Blackout Ascension: Return of Primordial Heir-Chapter 61: Three months later

Three months. That was ninety days of bleeding in the dark. Ninety days of waking up with muscles so sore they felt like they were tearing right off the bone. Ninety days of breathing in the damp, dusty air of the subterranean training hall deep beneath the Solaris Academy.

Kairos Vedaryan stood in the center of the rough gravel floor. He was drenched in sweat. His plain gray shirt was discarded in a corner, revealing a lean, heavily scarred torso. The blisters on his palms had healed, and hardened into thick, permanent calluses.

He gripped a heavy iron sword with both hands. It was the same dull, unforgiving weapon he had picked up three months ago, but it did not feel sluggish anymore.

Kairos closed his eyes and took a slow breath. He visualized the teleporting movements of the Black Mist Knights. He remembered the speed of their dark greatswords.

He moved. He didn’t use a drop of magic. He simply stepped forward and swung the iron blade.

Whoosh!

The heavy metal cut through the cold air with a sharp, rigid hiss. Kairos staggered smoothly on his right heel, spinning his body to deliver a sequence of strikes. A low horizontal sweep, a brutal upward thrust, a diagonal slash. He moved so fast that the heavy iron sword actually became a gray blur. The sheer force of his swings kicked up small clouds of dust from the gravel floor.

He stopped his final swing exactly one inch away from the wooden training log. He didn’t hit the wood, but the air pressure from the swing hit the log instead, leaving a shallow, visible groove in the tough bark.

Kairos exhaled slowly and lowered the heavy sword. He focused his mind inward, calling up the blue digital interface.

The golden letters of Conqueror of Time were still muted and pushed to the background. He hadn’t stopped the clock a single time in ninety days. Instead, he opened his base physical attributes panel.

[BASE ATTRIBUTES.]

[STRENGTH: 88]

[AGILITY: 95]

[ENDURANCE: 82]

His numbers had more than doubled. The brutal, endless repetition of raw physical labor had forced his mortal body to adapt and evolve. He was no longer just a boy relying on a magical cheat code. His own muscles were catching up to the speed of the shadows.

"You are getting faster, village boy," a voice crawled out from the side of the room. "But you are still too stiff in the shoulders."

Kairos turned and wiped the sweat from his eyes.

On the other side of the massive basement, Ignis and Terravarous were facing off in the gravel. The two royal cousins looked just as battered and exhausted as Kairos.

Ignis held a wooden practice sword. Three months ago, Ignis would have coated the entire room in explosive orange flames just to show off. He would have wasted massive amounts of his mana trying to overwhelm his opponent with sheer fire.

But not anymore. Ignis took a deep breath, his red eyes narrowed in absolute focus. Instead of a roaring explosion, a thin, bright line of pure blue fire ignited right along the wooden edge of his practice sword. The heat was gathered at one point. The air around the blade shimmered and warped, but the rest of the room stayed cool.

He had learned to compress his magic. Dense, focused heat was infinitely sharper than an explosion.

Ignis lunged forward, moving with a deadly grace that was completely stripped of his old arrogant swagger. He thrust the blue hot wooden blade directly at Terravarous’ broad chest.

Terravarous didn’t flinch. Three months ago, the giant would have encased his entire massive body in his unbreakable Diamond Skin magic. It was the ultimate defense, but covering his whole body drained his mana pool in a matter of minutes.

As Ignis’s burning blade closed the distance, Terravarous simply raised his left forearm. He didn’t transform his whole body. A tiny patch of dark skin on his forearm suddenly hardened, turning into a smooth, glittering diamond buckler just three inches wide.

CRACK!!!

The tip of the blue hot sword struck the exact center of the tiny diamond patch. The compressed fire flared brightly, trying to melt the stone, but the diamond held strong.

Because Terravarous was only armoring a three-inch circle of his body, the mana cost was practically zero. He could maintain this dynamic defense for hours without breaking a sweat.

