The spiral hill was quiet at this hour.

Villa 3 sat one tier below the summit. Even from the path, Ryuken could feel the ambient pressure of an SSS-rank Authority that never fully switched off. The Blessed by Mana thrummed like a hearth in the walls, steady, warm, and constant. He had felt stronger presences in his long life. He had not, however, felt many with such pristine discipline radiating from someone so painfully young.

He knocked. He tapped his foot in a restless rhythm. He knocked again.

Anastasia opened the door herself. She was dressed and flawlessly composed, her golden hair swept back. It was the practiced surface of someone who had been awake for hours, meticulously preparing for whatever the morning might spring upon her. She looked at him the way people looked at things they could not immediately categorize.

“Ryuken Razar,” he announced, a sudden grin pulling at the corner of his mouth.

He watched her process the name. She was exceptionally good at processing. Those amber eyes ran their calculations fast and clean. What emerged on the other side was not fear, nor deference, nor the specific, fragile performance of confidence that terrified people produced. She simply held the door open.

Lancelot stood at the window in the common room. He turned when Ryuken entered.

Ryuken stopped dead in his tracks.

He had been doing this for forty years. Reading bodies was not a technique he actively triggered; it was simply what happened when he opened his eyes. His Iron Heaven perception worked through stance, weight distribution, and the alignment of every biological system simultaneously. He saw people the way a maestro hears the individual components of a complex chord rather than just the surface noise. He had read Vane in a mere two seconds in the Villa 1 foyer: good foundation, genuine talent, the restrictive ceiling of a dead woman living in his bones.

He read Lancelot, and the number of seconds that ticked by was ten. Ryuken was acutely, shockingly aware of every single one.

There was no Authority. That was the first thing. The impossible thing. The thing the eastern tradition reserved exactly one word for, a word that translated roughly to myth. The undivided body. It was the absolute convergence of every physical system without a conceptual anchor. Every serious martial scholar agreed this was the absolute upper limit of what cultivation could approach but never actually reach, simply because the final twenty percent of the distance strictly required an Authority to bridge the gap.

Lancelot had not bridged it. He was simply walking on top of the open water. At Rank 4. At what Ryuken giddily estimated was a mere eighteen years old.

Ryuken suddenly realized he was staring.

“Training ring,” he said abruptly. His voice came out the same as it always did, though his heart was hammering a frantic new rhythm against his ribs. He was immensely grateful for the vocal control.

The ring inside Villa 3 was identical to the one in Villa 1. Anastasia stayed at the entrance, her hands resting just a fraction too tightly in front of her. Ryuken bounded to the center and told Lancelot to show him exactly what he had.

The first exchange was calibrated. Forty percent, perhaps less. It was effective and precise, bearing the specific quality of a combatant methodically mapping a threat before committing. Ryuken redirected the force through position alone and demanded more.

Sixty percent. He used the Iron Heaven at low convergence, just enough to handle the weight, and his eyes widened at what he was experiencing.

More.

Eighty percent. The solid stone cracked underfoot. The dampening rune on the north wall flickered wildly.

Ryuken demanded more, a feverish edge bleeding into his tone. Lancelot stated plainly that he would not use full output against a Rank 9. Ryuken let out a sharp, breathless laugh, declared that he absolutely would, and started walking straight toward Anastasia.

He did not look back. He heard the broadsword slice the air. He heard the footwork close the impossible distance in the time it should have taken to blink. He brought Iron Heaven to full convergence and spun around.

The first instant strike slammed into his shoulder.

Ryuken was a Transcendent. He had spent four decades building the most complete physical convergence system alive on the blessed world. He had not felt a Sentinel-rank strike demand a genuine, desperate response in eleven years. That last time had been Kaito at the absolute peak of his development, a session Ryuken still thought about occasionally for its rare quality of being very good.

He felt this one.

He absorbed it through his body’s vertical axis the way he absorbed everything, channeling the violent force down through his joints and into the stone below. Yet, there was an anchor of pure weight behind the intent layer of the strike that forced his absorption to actually work. He noted this with the specific, thrilling interior shock of a man who has been waiting half a lifetime for a miracle and has just felt it crash into his bones.

The second strike hit his forearm. The third caught his hip. He was taking physical contacts. That simply was not a thing that happened to him in controlled training environments. It had not happened since a bloody border skirmish fourteen years ago against an opponent two full ranks above him.

He stopped managing the spar.

He pushed the Iron Heaven to the output level he reserved strictly for serious, mortal threats. It was what the eastern tradition classified as Expert range, the third step below his absolute true ceiling. The convergence tightened across every biological system simultaneously. Intent, mechanics, weight, and breath all arrived at the exact same fraction of a second. The next sequence of instant strikes he met head-on rather than absorbing. He danced through the empty spaces they were aimed at milliseconds before they arrived. The Iron Heaven’s perception was reading the microscopic gap between decision and execution in Lancelot’s body, a tiny flaw that absolutely no one else alive would have been able to see.

The gap was microscopic, but it was real. It was the last remaining seam in a living, breathing impossibility.

Four minutes. Ryuken had not run four minutes of sustained engagement at Expert-range output against a Sentinel-rank opponent in his entire life. The very idea of it was not something that had existed in the realm of possibility before he woke up this morning.

