After the morning training, Thiriel left the tower with calm steps, feigning simple curiosity.
First, he crossed the garden, observing the plants Caethiriel tended with increasing skill.
Some leaves seemed to react to his nearness, bowing slightly, as if recognizing something in him. It wasn't active magic, but a subtle resonance.
He didn't stop for long.
He continued toward the lake.
The water was completely still, reflecting the sky like a dark mirror. Thiriel crouched at the edge and closed his eyes. This time he didn't seek magic inside, but outside.
He felt how the ambient energy concentrated around the lake, denser than at other points, drawn by the tower's formations.
'A good place to refine,' he thought, 'if it weren't so exposed.'
He stood up and kept walking.
Each time pushing a bit further. First circling the lake. Then moving away from it. Then, following a barely visible path leading to the tree line marking the start of the forest.
The sensation returned.
That constant, watchful pressure.
He didn't get upset. He was used to it. As long as he didn't do anything "forbidden," the surveillance remained passive, like an eye watching from afar.
When he was a few meters from the forest edge, a rasping voice broke the silence.
"You shouldn't go any further."
Thiriel stopped.
To his right, motionless as a statue, was one of the servants. His face expressionless, eyes dull.
The energy emanating from him was weak, artificial, and absolutely controlled.
"Why?" Thiriel asked with a neutral tone.
"Beyond the tower is dangerous," the servant replied without any inflection. "Master's order."
Thiriel observed him for a long second. There was no direct threat in the servant's stance. He wasn't prepared to attack. He was just fulfilling a function.
"I understand," he said finally.
He turned around and returned the way he came.
Inside, he smiled.
"So even here there are clear limits."
That confirmed something important: Vexar didn't just watch the apprentices; he also delimited their world. Everything was designed to keep them within a range safe for him.
That night, Thiriel went back to training.
Three days.
He only needed three days.
On the third dawn, sitting in his room, something changed.
The flow of magic he had been compressing for hours, for entire days, stopped dispersing. For the first time, it stabilized. It condensed into a fixed, solid point, like a small core spinning slowly inside his abdomen.
It didn't hurt.
It didn't explode.
It simply existed.
Thiriel opened his eyes, breathing calmly, and knew he had achieved it.
"Rank D, one star," he murmured.
He had formally entered the path of magic.
For the rest of the week, his progress went unnoticed.
The other apprentices were still struggling with the formation of the core. Drowen was close, but still unstable. Kael was barely beginning to understand how to refine energy without exhausting himself.
Vexar, for his part, said nothing.
But his gaze lingered more and more on Thiriel.
And that was not a good sign.
Despite his magical advancement, there was something that didn't change.
He didn't have a technique to defend himself, and the warrior aura technique still wasn't responding.
Thiriel tried everything.
By day, with his body active.
By night, after long sessions of magic refinement.
Changing the pathways.
Nothing.
The aura didn't appear. Not even a spark.
Every attempt ended the same: the muscles responded, the body tensed up, but the energy didn't follow the right path. It diverted toward the magic meridians, dissipating before taking shape.
'It's not rejection,' he thought. 'It's incompatibility.'
The magic in this world had changed the internal body structure of everyone. The system he had previously mastered no longer worked the same way.
During the week, he kept training in silence, without drawing attention. He refined magic in the morning.
He helped occasionally with simple tasks to avoid raising suspicions.
He watched.
He listened.
The servants remained the same empty shells.
The senior apprentices repeated the same routines.
And Vexar kept waiting for whoever reached Rank D, looking at him from time to time with expectation.
On the seventh day, Thiriel locked himself in his room earlier than usual.
He didn't turn on the lamp.
He sat on the floor and closed his eyes.
'I've been trying to impose my technique on this body,' he thought. 'Forcing vital aura to activate the technique as in my previous life.'
That was the mistake.
He took a deep breath.
Instead of trying to activate the technique from vital energy, he brought his consciousness to the newly formed magic core. He watched it spin slowly, stable.
"What if I don't activate it the same way?"
He hadn't tested that idea.
Until now, he had thought of using magic only after activating the aura. As a supplement. Like in his previous world.
This time he would do the opposite.
He guided a minimal amount of magic out of the core. Not toward the usual meridians, but toward the pathways closest to the muscles.
Not to cast a spell.
Not to reinforce the body directly.
Just to mimic the function the aura previously fulfilled.
The magic flowed.
The muscles responded.
There was no explosion of strength. There was no sharp increase in speed. But the body felt more present, more cohesive, as if every fiber were slightly aligned.
Thiriel opened his eyes abruptly.
His heart was pounding.
"So it is possible," he whispered. "But it's not the warrior aura. It's something else."
An incomplete version. Weak. Unstable.
But it was a beginning.
He stood up slowly, testing his balance, the tension in his legs, the response of his arms.
Everything worked… though far from his old level.
Even so, he smiled.
For the first time in days.
'The martial path isn't dead,' he thought. 'It just needs to adapt.'
He lay back on the bed, exhausted, but with a clear mind.
In a week he had achieved what took others months.
He had entered Rank D.
He had confirmed the tower's limits.
And he had found a possible way to unite his two worlds.
But he also knew something else.
Vexar wouldn't wait indefinitely.
And when the moment came…
Thiriel had to be ready.