By the time the sun started slipping down the reinforced mana-glass of the Everhart gym, half the pot of golden elixir was gone.

  Rina had stopped counting how many times her fingers had burned.

  Her world had narrowed to a loop of:

  Lightning.

  Pain.

  Warmth.

  Relief.

  And then lightning again.

  “Enough.”

  The single word cut through the crackle of Overcharge, the hiss of mana, the ragged rhythm of her own breathing.

  Azhareth stepped back from her, cloak settling around him like a shadow remembering its shape. The half-full pot of Elixir of Regrowth still glowed on the stand behind him, throwing a faint halo over the polished floor.

  Rina swayed, sweat dripping from her chin.

  “S… so… training is done?” she managed, voice hoarse.

  Azhareth paused, his back to her.

  He didn’t turn around when he said:

  “Do you know when Flercher stopped using Overcharge?”

  Rina blinked.

  That sounded like a quiz question.

  “After… battles?” she guessed, wiping her forehead with the back of her hand. “Or… when he was resting, maybe—?”

  Azhareth finally turned his head.

  His eyes were colder than any lightning he’d called today.

  “When he died.”

  The words dropped like stone.

  Her chest tightened.

  He went on, voice not loud but heavy enough to press on their eardrums.

  “Flercher maintained Overcharge every hour, every minute, every second he breathed,” Azhareth said. “His body became lightning. His essence was lightning. His soul—” his gaze drifted somewhere far beyond the gym ceiling “—blazed like a storm.”

  No one spoke.

  Gavren swallowed audibly.

  Selphy’s fingers loosened on her spear shaft.

  Dael’s hands clenched around his notebook until the spine cracked.

  Kira’s Predator Sense whispered the same word it had since the first time she’d seen him:

  Submit.

  Rina’s tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth.

  Every hour. Every minute. Every second…

  She couldn’t even hold Overcharge on one finger for more than a handful of heartbeats.

  Azhareth turned away.

  Rai padded at his heel, golden eyes flicking once toward Rina, ears twitching.

  He walked toward the limousine now parked at the edge of the gym—indoors, like the room had been redesigned just so he wouldn’t have to walk very far.

  He put a hand on the car door.

  The thought surfaced before she could stop it.

  It pushed past cracked lips on its own.

  “Teacher,” she called.

  He stopped.

  Rai did too, fur bristling.

  Rina’s heart hammered against her ribs, but she didn’t look away.

  “You talk,” she said quietly, “like you are Flercher.”

  The gym stopped breathing.

  Azhareth’s hand froze on the door handle.

  Very slowly, he looked back over his shoulder.

  For the first time since she’d met him, his eyes widened.

  It lasted only a moment.

  Then the expression vanished, smoothed away like someone wiping chalk from a board.

  Rai’s tail stiffened. The pup gave a soft, confused whine and glanced between them.

  Azhareth said nothing.

  He simply opened the door, got inside, and closed it.

  The limo drove away without a sound, disappearing into the inner corridors of the facility.

  Rina stood in the middle of the gym floor, fingers still tingling, the taste of lightning and elixir still on her tongue.

  Her question hung in the air, unanswered.

  “Rina!”

  Her team rushed her as if a spell had broken.

  Gavren came first, his massive frame bracing her shoulder. Merrin hovered at her side, eyes still wet from earlier, healing magic twitching at her fingertips, ready if needed.

  Kira stayed a step behind, amber eyes scanning the empty space where the limo had been; Predator Sense was still rattling inside her like a caged animal.

  Selphy’s spear tapped against the floor, the sound too sharp, too fast.

  “That’s enough for today,” Gavren said. “You’ll pass out if you keep going.”

  Rina looked at her hands.

  Smooth skin. No scars. No burns.

  You’re healed. You could stop.

  Her muscles trembled.

  She raised her index finger anyway.

  “Rina, don’t,” Merrin whispered.

  Rina met her eyes.

  “If he kept Overcharge running until he died,” she said softly, “I can at least last until sunset.”

  Before anyone could stop her—

  “Overcharge.”

  Lightning wrapped her finger in a sheath of white fire.

  Pain hammered up her arm, familiar and terrible.

  She bit down on her scream.

  A hiss escaped through her teeth, eyes flooding with tears—but no sound left her throat.

  The rule echoed in her head:

  The more you scream, the slower I give you the potion.

  Her body wanted to sob, to howl.

  Her pride wanted to be silent.

  She chose pride.

  Selphy took a step forward. “Rina, this is—”

  A hand closed around Rina’s wrist.

  Large. Strong. Unyielding.

  “Enough.”

  Rina’s breath caught.

  “…Dad?”

