Chapter 69: Compressed Mana, The Secret Spar

The Vanguard Academy granted the student body a full day of rest following the entrance evaluations. It was the Eve of the Saints, an indulgent celebration intended to welcome the new aristocrats.

For the nobles in the upper wings, the day was spent gorging on roasted meats, trading political gossip, and drinking expensive wine in the grand dining halls.

For Saile, the daylight hours were spent in grueling isolation.

He remained in the damp cellar of the Class F dormitories. While his classmates slept or played cards in the dim light, Saile sat cross-legged on his rusted iron bed. He spent fourteen hours doing nothing but breathing.

He was practicing the lie.

Pushing his EX-Rank core through the silver elven choker was agony. It felt like forcing a raging river through the eye of a needle. He spent the entire day refining the friction, squashing his freezing dark mana down until it sparked with the warm, artificial yellow glow of a C-Rank Light user. If his concentration slipped for a single fraction of a second tonight, Aira’s eyes would see the truth.

When the distant courtyard bells finally chimed twelve times, Saile opened his eyes.

The celebration above was winding down. Drunken laughter echoed faintly through the ventilation grates. Saile slipped out of the dorms, moving through the shadowed marble corridors until he reached the eastern wing.

He pushed open the heavy iron door of the seventh training hall.

The secluded room sat deep beneath the academy, far from the roaming Inquisitor

patrols. Reinforced obsidian walls lined the vast space, cratered and scarred by years of high-tier magical impacts.

Aira stood waiting in the center of the dark room.

She had discarded her silver armor for a fitted white combat tunic and light steel greaves. She held a glowing training longsword, the steel humming with contained heat. Her golden eyes tracked Saile the exact moment his cheap leather

boots hit the stone floor.

"You are on time," Aira said. Her voice cut sharply through the empty hall.

She kicked a blunt iron broadsword across the floor. The metal skidded, stopping right at Saile’s feet.

"Pick it up," she ordered, raising her blade. "I want to see the technique you used to cripple Julian Vance."

Saile looked down at the iron weapon. He bent his knees and picked it up. It was poorly balanced and thick—a crude tool meant for palace guards, not swordsmen. It did not matter.

He closed his eyes. The true challenge tonight was not fighting the Saintess. It was hiding the Sovereign.

"Squeeze the dark," Naicul whispered coldly in his mind. "If she sees a single drop of black lightning, she will summon the Cardinals."

Saile seized the freezing, violent ocean of his EX-Rank core. He forced the dark magic up into his throat, shoving it directly into the silver choker. He compressed the energy with ruthless mental discipline. He crushed the black mana so tightly that the sheer friction ignited inside his own veins.

Pain spiked hard behind his eyes. The artificial heat felt like swallowing hot coals.

Saile exhaled slowly. A brilliant white glow erupted around his body. The fake Light aura flared over his crude iron sword, humming with unstable power. To the SSS-Rank Eyes of Truth, it looked like a highly concentrated, pure holy affinity.

Aira narrowed her golden eyes, studying the light. "C-Rank," she murmured. "But the density rivals a Diamond. Show me."

Aira lunged.

She crossed the twenty feet between them in a single heartbeat. Her blade cut through the air, trailing a searing arc of S-Rank holy fire. She aimed a punishing horizontal slash directly at Saile’s ribs.

Saile did not retreat. He stepped forward, sliding smoothly off the centerline.

He brought his iron broadsword up in a surgical parry. The blunt iron caught the flat of her glowing steel.

Clang!

A shockwave rattled the obsidian training hall. The impact jarred Saile’s forearms, but his Diamond-Tier bones absorbed the kinetic trauma effortlessly.

He did not try to overpower her. If he pushed back with his true strength, he would snap her steel blade in half and blow his cover. Instead, he let her own violent momentum carry her forward.

Saile pivoted on his heel and tapped the back of her knee with his boot.

Aira stumbled, but only for a fraction of a second. The Saintess was a prodigy for a reason. She planted her free hand on the obsidian floor, turning the stumble into a fluid cartwheel. She launched a rising diagonal cut as she righted herself.

Saile leaned backward. The holy fire singed the collar of his linen shirt, leaving the scent of burned thread in the air.

"Your footwork," Aira grunted. She pressed the attack with a rapid flurry of thrusts, forcing him to retreat.

"It lacks the rigid, orthodox forms of the Church. Who taught you?"

Saile deflected the strikes with minimal wrist movements. Sparks rained over the black stone floor.

"I taught myself," Saile lied smoothly, his breathing steady. "In the slums, you learn to adapt. Or you bleed."

Their blades locked. Aira shoved her weight against his guard, her golden eyes burning with intense scrutiny. The artificial light magic flared agonizingly inside Saile’s veins, grinding against his dark core. He kept his expression dead.