Terravarous flicked his wrist, pushing the burning sword away. He smoothly stepped inside Ignis’ guard and tapped the side of his cousin’s neck with two fingers.

"Dead," Terravarous rumbled in his deep voice. "You committed too heavily to the thrust, Ignis. You left your right flank open."

Ignis let the blue fire die, lowering his wooden sword and letting out a long, frustrated groan. He rubbed the back of his neck where Terravarous had tapped him. "I swear, hitting you is like trying to punch a mountain that knows how to dodge. How do you shift the diamond armor so fast?"

"Absolute focus," Terravarous replied calmly, picking up a leather water bottle from the floor and taking a long drink. "I do not armor where the sword is. I armor where the sword is going to be. You are projecting your strikes with your eyes, cousin."

Kairos walked over, tossing his heavy iron sword onto the weapon rack, a loud clatter echoed in the cold room. "You almost had him that time, Ignis. The blue fire is incredibly sharp."

"It is sharp, but it takes too much effort to hold the shape," Ignis sighed, grabbing his own water bottle. "If I lose focus for a single second, the fire expands and the wooden sword burns to ash in my hands. It is exhausting."

"Everything is exhausting," a weak, raspy voice muttered from the darkest corner of the basement.

Kairos, Ignis, and Terravarous turned to look. Sitting cross-legged on a dusty stone bench there was Luna Freyr Zephyros.

The Night Emperor had stopped participating in the physical sword training weeks ago. He had realized that no matter how many iron clubs he swung, his frail body was never going to match Kairos’s agility or Terravarous’ raw power. Raw muscle was not his path to victory.

Luna was currently wearing a black cloth tied tightly around his eyes as a blindfold. His ears were plugged with soft wax. He had deliberately stripped away his physical senses to plunge his brain into sensory deprivation.

Resting on his lap was an illegal, ancient scroll he had quietly stolen from the Restricted Archives when Librarian Jovian wasn’t looking.

Luna was secretly studying the Primordial Laws. For the past month, Luna had been sitting in the dark, sending his raw consciousness deep into his own soul. He was gently, carefully tracing the shape of the golden chain wrapped around his core. The First Cosmic Lock: The Gate of the Mind.

He wasn’t trying to rip it open like he had done on the balcony. He knew that would fry his nervous system again and likely kill him. He was acting like a master thief, trying to find a way to pick the lock. He wanted to crack the seal just enough to let a safe, controlled infinite mana leak into his brain, expanding his psychic range.

Luna pulled the blindfold off his face and blinked against the dim basement light. He looked pale, and a thin line of fresh red blood dripped from his left nostril.

"You are bleeding again, Luna," Terravarous pointed out, his brow furrowing in concern. "You are pushing the limits of your soul. The High Healers said touching the cosmic energy again would severely damage your mind."

"I am fine," Luna lied smoothly, wiping the blood from his lip with the back of his hand. He carefully rolled up the ancient scroll and tucked it inside his jacket. "I am just mapping the edges of the golden chain. I haven’t tried to open it yet. But I am getting closer. The one who made these locks to protect us, but every lock has a keyhole. I just have to find it."

"Just don’t blow your head off before the Great War starts," Ignis grunted, walking over to the wooden bench and falling onto it. "We need our human radar alive."

Kairos grabbed a clean towel and wiped the sweat from his face. "Has anyone received a letter from the borders today?"

Ignis reached into his pocket and pulled out a piece of parchment. "A fast-hawk arrived from the Wind Kingdom this morning. Velanor sent a message. The dirty boy is clearly having a blast. The Zephyros elders refuse to believe that the Void Era shadows are waking up. They think the King is just making up rumors to increase his military."

"Fools," Terravarous muttered. "They will believe it when a Black Mist Knight teleports into their high mountain halls."

"What about Soltheia?" Kairos asked, looking at Luna.

