The sea in the morning was not blue, but iron gray.

  A thick fog hung low over the water's surface, hiding the line between the sky and the waves. On the deck of The White Swan, the post-battle silence still felt heavy. Bloodstains may have been scrubbed away, but the psychological traces remained on the faces of every crew member on watch.

  Mira was in her favorite spot: the Crow’s Nest at the top of the main mast.

  Thirty meters above the deck, the wind blew stronger and colder. Mira was not wearing her full outfit. She was now wearing only her innermost clothing—a white bandage wrapped horizontally around her chest, letting the salty wind lash against her skin, which had started to toughen.

  "Repeat," Kars' voice came from below, sitting leisurely on the cross-tree (yards) of the mast. He was peeling a green apple with Mira's dagger.

  "I've tried it fifty times, Kars," Mira panted, her hands trembling badly as she held the bow. "My eyes feel like they're going to explode."

  "Draven won't stop just because your eyes hurt. Repeat."

  Mira growled, frustrated. She raised her bow again. There were no physical arrows in her hands.

  Today's training wasn't about shooting; it was about shaping. Unlike when Mira practiced creating blades using Hard Light, this required higher focus that was mentally exhausting.

  “Imagine your Intian not as an explosion,” Kars instructed, his voice slicing through the wind. “That's a rookie mistake. You always think the light shoots out. Now, make it silent.”

  Mira closed her eyes for a moment, searching for and reaching out to all the Intians flowing within her body. But she felt two opposing things, one hot and aggressive, the other cold.

  Don’t use their power, Mira thought.

  She took a breath, drawing back the empty bowstring.

  Channel it. Don’t blast it.

  The light began to gather between her index and middle fingers. But this time, Mira didn’t let it become a wild ball or spread out like a dagger of light. She forced it to condense and thin. She imagined the light particles pressing against each other, locking together to form a crystal structure.

  An arrow began to take shape from pure light. It wasn’t the rough Hard Light like the dagger she had made in the forest. This was finer. But the problem wasn’t with its form. The problem was the lens.

  "Make the lens, Mira," Kars commanded. "You want to shoot a target a kilometer away? Your eyes aren't enough. You need a telescope. Make that telescope yourself."

  This was the torturous part. Mira had to divide her concentration. Part of her brain had to hold the shape of the light arrow so it wouldn’t explode. Another part had to manipulate the air and remaining light particles in front of her right eye to form the lens.

  She had to bend the light (refraction) to magnify her vision (zoom).

  "Argh…" Mira winced. The rune behind her ear felt scorching hot, as if lit by a cigarette.

  In front of her right eye, a small transparent disc of light formed. The world behind it wavered, blurred, like looking at the bottom of a stirred-up pond.

  Kars threw an apple peel toward Mira's face. “Your enemy won't just wait for you to adjust your focus! Stabilize!”

  The scene inside the light lens gradually sharpened. The distant gray sea suddenly appeared close. She could see the foam of the waves. She could see a piece of wood left over from yesterday's battle floating far away, maybe five hundred meters off.

  “Got it,” Mira hissed.

  “Now,” Kars said quietly. ‘Change the property of your arrow. We don’t need heat. Heat will dissipate in the sea air. We need mass.”

  This is the Universalist concept that Kars began teaching. Light is energy. But energy can be converted. If Mira wants to become a sharpshooter, her arrows cannot just burn. Her arrows must strike like a war hammer.

  Mira has to appear like someone specialized in Universalist skills.

  Mira visualizes the light arrow in her hand becoming heavy. She imagines it is not light, but solid molten lead. The color of the arrow changes. From dazzling white to a heavy dark yellow that hums lowly.

  Mira's arm trembles under the weight of the imaginary object that has now become real. Gravity begins to pull her light arrow downward.

  “Shoot.”

  Mira released the bowstring.

  The sound was not like a normal arrow, but a heavy thud like a small cannon. The solid light arrow shot forward. Mira looked through the lens in her eyes. The arrow sliced through the mist, creating a spiral trail in the air.

  Five hundred meters in one second.

  Instantly, water exploded beside a piece of wood on the target. It missed by half a meter to the left.

  Mira let her hand drop, completely out of breath as if she had just run a marathon. Her lens shattered into a cloud of light particles. The arrow disappeared.

