Klaus finally made it away from the girls that had been asking for headpats over and over and he was at the kitchen counter.

’Do I have some blessed hands or something?’ Klaus thought to himself. There had to be some reason these women were obsessed with headpats and to test that theory, the man gave himself a headpat.

An awkward silence followed.

’I can’t feel anything special.’

He sighed and ran his hand through his hair, turning his back to the dining area.

’Whatever. That wasn’t the main point here anyway.’

Klaus lifted the remaining slice of Mirela’s birthday cake and ate it in several large bites, licking his fingers clean afterward.

’Damn, this tastes so much better than the cakes back on Earth...’ Klaus thought. He rinsed the plate and dried it with a clean rag before putting it back then he turned to face the long counter.

’Right. I haven’t even spun today,’ Klaus realized. He pulled up the familiar translucent blue screen and looked at the three options.

「Status」

「Spin!」

「Merge」

Klaus tapped Spin without much ceremony and the gacha wheel materialized. Unlike other days when he’d felt genuine excitement, today he felt nothing... it was just tired resignation.

’Just give me something that’s not complete trash...’ Klaus thought with a sigh. He telepathically inserted the daily ticket into the glowing slot and the wheel began spinning faster, then gradually slowed. Klaus watched without much investment as it crept toward a stop.

The wheel halted on a section depicting a book.

「Congratulations! You have pulled: 12-Sword Mastery Skill Scroll (Tier 5)」

Klaus blinked then blinked again.

「Item Description: Grants complete mastery of all 12 Basic Sword Forms. Knowledge is directly imprinted into muscle memory with the body automatically knowing proper stances, grips, transitions, and attack patterns for all forms. Can fluidly switch between forms mid-combat based on tactical needs. The process of absorbing the scroll causes an extreme amount of pain.」

「Would you like to use the Item now? Y / N」

Klaus stared at the notification floating in front of him, almost refusing to believe what he was seeing.

He had wanted this exact thing for a while now. He’d been struggling through Astrid’s manual, trying to memorize stances and forms through pure repetition and practice and the very day that he wasn’t expecting anything good... the day he’d almost given up on getting anything useful from the gacha was the day it actually came through.

’So learning all of it comes with an extreme amount of pain?’ Klaus thought, reading the description again carefully.

That was very understandable when he thought about it logically. He would be learning all twelve basic sword forms completely... something that took normal people literal years to master and apply in actual battle situations. Getting it instantly would naturally come with a cost and the system wasn’t going to make it that easy.

’So do I want to learn this now, or should I merge the herbs first?’

Klaus tossed his head left and right, weighing his options.

While merging the herbs was a good way to spend time productively and to test if they would give him a power boost, he also wanted to get much stronger as soon as physically possible and since sword movements also required moving the entire body with precision and control, mastering them would give him much better overall mastery of his own physicality.

He’d become more nimble, more coordinated, and more dangerous too.

’I’ve decided,’ Klaus thought firmly.

He pushed away from the kitchen counter. He could always merge herbs later... that could wait a few hours or even days but this? This was too important to delay.

Klaus walked out of the kitchen and approached the stairs leading to the second floor. He turned back briefly toward the dining area where the three girls were still sitting.

"Don’t disturb me until I come back downstairs..." Klaus said clearly.

"What are you going to do?" Taula asked immediately as her curiosity piqued.

"Something important, you don’t need to worry." Klaus replied vaguely and Taula whined in protest at the non-answer.

Serra nodded her head in acceptance, trusting that Klaus knew what he was doing while Mirela looked up at him with those blue-purple eyes and said softly.

"Be safe, Master."

Klaus chuckled.

"You’re saying ’be safe’ like I’m planning to hurt myself..." Klaus said, Mirela averted her eyes with a slight blush coloring her cheeks..

Klaus turned and headed upstairs.

’How accurate...’ Klaus thought as he climbed the steps. ’She’s pretty scary at guessing what I’m thinking.’

Klaus soon arrived outside his room. He entered, closing the door firmly behind him with a soft click.

’I’m grateful that this place is soundproof...’ Klaus thought, remembering that detail from when he’d first rented the room.

It didn’t matter if he was literally burning alive in here... as long as the door remained closed, they wouldn’t be able to hear anything happening inside. That was exactly the kind of privacy he needed right now.

Klaus locked the door from the inside and turned back to face the floating notification tab.

’I’m ready.’ he told himself.

