The training ground materialized around Nero the moment they stepped through Luna's portal.

*Woommm…!*

It was a wide open space with reinforced earth and absolutely nothing flammable within a hundred meters.

These were the standard precautions whenever Velraeth was involved in anything.

His magic lesson with Luna had wrapped up an hour ago, and his brain was still buzzing from the theoretical mana compression techniques she had taught him.

It all sounded simple enough until you actually tried executing them without accidentally exploding your own spell matrices.

Now comes the fun part.

"Remove your shirt."

Velraeth gave the command, and her tone carried absolutely zero room for any kind of negotiation.

Nero complied without a second of hesitation as he pulled the fabric over his head and tossed it to the side.

The cool air hit his torso immediately.

The dragon circled him slowly, and her amber eyes scanned him with an intensity that made regular medical examinations look casual by comparison.

Her gaze tracked every bit of his muscle definition and bone structure, along with the way his breathing expanded his ribcage.

It was a professional assessment that bled through her every movement.

After she completed a full rotation around him, she nodded.

"Not bad."

Her tail swished once, which was a tell that meant approval despite her neutral tone of voice.

"Your foundation is solid. Aurelia and Luna did not waste their time with you. You are starting to develop your own presence now."

Nero felt it too, honestly.

Something had definitely shifted over the past few weeks.

There was a subtle weight to his existence that had not been there before, almost like reality was starting to acknowledge him differently.

"What I am passing down to you first is the very essence of what will later become your own unique path."

Velraeth clenched her hand into a fist.

*Crack!*

The air itself seemed to fracture right around her knuckles, and the space protested her casual display of compressed force.

"The body is the foundation of everything."

She opened her palm and examined her clawed fingers like they were teaching tools instead of weapons that could easily tear through steel.

"Your vessel. Your weapon. Your only lifeline."

Her gaze locked onto his eyes.

"Most warriors dedicate themselves to a single path. They choose the sword or the spear. They refine their technique to absurd levels, and they end up becoming extensions of their chosen weapon."

She stepped closer and loomed over him.

"But that is their weakness. If you disarm them, half their strength vanishes. Their identity crumbles because they forgot the most basic truth."

She took another step.

"Your body never leaves you."

Nero swallowed as he processed the implications, which sounded both obvious and revolutionary at the same time.

"What I will teach you is to strengthen your body to its absolute peak. It requires repeated buildup until your punch becomes a hammer. Your chop becomes a blade. Your kick becomes a whip."

Velraeth grinned wider with intensity.

"Theoretically, your body could become so refined that most weapons become ineffective against you entirely."

She moved toward a weapon rack nearby and selected a spear with casual precision.

*Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!*

The weapon blurred through forms that looked professionally choreographed, and each movement flowed into the next with zero wasted motion.

Then she tossed it aside and grabbed a flail instead.

*Crack! Crack! Crack!*

The spiked ball whirled through patterns that made physics look negotiable, and it was controlled chaos compressed into lethal technique.

"Wait..."

Nero's brain finally caught up to what he was witnessing.

"Aren't you a warhammer user? How can you..."

"What kind of blacksmith would you become if you do not even know the weapons you are building?"

Her tone carried a mix of scorn and genuine confusion at his surprise.

"..."

The logic hit him harder than he expected.

Of course she had mastered every weapon type.

How else would she forge them to perfection if she did not understand their fundamental mechanics and combat applications?

'I mean, it is theoretically true but...'

Aria's words echoed in his memory.

'Master is still underestimating the rarities of his waifus!'

Yeah, she definitely had a point.

Velraeth continued her demonstrations for several more minutes as she cycled through axes, daggers, and even a kusarigama that looked like it required four hands to use properly.

Finally, she set everything down.

"Zenith of Apotheosis."

The name dropped with a weight that made the air feel heavier.

"That is the technique I will teach you. There are three main pillars you will work on continuously, every single day, until your body rebuilds itself into something beyond human limits."

