on his back, gasping for air.
"Get up," Kashima's voice demanded, devoid of pity. "The simulated Morana is preparing her domain. What do you do?"
Krad forced himself to one knee. His mind was frayed, his sanity dangling by a thread. But something in the chaos was starting to click.
A hundred and forty deaths had stripped away his panic. When the simulated Morana raised her hands, Krad didn't just look at her fingers. He remembered Kashima's brutal lessons.
Look at the shoulders, look at the hips, look at the flow of the core.
He activated the Breath of the Ancient World. Seven seconds in, four seconds hold. The panic faded. The golden grid lines of the domain seemed to sharpen.
For the first time, Krad didn't just see Morana's physical body moving. He saw the subtle tension in her right shoulder, a fraction of a second before she cast. He saw her center of gravity shift slightly to the left, indicating she was preparing an ice wall for defense, not an offensive spear.
She expects me to charge the wall, Krad realized.
"Begin," Kashima ordered.
Morana cast the spell. The ice wall erupted.
Instead of using Moon Step to charge or retreat laterally, Krad simply dropped his weight straight down, letting gravity do the work without straining his torn thigh. He slid beneath the forming ice wall before it fully solidified, exploiting the millimeter of space she had left open on her right side.
He didn't use a flashy skill. He just used a basic, perfectly timed, upward palm strike.
His hand connected cleanly with the underside of the simulated Morana's jaw. The kinetic force traveled perfectly up her spine.
The simulation flickered, then shattered into a million golden pixels.
Silence reigned in the domain. Krad stayed on his knees, his chest heaving, waiting for the inevitable spike of pain that signaled Death One Hundred and Forty-Three.
It didn't come.
High above, Mist let out a breath he didn't realize he'd been holding, a proud, relieved smile breaking across his face.
Kashima looked down at the boy in the grid, his stormy gray eyes gleaming with a fraction of genuine respect.
"Acceptable," Kashima's voice boomed, the golden grid slowly beginning to dissolve around them. "You have stopped fighting like a blind man swinging in the dark. Your tactical awareness has improved by precisely one percent."
Krad groaned, collapsing onto his back in the void, but a tired, triumphant grin spread across his bruised face.
"Now," Kashima said, stepping into the dissolving grid, his black and gold mantle billowing around him. "We begin the real training."
"You've got to be kidding me," Krad laughed, closing his eyes as the domain finally faded away.