Sending a strike at his uncle with Echoform Reliquary already shifted into its crowbar form, Deacon activated Power Strike

  The impact rang out in a deep metallic that sent harsh vibrations through the bones of Deacon’s arm. Sparks flared between blade and crowbar as the metals ground against each other, and Deacon pushed harder, trying to force his uncle’s sword even a single centimeter backward.

  Bjorn didn’t move – not even a smidgen.

  If anything, he looked faintly amused, standing with the casual ease of taking a moment to admire the weather rather than effortlessly stopping a strike carrying the full weight of Deacon’s attack head-on.

  Clenching his jaw, Deacon shifted his weight, attempting to dig deeper, but then he caught the tiniest change in Bjorn’s posture — a nearly imperceptible shift of his torso.

  Deacon’s instincts screamed at him before his mind could even process it, and he kicked backward in an attempt to escape whatever counter was incoming.

  He got maybe three inches off the ground before Bjorn’s foot buried itself in his stomach.

  The kick folded him in half and launched him upward like a cannonball fired from a cannon, blasting the air from his lungs as he tumbled through the air.

  The world spun out of control, sky turning to ground and then back to sky, before Deacon snapped out of his stupor and cast .

  Twin jets of fire blasted beneath him for a brief moment, bleeding off just enough momentum to flip him upright. He cut the spell a moment later, dropping into a crouch and skidding across the ground, his left hand and heels carving a rough trench through the dirt.

  Deacon took in a deep breath of air as his narrowed eyes focused on his uncle’s smirking face, doing his best to ignore the pain of the bruise that was most definitely blossoming across his torso and joining the many others.

  “I didn’t think you’d be able to catch onto that – you’re quite the monster,” Bjorn called out with a small, amused chuckle, and sounding far too amused for someone who had just casually sent him flying.

  Deacon thought to himself in disbelief.

  Not bothering to reply to his uncle, he cast once more, the flames geysering beneath the soles of his boots as he shot forward, Echoform Reliquary shifting fluidly in his hands.

  The crowbar shifted and extended into its double-handed axe form just before he reached Bjorn. Deacon activated Power Strike

  His swing connected with Bjorn’s Ulfberht in a massive clash that created a shockwave of wind around them, scattering loose dirt across the field.

  “Oh?” Bjorn hummed in genuine interest, holding his ground with the same effortless stance as before; however, a look of surprise came across his face. “You’ve been holding back on me – shifting forms just as you were about to activate Power Strike

  Deacon grit his teeth and abruptly shifted Echoform Reliquary again, forcing it into its dual short-sword form. The sudden release of pressure between their blades made Bjorn’s upper body tilt forward by a hair, and Deacon seized the narrow opening instantly. His left blade shot toward Bjorn’s liver, while his right darted toward the lower left of Bjorn’s small intestine —forming, for an instant, the image of a serpent’s gaping jaws. In Bjorn’s eyes, a younger Mattias flickered over Deacon’s form for the briefest moment.

  Bjorn’s gaze softened as a wash of nostalgia overtook him, if only for a few moments, long enough for the tips of Deacon’s blades to nearly brush the fabric of his training suit.

  Though those brief few moments passed by faster than Bjorn would have liked.

  As the image of young Mattias faded and Bjorn clearly saw Deacon again, Bjorn’s knee drove into his gut with brutal precision, knocking every thought of landing a blow on Bjorn from his mind and every bit of air from his lungs.

  The impact blasted him backward once more, and this time the shock tore Echoform Reliquary from his hands.

  As Deacon’s feet left the ground and he was launched backwards, two things happened at once.

  First, glinting under the artificial sunlight above the training field, thin metal wires connecting both hilts to Deacon’s wrists snapped taut, dragging the short swords along with him as he flew through the air.

  Second, a vibrating rumble could be heard from somewhere behind Bjorn.

  Deacon hit the ground in a skidding crouch, wincing through the aftershocks of the knee strike as he reeled the short swords back toward him.

  He gripped them again, tightened his stance, and shot forward, lunging both blades in at an angle that mimicked the snapping jaws of a serpent once again.

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  Only for Bjorn to casually ease out of his stance and lift a single finger in Deacon’s direction.

  Deacon braked so hard his boots tore up the dirt beneath him and stopped his blades just a hair’s breadth away from entering his uncle’s guard, staring at him in pure disbelief as Bjorn lifted his manaphone, answered it, and began speaking into it without letting a single sound be heard by Deacon as he activated some sort of device to silence his voice.

  Deacon stood there, chest rising and falling sharply, still holding both blades out as the phone call dragged on for several seconds. Bjorn eventually ended the call with a curt tap and pocketed the device before finally turning his full attention back to Deacon.

  “That’s enough for now,” Bjorn said, not a trace of humor in his voice anymore. “Training session’s over. We’re going to go pick up your new armor set.”

  Deacon blinked, exhausted and still half crouched. “…Now?”

  Bjorn didn’t break stride as he walked toward the exit of the training field, his voice dropping into a tone that brooked no argument. “Now.”