She raised one finger.

"First: Zenith of Physique. Your body must become resilient to everything. And to achieve that..."

*BANG!*

Nero did not see the strike coming at all.

One moment he was standing upright, and the next moment his body flew backward like someone had fired him from a cannon.

*CRASH!*

He buried into the reinforced earth hard enough to crater the ground, and his chest caved inward from pure blunt force trauma.

Blood erupted from his mouth and his vision blurred as his pain receptors screamed that several ribs had just relocated to places ribs should never be.

Through his watering eyes, he saw Velraeth's grin plastered across her face like a festival banner.

Pure maniac excitement radiated from her every feature.

"Your body must go through forced breaking and regeneration!"

'Ah shit.'

*WHOOSH!*

His body flew again before the thought could even finish, and he launched in a completely different direction.

"Activate your transformation."

Her voice carried across the training ground with casual authority.

The sound of knuckles cracking followed, and each pop was deliberate and threatening.

Nero coughed blood and forced mana through pathways that protested violently.

Gray scales erupted across his skin as his Metalloid Transformation kicked in, and his durability spiked alongside his strength.

He chuckled despite everything.

'I am screwed, aren't I?'

***

What followed could only be described as systematic destruction.

Velraeth did not hold back.

Every strike landed with calculated force designed to break his bones without pulverizing his organs completely.

*CRACK!*

His left arm snapped like dry wood.

Healing kicked in immediately, and mana flooded the damaged tissue as bone fragments realigned and fused back together at visible speed.

*CRACK!*

His right leg broke next.

The femur split cleanly before the regeneration caught up, repairing faster than natural healing but still slow enough that he felt every agonizing second.

"Don't scream."

Velraeth's voice cut through the haze of pain.

"Bite down. Control your breathing. Let your body learn what breaking and rebuilding feels like."

Nero bit his lip hard enough to draw blood as he swallowed the screams that wanted to tear out of his throat.

His muscles burst next.

Fibers tore apart under impacts that his enhanced durability could not fully absorb, and blood vessels ruptured as internal damage accumulated faster than his regeneration could compensate.

Then his body healed.

And then it broke again.

Healed.

Broke.

Healed.

Broke.

The cycle repeated until time lost meaning, and his existence narrowed down to pain and the desperate struggle to stay conscious through each wave of forced reconstruction.

It was a hellish experience once he was made to endure.

***

By the time Velraeth finally stopped, Nero lay flat on his back staring at the sky.

His body heaved with ragged breaths that sounded more like dying gasps than functional respiration.

Every muscle ached with an exhaustion that transcended normal fatigue, and his mana reserves were completely tapped out.

Metalloid Transformation had deactivated hours ago.

Or maybe it was minutes ago.

He honestly could not tell anymore.

'I thought her normal training was tough...'

The thought drifted through his mind with bitter amusement.

'I thought I could withstand her regular strength after everything...'

How naive.

That was not her regular strength.

And it's not even close.

She had been testing his limits and pushing boundaries to see exactly how much punishment his body could absorb before critical failure.

And apparently, the answer was a lot more than expected, but still nowhere near enough.

After several minutes of lying there pretending the ground was his new best friend, Nero forced himself to sit up.

His regeneration had kicked back in enough to make movement possible, though every joint protested the decision to exist vertically.

His mind drifted back to the dungeon.

He thought about the UR-tier pull that had torn reality apart just to make an entrance.

He had tried examining it properly, but Luna had interrupted before he could dive deep into the analysis.

She said something about the spatial distortions being noticeable from outside the sealed chamber, and she gave warnings that other adventurers might investigate if they stuck around longer.

So they returned to Waifuria immediately.

They went back through Luna's portal and emerged in her villa where Aurelia, Felt, and Helya had been waiting with varying expressions of curiosity.

Nero had summoned the item then.

*Wooommm...*

The broken sword materialized in his hand, and it looked decidedly less impressive than the reality-tearing entrance suggested it should.