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  The lightning fizzled from her finger as concentration broke.

  Lord Aester Everhart stepped fully into the light.

  He had been there, watching from the observation room, but none of them had noticed when he’d left it. His presence was simply… there now, filling the space with a different kind of pressure.

  Not demonic.

  Not ancient.

  But heavy in the way only someone who owned entire skylines could be.

  “K-king of the building decided to descend,” Kira muttered under her breath, more out of nerves than snark.

  Rina stared.

  “Dad, you—how long have you—?”

  “Since the beginning,” Aester said. “Long enough to watch you burn yourself ten times over.”

  His gaze flicked briefly toward the far wall, where the observation glass had been.

  Azhareth had glanced there once, when he first arrived.

  Aester realized, with a faint chill, that the man had known he was there from the start—and had ignored him completely.

  I’m not even worth his attention.

  The thought sat in his mind like ice.

  He turned back to his daughter.

  “You will stop for today,” he said firmly. “I’ve seen no improvement. Only suffering.”

  Rina pulled her wrist free, fingers still shaking.

  “You didn’t see it,” she said, a little too sharply. “There is progress. I can hold it longer. I don’t scream anymore.”

  “That is not progress,” Aester snapped. “That is conditioning.”

  “Conditioning is progress,” she shot back.

  Silence stretched.

  Dael’s hand twitched in the air.

  “I, uh…” he said, voice dry. “Actually, we could… measure progress.”

  Aester’s eyes turned to him, and Dael flinched like he’d been hit.

  “How,” Aester asked, “do you propose to do that?”

  Dael swallowed.

  “If I… had Eyes of Zandquar,” he said, “I could see mana flow. I could track her Overcharge adaptation. I could quantify how much lightning essence is—”

  “Eyes of what?” Aester cut in sharply.

  Rina sighed, reaching into her inventory.

  “Dael,” she said, “we’ve talked about this.”

  She pulled out her Empty Skill Book.

  The cover shimmered as it appeared, the pages humming faintly with the weight of Rank SSS+ recordings.

  Aester’s gaze sharpened.

  He’d seen many artifacts.

  He’d never seen one quite like this.

  Rina flipped it open.

  “It recorded Teacher’s skills,” she explained. “Flashpoint Transpierce, Flercher Reflex, and Eyes of Zandquar. That’s all I—”

  She stopped.

  Her brow furrowed.

  “…What?” she whispered.

  “What is it?” Gavren asked.

  “There…” she said slowly, “there are four entries.”

  “Four?” Dael’s head snapped up. “That’s impossible. You only—”

  “Empty Skill Books can record multiple skills,” Aester said absently as he took the book from her hands. “It’s not unusual if—”

  “I locked it,” Rina interrupted. “I restricted it to record only SSS rank or higher. It shouldn’t capture anything less than that. And I only saw three skills…”

  A low hum filled Aester’s ears as he scanned the entries.

  His heart stuttered.

  Three of the skills glowed with a faintly different color than any SS or SSS entry he’d ever seen:

  – Flercher Reflex — Origin Rank

  – Flashpoint Transpierce — Origin Rank

  – Eyes of Zandquar — Origin Rank

  And below, newly formed, the ink still metaphorically fresh—

  – Alchemize: Ithil Perfect Craft — Origin Rank

  Aester’s lips parted.

  “…Origin… rank,” he breathed. “These aren’t SSS. They’re… beyond SSS.”

  Rina snatched the book back.

  Her eyes flew over the fourth line.

  The description formed in her vision.

  Alchemize: Ithil Perfect Craft

  Grants perfect alchemical execution.

  Any ingredient used in a craft reaches its highest possible potential.

  All failure is removed from the process.

  No recipes provided. Only perfection of method.

  Rina’s fingers tightened around the leather binding.

  “S-so that’s how he—” Merrin began, looking at the half-full pot of Elixir of Regrowth.

  Selphy’s breath caught.

  “Wait,” she said slowly. “If he can make SSS elixirs with trash ingredients, then—”

  “Then in theory,” Kira finished, voice barely above a whisper, “he could mass-produce things like… immortality potions.”

  They looked, collectively, at the pot.

  Then at each other.

  Then at Rina’s father.

  Aester’s expression had gone very still.

  “If that is true,” he said quietly, “then this man is a threat to every government and conglomerate on this planet.”

  “And he’s training your daughter,” Kira muttered, not quite softly enough.

  Aester ignored her.

  His eyes were on the book again.

  “Give it to me,” he said suddenly.

  Rina jerked back.

  “What?”

  He reached out a hand.

