When I open my eyes, the first thing I see is the Veil weaving its way through the sky. Feeling a presence near me, I turn my head to the side, and Lissandra sits there on the fallen trunk of a tree.

Myrra is nowhere to be seen.

“I sent her to level up,” Lissandra says.

“Got it.” Sending thermal energy through my body, my passive activates, and it starts healing my wounds.

Lissandra lets it happen, and waits for me to recover a bit before speaking, “You are free to challenge me anytime.”

With my interest piqued, I listen as she speaks. Even after all this, I can’t help but feel a lot of admiration for her. She’s the only being to inspire me in quite this way. The strongest being I’ve met through the floors, not counting the Ruler of Greed and the Ruler of Envy.

“I never backed down from a challenge, little pup. I have defeated more than a dozen Absolutes. I have beaten every Champion who had an eye towards taking my title, everyone who thought they were ready to challenge me. Just through my own power, I have brought my planet victory in every Pairing we’ve experienced.” A long silence follows her words.

Lissandra takes a moment before continuing, “Before these two weeks end, you will know more, and I won’t kill you if you follow my rules. So come, challenge me, little pup. Test yourself and see what breaks sooner, you or your pride.”

“I would ask why, but I won’t get an answer, will I?”

“I don't feel like it, but if you use that head of yours, you might figure it out.”

“What did you do to my black mana dagger?”

“I’m using it as an external, temporary mana heart. As you have realized, I do not have a mana heart, so I have to rely on external mana. To that end, I modified the dagger you left behind.”

“What is that black mana?”

“I might tell you if you survive.”

“You used Hadwin’s skills.”

“Yes.”

“Why would you need my status then? You can take over Hadwin’s?”

"I told the Ruler of Envy I couldn’t. He just happened to be gullible enough to believe me. He used one of the tutorial’s functions to bring that other man here so that I could transfer his status to our little kitten. In exchange, he wanted me to kill you."

It seems like old Liss is making plans of her own. I would like to ask more, but she seems to be at her limit. All-powerful Absolute cockroaches aren’t going to be accustomed to answering questions for one so lowly as me, so I better stop here. Instead, I go through the list of my skills and the ones I have the best chance of pushing to level 50 in the next two weeks.

My best choices are [Focus] which is at 49, [Mana Manipulation] which is at 47, but something tells me that I should have a fairly high chance to make it work. And that leaves me with [Redistribution], my next best option, sitting at 48. Either that or [Resonance] at 45.

[Perception] might be an option as well sitting at 46, but I don’t think I would be able to level it in the time we have. It’s not a skill that I can level up that quickly.

I also start right away. Lissandra doesn’t seem to want to mess with my training much further, even though I’m sure she is watching. Still, for now, I push her presence to the back of my mind.

I start working on the closest approximation I can make to the mana shaping exercise she was playing with back on the 2nd floor. A ball of mana constantly growing and shrinking. That alone wouldn’t be that great, so obviously I added some challenges I figure she must have thought of herself. I increase the density of mana, I spin it, and I increase the speed.

It only takes a few minutes of this before I hear Lissandra stand up and walk towards me. I look up, and she looks at me and then at the mana orb, I’ve been using to practice.

She flicks her hand and sends it flying far away whereupon it expands between the trees and bursts open.

Making sure I watch, she then gestures at me, and I send a chunk of my mana her way. She absorbs the mana into the black dagger and pulls it free. And with that mana, she creates a small mana orb and then another. Then more, In quick succession, dozens, then hundreds, come into existence.

Without looking away, she collapses them down, without seeming to try, until they’re only as big as the eye of a needle. Like a swarm, these tiny orbs move in formation, taking on the shape of an orb of their own.

They’re so small the newly created orb seems like a single orb rather than the thousands of tiny orbs forming it. The sheer control required to do something like that leaves me speechless.

Fascinated, I reach out a finger and touch the surface which ripples like water, thousands of tiny orbs reacting to my touch and reforming into a glass like surface.

Lissandra then moves her hand, and with seemingly less effort than breathing, each of the orbs burst open and in the blink of an eye form into a single orb. But it’s not that simple. Sending my senses toward it, I see another orb inside of that.

Then another.

And more.

Each orb is smaller than the one before it, with an insanely thin layer of air separating it from the others. The number of orbs feel like they go on infinitely.This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

With another movement of her hand, all the orbs disappear and instead, two smaller orbs form inside the third one. These two orbs inside start spinning around each other.

Gradually, the speed of their spin increases to a terrifying degree. A vortex is created between them, trying to pull in the mana comprising the orb that contains them. Yet the larger orb resists without strain, without so much as letting a sound escape despite the impossible speeds involved.

Then the orbs disappear, dissolving into particles of mana that Lissandra waves her hand and sends away.

“Little pup, it pains me to watch your clumsy attempts at shaping mana. The exercises I just showed you are something everyone capable of breathing should be able to do.”

Here it comes. This is something I really haven’t missed very much.

