Chapter 109: The Gravity Anvil and the Dance of the Elements
I. The Weight of Ambition
The great black stone doors of the Underground Training Chamber closed with a thud that sealed the fate of everyone inside. The air was stale, heavy with an ancient, metallic scent, as if the room itself hungered for effort. There were no windows, only alchemical green torches casting long, dancing shadows across walls reinforced with Earth-Grade containment runes.
In the center stood the 20 Sequences, the Elders (Lilith, Marcus, Sela), and the 50 elite disciples chosen for the vanguard. There was nervousness, forced laughter, and the constant sound of weapons being adjusted.
Samael walked to the center of the room. He wore no armor, only his black robes that seemed to absorb the light from the torches. His presence filled the space more than his physical body. —"You have touched the sky with your new toys," Samael said, his voice bouncing off the walls with a deceptive calm. —"You have felt the power of Origin-Grade artifacts. You feel invincible."
He stopped over a central flagstone engraved with the glyph of an inverted mountain. —"But power without control is merely a flashy suicide. Now, I will teach you how to touch the ground."
Without warning, Samael injected his Void Qi into the room's matrix.
[Activating Gravity Matrix: Level 5.] [Setting: 500% of standard gravity.]
BOOM!
There was no explosion of fire; there was an implosion of atmospheric pressure. It was as if the ceiling had collapsed onto their heads. Instantly, half of the disciples fell to their knees, spitting saliva or blood. The sound of armor creaking, leather straining, and bones protesting filled the room in a symphony of pain.
Kael, whose muscles were like tempered steel, doubled over at the waist, growling as he drove the Magma Fang into the floor to avoid falling flat on his face. Eris and Violeta, despite their talent, felt their lungs compress. Eris's Solar Cataclysm Spear, already massive by nature, now weighed as much as a palace pillar, sinking inches into the reinforced stone floor with an agonizing screech.
—"Stand up," Samael ordered. He was standing perfectly upright, hands behind his back. Gravity seemed to slide off his skin, rejected by his Sovereign will.
—"It's... too much...!" gasped Aylin (Sequence 8), using her wind spear to keep from kissing the floor, her face flushed red from the effort.
—"The enemy will not adjust their strength for your comfort," Samael said, walking among them. Every step he took resonated like a hammer blow to the group's morale. —"A True Saint can crush you with their aura alone. This gravity is a caress compared to the killing intent of an Alliance Patriarch. If you cannot lift your weapons here, you do not deserve to carry them outside."
II. Violeta: The Coordinate of the Cut
Samael stopped in front of Violeta. The twin was pale, visibly trembling. Her new Silent Winter Blade was driven into the floor, and she leaned on the hilt with both hands, desperately trying to pull air into her compressed lungs.
—"You are trying to lift the sword with your muscles," Samael said, looking down at her with analytical coldness. —"Error. You are not Kael. You are not a berserker."
—"It weighs... like a mountain..." Violeta groaned, gritting her teeth.
—"It weighs because you insist it exists in this physical space," Samael corrected. —"You are the mistress of Void and Ice. Stop treating the sword as a solid object of metal. That sword is a conductor. It is a coordinate."
Samael kicked the base of Violeta's sword, destabilizing her. She nearly fell but recovered with a cry of frustration. —"Attack me!" he ordered.
Violeta, by instinct, tried to lift the blade and cut in a horizontal arc. It was slow. Agonizing. Samael didn't even move; he simply tilted his neck, and the blade passed inches away, slow and clumsy. —"Slow. Predictable. You are moving the sword through the air. Friction slows you down. Gravity slows you down."
Samael leaned into her ear, his voice dropping to a whisper that cut through the noise of the gasping in the room: —"Do not move the sword toward the target. Eliminate the space between the edge and the flesh. Envelop the blade in your spatial Qi. Do not cut the air; cut the distance. Make the sword be in two places at once."
Violeta closed her eyes (both the blue and the violet). Her breathing slowed. Not lifting. Not pushing. Relocating. Her Qi of Ice and Space flowed into the crystal blade. The sword stopped glowing and became translucent, vibrating with a hum that pained the ears. Gravity ceased to matter because the sword was no longer entirely there.
Violeta opened her eyes. She didn't lift her arms. She simply visualized the edge at Samael's neck. SHIIIING.
There was no movement of the arm. There was a flash. Violeta's sword disappeared from its low position and instantly reappeared in a high-cut stance, frozen in the air millimeters from Samael's throat. A lock of the Patriarch's white hair fell slowly, sliced clean. Samael smiled, ignoring the blade threatening his jugular. —"Good. That is a Dimensional Slash. Now do it a thousand times until you don't have to think about it."
III. Eris: The Cannon of Flesh and Bone
Samael moved toward Eris, leaving Violeta in her training trance. The situation with the fire twin was much louder. The Solar Cataclysm Spear was a brutal weapon, and Eris was red with fury trying to lift it horizontally. Her arms shook violently, and sparks of erratic fire jumped from her skin.
—"You look like a child trying to move a log," Samael mocked, crossing his arms.
Eris growled, her inverted heterochromatic eyes blazing. —"This damn thing weighs more than Kael's ego! It's useless if I can't move it fast!"
—"It is useless because you use it like a stick. You are fire, Eris. You are an explosion. Since when does fire carry weight? Fire pushes."