His hand moved slowly toward the Y option, then paused mid-reach.

He wasn’t a masochist... He didn’t want to feel extreme pain... Nobody in their right mind would actively choose that but he wanted to get stronger and if mastering all twelve sword forms meant enduring some temporary suffering, then that was the price he’d pay.

With sword mastery, he could combine proper technique with Magnetic Field and deal even more devastating damage instead of being reliant on blind lucky hits and brute force metal manipulation.

’Fuck it.’

Klaus tapped Y decisively and the notification tab vanished instantly.

... Nothing happened.

Klaus stood there in the middle of his room while waiting. He then sat down with his back against the door, preparing himself mentally for the pain to hit.

One minute passed...

The extreme pain that the description had warned about didn’t come at all.

’Is this thing trolling m—’

The moment Klaus relaxed his body and let his guard down, it hit him like a freight train made of knives. Klaus collapsed forward with his hands scrabbling desperately against the wooden floor.

"FUCK! FUCK! FUCK!" he screamed, the words ripping from his throat involuntarily.

His head felt like it was literally splitting open from the inside, like someone had driven a red-hot wedge directly into his skull and was prying the two halves apart with brutal force. He clutched at the floorboards, his fingers digging into the wood hard enough that his nails bent painfully but even worse than the headache... his muscles stopped responding properly.

They hurt.

God, they hurt so much.

Every single muscle fiber in his body felt like it was being torn apart and rewritten simultaneously. The sensation of having combat knowledge forcefully memorized directly into muscle tissue was absolute hell... like someone was carving the information into his flesh with a dull, rusty blade, then setting the wounds on fire for good measure.

Klaus’s back arched involuntarily, his spine curving at an unnatural angle then it got worse.

His entire body began breaking down.

He could feel his muscle fibers tearing apart, shredding into pieces. His bones creaked and groaned as they restructured themselves.

The pain intensified beyond anything Klaus had ever experienced... It wasn’t just physical anymore. It was the sensation of his entire being unmade and remade and every nerve screamed.

Klaus tried to scream again but no sound came out as his throat had locked up. His vision went white, then black, then white again in pulsing waves.

’I’m going to die...’ Klaus thought with certainty. ’I’m actually going to die from this.’

But something kept him conscious... some cruel mechanism that prevented him from passing out. He had to be awake so he had to feel every second.

New neural pathways carved through his brain and combat instincts that took normal people decades to develop were being forcibly installed in minutes.

His hands convulsed with his fingers moving through sword grips he’d never practiced... At some point, Klaus stopped screaming entirely.

He just laid there on the wooden floor, his body trembling as the pain slowly began to fade. His breathing came in sharp gasps and sweat soaked through his clothes.

A new notification appeared.

「Due to your low Physical stats, 12-Sword Mastery has forcefully increased your Physicality by simulating it as if you were the one learning to use the sword from scratch, breaking apart your body and rebuilding it to match the requirements of true mastery...」

「Your Physicality has increased greatly!」

’So this is the power of a Tier 5 item...’ Klaus thought through gritted teeth. He still couldn’t move as his body refused to respond.

’Fuck! Let me move, dammit!’

...

"Do you think the Master is okay?" Mirela asked as they cleaned up the dining table two hours later. Taula leaned back in her chair, drinking wine directly from the bottle. She removed it from her mouth with a satisfied burp.

"He’s probably just sleeping or something..." Taula said with a shrug.

Serra, on the other hand, was meditating in the living room with her legs crossed. Holy energy circulated visibly around her body in golden wisps.

She had explained earlier that members of the Church did this exercise daily to keep their holy energy in harmony with their bodies but the downside was meditating for hours without being able to respond to the outside world... unless exposed to an immediately dangerous situation.

Suddenly, the sound of footsteps came down the stairs and Mirela looked up but a different man descended into view.

He had long black hair that fell past his shoulders, partially covering his face. His build was noticeably more muscular... not huge, but lean and defined.

’It’s the Master,’ Mirela realized with shock. ’But how did he go from that to THIS in just two hours?!’

Klaus reached the bottom of the stairs and drew back his long hair with one hand with an annoyed expression.

"This is too hard to maintain." Klaus complained to himself. Taula looked at him while mid-drink and her eyes widened then she spat out her wine onto the table and fell backward out of her chair with a crash.

She scrambled to her feet and rushed over to him.

