Rowan Mercer barely noticed his surroundings as he left the arena.
His attention was turned inward, calmly reviewing what he had just taken.
Spirit binding was better than he'd expected.
At its core, the technique targeted incorporeal entities. It relied on leverage rather than brute force, using precise control to seize spirits far stronger than the practitioner themselves and anchor them inside the body. Once bound, a spirit could be used in two ways. It could be channeled temporarily, lending its abilities, or it could be broken down and absorbed, permanently reinforcing the user.
The key detail was scalability.
The stronger the practitioner, the stronger the spirit they could bind.
Someone at Ben Ward's level could theoretically seize a spirit that had existed for a thousand years, provided it had no physical body. Anything with a living vessel was off-limits. Power anchored to flesh couldn't be taken so easily.
Rowan's mind jumped immediately to the competitors he'd observed earlier.
The Dunn brothers, for example.
They carried a serpent spirit that had existed for centuries, one of the oldest still active. They didn't dominate it. They cooperated with it. The spirit had temporarily left its physical form so the brothers could compete, but if it ever returned to its true body, no one here could touch it. Not Ben. Not his grandfather. Not without paying a catastrophic price.
That distinction mattered.
If powerful spirits were truly so easy to consume, the world would have collapsed long ago.
Still, even with those limits, the technique had enormous value.
Rowan's thoughts drifted beyond this world. Against beings reduced to pure soul or lingering consciousness, spirit binding would be devastating. Once the body was gone, capture was inevitable. Consumption was optional.
He also saw the flaw.
Absorbing spirits was not clean. It never was. You didn't just take strength. You took fragments of memory, instinct, obsession. Do it carelessly, and the mind fractured. Ben's instability wasn't arrogance alone. It was accumulation.
The creator of the technique had likely understood this. Handing over the full version while leaving a safer, incomplete form for his descendants hadn't been loyalty. It had been restraint.
Rowan wasn't concerned.
His mental defenses were far beyond what this world considered normal. If necessary, he could strip a spirit down to raw power and discard the rest. And with his unique circumstances, even slow absorption scaled efficiently.
One spirit at a time was more than enough.
When Rowan reached the open plaza again, the matches had already finished.
Marcus Hale stood near the large screen with his senior, both of them watching the final replay fade out.
Marcus noticed Rowan first. "I lost," he said, scratching the back of his head. "Got close, though."
Rowan nodded. He'd seen enough to understand how it ended. Marcus had pushed hard. Too hard. His opponent had baited him at the last second.
"You did fine," Rowan said simply.
Marcus hesitated, then leaned in. "Now I get why you were so confident earlier," he said quietly. "That lightning… I didn't realize—"
He stopped himself abruptly, glancing at his senior.
Rowan said nothing.
Marcus's senior stepped forward, expression serious. "What you did today was reckless," he said bluntly. "The Ward family doesn't forget insults."
"I know," Rowan replied.
"Come back with us after the tournament," the man continued. "Stay out of sight for a while. Let things cool down."
It was practical advice. Reasonable. And unnecessary.
Before Rowan could respond, two familiar figures approached.
Evan Clarke arrived first, followed closely by Fiona Barlow.
Evan didn't waste time. "If you want protection," he said, "Iron Front can offer it."
Rowan raised an eyebrow.
"The Ward family crossing us isn't an option they can afford," Evan continued. "Join, and this stops being your problem."
The offer wasn't subtle.
Rowan glanced at Fiona. She didn't speak. She didn't need to.
Iron Front had already seen enough.
Rowan smiled faintly.
"I'll think about it," he said.
And that, for now, was enough.