Samael pointed to the base of the spear, the opposite end of the tip. —"Stop using your biceps to strike. Use your Flame of Ruin. Create a controlled explosion at your elbow and at the base of the spear every time you attack. Become a human piston."
Eris blinked, confused and sweaty. —"Explode... to strike?"
—"The spear is a projectile, you are the cannon. Try it! Hit that mannequin!"
Samael pointed to a training mannequin made of reinforced black steel. Eris took a deep breath. She stopped trying to lift the spear with muscular strength. Instead, she concentrated a compact sphere of Ruin Qi in the palm of her right hand, which held the base of the shaft. She visualized a shot. BANG!
A dull detonation of black Qi erupted behind her hand. Kinetic force shot her arm forward with terrifying violence. The spear, propelled by the explosion, broke the sound barrier over a distance of barely a meter. CRAACK!
The spear tip didn't just hit the mannequin; it pulverized it. The black steel exploded into burning shards. The shockwave pushed back the nearby disciples. Eris was thrown backward by the recoil, falling onto her backside on the stone, but when she looked up, her eyes shone with manic joy. —"Hahaha! It's brutal!"
—"Control the recoil or you'll dislocate your shoulder before you even get to the war," Samael warned, though a smirk of satisfaction crossed his face. —"Again. I want you to pierce the back wall."
IV. Xylia: The Mandate of the Empress
Further off, Xylia was standing. Unlike the others, she did not try to move frantically. She maintained a regal posture, though sweat pearled her forehead and her knees shook under the 5x gravity. She held the Lightning Scepter with both hands, using it as a staff to stay upright.
Samael approached. —"I see you are holding the weight. Your soul remembers how to stay upright, even when the body wants to crawl."
—"Gravity is a physical law," Xylia said through gritted teeth. —"A ruler's will is superior to physics."
—"True. But your lightning is undisciplined." Samael pointed to the blue sparks jumping erratically from the scepter. —"You are throwing electricity as if you were throwing stones. An Emperor does not 'throw' things. An Emperor commands."
Samael touched the tip of the scepter with a finger, absorbing a stray spark. —"Use the scepter to mark the target. Do not fire the lightning from yourself. Command the ambient Qi to collapse upon that point. The scepter is your authority, not your generator. Make the sky punish your enemies; do not exhaust yourself by being the storm."
Xylia nodded, understanding instantly. Her past experience as an Empress resonated with the instruction. She raised the scepter, pointing at a distant target. Instead of launching a bolt from the tip, she whispered a single word with absolute authority: —"Fall."
The lightning Qi saturating the room reacted. It didn't come from Xylia; it condensed over the target and fell vertically. A pillar of blue light, solid and perfect. Absolute precision. Minimum personal energy expenditure. —"Excellent," said Samael. —"That is a Sovereign-Rank attack. Keep that arrogance; you'll need it."
V. The Crucible of the Rest
While the leaders found their new paths, the rest of the clan underwent their own transformation under the crushing pressure.
Kael: He trained bare-chested, his red skin glistening with sweat. He stopped using complex techniques and focused on the basics: simple vertical slashes under 500% gravity. Every movement cost him an ocean of effort, but he could feel his Sword Physique absorbing the pressure, making his bones denser, more like the metal of his weapon.
Elara: Gravity neutralized her speed, her greatest advantage. She was terrified at first. But she remembered Samael's words in the desert. If you cannot be fast, be non-existent. She began to use the pressure to compact her presence, moving less but disappearing more, merging with the unmoving shadows of the room.
Cedric: His mind worked at a thousand miles per hour. He used his matrices not to attack, but to create micro-zones of "gravitational relief" for his allies, learning to manage the battlefield and manipulate the environment under extreme stress.
VI. 24 Hours Later: The Dawn of Iron
Time passed in a haze of pain and repetition. No one slept. No one ate. They only drank water mixed with Dragon Blood Pills that Elowen and her healers distributed hastily. Under the pressure of gravity and physical exertion, the medicinal energy was assimilated into the blood at a breakneck speed, forcing cultivation breakthroughs in the midst of exhaustion.
When the hourglass marked the end of the cycle, Samael deactivated the matrix.
[Gravity Deactivated.]
The change was so abrupt that many vomited. Kael fell to the floor, gasping, but when he tried to get up, he unintentionally jumped three meters into the air. He landed with a disconcerting lightness. He looked at his hands; he felt light as a feather, as if he could fly.
Violeta sheathed her sword. The air around the scabbard seemed permanently distorted. She no longer carried the weapon; the weapon floated in its own spatial bubble. Eris spun her heavy spear with one hand, as if it were a willow branch. Her muscles had adapted to the monstrous weight, and her explosive control was now instinctive.
Samael watched them from the doorway, with the Eternal General at his back. They were filthy, bruised, covered in soot and dried sweat. They smelled of blood and effort. But their eyes... they were no longer the eyes of refugees or survivors. They were the eyes of predators who had just realized the chains were broken.
—"Training is over," Samael announced. He pulled out a black silk cloth and wiped an imaginary speck of dust from his sleeve. —"Shower. Eat something solid. In one hour, we march to the Bronze Citadel."
Kael stood up, a wild and dangerous smile crossing his scarred face. He cracked his neck. —"Brother... I think I'm going to break that city in half if I'm not careful."
—"That's the idea," Samael responded, turning away, his cloak billowing. —"Let the world tremble when the Morningstars take a step."
[End of Chapter 109]