  "Missed." Mira struck the screen pole in frustration.

  "But you didn’t burn the wood." Kars jumped down from the branch, landing lightly beside Mira in the observation basket. "You created a kinetic explosion in the water. That means you successfully converted light into force."

  Kars took Mira’s hand, examining her fingertips, which were blistered and emitting thin wisps of smoke.

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  "You're trying to be everything at once, Mira. Eyes (Sharpshooter), Hands (Archer), and muscles (Fighter). That's why you're exhausted."

  "You said I had to be able to do everything," Mira protested, pulling her hand away. "You said Universalists have no weaknesses."

  "I said Universalists have access to everything," Kars corrected, staring sharply into Mira's eyes. "That doesn't mean you have to use everything at the same time. You're like a prism, Mira. A prism doesn't create new colors; it splits a single white light into a specific spectrum."

  Kars pointed to the sea. "When you need range, be yellow–the Sharpshooter. When you need to break armor, be red–the Fighter. When you need an explosion, be blue–the Mage. When you need to be invisible, be dark gray–the Scout. Don't try to be white all the time; you won't succeed as a Universalist."

  Mira remained silent, processing the metaphor. All this time, she had only been 'exploding' her energy. She was using brute force. Kars was asking her to perform spectrum management.

  “Do you think Light Style is easy? You’re very wrong. Among all the Styles in star magic, Light Style is one of the most complicated.”

  “I thought so too,” said Mira, looking at the remnants of the explosion. “Draven… he used ice. The ice reflected light. If I shoot him with a regular laser, it will just bounce off, right?”

  “Exactly,” Kars smiled faintly. “That’s why he’s called the 'North Sea Mirror'. Pure energy attacks are ineffective against him. You need physical bullets. Or…”

  Kars took an iron nail from his dimension pouch. "...you need something so solid that it can't be deflected."

  Kars tossed the nail into the air. "Take a five-minute break. After that, we'll practice moving targets. I’ll throw a coin into the air. You have to shoot it before it falls into the sea. In 'Red' (Hot) mode."

  "You’re really rich if you can waste coins like that," Mira slumped down onto the wooden floor of the Crow’s Nest.

  "I’m using Drek coins we stole," Kars replied nonchalantly. "Consider it her funding her own death."

  "Speaking of Drek… was she really raped yesterday?"

  "I don’t know. But at sea, the consequences of defeat are wilder than on land."

  ***

  In the afternoon, the training moved to the lower deck.

  Not because Mira wanted to, but because Captain Vraaxask had become conscious.

  Mira was having lunch—bland oatmeal and salted fish—when the medical cabin door opened. An intense heat immediately surged out, making the ship’s corridor feel like a sauna.

  Vraaxask stepped out.

  She looked... smaller. Her white marble armor (exoskeleton) hadn’t fully recovered. Its surface appeared dull, rough like chalk, not shiny like new ceramic. On her damaged left shoulder, there was a patch of new tissue that was more transparent in color, revealing the shadow of dark flesh and blue blood flow beneath it.

  She walked unsteadily, using the corridor wall to support her body.

  The crew who passed by her immediately stepped aside, bowing in a mix of respect and horror. They had seen the "inside" of their captain, and it changed the way they viewed him. No longer an untouchable goddess, but a wounded monster.

  Mira stood, setting down her bowl of porridge.

  "Human."

  The voice seemed to enter Mira's head without permission. Weak, but clear.

  "Captain," Mira nodded. "You should rest. Kars said regeneration takes—"

  "We don't have much time," Vraaxask interrupted. She stopped in front of Mira. The oval, faceless head "looked" at Mira. "Draven won't wait for me to heal."

  Vraaxask raised her right hand. In her palm with its sharp fingers, she held an object. It was a dark blue crystal that had shattered. A fragment from Draven's ice island that she had taken during the battle.

  “Hold this.”

  Mira hesitated for a moment, then took the ice crystal. It was incredibly cold. It didn’t feel like holding an ice cube, but rather holding nothingness. Mira’s fingers immediately went numb.

  “What do you feel?” Vraaxask asked.

  “Cold,” Mira replied, her teeth chattering. “Painful. Like... like it’s sucking the heat out of my body.”

  “That’s the nature of Draven’s Intian. Entropy. It doesn’t create cold; it consumes heat. It’s a thermal black hole.”