A faint smile touched Luna’s pale lips. "She wrote to me yesterday. The Sylphyros Kingdom is a political nightmare right now. Catherine is busy interrogating half the royal court. But Soltheia started taking lessons from the royal medics. She is learning advanced healing magic and support wards. She refuses to be helpless when the dark sky returns."

"She is a brave girl," Kairos nodded.

CRANKKK!!!

Suddenly, the wooden door of the basement groaned loudly as it was pushed open.

A stream of bright, warm afternoon sunlight crept into the cold training hall, making all four boys squint their eyes.

Seyana stepped into the room. She wasn’t wearing an elegant royal gown today. She was dressed in dark leather riding gear, and she had a silver rapier strapped to her hip. She carried a large woven basket filled with fresh bread, roasted meat, and cold apples.

"I brought food," Seyana announced, walking down the stone stairs. She wrinkled her nose slightly as the smell of sweat and old iron hit her, "and it is a good thing I did, because you all smell like a pack of wet dogs. Have any of you actually seen the sun this week?"

"We are vampires now," Ignis said, eagerly grabbing a piece of roasted meat from the basket. "We live in the dirt."

Seyana laughed softly, but her smile didn’t quite reach her amber eyes. Kairos noticed the nervousness in her shoulders immediately. He put his towel down and walked over to her.

"What is wrong?" Kairos asked quietly, keeping his voice steady.

Seyana handed him an apple. She looked around the room at the four battered, exhausted boys. They had trained for three months in secrecy. They had broken their bodies and rebuilt them stronger.

"My father just received an urgent magical flare from a scout rider," Seyana said, her tone dropping into seriousness. "A minor tear in reality just opened up near the eastern border. It is right on the edge of a large farming village called Oakhaven."

Ignis stopped chewing his meat. Terravarous slowly lowered his water bottle. Luna sat up straight on the bench, his pale eyes narrowing.

"Is it the Black Mist Knights?" Kairos asked, his hand reaching for the empty scabbard on his back.

"The scouts don’t think so," Seyana shook her head. "They described them as violent monsters made of bulging muscle and oozing dark magic. They are tearing up the fields and heading straight for the village center."

"Mana Aberrations," Luna whispered, recognizing the description from the ancient scroll he had been studying. "They are corrupted beasts of the Void. Foot soldiers of the Fallen."

Seyana looked at Kairos. "The regular border guards cannot stop them. Their iron spears are just bouncing off the beasts’ corrupted heads. The King is preparing to deploy the elite royal knights, but it will take them three days to ride there. The village will be gone by tomorrow morning."

Kairos didn’t hesitate. The hollow ache in his chest was gone. The fear of the teleporting shadows was burned out of him. He looked at his bandaged hands, feeling the raw power resting quietly in his own muscles.

He didn’t need the System to freeze time today. He just needed his sword. Kairos walked over to the wooden bench near the door. He picked up Asteria. The holy sword felt light in his hands. The tiny, jagged chip near the tip of the silver blade was still there, serving as a permanent reminder of that day. He strapped the scabbard firmly across his back.

"Tell the King to keep his royal knights at the palace," Kairos said, turning back to face Seyana. His dark eyes were burning with an unbreakable resolve. "The Vanguard Generals will handle it."

Ignis grinned, a bright spark of intense blue fire dancing gracefully across his bruised knuckles. He grabbed his real sword from the rack. "Finally!!! I am so tired of fighting this giant rock. I need to burn something ugly."

Terravarous cracked his neck, the sound echoing loudly in the basement. He strapped a pair of iron gauntlets over his thick hands. "We ride within the hour."

Luna sighed, slowly pushing himself up from the bench. He adjusted the collar of his dark jacket, slipping his mask back into place. "I suppose I can spare a few minutes to crush some dogs. Try not to leave me behind, village boy."

Kairos walked past Seyana, offering her a quick, confident nod. She smiled back, her amber eyes shining with pride.

The four boys walked up the stone stairs, leaving the dark training hall behind them. The three months of brutal training was finally over. The true test had arrived. It was time to show the shadows what the fragile children of the Dawn Era could do.