Chapter 36: [36]: Three Days of Grinding, Preparation for War

Day One started at 0300 in the empty subway platform where he had first farmed Short-Sword proficiency.

Alvian drew his sword and turned on Gambler’s Delay for proficiency. The System accepted the hold.

[Gambler’s Delay (Proficiency) active. Holding base proficiency EXP from Short-Sword actions. Release command: "Spin."]

One hundred swings. The tunnel echoed with the sound of steel cutting air. His shoulders burned after fifty. His grip slipped at seventy. By one hundred, his arm felt like heavy mud.

He released the pool.

"Spin."

The wheel turned. The reels spun past bronze and silver, stopping at gold on the first two. The third reel landed on silver.

[DING!]

[Rare Roll! 230x Multiplier!]

[Proficiency Pool: 100 base EXP × 230 = 23,000 Proficiency EXP]

[Severing Sword Aura proficiency increased. Approaching A-Rank cap.]

Not as crazy as the 6,500x Epic roll, but good. The air blades would hit harder and push acid deeper. Every bit helped.

He spent the next two hours farming Clearwater Coating proficiency. Fifty uses, putting acid on different surfaces in the tunnel. Walls. Floor. Ceiling. His own jacket. The acid hissed on each spot, eating small holes into the concrete.

"Spin."

[DING!]

[Uncommon Roll! 85x Multiplier!]

[Proficiency Pool: 50 base EXP × 85 = 4,250 Proficiency EXP]

[Clearwater Coating proficiency increased. Duration: 30 → 35 seconds. Corrosion rate +5%.]

Small gains. But still gains.

Day Two was Serah’s lab at 2100.

The East Wing laboratory was clean. Tools hung on magnetic strips. Resonance crystals glowed in straight lines. Serah had not slept, and the dark circles under her eyes showed it.

"Lie down," she said. "Shirt off. This will hurt."

Alvian lay on the metal table. Serah put a thin crystal pad on his chest that showed his Essence pathways. The blue light showed his inner energy web running through his body like veins.

She picked up a tool that looked like a needle wrapped in energy wire. The tip glowed blue.

"I am going to make your main Clearwater channel forty percent wider," she said. "The channel is E-Rank width now. After this, it will be C-Rank width. That means fifty percent more Essence flow."

"Do it."

The tool touched his arm.

Pain hit him like fire.

Not a sharp cut, and not a punch. This was a burning, stretching pain that spread from his forearm through his whole body. His Essence channel was being stretched wide, like forcing water through a tiny pipe.

Alvian’s back bent. He bit his teeth together so hard his jaw cracked. Sweat poured off his forehead onto the table.

"Do not move," Serah said. Her voice was calm, but her hands shook. The tool moved slowly, widening Essence channels by small fractions. One wrong move would cause damage, cutting his Talent power in half forever.

Three minutes felt like three hours.

When Serah pulled the tool away, Alvian gasped for air. His forearm was red and swollen, hot to the touch.

[Essence pathway expansion complete. Session 1 of 5.]

[Primary Clearwater channel widened by 40%.]

[Essence throughput increased by 50%.]

[Abyssal Dissolution Domain drain reduced: 10/sec → 7/sec]

[Projected Domain duration at Essence 28: ~4 seconds (up from 1 second)]

Four seconds. Still under the five-second limit needed for real combat. But it was getting closer.

Serah wiped sweat from her face. "The next session is in three days. Opening the blocked side channels will hurt much more." She paused. "Do not use the Domain before then. Your pathways need time to heal."

Alvian nodded. He put his shirt back on and left the lab, his arm hurting with every heartbeat.

Day Three was the deep Warrens.

He needed to test the Domain with his wider pathways. More importantly, he needed to learn control. The Abyssal Dissolution Domain was not a precise tool; it was a giant bomb. If he could not control it, he was dangerous to everyone, including his family.

He found an area deep in the Warrens where energy spawned monsters endlessly. Rank 3 territory. Corrupted Sludge Crawlers, Level 36. Big, fast, and dangerous.

The first Crawler charged. Alvian raised his hand and turned on the Domain at lowest power.

[Domain activated. Radius: 5 meters. Essence cost: 5 (activation) + 1/second maintenance.]

The erasing field expanded. Five meters instead of fifty. A bubble of deletion around him. The Crawler ran into the field and vanished. No blood. No sound. Just gone.