"I just observe the world," Saile said softly over the screech of grinding steel. "Like Professor Erif’s history lecture yesterday."

Aira broke the weapon lock and swung a heavy overhead chop. "The lecture on the

Demon God?"

"Yes," Saile replied. He sidestepped the blow. Aira’s sword slammed into the obsidian floor, carving a molten, glowing trench deep into the black stone. "The

professor called Naicul Elav a mindless, savage beast. But I have a hypothetical

question, Saintess."

Aira wrenched her blade free and pointed it at his chest. "Ask it."

"If the Demon God was a mindless beast," Saile began, circling her slowly, "how did he build the old trade roads? How did he forge the first black steel armories?"

Aira’s jaw tightened. "He used human slaves," she answered rigidly. "He forced

them to build his empire in the dark. The Immortal Saints saved us from him."

"Perhaps," Saile conceded, locking his blue eyes onto her golden gaze. "But the oldest cathedral archives state that Pope Naissac was the Demon God’s Chief Strategist. He served the beast directly for ten years."

Aira scoffed. She charged again, driving a series of rapid, punishing thrusts that forced Saile back against the obsidian wall.

"A recognized tactic," Aira fired back, her voice ringing with indoctrinated certainty. "Holy espionage. The Pope infiltrated the beast’s ranks to learn his weaknesses from within. You read unvetted historical texts and mistake righteous sacrifice for servitude."

Saile ducked under a lethal horizontal sweep. He channeled kinetic force into his calves.

[Skill Activated: Phantom Step (C-Grade)]

The air snapped. Saile moved with unreactable speed, riding the bright flash of

his fake light aura. He slipped entirely behind her. Before she could turn, he rested the blunt edge of his iron sword gently against the side of her throat.

Aira froze. Her breath hitched.

"Espionage takes a few months," Saile whispered cold, clinical logic over her shoulder. "Ten years is an administration."

Aira’s grip tightened on her sword, but she did not move.

"A loyal spy does not spend a decade building the enemy’s economic infrastructure," Saile continued quietly, twisting the psychological knife. "He does not execute the beast’s political rivals to solidify the empire’s borders.

Unless, of course, Naissac wasn’t a spy at all. Unless he was a loyal servant who only decided to be a savior when he realized he could steal the throne."

"Heresy," Aira warned through gritted teeth. But the unshakeable confidence in her voice had finally cracked.

"Logistics," Saile corrected flatly.

He lowered his sword, stepping back to give her room. He tossed the blunt iron weapon onto the ground. It clattered against the obsidian, the sound echoing in the heavy silence.

Aira turned around. She did not raise her blade. She stared at him, her brow furrowed in deep, uncomfortable thought. She possessed the legendary Eyes of Truth. She had been trained her entire life to see through illusions and identify lies. Yet, she had never turned that piercing gaze upon her own holy texts.

Saile’s logic was a mental virus. The math of a ten-year "infiltration" simply did not add up, and her brilliant mind knew it.

"Naissac saved humanity," Aira whispered. She was trying to anchor herself to her faith, but the words sounded hollow in the dark room.

"A savior who builds his golden throne on top of buried secrets," Saile replied. He turned his back on her, walking toward the heavy iron door of the training hall. "We are done for tonight. My mana is depleted."

It was a lie. His Diamond-Tier core was vast and untouched. But the physical pain of filtering the dark magic was giving him a splitting, nauseating headache. If he stayed any longer, the illusion would break.

Aira did not try to stop him. She stood alone in the center of the scarred training hall, looking down at the molten trench in the floor. She was lost in a sudden storm of dangerous, traitorous thoughts.

"You broke her," Naicul noted. A dark, highly satisfied purr echoed in Saile’s chest. "She fought the truth, but the armor cracked. A sword can kill a soldier. But a question can kill an empire."

Saile stepped out into the cool, silent corridor. He wiped a thin layer of cold sweat from his forehead. The first secret spar was a tactical masterpiece. He had maintained the disguise and forced the Church’s greatest weapon to doubt her own master.

He needed her clearance to access the lower, restricted levels of the Academy. A

doubting Saintess was far easier to manipulate than a fanatic.

As Saile navigated the dark marble hallways back to the Class F dormitories, a loud, magical chime echoed from the crystal speakers mounted on the stone walls.

"Attention all students," a mechanical, projected voice buzzed through the empty

academy. The late-night announcement was a harsh wake-up call. "The monthly survival exam will commence at dawn. All classes will report to the teleportation courtyard immediately following breakfast."

Saile stopped walking. He looked up at the glowing crystal speaker.

The monthly exam. It was the only time the Academy willingly sent its student body into the controlled upper floors of the Abyssal Labyrinth to hunt monsters for Merit Points.

A cold, dangerous smile slowly crept onto his face.

The gates to the dungeon were opening. The hunt for the Fallen God’s right arm was officially underway.