  Deacon didn’t waste time questioning the severity in his uncle’s tone; the sharp edge in it alone was enough to override whatever complaint he was about to voice out about suddenly ending their training so soon.

  Deacon hurried to catch up to his uncle, ignoring the ache in his body as he fell into step behind him. As they left the training field, he quickly stored Echoform Reliquary and the metal wiring wrapped around its hilts and his forearms into his Spatial Sling Bag and leg pouch, respectively.

  Deacon thought to himself, watching the way his uncle’s shoulder tightened and squared themselves, a far cry from his rather aloof posture back when they were training.

  They crossed the threshold of the training field and slipped into the kitchen of the Knight Order’s lounge room, Bjorn grabbed ahold of his pseudo-domestic stone counters and metallic appliances, failing entirely to mask the tension radiating from Bjorn’s frame. Before Deacon could form a sentence, Bjorn moved straight through the illusory stove like it wasn’t even there — disappearing past the veil and leaving Deacon to follow after him into the hidden chamber behind it.

  Stepping through the illusion that was the threshold between the training field and the kitchen of the Sovereign Blade Knight Order’s lounge, right after his uncle, Deacon found himself suddenly no longer right behind his uncle.

  Bjorn moved so quickly that he was already at the far end of the lounge room, behind the holo-table and beside the standing coat rack. He’d managed to cross 50 meters in the second when Deacon stepped into the lounge.

  Another thing Deacon had noticed was that his uncle was no longer in his training suit but instead wore a black, high-collared leather coat that was zipped up, wearing a similarly colored pair of pants, and a burnt-orange porcelain mask that covered everything from his forehead down to just below his jaw.

  Deacon stared at his uncle incredulously before asking, “… Are you cosplaying?”

  “Yeah, I am, it’s your—” Bjorn began, voice muffled under the mask, but he cut himself off abruptly and shook his head, his thoughts still a bit muddled up from his memories from just a minute ago – though Deacon had no way of knowing this.

  “Come on. We don’t have any time to waste,” his uncle had said, turning to brush aside a curtain to reveal a plain, grey brick wall.

  Before Deacon could form a single follow-up question, Bjorn pressed his palm against the plain wall behind the curtain. Doing so revealed a set of concealed runes that flared to life upon his uncle's inputting in a mana sequence, retracting a portion of the wall inward to reveal a dark-grey circular pad, ringed with runes and thick cased wiring running from the frame into the surrounding walls – this was a Teleporter Pad.

  “4, 2, 7, 8, 2, 5, 3, 9, 3, 6, 1, 5; is the mana sequence to access the teleporter,” his uncle told him as he stepped onto the teleporter pad.

  Deacon stepped in behind him, still trying to figure out what exactly had shifted Bjorn’s mood so violently after the phone call, but the taut focus in the man’s shoulders told him asking would not get him any answers right now.

  Instead, he imprinted the mana sequence to access the teleporter pad in his mind.

  Watching as Bjorn began typing on the holographic console that appeared in front of him as he stepped onto the teleporter pad, Deacon stepped onto the platform and stood beside his uncle. A brief second later, he was greeted with a hologram in front of him.

  [Designation:] [Destination: ]

  he said to himself silently, feeling the prickle of unease creep along the back of his neck as he tried to imagine why they needed to be there right now.

  The moment Bjorn confirmed the destination and entered the teleport coordinates for the pad he had within Dunes Dunes Dunes, within a blink of his eyes, the lounge room in front of them vanished.

  In its place for a brief fleeting moment, Deacon witnessed as light all around him collapsed inwardly as though sucked through a pinhole, then dispersed into nothing, before imploding in on itself with a muted thud that resounded within his eardrums.

  A few seconds after that moment, Deacon realized he’d been teleported after sensing that the ambient mana in the air had shifted.

  Deacon wondered. It was so dark he couldn’t even see his own hand when he lifted it in front of his face.

  He hesitated for a second, taking in a quiet breath through his nose to check for anything explosive in the air. When he didn’t smell any trace of methane or volatile fumes, he began gathering mana into the space around him to cast however, a hand on his shoulder stopped him before he could fully form the structure of the spell.

  “Use your Mana Lantern – any use of flames in here will set off the insectoids nearby,” Bjorn said to him.

  Reaching into his Spatial Sling Bag, Deacon found the Portable Mana Lantern he’d stolen from Jeremiah’s base on Floor Three and clipped it onto the band at his left hip.

  Item Name:Portable Mana Lantern

  Type:Rarity:Description:A compact lantern designed to hook onto a belt band or around the waist if the proper instruments are met. Its center houses a small mana crystal held in place by a metal frame and surrounded by tempered glass. When injected with mana, the crystal activates and produces a clear, steady glow, bright enough to illuminate the wearer’s surroundings. Frequently used for exploration in dark floors or low-visibility environments.

  Effect:Requirement:

  Feeding a thin stream of mana into the crystal housed inside the tempered-glass frame, the lantern responded with a bloom of bright blueish-white light that began to expand, pushing the darkness back far enough for him to see their surroundings.

  “Woah…” Deacon muttered, turning in place to take in the full sweep of the now illuminated area.

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