The locker room after Combat Praxis smelled of expensive alchemical muscle balms, ozone, and the sour sweat of terrified teenagers. It was a humid, cramped space where the hierarchy of the Academy was usually reinforced through shoulder-checks and whispered insults.
Vane sat on a bench in the corner and pulled on his boots. His ribs ached where Kael had tagged him with a training staff during a shield-breaking drill. It was a dull ache rather than a sharp break, a testament to his increasing durability. His body was finally getting used to the abuse.
But something was different today.
When he tied his laces, his fingers moved with a weird, alien efficiency. He didn't fumble. He didn't have to look. The knots were tied with the same tactile precision as a surgeon stitching a wound.
The Ghost was still there.
It was fainter than it had been yesterday on the balcony, but the neural pathways had been burned in. The Usurper hadn't just copied a skill; it had overlaid a decade of Senna's internal mana-circuitry onto his nervous system. Vane wasn't just moving his muscles—he was unconsciously circulating mana in the Spiral Circulation pattern through his marrow. Even while sitting still, his internal energy was vortexing, reinforcing his skeletal structure.
Around him, the sons and daughters of counts and magisters eyed him sidelong. At the start of the semester, the stares had been open mockery. The Commoner. The joke of Class 1-A. Now the stares were different. They were quieter and infused with a confused irritation. Vane wasn't failing spectacularly anymore. In Praxis he didn't flail. He moved with a boring, ugly economy of motion—his mana always perfectly channeled to the exact point of impact before the strike even landed.
"You smell like a crypt, Vane," a voice sneered.
Vane finished tying his boot and looked up. Standing over him was Jax. He was a Rank 3 Elite Fire-aspect noble with impeccable hair and a permanent sneer. He was one of Anastasia's orbiters, usually content to laugh at her jokes, but today he seemed bold.
"Do they not have showers in Villa 1?" Jax asked. He spoke loud enough for the room to hear, seeking the approval of his peers. "Or do you just prefer rolling around in the campus dump every evening to remind yourself of home?"
The room went quiet. This was the social pressure valve releasing. They needed the rat to know his place.
A month ago, Vane would have used [Flash Step] to be behind Jax before the sentence was finished. He would have pricked a kidney to scare him straight. A week ago, he would have thrown a verbal barb and run for the door.
Today, Vane just stood up.
He didn't step back. He didn't shift into a fighting stance. He just planted his feet. The stolen mana-memory took over. His weight settled into his heels, and his internal mana vortex tightened, anchoring him to the floor with the density of an iron pillar. He didn't look like a student about to get into a fight. He looked like a spear planted in the earth.
He looked at Jax with dead tired eyes.
"Move," Vane said.
It wasn't a shout. It was a statement of fact. Jax waited for the flinch or the clever retort. When it didn't come, he shifted his weight uncomfortably. The silence stretched. Vane wasn't doing anything threatening yet, but standing in front of him suddenly felt like standing in front of a dense, immovable object that would shatter Jax's hand if he tried to strike it.
"Watch yourself, rat," Jax muttered. But the heat was gone from his voice. He stepped aside.
Vane walked out the door without looking back. From the doorway of his office overlooking the locker room, General Kael watched the exchange. His golden eyes narrowed. The boy wasn't scurrying anymore. His mana was starting to have weight.
That evening, Vane sat in Vyla's Magical Theory lecture hall. The amphitheater was freezing as usual, the stone benches sapping the warmth from his tired legs.
He was exhausted. The physical and mental toll of maintaining the Spiral Circulation was immense. Even with the stolen technique, his mana channels were screaming from the friction of the rotation.
He looked at his hand. He flexed his fingers. The power he had siphoned from Senna wasn't just "moves." It was a 5-Star Combat Art—a system that converted mana into extreme linear velocity.
"The primary failure point of standard kinetic shielding," Vyla lectured from the pit. She was manipulating a complex holographic diagram of a mana shield. "Is overpressure on the leading edge. If the force exceeds the total output of the caster, the shield shatters catastrophically. How do we mitigate this without simply adding more power? Mr. Vane."
The class went dead silent. Vyla loved calling on the Commoner to expose his ignorance. Vane looked at the diagram. A week ago, it would have been gibberish. Now he saw it through the lens of the Argent Horizon.
"You don't try to stop it flat," Vane said. His voice was rough, echoing in the quiet hall.
