Chapter 469. Stay Back, We Don’t Know What It’s Doing to Him

Chapter 469: 469. Stay Back, We Don’t Know What It’s Doing to Him

"Speaking of unbearable," Lia said, turning her attention back to Kaela with a wicked, predatory glint dancing in her eyes. "Have you managed to land that spinning technique yet?"

"You know, the one you kept threatening to name after a natural disaster?"

Kaela’s entire face transformed instantly. A flush of crimson crept up her neck, spreading across her cheeks as her expression shifted from genuine warmth to one of profound, deep betrayal.

She shot a glare at William that could have melted steel. "William told you about that."

"William told everyone about that," Lia corrected with infuriating glee, leaning forward on her elbows. "He tells the story better each time, too."

"The dramatic pauses, the way he describes your technique with such... reverence."

"Last version I heard, you’d cleared the practice post by a full wagon’s width."

"It was not a full wagon’s width!" Kaela protested, her voice cracking slightly in indignation. "I was merely... testing the centrifugal force of the impact zone."

Lia grinned wickedly. "He was very specific about the wagon, Kaela."

"A standard two-horse supply wagon... impressive, if slightly terrifying."

"I refined it since then," Kaela insisted, attempting to salvage what remained of her dignity.

She folded her arms across her chest, chin tilting upward in defiance. "The name stays."

"Tempest Cyclone Smash is going to be legendary once I actually land it on something alive instead of just pulverizing the training yard."

"I look forward to watching you land face first in front of an entire royal court someday," Lia said sweetly, her voice dripping with mock sympathy. "The nobles will think it’s some kind of new, avant-garde interpretive dance."

"You...! You insufferable brat!" Kaela cried, reaching for the nearest projectile.

Without missing a beat, Kaela snatched up a stray pastry and hurled it at Lia’s head with genuine accuracy. But Lia, whose reflexes had been honed to a razor’s edge by Ardyn’s brutal training regimen, didn’t even flinch.

Without breaking eye contact or shifting her posture, Lia’s hand shot up in a blur of motion. Her fingers snapped shut around the pastry midair.

Lia didn’t even pause to examine her prize. She popped the entire thing into her mouth, chewing with shameless satisfaction while maintaining that infuriating, triumphant grin.

The table erupted into another round of laughter, the sound echoing off the high stone ceilings of the palace, momentarily drowning out the shadows of the war that waited beyond the gates.

...

Three days later, the levity of the breakfast table had been replaced by a cold, clinical tension that hung heavy in the air.

William stood alone in a walled training yard tucked behind the Royal Guard’s barracks, a secluded stone square Captain Roan had arranged specifically for this purpose. It was a fortress within a fortress, chosen for its towering walls and complete lack of windows.

Roan had been meticulous, ensuring that no curious member of the Delmore delegation or prying court spy could catch even a glimpse of what was about to unfold.

The yard was smaller than the main training galleries, unadorned and functional. Packed earth lay beneath his boots, scarred by countless previous drills.

At the far end stood a single, massive steel practice dummy, a reinforced monstrosity of thick plating designed to absorb the raw, bone-crushing striking power of seasoned guardsmen. The metal was already pale and scarred where generations of steel had bitten into it.

Captain Roan had walked the perimeter twice before allowing William entry, checking every door, every latch, and every potential vantage point with the obsessive thoroughness of a man who understood that privacy was a luxury bought with vigilance.

"Nobody comes through this gate without my explicit word," Roan had growled at William, his scarred hand resting heavily on the hilt of his own sword. "Not a servant, not a guardsman off duty, and certainly not anyone wearing Delmore blue."

"Whatever you’re planning to unleash in here stays between these walls."

"I appreciate the discretion, Captain," William had replied, though his voice sounded hollow to his own ears.

"Don’t thank me yet," Roan countered, his eyes narrowing. "Thank me if you don’t end up putting a hole through my masonry."

Now, standing in the center of the yard, William could see the three women. Catherine, Lia, and Kaela stood together along the near wall.

They were close enough to witness his progress but positioned far enough away that they would hopefully be safe if the power proved to be as volatile as the warnings suggested.

