Days slid by. Alex buried himself in training again—quiet training this time.
Lucius had excused him from the usual outdoor drills: the open field, the sparring rotations, the little crowd of clan members watching him like he was some stray cat learning tricks.
Instead, a small hall was assigned to him. Not too big. Not too small. Just enough space for him to breathe, move, fall, get back up, and do it all over again without anyone's eyes on him.
Inside the hall, Alex sat cross-legged on the polished floor.
Back straight. Hands relaxed.
His eyes stayed closed, but the system windows flashed stubbornly in front of him like glowing reminders of everything he wasn't good enough at yet.
For days now, he hadn't touched the rocket move—at least not the way they expected.
He already knew it. Why waste time pretending?
Instead, he focused on something else. Something bigger.
'The Vornshade mission opened my eyes,' Alex thought.
'I'm strong… but I'm still lacking. I need better techniques.'
The system pulsed.
---
[ Name: Alex Wyndham ]
[ Age: 18 ]
[ Race: Human ]
[ Path: Warrior ]
– Harnessable Energy –
[ Qi: Stage 3 ]
[ Mana: Unable to determine host mana capacity ]
[ Peace Energy ]
[ Bloodline Power: 0.00001% ]
– Key Features of the Pendragon System –
[ Call ] | [ Message ] | [ Map ] | [ Library ] | [ Inventory ]
– The Host's Perfected Skills –
[ Phantom Body ]
[ Astral Body ]
[ Spiritual Eyes ]
[ Power Overlap ]
[ Energy Drain ]
[ Buster ]
– The Host's Weapons –
[ Death ]
[ Qi Handgun ]
[ Qi Cannon ]
– Death –
[ Stage 3 (Cursed) ]
[ Skills: ]
[ Call ]
[ Evolution Point ]
[ Self Healing ]
[ Death Aura ]
---
Training alongside Tamsin, Gwen, and Merrick had always reminded him of one brutal truth—
he still had a long climb ahead.
Their control. Their instincts. Their rhythm in battle.
They moved like they'd been warriors for a decade.
He moved like someone who just became one.
Mostly, to close the gap between him and stronger opponents, Alex still relied on the items the Dragon Roar clan had given him. Those tools had carried him through fights he had no business surviving.
Because of that, Alex made up his mind.
He didn't just want new techniques — he wanted to upgrade the ones he already had. Make them sharper. Faster. More reliable.
[Phantom Body]
[Astral Body]
[Spiritual Eyes]
[Power Overlap]
[Energy Drain]
[Buster]
The Phantom Body was the one that had saved his neck the most. A defensive technique way above his stage when he first learned it, yet somehow he had still managed to pull it off.
The reason was simple. Alex had pushed through the one major weakness that normally blocked a stage-one warrior from learning it — qi capacity. He had forced his qi to stretch far beyond what it should have carried. Risky, stupid, but it worked.
Both Phantom Body and Astral Body relied on the same idea.
Using qi with sharp, precise control to thin out the body — almost like turning into a fading outline. Impossible on its own, yet with qi, the rules bent just enough to make it real.
It was a strange technique, and a dangerous one, but Alex knew he couldn't rely on luck anymore. If he didn't push these skills forward, he would stay stuck.
And staying stuck meant dying in the next real battle.
Using qi — one's own life force — Alex shook his body from the inside out.
Every atom. Every tiny bond. All of it vibrating under his control.
Normally, doing something like that should rip a person apart.
But qi wrapped around him like a shell, holding him together while he pushed the limits of what a human body should survive.
When he hit the right frequency, the atoms in his body loosened.
Not enough to scatter him… but enough to stop them from locking tightly together.
For a split second his body phased out — ghost-like — then snapped back.
A heartbeat later, it phased out again.
That repeated flicker created the Phantom Body.
One second solid. One second untouchable.
A dangerous technique, but Alex had used it so many times it felt familiar now.
Then came the harder one.
If he pushed the vibration even higher, his atoms didn't just loosen—
they cloned themselves. Not perfectly, not a real copy, but a thin duplicate layered over his real body.
That was the Astral Body.
To hold that form steady, he had to constantly feed it qi.
In the beginning, back at stage one, he could only maintain it while moving—always moving—
or else the astral shell would collapse.
But after reaching stage two, he'd managed to stabilize it longer. Still not perfect, but far better.
All these tricks demanded ridiculous amounts of qi.
More than any normal stage-one or stage-two warrior could ever possess.
Lucky for him, he had one thing no one else had:
the artificial qi core.
It drank qi from every direction, then pumped it straight into his real core.
To anyone watching, it looked like Alex had an endless ocean of qi inside him.
But even with the supply, there was still a wall he couldn't break yet.
His output.
He simply couldn't release qi fast enough to form anything bigger than his current astral body.
No matter how much he had stored, there was a limit to how much he could unleash in a single breath.
However, now that he'd stepped into stage three, Alex wanted more.
Not new tricks. Not borrowed moves.
He wanted to upgrade everything he already had so his techniques finally matched the strength of his body.
'If I can make the Phantom Body last more than a single second…
and maybe form more than one Astral Body… that would be perfect,' Alex thought.
But his training had revealed something else. Something bigger.
'I finally understand it,' he told himself.
'The Astral Body and the Phantom Body… they're not full powers. They're pieces. Small copies of something larger—'
He opened his eyes slightly as another system line flashed.
'—the vibration power.'
All of the strange information came from the system.
And reading deeper into the notes for his astral technique, he'd made a discovery that shook him.
'Vibration power… it lets a person control vibration itself. Phase matter. Split atoms. Clone parts of the body. Melt or break objects down to the molecular level…'
He swallowed.
'And the Phantom Body and Astral Body are just baby versions of it. Not the real thing.'
He leaned forward, a slow smile pulling at his mouth.
Because buried in the descriptions, he saw something familiar.
Something he had once—accidentally—done in a fight.
'If I apply the same vibration principles to my attacks… I can turn one punch into multiple punches in a single instant,' Alex thought.
His fingers curled into a fist.
'And if I combine that with the buster skill…'
A sharp grin cut across his face.
'…the result will be devastating.'
Thinking about combining techniques, Alex's mind drifted to one skill that made that possible.
[Power Overlap]
'Power Overlap doesn't really need an upgrade,' Alex thought.
'What it needs is practice. The more I use it… and the higher I climb in stage… the more techniques I'll be able to combine.'
Every technique demanded a specific qi pattern.
A precise flow.
A rhythm inside the body.
And because of that, most warriors couldn't cast two techniques at the same time.
They had to chain them — one after another.
But Power Overlap broke that rule.
It let him run two techniques at once.
Back in stage two, Alex could only overlap two.
Now that he stood at stage three, he hoped he could push that number higher.
He shifted his focus to another technique — the Spiritual Eyes.
A gift from Stan.
Simple, but brutal in its usefulness.
By channeling qi into his head and focusing it around his eyes, he could see across different spectrums. Sense movement better. Smell clearer. Hear things he shouldn't be able to.
It was one of those techniques that naturally grew stronger as the user climbed in stage.
Then there was Energy Drain.
A technique that let him pull qi from life-forms… except humans.
Originally, it was meant for stealing energy in battle.
But now it mostly functioned as a passive ability — feeding qi into his core nonstop.
Because of that, he rarely used it the way it was intended.
And finally, the Buster technique.
Alex exhaled slowly.
He had gone through every technique. He had his plan.
He tightened his fists and rose to begin training—
—but before he could start, the door swung open.
Someone stepped into the hall without knocking.
Gavalich.
He didn't even blink at Alex's posture. He just spoke, urgent and sharp.
"You're being called to the throne room."