A few students snickered. Vyla's eyebrows shot up. "Explain."
Vane stood up. The ghost of the Art whispered in his ear.
"If you try to stop a strike with a flat wall, you take one hundred percent of the impact. The shield breaks because your mana is fighting the incoming force head-on. It is a waste of energy. You are muscling the world."
He walked down the stairs toward the hologram. He didn't ask for permission.
"You need to apply Cyclic Resonance," Vane said. He pointed to the outer edges of the diagram. "You make the mana circulate spirally along the surface of the shield. You don't block the force; you give it a path to slide off the center line. It is a Lunar Deflection at a microscopic level."
He looked at Vyla.
"If the mana is spinning fast enough, you don't need to be stronger than the attack. You just need to be the frictionless surface it slides against. The vector gets distributed along the rotation."
The silence in the hall deepened. Vyla stared at him.
"Applying Combat Art momentum theory to a static mana matrix," she mused. "Usually reserved for high-level kineticists. It is unconventional... but functionally correct. It requires immense control to maintain the rotation without the construct collapsing."
She looked at Vane with a new expression. It wasn't respect yet. But it was curiosity.
"Sit down, Mr. Vane."
Vane walked back to his seat. Two rows ahead, Isole Sylvaris turned slightly. She caught his eye with a quiet nod of acknowledgment. Vane sat down. He understood the theory. He had the technique. Now he just needed the power to fill it.
The next morning, the fog in the eastern sector was thicker than usual. Senna was waiting for him. She was in the wheelchair again, but she looked sharper. Her eyes followed him as he approached the pillar.
"Show me," she said simply.
Vane picked up the spear. He didn't hesitate. He fell into the groove the Ghost had carved into his mind. He initiated the Spiral Circulation, feeling the mana hum through the marrow of his arms and into the star-metal shaft.
Hiss. Hiss.
The air began to whistle as the Frictionless Sleeve took effect. He spun the spear in the defensive figure-eight pattern. He aligned his hips. He snapped the thrust.
First Form: Quicksilver Thrust.
CRACK.
The supersonic strike bit deep into the concrete. It was a perfect manifestation of the Art—mana and movement working as one. Vane pulled the spear back and returned to guard. He looked at Senna, expecting a critique.
Senna just stared at him. She looked baffled. She wheeled herself closer, inspecting the hole in the concrete. She ran a finger over the fracture lines.
"You..." she trailed off. She shook her head. "Who taught you that?"
"You did," Vane lied smoothly. "Yesterday."
"Don't lie to me, boy," Senna snapped. "I taught you the grip. I taught you the stance. I didn't teach you ten years of micro-adjustments. You are using Spiral Circulation in your marrow. I haven't even mentioned that yet."
She looked up at him, her eyes narrowing. She didn't suspect his Authority. No one would suspect a Rank 1 had a power that could steal experience.
"You move like you have been circulating mana this way for a decade," she decided finally. "You are a freak. Or a liar. Maybe both."
Vane lowered the spear. "Does it matter? I have the Art."
"You have the delivery system," Senna corrected. "The Argent Horizon is the gun. It uses your mana to reach speeds that ignore the world's friction. But you are still just hitting things with a stick. Even at the speed of sound, a stick is just a stick."
A tiny spark of liquid silver mana appeared on her fingertip. It hummed with a low, dangerous sound.
"This is the Silver Fang. It is an Authority that adds a conceptual edge to the mana of the Art. It is dense. It is sharp. It tells the target that its durability is a lie."
She flicked her finger. The spark flew at the concrete pillar. There was no crack. No dust. The spark simply sank into the stone. It didn't blast the concrete apart; it ignored the stone's existence entirely, boring a clean, impossibly smooth hole through the meter-thick pillar.
Vane stared at it. The hole he had made with the spear was jagged and cracked. The hole the mana made was surgical.
"The Argent Horizon makes you fast enough to hit anything," Senna said. "But the Silver Fang ensures that whatever you hit breaks. Without the bullet, you are just a very fast boy with a sharp stick."
Vane looked at the smooth hole. He felt the Usurper stir in his gut, hungry for the power he couldn't reach.
"Then teach me," Vane said. "Teach me how to manifest the Silver Mana."
Senna laughed. It was a dry, hacking sound.
"You can't manifest it. This is my Authority, something I was born with."