Chapter 12: Instructor Kael
Malrik lingered by the threshold for a few heartbeat-long moments after Eliza’s departure.
The temptation to just lock the door and obsess over Infinite Evolution was a heavy, suffocating pull. He wanted nothing more than to watch his Class shatter its current boundaries and see what reality-bending monstrosity lay hidden behind the Talent that had crawled across dimensions with his soul.
But he wasn’t an idiot. It would have to wait.
No matter how broken Infinite Evolution proved to be, a house built on cardboard foundations would still collapse. A Talent couldn’t magically substitute for raw combat instincts, muscle memory, and hard-earned trauma. If he neglected the basics and treated his Talent like a golden ticket to absolute supremacy, he’d just end up as another cautionary tale—one of those tragic, overhyped geniuses who get gutted by a pragmatic nobody with a dull knife.
He gave his reflection a dry, mocking look before focusing back on reality.
*One thing at a time.*
The deeper Malrik traveled into the bowels of the Vesperion estate, the louder the symphony of violence became.
The air was heavy with the metallic clang of steel meeting steel, the barked orders of drill captains, and the relentless, dull thud of wooden practice rods splintering against bone and leather.
When the central training grounds finally opened up before him, Malrik instinctively slowed his gait. His emerald eyes swept over the massive courtyard, his mind instantly categorizing the scale.
The place was less of a practice yard and more of a heavily fortified staging ground. Dozens of separate combat rings scarred the earth. Hundreds of knights moved in tight, overlapping patterns without a single trace of friction or wasted energy. To his left, standard infantrymen traded textbook sword strokes with terrifying, metronomic precision. To his right, an entire phalanx thrust spears in perfect, sweeping synchronization.
Further out, the steady, rhythmic *twang* of recurve bows filled the air, punctuated by the dull *thud* of arrows burying themselves into distant bullseyes. And in the far corners, the true heavy hitters—warriors encased in brutal plates of reinforced steel—swung monstrous battle-axes. Every downward cleave left visible, jagged fractures spiderwebbing across solid stone pillars.
Nobody was chatting. Nobody was adjusting their gear for comfort. Every single twitch, every breath, every drop of sweat served a functional purpose.
House Vesperion hadn’t climbed to the apex of the Empire by being born lucky. Talent was just a polite word for an open door; discipline was the brute force required to tear the hinges off and march through.
Malrik watched the defensive garrison push themselves to the brink of exhaustion. None of these veterans behaved like they had reached the end of their progression tree.
A cold, appreciative smile touched his lips. *No wonder this bloodline keeps vomiting out absolute monsters generation after generation. They never stop grinding down their own edges.*
Following the gray stone pathway cutting through the chaotic fields, Malrik eventually arrived at an isolated, elevated ring separated from the main masses by a wide buffer zone.
Unlike the roaring meat grinder outside, this private court was dead silent.
Polished weapon racks lined the stone perimeter, displaying a terrifyingly comprehensive catalog of imperial murder: longswords, greatswords, polearms, halberds, war hammers, heavy recurves, and serrated daggers. Every piece of iron sat meticulously oiled on its wooden mount.
The ring itself was bare, save for a single monolith of a man standing dead center.
The instructor was massive—easily clearing two meters. Broad, blocky shoulders stretched the fabric of a minimalist black training uniform. His physique wasn’t the useless, bloated mass of a circus strongman; it was the lean, dense architecture of an apex predator that had spent decades converting calories into lethal leverage. Faded, silver scars mapped his forearms like a roadmap of near-fatal encounters.
Yet, for all his terrifying mass, the giant didn’t look heavy. He looked weightless. Natural. His posture suggested a perfect, terrifying equilibrium between explosive violence and absolute, granular control.
A long spear rested loosely in his right palm. He wasn’t gripping the shaft hard, nor was he leaning on it like an old man’s staff. He just... held it. But the visual geometry was entirely wrong—the weapon didn’t look like an object he had picked up; it looked like a natural, terrifying extension of his own skeleton.