But the floor under the field vanished too. A five-meter hole opened under his feet. He jumped back, almost falling in.

’Side damage,’ he thought. ’Even at low power, the Domain erases everything, including the floor.’

He tried again. Instead of sending the field out around him, he focused it into his hand. Pushing the energy into a single touch point.

The second Crawler charged. Alvian touched its head and turned on the Domain.

[Domain activated. Contact Application. Radius: 1 meter from point of contact.]

The erasing energy spread from his hand into the Crawler’s head. The creature’s head vanished. Then its body. Then its legs. The field ate through the monster like acid through paper.

One Crawler dead in half a second. Essence cost: 5 activation plus 1 second hold. Total: 6 Essence.

No hole in the floor. No extra damage. No danger to the room.

Alvian looked at his hand. The skin was red and sore from sending that much energy, but the technique worked.

’I can touch an enemy and erase only them. No big blast. No hitting friends. No breaking the floor. Just one touch and they are gone.’

[DING!]

[Domain control technique discovered: Contact Application.]

[Radius: 1 meter from point of contact.]

[Collateral damage: Eliminated.]

[The System notes that precise erasing is much cleaner than wild destruction. The System likes Host’s progress.]

He trained for six hours. Touch targets. Erase only what he touched. Control the size from 1 meter to 5 meters to 15 meters and back down. Each use taught him how the Domain worked. At 1 meter, it was exact. At 5 meters, it was tactical. At 15 meters, it was destructive. At 50 meters, it destroyed everything.

The right tool for the right job. Not every fight needed a giant blast.

He also gathered information. Using Hendricks Cole’s network, he learned the setup of the Magnus Estate. A walled area in the Upper Ward. Fifty B-Rank guards. Three A-Rank bodyguards. A magic shield grid. And the Duke, Level 45 with an A-Rank Magma Behemoth Talent.

Molten rock. Clearwater dissolved rock and mineral matter.

’His Talent is weak against mine,’ Alvian calculated. ’Magma is melted rock. I dissolve rock. The question is if my dissolution is faster than his magma creation. If it is, his own power will fail him.’

He spent 20,000 EXP from his Bank, gathered from Warren dives over the three days, putting it into Essence.

[Essence: 28 → 33]

[Post-restructuring effective Essence for Domain calculations: ~50]

[Domain duration at full radius: ~7 seconds]

[Domain duration at contact radius: ~33 seconds]

Thirty-three seconds of single-touch dissolution. More than enough time to erase a single target.

He checked his full status one last time before leaving the Warrens.

┌──────[ Profile]──────┐

│ [Host]: Alvian Vance

│ [Level]: 32 (Mortal Tier)

│ [Talent]: Clearwater [E-Rank, S-Rank effective output]

│ [Skills]: Abyssal Dissolution Domain [S-Rank]

│ Clearwater Coating [E-Rank, enhanced]

│ Severing Sword Aura [A-Rank, proficiency increasing]

│ [Weapon Mastery]: Short-Sword [MAXIMUM, evolved]

│ [STR]: 40 | [AGI]: 38 | [VIT]: 55

│ [INT]: 22 | [Essence]: 33 (effective ~50)

│ [Karma Points]: 8

│ [EXP Bank]: 0 / ∞

│ [System Version]: 2.0 (Proficiency Tier)

│ [World Will Attention Level]: ELEVATED

└─────────────────┘

Three days. Proficiency farmed. Pathways widened. Domain control learned. Intelligence gathered. Stats added.

He was ready.

He climbed back to the surface, leaving the deep Warrens. The tunnels were quiet. The monsters he killed for practice lay on the floor, their cores harvested.

Above ground, Duke Gaius Magnus sat in his mansion, protected by guards, thinking that twenty mercenaries had died by accident. He did not know that the boy he tried to kill was coming for him.

And somewhere beyond the physical world, the World Will watched. Patient. Silent. Waiting for the next distortion to raise its attention from elevated to active.

Alvian had three goals to balance. EXP for stats. KP for survival items. Proficiency for Skill evolution. Three resources, three clocks, one body running out of time.

He reached the surface level and walked home. Martha’s medicine. Leo’s drawings. A few hours of sleep before the fight.

The Magnus Estate attack was coming. And the World Will was watching.