"Klaus, what the hell happened?!" Taula demanded. "Why do you look so... strong?!"

"Would you believe I just slept and woke up like this?" Klaus asked.

"No!" Taula said immediately.

Klaus sighed.

"I took the Bloodline Awakening Pill earlier," Klaus lied. "It seems like my bloodline has something to do with enhanced physicality. But this long hair though..."

He ran his fingers through the black strands with clear dissatisfaction.

"The hair is WAY too much..." Taula agreed.

Mirela looked at the ground, then swallowed nervously before speaking up.

"I think... you look good with long hair, Master." Mirela said quietly.

Klaus considered that.

"I guess I’ll need to style it up then," Klaus said. "I don’t like it hanging loose like this, but I can work with it."

But that wasn’t the most important thing right now. Klaus turned to face Taula directly with a serious expression on his face.

"Taula," Klaus said. "I want to duel you."

Taula blinked.

"A duel?" she repeated, as if she’d misheard.

...

Alongside the backyard of Moonstone Residence, there was also a side yard where someone had marked out a flat field with painted lines. It was good enough for sparring or small-scale combat practice.

"So you said I shouldn’t use aura, and we aren’t trying to kill each other, right?" Taula asked while hopping in place excitedly.

She held her massive axe in one hand like it weighed nothing with a bright smile on her face.

"And if I try my hardest without aura," Taula continued, "you’ll give me forty headpats afterward?"

"Absolutely..." Klaus confirmed.

He stood at the opposite end of the marked field, pulling a single sword from his storage ring. The moment the weapon’s handle touched his palm, Klaus felt something click into place.

It was like the sword had always belonged there and like he’d known this blade his entire life which sounded a bit ridiculous when he thought about it, but unlike before... When he’d just been trying things out blindly and hoping they worked, Klaus was now genuinely confident he could beat Taula in this specific scenario.

Well, without her explosively using aura to obliterate him, anyway.

His body was objectively stronger now. But at the end of the day, he was still a Wizard Apprentice going up against an Aura user like her... It wasn’t exactly a fair fight.

Then again, she wasn’t using aura, and he had twelve complete sword forms downloaded directly into his muscle memory.

Mirela raised her hand from where she stood at the sideline, acting as referee and Klaus nodded at her so she brought her hand down sharply.

"Begin!" Mirela called out.

Immediately, Taula shot forward, closing the distance between them with frightening speed. She was heading toward Klaus with that familiar wild grin on her face.

’Headpats, headpats... I have to get those headpats!’ Taula thought gleefully and the next instant, she was within striking range.

Taula’s axe came down in a brutal overhead chop which was the kind of attack that would have crushed Klaus’s skull like an eggshell if it connected but Klaus’s body moved.

It was not because he consciously decided to dodge or because he had calculated angles and trajectories. His body simply knew what to do as muscle memory took over with perfect execution.

He sidestepped with the Vane Form’s spacing technique, rotating his hips and shifting his weight distribution in one fluid motion. Taula’s axe whistled past him, missing by inches with the displacement of air ruffling his new long hair.

Before she could recover her stance, Klaus struck.

His sword came up in a precise arc following the Riven Form’s counter-attack pattern... using her own momentum against her. The blade met the axe handle at exactly the right angle with exactly the right amount of force and the impact sent vibrations up Taula’s arms.

Her grip loosened involuntarily and the axe spun out of her hands, sailing up into the air and tumbling end over end.

Taula’s eyes widened in shock.

’What...?!’

Klaus didn’t give her time to process what had happened. He stepped in close, inside her guard where the axe would have been useless anyway, and delivered a solid kick to her midsection using the Malo Form’s low-strike technique.

It wasn’t a full-power blow... he wasn’t trying to actually hurt her but it was enough. Taula fell backward with a surprised yelp, landing hard on her back in the grass.

Before she could roll away or get back up, Klaus was on top of her.

He sat down on her stomach, pinning her in place... exactly like she had done to him back in Galen when she’d been complaining about being hungry and had tackled him to the ground.

The axe hit the ground a few feet away with a heavy thud, embedding itself slightly in the dirt. Klaus discarded his sword to the side with a casual throw. It landed point-first in the ground and stood there quivering then he looked down at Taula with a smirk.

After all that bullying, after all those times she’d pinned him down or thrown him around or threatened to "eat" him when she was hungry... he was finally on top.

The tables had completely turned.

"So, Taula... what should I do with you?"