CHAPTER 48: THE OLD BLADE AWAKENS

The following morning, Caius returned to the small training courtyard.

The yard was serene beneath the cool illumination of the glowing blue crystals embedded into the cavern ceiling. Their pale, azure light spread evenly across the smooth granite floor, highlighting the wooden practice weapons stacked along the weapon rack.

Old Bones was already waiting for him.

He stood in the center of the yard with the same relaxed, almost careless posture as the day before. His wooden sword hung loosely in his right hand, while the wooden practice knife sat low in his left. His expression carried little outward interest, as though the coming spar were nothing more than an easy way to pass another boring morning in isolation.

Caius settled into his stance, holding his blunted wooden sword and knife in the asymmetric grip of the Umbral Twin-Edge.

Old Bones studied him for a brief second, his sharp red eyes noting the boy's balanced weight distribution and calm breathing.

Then the old assassin attacked.

The first exchange was vastly different from the previous day's brutal beating. Old Bones moved with sudden, explosive speed, but Caius was ready.

Channeling a precise trickle of black mana through his foot meridians, Caius executed a tight Flow Step, shifting his hips just enough to let the old man's wooden sword glide past his ribs. In the same breath, Caius swept his wooden knife across to intercept Old Bones's counter-thrust.

CLACK!

The old assassin instantly altered his angle, turning his wrist to drive a low jab toward Caius's thigh. Caius, drawing on the muscle memory and sensory instincts forged during his night of combat against the female Arachne Princess within his Crown Core, tracked the movement and caught the strike with the flat of his wooden sword.

Another attack came from the left. Caius blocked it.

Another thrust came from above. He parried with an upward sweep.

Old Bones's narrow eyes tightened slightly.

Caius was no longer simply trying to survive the incoming strikes through desperate reflex. He was actively reading the trajectory of the blows, anticipating the angles before they fully materialized. The foundational forms he had learned from Sereth were flowing far more naturally, and his hidden practice within the Crown realm had given him hours of high-intensity experience to sharpen his spatial awareness and reaction speed. His feet moved across the stone with calm confidence, while his practice blades remained tucked close to his body, efficiently redirecting every incoming strike with minimal wasted movement.

Old Bones increased his pace.

Caius's jaw tightened.

The old assassin's form suddenly blurred. Utilizing a high-level dark elf footwork technique, his body seemed to dissolve into the ambient shadows of the courtyard. His wooden sword appeared unexpectedly from Caius's left blind spot, whistling through the air.

Caius barely raised his wooden knife in time to absorb the heavy impact.

THOCK!

Before Caius could reset his balance, the old man's wooden knife darted inside his guard like a striking viper. Caius twisted his torso violently to the right, but the blunt tip still struck his left shoulder, sending a sharp throb of pain through his upper arm.

Old Bones did not give him room to breathe. His movements became increasingly difficult to track as he weaponized the stone walls, shifting his momentum rapidly from angle to angle with almost zero tell.

Caius struggled to keep up. Even though his eyes could register the faint shifts in air pressure, his unreinforced physical body was simply not fast enough to execute the necessary parries.

He took a hard strike to his ribs. Then another blunt blow to his forearm.

Caius stepped back sharply, opening up distance, and drew a deep, structured breath. He stopped holding back his internal energy.

Deep within his lower dantian, the Black Core responded instantly. It accelerated its counter-clockwise rotation, transforming from a steady vortex into a roaring storm of dark power. Caius opened his primary meridian pathways, letting compressed floods of black mana surge through his shoulder conduits, down his spine, and straight into his leg channels.

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As the dark energy saturated his muscular structure and nervous system, the physical strain on his body vanished. His limbs felt light, his optic nerves sharpened, and his explosive speed multiplied.

Caius stepped forward and unleashed his full speed.

This time, he was the one who blurred into a shadow.

Old Bones's wooden blade came sweeping toward Caius's temple, but Caius vanished from its trajectory entirely, executing an accelerated Vel'drin Step. He reappeared instantly at the old man's right flank, sweeping his wooden sword toward his ribs.

CLACK!

Old Bones caught the blade with his wooden knife without looking. In the same motion, his wooden sword whipped toward Caius's midsection.

Caius slipped away like water, pivoting on his heels and returning with a rapid Twin Arc strike.