  Vraaxask touched Mira's hand that was holding the ice with the tip of his finger. Instantly, the pain disappeared. Not because the ice melted, but because Vraaxask infused a thin protective layer into Mira's skin.

  “If you want to kill him, you can't fight him with fire. Fire is his favorite food. The bigger your fire, the stronger he gets.”

  Mira stared at the crystal in her hand. "Then what? Kars said I should use physical attacks."

  “Kars thinks like a tactical wizard. That’s good. But I think like a hunter.”

  Vraaxask’s head drew closer.

  “Draven has one weakness. He’s obsessed with 'containers.' He needs batteries. He needs to fill the void at his Intian. Don’t fight his pull, Mira. Give him what he wants.”

  Mira frowned. "Give? You mean I surrender myself?"

  “No. Give him light. But not the light he expects.”

  Vraaxask took back the ice crystal. She clenched it in her hand. The crystal shattered into dust in her grasp.

  “Be poison. Make your light so dense, so pure, and so unstable... that when he tries to drink you, he will choke.”

  Overload.

  Vraaxask turned and trudged toward the bridge.

  “Train your capacity. Expand your Intian. The next time we meet him, you must not be a glass of water. You must be a broken dam.”

  Mira stood frozen in the hallway. Kars had taught her Precision (Sniper/Prism). Vraaxask was teaching her Volume (Overload/Explosion).

  Two opposing philosophies. One demands microscopic control. The other demands massive chaos. And as a Universalist, Mira knew she had to master both.

  That night, Mira did not sleep.

  She sat on the back deck–poop deck, under the soft glow of the moonlight. In her lap, she had a bag of iron marbles that she had requested from the ship's carpenter.

  "Prism..." Mira muttered.

  She picked up one marble. She tried to practice Kars' theory.

  Red (Fighter/Heavy). Mira channeled the Intian into the marble. She tried to change its energy properties into mass. The marble glowed with a dim red light. When Mira dropped it onto the wooden floor, the sound was heavy, as if it were a five-kilogram lead ball, not a small marble. "It worked," Mira whispered.

  She picked up the second marble. Yellow (Sharpshooter/Speed). She discarded the mass. She focused on aerodynamics and thrust. The marble glowed yellow. Mira flicked it with her fingers. The marble shot off so fast it was invisible, hitting a fence post and embedding itself two inches deep into the hardwood.

  Mira smiled. Sweat soaked her forehead, but she smiled.

  She was beginning to understand. All this time, she had just been spraying water in all directions. Now, she was learning to fit the nozzle.

  "Hey."

  Mira turned. The old man—who had fought the Bosun—stood there, holding two bottles of Rum. His ribs were thickly bandaged, and he walked hunched over.

  "I heard it was you who dropped the crate on that damn Ogre's head," said the old man, straining to sit down beside Mira.

  "That was luck," Mira replied modestly.

  "At sea, luck is a skill," the old man said, holding out a bottle. "Drink this. Milk won't help you sleep tonight."

  Mira took the bottle. She had drunk before—palm wine from the south—when she had "accidentally" taken it from a city guard who had fallen asleep on duty.

  Mira took a small sip from the bottle. The liquid burned her throat, but it warmed her stomach.

  "How much longer until Port Rodan?" Mira asked.

  The old man pointed toward the southeastern horizon, where the stars seemed to twinkle strangely, as if obscured by unseen massive shadows.

  "Three more days, but we’ll probably be entering the storm zone by tomorrow morning," the old man replied. "There, regular compasses don’t work. The waves are as tall as the town hall tower."

  The old man looked at Mira seriously.

  Mira held a metal marble in her hand. She could feel it—cold, hard, real. She remembered the spilled blood. She remembered Drek's grin before being dragged onto the deck.

  She poured a little Intian into the bottle of Rum in her hand, making it glow with a soft golden light, becoming an emergency lantern in the darkness of the night.

  In the distance, beneath the black surface of the sea, something large moved following the shadow of the ship. But that night, the White Swan kept sailing, carrying a noble princess who was slowly learning that being a star magic user was not about how bright the light is, but how sharply she could refract it.

  Basic training was over. The trial of nature had begun.

  The song "Saturn" by Sleeping At Last isn't just background music—it is the very soul of this story.

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