  “Rina. This skill—this one skill—is worth more than entire nations. With it, we could…” he hesitated, catching himself “…stabilize economies. Heal entire regions. Control—”

  “Exactly,” Rina cut in. “And I need it.”

  Their eyes met.

  “I need it,” she repeated. “I can’t use any of Teacher’s skills properly without more control. If I give this up, I lose my chance to stand where he stands.”

  There was no whine in her voice.

  No pleading.

  Just iron.

  Aester felt something twist in his chest.

  For a moment, he didn’t see his daughter.

  He saw a silhouette.

  Standing where Azhareth had stood.

  Holding lightning.

  Looking down at the world.

  He lowered his hand.

  “…If you continue on this path,” he said quietly, “you will stop being my daughter and become something else.”

  Rina swallowed.

  “Then I hope,” she said, “that ‘something else’ is worthy of his teachings.”

  Silence fell like a shroud.

  Gavren looked away.

  Merrin wiped her face.

  Selphy gripped her spear tighter.

  Kira watched Rina with a complex expression—pride, fear, and something softer knotted together.

  Dael tugged nervously at his hair.

  “W-well,” he said suddenly, forcing a laugh that fooled no one, “if we’re talking about skills of that caliber, there’s… a workaround we could try.”

  Aester glanced at him.

  “Speak.”

  Dael straightened, glasses crooked on his face.

  “What if,” he said, “we buy every Empty Skill Book on the market? As many as we can. Then… we ask Teacher to use his skills in front of them. Let them all record.”

  The room went very, very quiet.

  Gavren’s brows rose.

  Selphy’s jaw dropped.

  Merrin looked horrified.

  Kira looked like she wanted to hit him.

  Rina’s eyes widened a fraction.

  The idea was insane.

  It was also… brilliant.

  Aester studied Dael for a long moment.

  “And what,” he asked at last, his voice low, “are you willing to offer him in exchange?”

  Dael froze.

  His mouth opened.

  Nothing came out.

  Aester’s gaze hardened.

  “Do you not remember,” he said slowly, “how all of us nearly died today because you demanded something from him with empty hands?”

  Dael’s cheeks flushed with shame.

  “I… forgot,” he whispered.

  “Forget again,” Aester said, “and he will not.”

  Kira hunched her shoulders, hugging her arms.

  “If he tells me to jump off a building,” she muttered, “I’m asking which floor.”

  Selphy let out a breath that was half laugh, half sob. “I’m with you.”

  Gavren sighed. “We’re all idiots.”

  Merrin nodded faintly. “Idiots with burned friends.”

  Rina closed the book with a soft thud.

  “Then we train,” she said. “We get stronger. And one day, if we still want something from him… we bring an offering that won’t insult him.”

  Her father stared at her, the line of his mouth tight.

  The girl who used to complain about early morning drills was gone.

  In her place stood someone who spoke about “offerings” and “insulting him” like she’d been born at the foot of a throne.

  He suddenly remembered the moment earlier, when the cameras had cut out for a full ten seconds during training. Every feed. Every backup.

  “Sir, we tried to reset,” his security chief had reported, pale. “The devices didn’t respond. Then they just… came back on their own.”

  It hadn’t been a mechanical failure.

  It had been close.

  “Rina,” he said, voice softer now, “that man… doesn’t move like someone from this age.”

  Rina looked down at her hands.

  They were steady.

  For now.

  “I know,” she said quietly.

  She lifted her index finger again.

  Lightning danced at the tip as Overcharge flared.

  It still hurts.

  But this time, she held it.

  One second. Two. Five.

  She didn’t scream.

  Not once.

  In the empty doorway far behind them, where no one was looking, a small shadow sat and watched. Rai had slipped back from the hallway where the limo had gone, ears perked, tail settled around his paws.

  He watched the lightning on her hand with a canine expression that was eerily close to approval.

  Out in the corridor, Azhareth walked in silence beside Aldren.

  The butler stole a glance at him.

  “Will you be returning tomorrow, Sir Azhareth?”

  Azhareth didn’t answer immediately.

  He thought of Rina’s cracked voice:

  You talk like you are Flercher.

  And quietly, so only Rai could hear in the back of his mind, he muttered:

  “…You chose a difficult successor, old friend.”

  Rai’s tail thumped once against his leg.

  Azhareth’s expression didn’t change.

  But something in his eyes did.

  “Yes,” he said at last. “Tomorrow.”

  He stepped into the waiting car.

  Back in the gym, lightning curled obediently around Rina’s finger as she held Overcharge a heartbeat longer.

  Aester Everhart watched his daughter, watched the empty space where a demon lord in a borrowed body had stood, and realized—

  The world had already started to change.

  And it hadn’t even been noticed yet.