Percival descended the stairs of the inn, the heavy oak floorboards creaking beneath his boots.
He found the burly, scarred innkeeper wiping down the counter with a rag.
"Down already?" Butrick asked. "The room wasn’t to your liking?"
"I need a space," Percival said flatly. "Sowhere open. Sowhere the stone can take a beating."
Butrick grinned. "You want to train, eh? Darn Awakeners. We’ll go out the northern fence, past the treeline. There’s an old, dried-up quarry the miners abandoned a decade ago when the veins ran dry. Have fun."
"Thank you."
Percival stepped out. As he walked the dirt paths of the village, he could feel the eyes of the locals again, tracking him.
Percival ignored them, keeping his pace steady until the village fell behind him and the craggy, gray walls of the abandoned quarry rose into view.
It was a massive crater of blasted rock, perfectly isolated.
Percival walked to the center of the dust-choked basin. He raised his hand, blue flas burning at his fingertips.
"Awake," he summoned.
Two azure furnaces erupted from the rocky ground. As the spectral flas died down, rcius and Willow remained.
"We have a lot of ground to cover," Percival started, but he paused as he noticed Willow staring openly at the towering Knight beside her.
"I am honored," Willow breathed, her spectral eyes wide with genuine awe. "You’re him. The Blade of Brackenbridge. I read about the Battle of Brackenbridge in my Academy archives. It is a profound honor to stand on the sa battlefield as you, Sir rcius."
rcius bowed his head, a gesture of absolute, stoic chivalry. "I am honored to et you too, Willow Lockhart."
Willow turned to Percival. "Thank you as well, Master. For the role you have bestowed upon . To be the Penetrator of your Vanguard... to be the shield that breaks their spears... I will not fail you."
"Your legion shall not falter under my command, my liege," rcius declared. "The skeletons will march with the discipline of true soldiers. Your enemies will find no weakness in our ranks."
"I know they won’t," Percival said, a faint smirk touching his lips. It was strangely comforting to have a team again, one that literally could not betray him. "But that’s not why I brought you out here. I need a teacher."
Percival drew the Basilisk Blade. "Through my Innate Talent, I extracted one of your skills, rcius. Heavenfall."
The two Soldiers looked at each other.
"Is that, even possible, Master?" Willow asked.
"It is for ," Percival said.
That was enough for them to understand. They both knew that there was sothing special about their Master. They couldn’t explain it, but they didn’t have to understand in order to obey.
"But possessing the knowledge of the Skill and permanently comprehending it are two different things," Percival continued. "If I don’t master it, the system will take it from ."
rcius stepped forward, his blue-flad eyes studying Percival’s stance. "Heavenfall is a unique technique, Master. A very powerful one with a vast AoE. It requires a leap that shatters the earth, and a descent that carries the weight of the sky. But there is a complication."
"The mana alignnt," Willow interjected. She circled Percival, her eyes fixed on his center of gravity. "Heavenfall is a Knight Skill. It requires the channeling of holy mana to create that massive fifty-fold multiplier on the descent."
"I’ve thought about that," Percival said, his blue eyes narrowing. "As a Necromancer, my core is saturated with death, shadow, and demons. I have no connection to holy mana."
"Exactly," Willow said, her eyes sparking. "If you try to channel pure dark mana through a holy circuit, the Skill will simply collapse."
"You cannot mimic the light," rcius explained. "So, you have to translate it. Master, you don’t need to use holy mana to bring the ’might of the heavens’ down."
"If you try to force your mana to act like light, the skill will collapse. I suggest you use your own mana to fuel the descent. It doesn’t need to be ’holy’ to break the ground."
Percival absorbed the theory. It made sense.
"Show the physical form, rcius," Percival commanded.
"I will watch your weight and the timing of the impact, Master," Willow said
For the next two hours, the abandoned quarry beca a war zone.
rcius demonstrated the kinetic launch, starting from the precise, explosive compression of the leg muscles and the violent torque of the spine required to send a heavily armored man rocketing into the sky.
Percival mirrored the movents. On his first attempt, he leaped fifty feet into the air, but as he tried to channel his dark mana into the downward strike, the energy violently rejected the skill’s frawork.
He hit the ground like a teor, tumbling painfully across the jagged rocks.
"Your mana is fighting the shape of the skill!" Willow called out from the sidelines. "Don’t force it to shine, Master! Let it condense! Make the blade heavier, not brighter!"
Percival grunted, pushing himself up and took the stance again. His Battle Fever talent was already humming, the stress of the physical exertion continuously feeding his stats, making his muscles coil tighter and his mana pool run hotter with every failed attempt.
"Again, my liege!" rcius encouraged, his voice echoing off the quarry walls. "The ground must fear your descent before you even leave the sky!"
Percival gritted his teeth. He focused entirely on the void within his chest. He didn’t look up at the sky; he thought about the crushing depths of the Soul Space. He bent his knees, his dark mana surging into his legs.
Boom!
The bedrock beneath him shattered as Percival launched himself into the air. He soared a hundred feet up, the wind howling past his ears.
At the apex of his jump, he gripped the Basilisk Blade with both hands and raised it above his head.
With a grunt, he forced his dark, necromantic mana into the Skill’s pathways. The Basilisk Blade erupted in a terrifying, suffocating aura of pitch-black energy.
The force of the sword multiplied exponentially, dragging Percival downward at a blinding speed.
"He’s got it!" Willow yelled.
KRABOOOMMM!!!
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