Rise Of The Lesser-Blood

The heavy iron bell at the apex of the Blackspear Academy tower tolled once, its deep resonance vibrating through the sand of the Arena under the open sky.

The duel had officially begun.

Thomas didn’t move. He stood awkwardly in his corner of the sand, his posture completely unrefined. He held no weapon, his hands dangling loosely at his sides. To the thousands of spectators watching from the vaulted benches, he looked like a terrified farm boy waiting for the slaughter. High above, on the elevated noble platform, Julian leaned forward slightly against the stone railing, his ebony eyes tracking Thomas through his spectacles with a razor-sharp, analytical glare.

Across the field, Raymond didn’t offer a theatrical smirk or an arrogant boast. He was a trained high-blood with an assassin Talent. The moment the bell rang, his entire presence shifted. He became entirely fluid, moving at a velocity that completely bypassed the natural limits of human acceleration. To the naked eye, Raymond didn’t run; he simply blurred out of his starting position and reappeared directly inside Thomas’s blind spot.

Thomas’s farm-boy reflexes were entirely outclassed. Before his brain could even register the displacement of air behind him, a cold, whistling sound sliced past his ear.

SHLICK!

A sleek, silver stiletto dagger tore through the fabric of his academy uniform, burying its tip deep into the meat of his left shoulder blade.

Thomas gasped, a sharp, icy spike of agony flaring through his back. But Raymond wasn’t throwing a standard, messy street puncture. His talent allowed him to strike with absolute anatomical precision. The stiletto didn’t hit bone; it slipped flawlessly between his muscle groups, the edge coated in a localized, vibrating frequency of blood-red mana designed to sever the delicate neurological and spiritual meridians that connected Thomas’s core to his left arm.

Instantly, Thomas’s left arm went completely limp. The nerve pathways were violently shut down, and his mana flow to that entire limb flatlined.

”First strike,” Raymond’s ice-cold whisper echoed directly behind his neck.

Before Thomas could even stumble forward to break the distance, Raymond executed a flawless, mid-motion rotation. His secondary dagger swept upward in a blinding, horizontal arc. It caught Thomas right across the chest, carving a deep, bloody line from his right collarbone down to his hip.

The sheer kinetic force of the strike lifted Thomas off his feet. He crashed heavily into the sand, rolling across the arena floor in a tangled, unrefined mess. Blood quickly pooled beneath his uniform, staining the dark grains of the sand.

The noble rows in the stands erupted into loud, satisfied cheers. To them, the lesser-blood was finally being dismantled by a true, generational weapon of the Crown.

Thomas lay on his side, his vision blurring as his chest heaved painfully. His left arm was completely paralyzed, and the long, diagonal laceration across his torso throbbed with a burning, white-hot agony. He tried to push himself up with his right hand, but his movements were sluggish, his farm-boy biology buckling under the intense shock of a high-tier assassin’s precision damage.

But deep inside the darkness of his mind, the frantic panic of his mortal instincts was suddenly crushed by the cold, majestic chime of the system.

[ CRITICAL INJURY DETECTED: MERIDIAN SEVERANCE & TISSUE LACERATION ]

*Threat Type: Piercing, Anatomical Disruption, & Flow Invalidation

* Status: Processing Threat Matrix...

[ INITIALIZING SPECIAL GRADE TALENT: ENDLESS ADAPTATION ]

* Protocol: Evolutionary Override Required.

* Process Speed: Constrained by Host Low Base Mana.

[ PROGRESS BAR:10% ]

Current Action: Mapping enemy weapon frequency.

Thomas clenched his teeth, forcing his right knee under his body. It’s taking too long, he thought frantically. Unlike his fight with Marcus, where the damage was simple blunt force and heat, Raymond’s talent was actively disrupting the very internal systems Thomas needed to function. The adaptation bar was moving like molasses, crawling forward pixel by pixel.

”You’re a disappointment, lesser,” Raymond’s voice echoed from the sand.

Thomas looked up just in time to see the silver-haired youth walking toward him with slow, measured strides. Raymond didn’t look tired; his breathing was perfectly level, his twin stilettos dripping with Thomas’s blood. His assassin traits gave him absolute control over his cardiorespiratory output. He didn’t waste a single watt of energy.

”Marcus fell because he was loud and reckless,” Raymond said, his narrow eyes tracking the blood pooling on Thomas’s chest. ”He gave you time to look for a flaw. But an assassin doesn’t give you space to breathe.”

Raymond vanished again.

Thwack!

A brutal low-kick caught Thomas right in the side of his knee. The impact sounded like an iron bar striking wood. Thomas’s leg bent at an unnatural angle as the tendons in his joint stretched to the absolute breaking point. He collapsed back into the dirt with a choked cry.

Before he could hit the ground completely, Raymond caught him by the throat with his bare left hand, his grip turning into an unyielding vice that entirely cut off Thomas’s windpipe. Raymond lifted the fifteen-year-old farm boy into the air using raw physical leverage, pressing his right stiletto directly against the skin right below Thomas’s jawline.

”Surrender, farm-boy,” Raymond whispered, his blade drawing a tiny bead of crimson from Thomas’s throat. ”Or you will die before the instructor can even drop his flag to save you.”

Ryan slammed his fists against the stone railing, his face completely pale as he prepared to scream for a medical intervention. The lazy senior girl by the pillar narrowed her ebony eyes, her grip tightening around her historical scroll.

But suspended in mid-air, suffocating and entirely outclassed, Thomas didn’t look at the blade at his throat. He looked directly past Raymond’s shoulder, his eyes locking onto the premium noble booth far above. Julian was staring down at him, his face an unreadable mask of cold disappointment.

Thomas let out a bloody, ragged gasp through his clamped throat, a dark, primal grin suddenly stretching across his lips.

Behind his eyelids, the loading bar finally flashed.

[ PROGRESS BAR: 40% ]

* Current Action: Synthesizing neural meridian bypass loops.

* Current Action: Hardening cellular tissue along tracking pathways.

[ WARNING: Host must endure further trauma to accelerate code rewiring. ]

I just need more time, Thomas thought, his right hand subtly closing into a fist in the air.