Chapter 75: Tyrant Blade
"Here, this blade is a tier 6 weapon. You’ll use it temporarily."
Ghost handed Ethan a treasured blade, its steel catching the dim light of the room, the handle thick and wrapped tightly in worn leather that had clearly seen use before him. The edge carried faint scoring along its length, evidence of whoever had wielded it last, whatever trial they’d carried it through.
Unlike other skills within White Tower’s collection, the Tyrant Blade wasn’t something a user could simply pick up and apply through preliminary practice. It demanded full understanding, root to branch, before it would answer to anyone’s command at all.
There was no shortcut built into it. No partial mastery that still yielded partial results.
"First, you bathe in the pool of lightning. Use this technique to protect yourself from the current while slowly absorbing it into your body through the blade."
Ghost explained the process methodically, gesturing toward a pool of water settled off to one side of the chamber, its surface still and undisturbed for the moment, though faint traces of current still flickered occasionally beneath its skin.
Much like the summoner ritual, which required specific ingredients to function properly, the foundation of this class carried its own demands. Most of what was needed had already been dissolved into the pool itself, waiting.
"This might not be the hardest thing you’ve faced in your life. But I can promise you, it’ll be the most painful."
Ghost’s voice dropped low as he spoke, delivering the warning plainly before reaching out and patting Ethan once on the back.
"Good luck."
With that, he turned and left the room without further ceremony, his footsteps fading down the corridor, leaving Ethan alone with a pool that had already shifted into a murky, unsettling black, faint sparks crawling occasionally across its surface.
Ethan hesitated only briefly before stepping forward, lowering himself into the pool until it closed fully over him, his mind already working through the technique laid out in the book Ghost had left behind.
The water, if it could even be called that anymore, felt heavier than it looked, pressing in against him with a low, constant hum that seemed to vibrate up through his teeth.
The first step required solidifying his body beneath a thick film of mana, a protective layer meant to absorb and redirect the lightning rather than let it tear through him unchecked. He focused, spreading the mana carefully across every inch of exposed skin.
From beyond the chamber, a staff turned sharply, and the first bolt of lightning surged outward from it, cutting through the space below and striking directly into the pool on the other side.
The moment it made contact, the first jolt of electrical current tore through Ethan’s body, forcing his jaw to clench hard against the sheer, overwhelming pain of it, every muscle locking rigid all at once.
"Fuckkkkk"
A second later, the current cut off, and Ethan found brief, ragged relief in the sudden absence of it.
"You need to focus. We aren’t trying to kill you. Control the lightning, don’t just take it."
From the other side of the dungeon, separated by a thick pane of reinforced glass, a feminine voice carried clearly into Ethan’s ears, sharp with instruction rather than sympathy.
Ethan nodded involuntarily, still working through the aftershocks of pain rattling through his frame.
"This is just the first volt. You’re all wasting your time standing here. Don’t you have work to do?"
Banshee turned sharply toward the small crowd of White Tower staff that had gathered nearby, her tone cutting enough to scatter them immediately, everyone suddenly finding urgent business elsewhere, pretending they hadn’t been watching at all. A few glanced back once they thought she wasn’t looking.
"Again!!"
This time the demand came from Ethan himself, and without hesitation, Banshee released another bolt, sending it crashing into him in rapid succession, one wave following the last with no pause between them.
At first, it was nothing but pure, unfiltered pain coursing through every nerve in his body. But as his body slowly grew numb to the initial shock, and his mind settled into something steadier, Ethan began channeling the current deliberately, bouncing it off the mana sheet layered across his skin and redirecting it down through the blade and into his waiting hands.
It was small progress, barely a fraction of what the technique eventually demanded, but it was progress all the same, and he clung to that.
That shift brought an entirely new kind of pain with it, his hands left unprotected by the mana sheet in order to let the lightning flow freely through them. The current bit into his palms directly now, raw and unshielded, a burning sensation layered on top of everything else already coursing through him.
Still, Ethan pushed through it without much complaint, teeth gritted, focus narrowing down to nothing but the technique itself.
If he didn’t endure pain, how could he realistically make any gains? To win was to suffer, and suffering was a sign of winning.
,,,,,,,,,,,,,
"Hm? In the same day? You’re joking."
Elsewhere within White Tower, a feminine voice rang out in open shock as Arian turned sharply behind her, disbelief written plainly across her expression, a letter still half-forgotten in her hand.
"Let’s go. I want to see this with my own two eyes."
She rose from her seat abruptly, the motion carrying the urgency of someone who had just been told something entirely impossible, already moving toward the door before the words had fully settled, her earlier composure forgotten entirely.
Tyrant blade was like the other classes in their arsenal gotten from ancient human records and peoples. It was notoriously hard to train, even Hela had failed terribly when she tried.
As for where the class originated from, honestly if they found out Ethen was learning it, it would be more of a problem to her than the dracontis families insistent ramblings.
Somewhere in her heart, she actually hoped that Ethen would fail horribly.
But then again,
Ethen was an anomaly.
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