Chapter 727: The C-Rank Gate

A perfect chance to field-test Honeybun. Let him build combat experience against real threats in a controlled environment, somewhere the danger won’t be high. A C-Rank is exactly the right difficulty to let him cut his teeth without any real risk.

"Sure, why not," Moon said. "I’ll take it. When do they want me?"

"That’s my boy. I’ll lock it in and send you the details. And Moon, keep an eye on the roster for this one. Word is the Association’s been seeding some of their favored young talents into gates lately in order to increase competition. You might not be the only rising star on the team."

Moon’s interest sharpened.

"Is that so?"

"Just a heads up. Play nice... or don’t. Either way, i’m sure you will do just fine."

Moon smiled. "Thanks, Tom. See you later."

A few minutes later, Moon’s phone buzzed. Tom’s message arrived complete with the gate’s location, the designated time slot, and a VIP orbital shuttle pass attached.

Moon gave it a quick scan, then pocketed the phone.

He found Selene to bid her farewell, but she stopped him.

"Wait, I’ll head out with you. I need to get back to the Second Sanctuary anyway, and the nearest gate’s on your way. No sense in you leaving alone."

"Count me in too," Yara added, appearing with her white bow already slung across her back. "Sierra’s expecting me to keep training even between our formal sessions. I need to grow stronger, and standing around here won’t do it."

So the three of them headed out together.

They rode toward the Second Sanctuary gate first, and when they arrived, Moon walked them to the entrance.

"Train hard, both of you, and be careful. Message me if anything comes up, I will respond as soon as I see it."

"You too," Selene replied. "Try not to make the gate you enter become an inescapable hell."

"No promises." Moon replied with a cheeky smile.

Yara waved, and the two girls stepped through the gate, leaving Moon alone to make his way to the orbital station.

He showed his pass at the gate, and was immediately ushered aboard the nearest shuttle, which arrived within five minutes. He went straight to the VIP section and let himself into the private training room.

Beside him, Mirage and Honeybun explored the space for a while, the steed nosing around the weapon racks while the little turtle inspected every equipment with curiosity. Before long, both grew bored and settled down near Moon, lazing contentedly while he got to do his own work.

Moon didn’t waste the travel time. He began training his assimilation technique.

He’d fully mastered Ice-Assimilation, an Epic-rank skill. But he was intensely curious about Lightning-Assimilation. If he managed to master it, would it also come out Epic-rank? He saw no reason on why it wouldn’t.

Both ice and lightning were advanced elements, and if anything, Moon considered his lightning the more powerful of the two. His purple lightning carried soul-damaging properties that ordinary lightning couldn’t match. If any element deserved an Epic-tier assimilation, it was that one.

And if I can master both... The thought ignited a spark of hope for a new power-up. They might merge and form something much stronger. Two advanced-element assimilations combining into a single higher skill. I really hope so... That would be worth every hour of this practice.

Before copying Elsa’s Ice-Assimilation, his understanding of lightning assimilation had sat at around twenty percent, cobbled together from his own failed experiments. But mastering the real technique through her class had given him the structural key, and that understanding had transferred.

His grasp of lightning assimilation had shot up to fifty percent the moment he understood the principle for ice. Now he had the second half to complete on his own, without a copied class to lean on entirely.

I can do this, he encouraged himself, channeling lightning into an arrow, trying to thread the current through the shaft’s structure rather than coat its surface, the same way he’d learned to do with ice.

The lightning resisted differently than ice had. Where ice tried to slip through the structure and settle, lightning wanted to leap and scatter, its nature volatile and eager to move. Threading it into a weapon and holding it there fought against everything the element wanted to do. But Moon had the foundation now, the deep understanding of what assimilation actually was, and he pressed forward patiently, arrow after arrow, adjusting his approach with each attempt.

Progress came, but slowly.

Fifty-two percent.

Fifty-four.

Fifty-five.

Moon’s understanding and control over the element continued to rise, the volatile nature of lightning making every increment harder-won than the last. He switched to a sword, then a shield, applying the same lessons he’d learned crossing mediums with ice, and it helped, nudging the counter upward, but the climb stayed gradual rather than exponential.

By the time the shuttle’s announcer chimed overhead, signaling their approach to the gate’s district, Moon lowered his practice weapon and checked his progress.

"Sixty percent, not bad. But I can feel it, this is where it starts to crawl. The rest is going to fight me for every point."

Lightning didn’t want to be tamed the way ice did. Mastering this without a copied class to carry him through the hard middle would take time and effort.

But he had the foundation, and he had patience.

Being slow is fine, as long as I get there in the end.

Moon recalled Mirage and Honeybun into his beast taming space and stepped out of the training room as the shuttle descended.

Five minutes later, he entered the controlled residential district where the gate had appeared. A handful of reporters lingered around the perimeter, kept well back from the gate itself, most of them clustered near the outer cordon. The moment they spotted Moon, they surged toward him, questions already flying.

The Association representative in charge moved to intercept them.

"No recording until the gate is cleared," he said coldly. "Anyone caught violating that rule will be dealt with personally by the Association. This is your only warning."