It was old metal, pitted with age.

The blade itself was cracked lengthwise, and it was barely holding together through what looked like sheer stubbornness.

"..."

Luna's heterochromic eyes had narrowed immediately, and her magical analysis activated without conscious thought.

Aurelia stepped closer, and her golden gaze tracked details invisible to normal perception.

Velraeth tilted her head while her amber pupils dilated as she examined the weapon's structure through whatever absurd sensory abilities elder dragons possessed.

Even Felt and Helya leaned in, and their professional interest overrode their confusion.

They could all sense something.

The sword radiated a presence despite its decrepit state, and it had an energy that suggested significance beyond its physical appearance.

But none of them could pinpoint exactly what made it special.

The blade looked useless as an actual weapon, as it was too damaged to hold an edge or withstand combat stress.

Yet the aura remained.

Nero had known immediately what it needed.

His interface spelled it out clearly enough.

But before he could explain or experiment, Velraeth had grabbed his arm with an enthusiasm that made resistance look stupid.

"Training time!"

And here he was.

He was sitting in a crater with his body still protesting its recent deconstruction, thinking about broken swords while his dragon teacher probably planned tomorrow's torture session with frightening excitement.

Nero pulled up his inventory interface with a thought.

The UR-tier item sat in its slot, and it pulsed faintly with energy that made neighboring items look mundane by comparison.

He focused on the description again.

===

Relic: ???, "Grave Sword of the Broken Will"

Item Type: Special

Tier: UR

Origin: ???

Description: A weapon forged for a destiny it never reached. Abandoned, silenced, and left to rot with the corpse of its own purpose, now it claws its way back from oblivion, driven by a lingering will that refuses to die. It wanders the void hungering for a new vessel... and a master bold enough to bear the weight of its unfulfilled purpose.

===

'A new vessel...'

The phrasing stuck in his mind, and it circled with implications that felt both obvious and uncertain.

"Aria."

[Yes, Master?]

Her voice chimed immediately, cheerful despite his current state of looking like he had fought a mountain and lost badly.

"This sword... it needs a weapon to merge with, right? A new vessel to inhabit?"

[Correct! The Grave Sword's will seeks a compatible host weapon to reconstruct itself through! Think of it like... spiritual possession, but for equipment!]

"..."

That explanation raised more questions than it answered, but he had learned not to expect straightforward responses from this anime system voice.

Nero stood slowly, and his joints popped as he forced mobility back into his abused limbs.

His hand moved to his side, and his fingers wrapped around a familiar leather grip.

*Shingg...*

Dawnbreaker slid free from its sheath with smooth precision.

The A-tier sword gleamed in the afternoon light, appearing reliable and solid.

It had been with him since Vincent's camp, a gift from Aurelia that had saved his life more times than he could count.

It was earned through blood and training, and it was proven in combat against threats that should have killed him.

'Time for an upgrade, partner.'

He held Dawnbreaker in his left hand and the broken UR-tier sword in his right.

Both weapons hummed faintly, and their energies responded to proximity like magnets sensing each other's presence.

"Alright, let's see what happens when..."

*Crack!*

The broken sword moved.

It did not move from his hand manipulating it, but independently.

The blade twisted in his grip, and the ancient metal was suddenly alive with a purpose that made his danger senses scream warnings.

"What the... ?!"

*SHIIIIING!*

Dark energy erupted from the broken weapon, and tendrils of shadow wrapped around Dawnbreaker like hungry serpents.

The A-tier sword vibrated violently as the steel sang with a frequency that hurt to hear.

Then the darkness swallowed it completely.

*Woooommmm...*

Both weapons vanished into a sphere of condensed void energy, and it floated between his hands with a weight that made reality bend slightly around its edges.

Nero's heart hammered against his ribs.

Whatever was happening, it felt irreversible.

The sphere pulsed once.

And the twice.

... Then it began to change.

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