48 Hours until the Tournament.

  The Boiler Room was a hellscape.

  The ambient temperature was 110 degrees. The massive mana furnaces roared like jet engines, vibrating the floor plates. It smelled of sulfur, hot grease, and dried blood.

  Amari stood shirtless in the center of the room. His skin was slick with sweat and grime.

  "Do not stop," The Custodian ordered from his seat on a crate, sipping tea as if he were sitting in a cool garden.

  Amari didn't stop.

  He was holding a heavy, rusted wrench in his right hand. In front of him was a jagged block of scrap iron.

  CLANG.

  Amari swung the wrench. It bounced off the iron, sending a shockwave up his arm that rattled his teeth.

  "Again," Idris barked. "You are gripping the tool like a handle. It is not a handle. It is an extension of your radius bone. Squeeze it until the metal groans. The System wants you fragile. It wants predictable failure states. Do not give it the satisfaction."

  Amari adjusted his grip. His hands were swollen, his knuckles purple.

  He looked at the wrench. He imagined his fingers fusing into the steel, becoming one continuous density.

  [Technique: Iron Grip]

  He squeezed. The handle of the wrench actually bent slightly under the pressure of his fingers.

  THUD.

  This time, the sound was different. It was deeper, duller. The wrench didn't bounce; it dug a divot into the scrap iron.

  "Better," Idris noted, fanning himself with a folded newspaper. "Now, the legs."

  Amari dropped the wrench. He walked over to the "Testing Post"—a thick steel beam wrapped in rough, blood-stained rope.

  He kicked it.

  THUD.

  He kicked it again.

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  THUD.

  "Harder!" Idris shouted over the roar of the furnace. "Thorne's Golem is made of Mana-Forged Titanium! If your shin is softer than titanium, you will snap in half! Do you want to be a cripple again?"

  Amari roared and unleashed a flurry of kicks.

  Bam. Bam. Bam.

  His shins were screaming. Blood seeped through the bandages. The pain was blinding, white-hot needles stabbing into his marrow.

  But Amari welcomed it.

  Break, he commanded his bones. Break so you can grow.

  After an hour of impact training, Amari collapsed onto the concrete floor. He was gasping for air, his chest heaving.

  For the next two days, time lost its meaning. There was no day or night in the boiler room. There was only the rhythm of the furnace and the sound of bone hitting iron.

  Thud. Crack. Heal. Thud. Crack. Heal.

  The rope on the testing post had worn through to the steel underneath.

  Amari didn't sleep. He barely stopped to drink water. He worked until his shins were black and blue, then he worked until the skin split, revealing the white bone beneath, only for the Void to seal it shut again.

  By the evening of the second day, the pile of scrap iron was dented and deformed.

  Idris walked over and dropped a plate onto the floor next to him.

  On the plate was the last massive steak from the Alpha. It was raw.

  "Eat," Idris said. "You have broken the temple. Now you must rebuild the walls."

  Amari grabbed the meat with trembling hands. He tore into it like a starving animal.

  As the Alpha meat hit his stomach, the reaction began.

  It wasn't a fever this time. It was a solidification.

  Amari felt his bones getting... heavy. It felt like someone was pouring molten lead into his skeleton.

  Deep inside his legs, the micro-fractures were knitting together. But they weren't just healing with calcium. They were pulling the residual "Silver Energy" from the Alpha meat and weaving it into the bone matrix. The gaps in the honeycomb structure of his bones were filling in, becoming solid.

  His shins stopped throbbing. They started to hum.

  He looked at his arm. The skin wasn't just tough anymore. It had a faint, metallic sheen under the dim lights.

  [System Alert] [Body Cultivation Progress] [Stage 1: Iron Skin — COMPLETE] [Stage 2: Steel Bones — INITIALIZING...]

  [Bio-Metric Scan] [Bone Density: 300% Human Norm] [Weight Class: Heavyweight (Density Modified)] [System Flag: Biological Anomaly Detected] [Directive: Forward Bio-Metric Packet to Vanguard Medical Oversight] [Priority: RED]

  Amari stood up. He felt different. He felt dense. The concrete floor creaked slightly under his bare feet. When he stepped, it felt like he weighed three hundred pounds, but he moved with the lightness of a feather.

  He looked at the steel beam.

  "Idris," Amari said. His voice was deeper.

  "Yes?"

  "Throw me a bolt."

  Idris reached into a bucket and tossed a heavy-duty industrial bolt, thick as a thumb, through the air.

  Amari didn't catch it softly. He snatched it out of the air.

  [Iron Grip]

  He squeezed.

  There was no leverage. No tools. Just the raw crushing power of his fingers and the friction of his skin.

  CREAK... PING.

  The head of the bolt popped off. It hit the floor with a metallic ring.

  Amari looked at the sheared metal in his hand.

  "Titanium," Amari whispered, looking at his fist. "I can break it."

  Idris smiled, his gold tooth glinting.

  "You can break it," the old man agreed. "But the Golem hits back. And it does not feel pain. Rest now, Sovereign. Tomorrow, you go to war."

  Amari dropped the broken bolt. He walked to the corner of the room, grabbed a ragged towel, and wiped the grease from his face.

  He was ready.