"If anything looks wrong," William called out, his voice carrying across the empty yard as he rolled his shoulders, testing the range of his joints, "stop me! I mean that."

"Don’t wait for me to ask."

"If you see my eyes change, if you hear something breaking inside me that shouldn’t be... just act."

"We will stop you," Catherine said, her voice steady and commanding, though he could see the slight tightness in her jaw. "Even if you refuse to ask."

"Good," William said, settling into a low, ready stance. "That’s exactly what I need."

He rolled his neck once, the vertebrae popping audibly in the silence. He shook out both hands, trying to dispel the tremor that had nothing to do with nerves and everything to do with dread.

He had faced summoned horrors three times his size without this much hesitation. He had stared down death itself without breaking.

But this felt different. A monster only wanted to kill him; it was a simple, honest transaction of violence. Whatever waited on the other side of this system was something he had invited into his own flesh, something he had agreed to carry.

And there was no telling what the cost of that burden would be.

’Am I trading my humanity for strength? ’The question whispered in the back of his mind. ’Or am I just sharpening the blade I’ll use to protect them?’

He didn’t answer it. He couldn’t.

William took a slow, measured breath. He closed his eyes, shutting out the sight of the women, the stone walls, and the steel dummy.

He turned his attention inward, past muscle and bone, searching for that strange, ethereal pulse the system had revealed two mornings ago. It was a quiet, rhythmic thrumming that sat behind his ribs, a heartbeat that didn’t belong to him but felt intimately connected to the three women watching him from the sidelines.

It was the anchor.

The source.

The Harem Training System.

He reached for it, grasping that invisible thread with both hands of his will, and pulled.

Calling on the boost for the first time felt nothing like the gradual crescendo he had half expected; there was no slow rising tide he could brace against, no warning whistle of steam before the engine roared to life. Instead, it arrived as a detonation.

It was a violent, psychic explosion that erupted from somewhere deep behind his sternum, racing through his bloodstream like liquid fire. The sensation was instantaneous and overwhelming, faster than thought, faster than breath.

It felt as though his very atoms were being forcibly rearranged by an invisible hand. A faint, sickly golden light began to bleed through his skin, tracing the raised lines of old battle scars and the fresh pink marks of recent training like glowing veins of molten metal.

The hum of it was unbearable, a low-frequency vibration he could feel vibrating in his molars and throbbing behind his eyeballs.

For one genuinely terrifying second, William ceased to be the master of his own flesh. His body became a foreign object, a vessel being flooded with more power than its architecture was designed to contain.

His knees buckled involuntarily, not from weakness, but because the raw, unbridled strength flooding his quadriceps was too sudden for his nervous system to process. His muscles fired with a savage, involuntary violence that made his limbs twitch like those of a marionette controlled by a madman.

’God, it’s too much; it’s too fast...’ his mind screamed, but the thought was drowned out by the roaring sound of his own pulse.

His right foot came down against the packed earth with the force of a falling hammer. The impact didn’t just land; it cratered. The ground beneath his boot was spiderwebbed with cracks, sending a bone-jarring jolt straight up his leg, through his pelvis, and up his spine until his teeth rattled together with enough force to threaten breaking them.

He staggered forward, his arms flailing wildly in a desperate, instinctive search for a balance that no longer existed. His sense of gravity had been shattered along with the ground beneath him.

"Instructor Wade!" Kaela’s scream tore through the courtyard, raw with panic.

Across the yard, Kaela and Lia reacted as one. Both women surged forward half a stride at once, their bodies already coiled like springs, their faces twisted with the terror of seeing him collapse.

Lia’s hand was already halfway to her sword, her instincts screaming that her friend was dying.

"Stay back!" Catherine’s voice cut through the chaos like a whip.

Her hand shot out toward them both in a sharp, commanding gesture, her fingers splayed. "Wait!"

"Don’t touch him yet; we don’t know what it’s doing to him!"

Catherine’s eyes remained locked on William’s face. She saw the way his pupils had dilated until his eyes were almost entirely black, swallowed by the golden luminescence pulsing beneath his skin.

She saw the way his jaw was clenched so tight the tendons in his neck stood out like cables.

She saw the man she loved fighting an enemy that wasn’t outside of him but inside his very bones.