Chapter 78: Training Like Hell

The ballroom had barely begun to empty when Caelus decided he’d had enough of it.

The last groups of students lingered beneath the chandeliers, stretching conversations long after the formal celebration had lost whatever purpose it once had. Fourth-years said their final goodbyes in clusters, while younger students traded names and plans for the semester ahead.

Caelus had no interest in any of it.

He returned to his residence, changed out of his formal clothes, packed enough food to avoid wasting time on meals, and headed for the Apex Training Hall.

He stayed there for the entire weekend.

The hall was not simply larger than the Academy’s ordinary training grounds. It had been built around a different assumption entirely: whoever used it was expected to push themselves beyond what most students could survive.

One side contained equipment for physical conditioning. Another held circular platforms surrounded by reinforced barriers, while several rooms had been designed to alter temperature, humidity, terrain, and atmospheric conditions for magical training. Recovery stations occupied the far wall, each fitted with enough equipment to support students who routinely exhausted themselves past reasonable limits.

The battle simulation chamber was the most valuable part.

The Academy had spent years collecting combat records from its students and instructors, then feeding that information into the chamber’s training constructs. Knights, Mages, Martial Artists, and practitioners of less conventional paths could all be reproduced as fighting patterns, complete with their preferred ranges, movement habits, defensive instincts, and the small tendencies that separated one style from another.

The constructs could imitate a fighter.

They could not become that fighter.

Their physical output, Affinity, special abilities, and the subtler qualities of a living opponent were all limited by the simulation itself.

That was exactly why Caelus wanted them.

He needed unfamiliar opponents.

For most of his life, his greatest advantage had been knowing what came next.

That advantage had already begun to rot. The world no longer followed his manuscript closely enough for him to trust prediction alone.

The simulation placed a swordsman in front of him.

Caelus expected the opening attack.

The construct changed its footing instead.

His blade came a fraction later than anticipated and from an angle Caelus hadn’t prepared for. He twisted aside, felt steel graze his sleeve, and answered with a cut toward the ribs.

The construct blocked.

A second strike followed before Caelus had fully recovered his balance.

He caught it. Barely.

The force drove him two steps backward.

Caelus stared at the construct.

Then he reset his stance and fought.

The next opponent favored short movements and fought from inside his range. Another relied on broad, aggressive swings. A third looked almost passive until the moment Caelus committed and then turned his own momentum against him.

Caelus began noticing things he normally would have ignored.

By the second day, Caelus had stopped trying to predict what the constructs would do and started watching what their bodies did before they decided.

That distinction made the training far more difficult.

It also made it useful.

The simulations left bruises across his arms and shoulders despite the chamber’s safety restrictions. When his body began refusing another round, he moved to conditioning rather than forcing himself through another fight. When his muscles finally loosened into exhaustion, he worked on mana circulation. When even that became unpleasant, he went to one of the recovery benches, slept for a few hours, and returned before his body had fully forgotten what he’d done to it.

It was not efficient by ordinary standards.

Caelus wasn’t interested in ordinary standards.

He’d survived the entrance examination barely conscious, taken the highest rank in his year, and watched the future he remembered drift further away from reality with every major event.

That combination left him with very little patience for complacency.

He deliberately avoided creating anything new.

New spells could wait.

What he needed now was mastery.

Water Sheathe was the easiest place to begin.

But the spell still had a habit of interfering with his movement whenever he activated it at speed, especially during abrupt turns. Caelus spent hours stepping through the same motions, drawing his sword, shifting his weight, activating the spell, cutting, and resetting before trying again from a different angle.

Veil Mist was difficult.

The mist altered visibility, moisture, sound, and movement all at once. Caelus needed to remain aware of his surroundings without allowing the sheer amount of information inside the field to interfere with his judgment.

Then there was Death Stalker.

That spell had seemed almost simple when he’d first created it.

Death Stalker’s tracking mechanism depended on moisture. Blood usually provided the strongest target because once an opponent was wounded, the water within their body gave the projectile something to follow.

The problem became obvious when Caelus looked at the spell from another angle.

What happened when there was more moisture somewhere else?

What happened when the enemy was fighting near a lake?

What happened if Caelus himself was bleeding?

The answers were unpleasant.

A large body of water could interfere with the projectile’s tracking. A battlefield soaked by rain could weaken its ability to distinguish the intended target. Worse, if Caelus was badly wounded and his own blood contained more available moisture than his opponent’s, Death Stalker could potentially betray him.

He needed another target.

Veil Mist offered one.

Caelus extended his hand, recalling what he did while fighting the S-rank creature.

Mist spread across the training floor, thin at first, then denser as he fed more mana into the field.

He gathered moisture near the far side of the room.

The droplets trembled.

A small concentration formed inside the mist, no larger than a fist.

Caelus fired Death Stalker.

The projectile curved.

It slammed into the wall several feet away from the condensed pocket.

Caelus watched the fragments of water scatter across the stone.

Again.

The second attempt followed the concentration sooner, but the turn cost too much speed. The projectile reached the correct area and struck the floor instead.

Again.

The third shot bent sharply enough to reach the pocket.

Caelus smiled.

Then he did it again.

And again.

By the end of the weekend, the movement was no longer an accident.

He could create a denser pocket of moisture somewhere inside the mist and force Death Stalker to treat it as the strongest available target.

He was controlling what the projectile wanted.