“The other issue is your weak body. Don’t think I haven’t noticed the results of your Active Tempering, I’ll grant that you’ve had somewhat passable success for someone so clumsy. For now, though, you are forbidden to use it. It’s obvious in the way you fight that you rely on your mana and primordial energies too much, so before you leave, I will give you a way to train your body.”

“Are you really that bored?” I ask.

“If you live as long as I have, you will learn how rare it is to experience something new. I told you multiple times that the rank of Champion is the highest you will ever climb, little pup. I still stand behind that assessment. Yet you keep refusing to accept that. You have the determination, more than enough of it, the only thing you lack is talent. So now I want to see how far you make it.”

“Lucky me.”

“Indeed. In my long life, I’ve only ever had one disciple, and the number of people I honored with my guidance could be counted on the fingers of my hands.”

“You mean Ruby. Was she really that talented?”

“I believed she was capable of reaching my level. If that’s not talent, I don’t know what is.”

Having finished talking, Lissandra takes a step closer and pulls a bit more mana from the black dagger.

“Lower your defenses,” she orders.

I do it without much hesitation.

Lissandra taps my chest with her finger just over my heart, and from it, that point of contact expands an incredibly intricate web of inscriptions, some pathways connecting to my heart and supplying them with power.

“A long time ago, even before my Keiron was born, I saw one fresh Champion do it. I have never tried it before, but it seems fairly simple to use and modify for what I want.”

The inscriptions look anything but fairly simple. The intricacy is easily comparable to the inscriptions of the damaged arcane item in my possession. In some ways, they are even more impossible to follow. But of course, for the monster in front of me, even something like this may as well be the height of banality.

“I think that man called them Burden Enhancement Inscriptions. The young ones back then always did like coming up with fancy names for everything.”

Even as she speaks, she continues to inscribe, not even for a second does her concentration slip.

“Little pup, I won’t ask you if you agree nor will I ask what level I should set these to. We both know your answer. That stubbornness of yours is one of the reasons why I find you so interesting.”

“That’s nice to hear from someone who keeps threatening to kill me.”

“I knew people like you. You are the type who does the best when they find themselves at their worst. But don’t think, even for a moment, that I didn’t mean what I said back then. If you fail, I will kill you.”

“It would be nice if you declared me an Absolute candidate if I succeed.”

“If you succeed, you will prove you are capable enough to be declared a Champion candidate, at least by my standards. That's it.” She finishes and takes her hand away, leaving the delicate inscriptions behind.

“What are the advantages of being a Champion or Champion candidate? Are there any actual advantages?” I ask.

“The system doesn’t like to waste resources on the weak. If you prove yourself talented enough to become a candidate, your body will start changing in preparation for you to become a Champion. It’s different for everyone, so you will have to find out on your own.”

“You mean like a body upgrade, but…”

“Enough.”

I shut up immediately. This is probably as much as I’m going to get from her. In fact, I might have pushed too far and asked too many questions. Old people have no patience at all.

She takes the last remainder of my mana from the black dagger and sends it towards me. Activating the inscriptions, and I fall to the ground.

It’s like there’s an immense pressure pushing me down. Like I’m being forced to labor under increased gravity. The only difference is that there’s no external source to apply it. All of it is caused by the inscriptions, my mana, and my body. I can’t even twitch my finger, and it’s difficult to breathe.

“I have noticed that you possess kinetic energy, little pup. So I have to wonder, why do you keep using mana to strengthen your body? Kinetic energy is extremely rare, not to mention one of the best ways to achieve your goal. I knew knights who would kill for it, yet you’re wasting it.”

Unable to answer, I just lay there. No matter what I try, I can’t move at all. The only reasonable way seems to be to get rid of these inscriptions preventing me from using mana to strengthen my body. They also make this bullshit happen. But something tells me Lissandra wouldn’t appreciate it.

“You might try to say that using mana is more efficient than transforming it into kinetic energy with your heart. Maybe you might try to say it doesn’t matter given the amount of mana you have, and maybe you could get the same result either way. You are wrong.”

She takes a few steps back and sits on a stone. With one eye, I can see her pulling the pale white arm from the bag, and she starts painting on it with mana conductive paint. The lines she draws are extremely smooth and thin.

From there, she glances at me and declares, “You won’t be sleeping for the next two weeks. Every morning, you will spend five hours in the state you currently find yourself in. When you show improvement, I will make changes and increase the pressure.”

I would love to say a few choice words, but I can’t even squirm as much as a worm, so I reach into my Vortex Core and let kinetic energy seep through my body.

“After these five hours, you will spend five more hours hunting and leveling. Then I will let you rest for one hour. After that, you will spend ten hours working on any mana shaping exercises I decide to teach you.”

The inscriptions she made do not hinder kinetic energy at all, but even though I have some experience with it, it’s not enough. Not even when I use a crazy amount of it am I able to lift as much as a finger.

“The remaining three hours will be randomly allocated by me throughout the day. I might have you do maximal bursts of your mana or primordial energies. I might rouse up the entirety of your mana and have you bring it back under control.”

She stops drawing on the arm.

"After these two weeks, you will probably hate me enough to want to kill me."

She makes sure I’m looking at her. “You are free to try it anytime.”