The two moved across the stone courtyard faster and faster, exchanging blows in a furious cadence. To an ordinary observer, their distinct forms were becoming impossible to separate. Their practice weapons flashed through the pale azure light like streaks of dark lightning, their boots clicking in rapid-fire succession as they appeared and disappeared across the arena.

For the first time in the entire journey, a faint, genuine smile touched Old Bones's lips.

It had been decades since the retired assassin had moved his body with this level of intensity. It had been even longer since he had pushed another young warrior to the absolute limit of their martial potential, and longer still since he had stood before a student who possessed such an explosive, relentless hunger to master the craft.

Something ancient and long-buried beneath the old assassin's years of weary retirement began to stir deep within his chest: the pure, forgotten fulfillment of passing down his lethal art to a worthy vessel.

He had almost forgotten what it felt like to teach.

Old Bones accelerated further, driving a whirlwind of strikes at the boy.

Caius met him head-on, his Black Core humming at maximum output as he parried, redirected, and counter-struck without a single second of hesitation.

Their wooden blades collided again and again, sending loud, echoing cracks reverberating off the high granite walls.

Outside the heavy entrance of the abode, the two elite Vel'drin guards stood perfectly straight in their official posts, their spears resting against their armored shoulders.

They had been ordered to maintain a strict watch over the human child, expecting another quiet morning of monitoring a simple captive. Instead, their ears were filled with an endless, terrifying barrage of splintering wood and sharp air displacement echoing from within the private courtyard.

THOCK-CLACK-THUD-CLACK!

The impacts grew faster, tighter, and infinitely more violent with every passing second.

The younger guard shifted his eyes toward his partner, a deep frown cutting across his dark brow. "What are they doing in there?"

The senior guard kept his eyes fixed strictly on the corridor ahead. "Training."

"I know that," the younger guard muttered under his breath, adjusting his grip on his spear shaft. "But that sounds like two master assassins trying to kill each other."

Another series of heavy, bone-rattling impacts cracked through the thick stone doors.

Unable to contain his curiosity any longer, the younger guard carefully turned his head, leaned an inch toward the open archway, and peered into the courtyard.

His expression instantly froze in sheer disbelief.

He could see almost nothing clearly. Caius and Old Bones were moving at such breathtaking speeds that their bodies had turned into overlapping dark shadows darting across the floor. Wooden blades blurred into pale fans of motion, and the stone floor seemed to tremble under the sharp force of their footwork.

The guard stared, his breath catching in his throat. He had never seen a practice spar move with such terrifying, lethal fluidity.

Suddenly, a calm, dry voice echoed from inside the swirling storm of shadow.

"Focus on your guard duty."

The guard went rigid as ice.

Old Bones had not paused his footwork for a fraction of a second, his wooden sword continuing to clash against Caius's blades, yet his voice carried straight to the guard's ear with absolute clarity.

"Or I will blind both of you if you keep spying on our training," the old man added smoothly.

The younger guard immediately recoiled, pulling his head back behind the doorframe as if he had just touched hot iron. He pressed his back against the cold wall, his heart hammering against his ribs.

The senior guard stared at him, his brow furrowing. "What happened?"

The younger guard swallowed hard, his skin noticeably paler. "He knows."

The two guards instantly resumed their rigid posts, staring straight ahead into the empty hallway. Neither dared glance toward the entrance again.

The old assassin's warning had been spoken softly, without a trace of anger or strain. That casual indifference somehow made the threat infinitely more terrifying.

They suddenly remembered the strict warnings given to them by the clan elders before they took this assignment. Old Bones might look like a harmless, lazy old man. He might spend most of his days sleeping on cold floors, complaining about his joints, and ignoring dark elf etiquette. But beneath that ragged exterior was a legendary executioner who had survived centuries of bloody shadow wars long before either of them had taken their first breath.

And apparently, his terrifying edge had not dulled in the slightest.

Inside the enclosed courtyard, the high-speed spar raged on without pause.

Caius pushed his Black Core to its absolute operational limit. Dark mana radiated out from his pores in faint, wispy veils, blending his physical form with the surrounding shadows until his movements were almost invisible.

Old Bones let out a low, hearty laugh, his red eyes blazing with renewed vitality. For the first time in many long years, the old assassin felt completely alive.

The wooden blades continued to clash rhythmically beneath the blue crystals, master and student moving as one through the dark.