His short, ash-black hair shifted slightly in the morning draft as a pair of dead, steel-gray eyes appraised Malrik from boots to collar. There was no theatrical arrogance in those eyes. No performative noble disdain. Just a cold, professional math problem being solved in real-time.
A few seconds of heavy silence crawled by. Then, the giant gave a solitary, rigid nod.
"You must be Young Master Malrik." His voice was a low, subterranean rumble—steady enough to anchor a collapsing frontline. "I am Kael. One of House Vesperion’s designated Weapon Instructors. From this moment onward, your combat education belongs to me."
Malrik returned the nod, keeping his posture disciplined. "I look forward to the lessons, Instructor Kael."
A faint, ghostly smirk flickered on Kael’s scarred face. He didn’t waste oxygen on aristocratic pleasantries or flattering lies. Instead, he smoothly turned on his heel toward the sprawling weapon racks.
"You’ve survived your Awakening. You have mana humming in your veins. You’ve unlocked a Class," Kael said, his voice flat as he paced along the iron line. He paused, his hand coming to rest on the crossguard of a standard longsword. "But none of those fancy titles matter if you are a toddler with a sharp stick."
He drew the blade effortlessly, the steel singing a sharp note as he held it out for Malrik to observe. "A sword. The balanced man’s choice. It has no glaring advantages, and no catastrophic blind spots. It adapts to almost any terrain, any skirmish."
Without waiting for a comment, he slid it back into its slot and reached for a heavy, broad-headed battle-axe, lifting the massive iron chunk as if it were a feather. "An axe. Pure, unadulterated violence. Devastating if you connect." He dropped it back into the rack with a heavy thud. "But every missed swing opens a window of opportunity that your enemy will gladly crawl through to gut you."
Next were the daggers. Kael spun a wicked, double-edged blade around his knuckle with terrifying, fluid speed before snatching it out of the air by the hilt. "Daggers. Quick. Quiet. Great for cutthroats and scouts. But their short reach demands absolute, psychotic precision. One miscalculation..." He tapped the flat of the blade against his palm. "...and you’ve walked yourself right into your opponent’s ideal killing range."
He filed them away and pulled a stiff recurve bow from its pegs, drawing the string halfway back with a casual twitch of his shoulder. "A bow. The coward’s favorite—and the king of the field. It lets you erase a problem before it ever gets close enough to smell you." His gray eyes remained unblinking. "But if they do close the distance..." He snapped the string back into place with a sharp *twack*. "...your survival rate plunges into the dirt."
Finally, Kael stopped before the last rack in the queue. A row of spears, varying in length and tip geometry, gleamed under the sun. His hand hovered briefly before selecting a simple, dark-shafted model.
The exact millisecond his fingers closed around the wood, the entire atmosphere of the courtyard shifted.
His stance, his presence, the very gravity around his frame altered. It was subtle, but to Malrik’s honed senses, it was like a flare going off in a dark room.
Malrik’s eyes narrowed. *Right. So that’s his real tool.*
Kael executed a single, basic thrust. No theatrical spinning, no flashy wind-up. Just a straight, textbook strike. The spearhead tore through the air with such sickening velocity that it produced a sharp, whip-like whistle that echoed off the stone walls.
"The spear," Kael said softly, lowering the point to the earth. "The oldest, most pragmatic weapon known to the history of warfare. It grants you the ultimate luxury in a melee: reach. It controls the arithmetic of distance better than any blade. It keeps the things that want to kill you exactly where you want them to stay."
He looked directly into Malrik’s eyes, his expression utterly deadpan. "There is a reason peasant conscripts and god-kings alike have relied on a pointed stick for thousands of years. It just works."
The ringing in the air died down. Kael returned the spear to its resting place and crossed his massive arms over his chest.
"Every tool has its purpose. Every tool has its flaw. The perfect weapon..." Kael’s gray eyes locked onto Malrik like a vice. "...is simply the one that matches the specific brand of crazy inside its wielder."
The giant instructor let out a low, challenging hum, a faint smirk returning to his face. "So... Young Master. Which flavor of weapons do you prefer?"
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