Ivy froze at the workshop entrance, her hand still on the doorfra as the notification burned into her mind. Reaper. Sixty-three techniques. Her thoughts stalled for a second. What kind of master created that many techniques at once?
Behind her, Redy remained seated, silent and focused, eyes locked on her phone. The faint glow reflected off her calm expression. More than last ti, she thought, the number alone already pushing past expectations.
Curiosity won. Ivy tapped the notification and opened the attached video from the martial forum, already trending. "Just one video," she muttered under her breath, glancing back briefly. Redy didn’t object, her attention still fixed on the ssage.
The video began playing imdiately. Techniques flowed one after another, precise, controlled, and terrifyingly efficient. Ivy barely processed the masked figure demonstrating them. Sothing else caught her attention first, sothing that made her breath hitch.
"...Wait," she whispered, leaning closer to the screen. Her eyes narrowed as the background ca into focus. The layout, the markings, the spacing, it all felt too familiar. Her heart skipped as recognition hit.
"Isn’t that... our training room?"
The realization struck hard. Ivy’s head snapped toward Redy, her expression sharp and searching. "It’s Adam, isn’t it?" she asked, the question coming out faster than she expected, almost accusing.
Redy finally stood, her movents slow but certain, slipping her phone into her pocket. "Apparently so," she replied, her tone steady, though her eyes carried a deeper weight than her voice revealed.
Ivy’s mind spiraled. Sixty-three techniques and different affinities. Questions piled up faster than she could sort them. How did he do it? When? What else is he hiding?
She clenched her jaw, forcing the thoughts down. Redy needed her focus now, not her confusion. What are you doing, Ivy? she scolded herself. Rem cos first. Don’t get distracted.
Exhaling slowly, Ivy locked her phone and slipped it away. The shock didn’t disappear, but she buried it under action. Without another word, she stepped out of the workshop, her pace steady as she prepared for their outing.
But even as she moved, one thought refused to fade.
At least Adam was still normal... or as normal as soone like him could be.
That thought lingered in Ivy’s mind as she and Redy made their preparations, the earlier tension settling into sothing quieter but heavier. Neither of them spoke much. Both understood that things were already shifting beyond control.
While they moved forward with their outing, Adam was already far ahead of them, literally.
Outside Tristan’s protective periter, Adam blurred across the terrain, his speed cutting through distance with ruthless efficiency. The wind tore past him, but his expression remained calm. At the rate Eden mbers ca and went without official clearance, Tristan’s defenses should have collapsed long ago. Yet it still stood. The contradiction didn’t matter to Adam. He had already dismissed it.
His objective was simple.
Gather existence.
Adam needed it more than anything else right now. Without enough existence, his growth would stall at a critical point. He had already stepped into the Master rank. He had already touched enlightennt. But that wasn’t enough.
A Supre Master wasn’t just a title. It required sothing deeper. Adam could feel the gap clearly. His power had advanced, but not fully and sothing essential hadn’t followed.
His [Equip] slots hadn’t increased.
That alone told him everything he needed to know.
A martial spirit was the core of a martial artist. It wasn’t optional. It wasn’t secondary. It was the foundation that determined how far one could go. And existence... was the fuel that pushed that foundation to evolve.
Adam’s situation was abnormal.
A true SSS-rank cultivation talent should have manifested a Supre Spirit from the very beginning. It was instant perfection, followed by the cost of existence to stabilize it.
But Adam hadn’t started that way.
Back then, he had only been able to form a Profound Spirit, forced into existence through his equipped talent at the ti. It was enough to begin. But now... it had beco a limitation.
Because now, things had changed.
He had an SSS-rank cultivation talent.
Which ant his spirit had to evolve.
Skelly had to rise from a Profound Spirit to a Supre Spirit. There was no shortcut or workaround, just one path forward, feed it enough existence until it broke through.
The problem was the cost.
At the Master rank, the required existence wasn’t just high. It was overwhelming. Far beyond what Tristan could provide safely. Staying there would only slow him down.
That was why Adam left.
Beyond Tristan’s borders, danger increased, but so did opportunity. Stronger opponents. Richer environnts. Greater rewards. Every risk carried the potential for massive gains.
And Adam had already made his decision.
He wasn’t going to slow down.
His speed increased again, his figure vanishing into the distance as his aura tightened around him.
He wasn’t going to slow down.
That resolve carried Adam straight across the boundary and into the rift he had targeted long before leaving Tristan. He had planned this for a while, but then, he knew one thing clearly, he wasn’t fully prepared.
The mont he stood In front of the rift, the environnt changed.
A dense wave of essence pressed against his skin, heavy and alive, like stepping into a different world entirely. Adam slowed slightly, his senses sharpening as he absorbed the unfamiliar pressure surrounding him.
He had entered an incursion.
But sothing was wrong.
Adam’s gaze swept across the landscape, his body remaining still while his perception expanded outward. There were no imdiate threats. For a place overflowing with essence, the silence felt unnatural.
Incursions weren’t supposed to be like this.
Normally, once a rift breached, monsters flooded outward, spreading chaos and forcing response teams to act quickly based on the estimated threat. But here, nothing had crossed the boundary. Everything remained inside, as if held back by sothing unseen.
Adam narrowed his eyes slightly.
It wasn’t that the monsters couldn’t leave.
They simply didn’t want to.
That realization settled heavily, but instead of concern, a faint spark of interest flickered in his mind. A place where creatures chose to remain... ant sothing deeper was inside. Sothing worth guarding.
And that worked in his favor.
If the monsters had spread out, this place would have already been cleared by the alliance. High-level incursions never stayed active for long. They were too dangerous to ignore.
But this one had survived.
Because it was different.
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