He felt a wild, soaring sensation rising in his chest that took him a moment to identify because it had been utterly absent for so long. It was not excitement in the raw, adrenaline-fueled way young fighters felt it. It was the older, deeper version. It was the relentless hunger that had driven him to the inner sanctum at three in the morning for thirty years and would never let him rest. It was the sudden, shocking recognition of something dwelling just at the edge of his vast understanding, violently pulling him forward.

He caught the wrist on the twenty-third strike. He found the gap, finally, at the exact right moment. The broadsword stopped dead.

“Stop,” Ryuken breathed.

Lancelot stopped.

The killing intent drained away instantly. The ring went perfectly quiet. Ryuken stood in the heavy silence, staring at the cracked stone, the dead rune, and the specific, beautiful geometry of destruction that four minutes had produced. He felt that magnificent, nameless thing fluttering in his chest.

He exhaled a long, shaky breath.

He was sixty-one years old. He had walked away from teaching two decades ago because absolutely nothing he encountered had given him a single reason to stay. He had built the inner sanctum, trained in complete isolation, and been perfectly content with the solitary work itself, mostly because the alternative required finding a student genuinely worth the monumental investment.

He looked at Lancelot, his eyes practically shining.

“Forty years,” he said. His voice was entirely different from what it had been at any point in the morning, raw and thrumming with absolute awe, and he made no effort to mask it. “Forty years, and I have met exactly two people who forced me to raise my output against them when I had absolutely no intention of doing so.” He paused, gesturing wildly at the cracked floor, at the impossible pattern of it, at what eighteen-year-old feet possessing zero Authority had done to a foundation rated for Grandmaster impact. “I came here this morning expecting to be mildly impressed.”

He stepped closer, looking at Lancelot directly, studying him like a priceless artifact.

“I did not expect to be pushed to Expert-range output against a Mid Sentinel.” He let the sheer weight of that truth hang in the dust-filled air. “You are a masterpiece. I do not use that word lightly. I am using it right now because it is the only accurate word, and I have spent forty years being utterly accurate.”

Lancelot said nothing. He was looking at Ryuken with those flat, calm eyes. Ryuken finally understood they were not the absence of an interior life, but rather the most perfectly controlled exterior for a very specific, quiet interior. The Iron Heaven’s perception could see that subtle difference even if the rest of the world remained blind to it.

“You are also not finished,” Ryuken insisted, leaning in, his hands twitching with the urge to mold, to teach. “The gap between your decision and your execution is the last remaining seam. It is the width of a single thread. You cannot close it alone because you cannot see it yourself. It requires a master who can see it from the outside and show you exactly where to look.” He paused, his eccentric energy suddenly focusing into a sharp, undeniable point. “Come east for twelve weeks. I will show you.”

“I would need the Princess’s permission,” Lancelot stated evenly.

“I already have it,” Ryuken shot back.

He turned and strode briskly toward the ring exit, practically vibrating with renewed purpose. He passed Anastasia in the doorway. She had not moved from where she had been standing. Her face was doing something she was not fully managing, a tight, fragile thing that lived in the uncomfortable space between her flawlessly composed surface and the quiet ache underneath it.

He stopped.

He leaned in and said, quietly enough that it was for her ears alone, “He held back for the first ninety seconds because he explicitly did not want to hurt me.” Ryuken did not look at her as he delivered the final blow. “You should know what that means, coming from a creature like him.”

He walked out, leaving a wake of displaced air.

The morning light was bleeding into the ring through the high window, pale and flat. Anastasia stepped in from the doorway. She stood amidst the ruined, cracked stone and looked at Lancelot. He was still holding the broadsword, his expression the exact same serene mask it always was.

“He walked toward me deliberately,” she noted, her voice just a fraction softer than usual.

“Yes.”

“To force you to stop calibrating.”

“Yes.”

She looked at the dead dampening rune on the shattered wall. She looked down at the ruined floor. She was quiet for a long moment. In that heavy quiet, she looked at him with something vulnerable she did not even try to manage, a subtle tightening around her eyes, a quiet dread at the looming absence.

“He needed Expert-range output,” she said. It was not triumphant. She was just saying the words, forcing herself to sit with the immense weight of what they meant.

“Yes.”

She looked closely at his face. “Masterpiece,” she repeated. The word was incredibly careful in her mouth, spoken the way one might handle a sharp blade they were still deciding what to do with.

“It was an accurate assessment,” Lancelot replied.

“I know it was.” Something painful shifted in her expression, quickly suppressed but undeniable. “That is precisely why I am saying it.”

She adjusted the strap of her document case, her knuckles turning slightly white from the grip. She looked around the destroyed ring one final time.

“Twelve weeks,” she murmured, the timeframe sounding terribly long in the echoing room.

“I will be back before the second year,” Lancelot stated.

She breathed out once, very slowly. When she looked at him again, the royal composure was back in place. Almost. It was not quite the same impenetrable armor as before. Something fundamental had rearranged itself slightly behind her amber eyes, bracing for the quiet that would follow his departure.

“Do not let anyone reduce you to simply being useful,” she commanded softly. “Not even him.”

“Understood,” Lancelot said.

She turned and walked out. He stood alone in the profound quiet, surrounded by the damaged floor and bathed in the pale morning light for a long moment. Then, he seamlessly dissipated the broadsword and went to pack.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep