CHAPTER 66: THE WARLOCK

More than a month had passed since Caius began his relentless rotation against the elite guards of House Vel'drin, and the results had become impossible to ignore.

One by one, all Fifty Blades had fallen. The warriors who had initially entered the basalt hall with pride and condescension had been methodically dismantled. Some had lasted several furious exchanges before Caius exposed their flaws; others had forced him to adapt to rare weapon styles and brutal lineage techniques. But through his newly forged Open Blade, Caius didn't merely defeat them; he absorbed them. Every stance, counter, and rhythm the guards threw at him was cataloged by his Crown Core and integrated into his fluid, formless sword art.

What had begun as a forced training regimen for the Trial of Fate had turned into a matter of desperate clan pride. No Nyx'ari warrior wanted to be remembered as the one who succumbed to a fourteen-year-old human. Yet, despite their best efforts, Caius kept closing the gap, then surpassing it entirely.

Old Bones had watched every match from the shadows of his stone pillar. He had allowed Caius to bleed, struggle, and exhaust himself, expecting the inherent gap between human and dark elf longevity to eventually manifest as a ceiling.

Instead, Caius had shattered that ceiling.

When the last of the Fifty Blades dropped to his knees a few days earlier, Old Bones knew the guards had served their purpose. Caius had mastered physical combat against swords, spears, shields, rapiers, and dual daggers. If he continued fighting the same martial elite, his growth would stagnate. Comfort was a quiet death in the Underdark, and comfort would get the boy killed in the arena.

That evening, Old Bones sought out Patriarch Vel'drin in his private sanctum.

The head of the house looked up from a desk piled high with intelligence ledgers and scout reports. "You have come for something, old friend."

"The guards are no longer enough," Old Bones said plainly, folding his arms. "He has devoured every martial style we placed before him. If I continue the same rotation, we are no longer training him. We are letting him stagnate."

The Patriarch raised an eyebrow. "Already? What do you suggest?"

"War mages," Old Bones replied. "Our people possess two distinct traditions of battle magic: the female sorceresses and the male warlocks. Their methods will force Caius to adapt to threats that don't rely on physical blades."

"You want him fighting spellcasters," the Patriarch mused, a faint, intrigued smile touching his lips. "Who will you send first?"

"Start with the warlocks."

The following morning, Caius entered the subterranean chamber holding his twin steel short swords: the weapons Old Bones had given him to replace his wooden gear.

Waiting in the center of the hall was a dark elf who carried no steel, shield, or armor. Dressed in layered black robes secured with silver clasps, his long white hair was tied tightly behind his head, accentuating a sharp face and narrow, crimson eyes.

He stared at Caius with undisguised contempt.

No guards lined the walls today. There was no audience. Only Caius, Old Bones, and the dark elf stood within the vast stone hall.

Caius studied the newcomer, speaking in clear, unhurried Nyx'ari. "You don't carry a weapon?"

The dark elf's lips curled into a sneer. "I have no need for crude metal. My name is Dareth."

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"I am Caius."

"I know who you are," Dareth spat, his voice laced with the deep-seated pride of a Nyx'ari nobleman. "I know you humiliated our clan's martial elite. But do not mistake simple swordsmen for the true power of House Vel'drin. Now you will see what a warlock can do."

Old Bones remained silent at the edge of the ring. He knew Dareth's hatred was personal. To a proud Nyx'ari warlock, the notion that a surface human child had conquered fifty of their finest warriors was an insult to their very bloodline.

"I will not be the first warlock disgraced by a human child," Dareth snarled.

Caius adjusted his grip on his steel short blades, his posture loose and relaxed. "Then don't be."

Dareth's face twisted in fury as his core flared.

Instantly, Caius activated the Eye of the Loom. The world shifted into vibrant, multi-layered energy. Through Far Sight, Caius locked onto Dareth's mana core, watching it burn like a sphere of concentrated crimson light within the warlock's chest. Through Inner Sight, he didn't just see the energy; he tracked its precise circulation as Dareth forced it out of his core, channeling it down his shoulder, through his arm, and into his fingertips.

Combining this with his Crown Core, Caius achieved complete Spell Prediction.

Before Dareth even thrust his palm forward, Caius saw the spell's blueprint, trajectory, and release point.

A sphere of condensed dark energy erupted from Dareth's hand, tearing through the air. Caius had already taken a fluid half-step sideways. The projectile missed him by inches, detonating against the basalt wall behind him with a deafening boom that shook the hall.

Dareth immediately gathered mana for a second strike, but Caius was already reading the internal flow.

Mana gathered in Dareth's core, compressed, and surged down his left conduit. Caius slipped smoothly to the right before the spell left the warlock's hand. Dareth fired a third blast; Caius executed a Shadow Step, dissolving into the dim light and reappearing five paces closer.

Dareth fired frantically—four, five, six blasts of destructive dark magic. Stone shattered, smoke filled the air, and kinetic shockwaves rattled the chamber. Yet none of them touched the boy.

Caius was smiling.

He wasn't mocking the warlock; he was genuinely enthralled. To Caius, magic was not an invisible, mysterious force; it was another intricate web of threads. Through his Crown Core, he was dissecting the relationship between intent, core compression, and spell projection. He was absorbing the rhythm of magic into his Open Blade, learning to blend anti-mage evasions into his swordplay.

"Stop moving!" Dareth roared, his breathing ragged as another blast exploded uselessly against the stone. "You cannot dodge magic before it is cast!"

"I can see your mana pathways," Caius replied calmly, his glowing eyes fixed on Dareth's chest. "I see the spell before you release it."

Incensed beyond reason, Dareth slammed his foot against the floor. "Then dodge this!"

Instead of targeting Caius directly, Dareth channeled his mana into the basalt ground. The temperature in the chamber plummeted instantly. A thick sheet of killing frost spread across the stone, and jagged spikes of black ice erupted from the floor, racing toward Caius to lock his legs in place.

Caius didn't panic. His Crown Core flickered, activating his Black Core.

A thin, dark veil of thread-mana extended from his boots, anchoring to the air just above the stone. The freezing spell washed over the barrier, crawling harmlessly beneath his feet without touching his skin. Caius had instinctively woven a spatial buffer, neutralizing the battlefield manipulation before it could trap him.

Dareth stared at the untouched human boy in sheer disbelief. His Nyx'ari pride shattered into pure, reckless rage.

"Enough," Dareth hissed through gritted teeth.

His mana core flared with a blinding, dangerous intensity. Far Sight showed Caius an absurd amount of compressed mana expanding rapidly within the warlock. It wasn't being channeled into a beam or focused into the ground. It was flooding outward into the air, the walls, and the very atmosphere of the room.

The entire subterranean chamber began to hum with unstable, suffocating weight.

Caius stopped advancing. For the first time during the spar, his instincts screamed a warning. This was not a projectile or a surface spell. The warlock was changing the reality of the chamber itself.

Old Bones's eyes snapped wide. He recognized the heavy, suffocating pressure instantly.

"Dareth! Cease!" Old Bones commanded, his raspy voice cutting through the hum of gathering magic.

Dareth turned a wild, manic grin toward the old assassin, his crimson eyes overflowing with uncontrolled mana. "Let the human see what true Nyx'ari magic is!"

"Stop, you fool!" Old Bones roared, stepping forward at blinding speed.

Old Bones knew what Caius did not. Dareth wasn't casting a spell; he was forcibly manifesting a high-tier Domain. And if that localized realm fully expanded within the enclosed chamber, it would shred the fourteen-year-old human to pieces.