Black Arcana

Lucien was going to Prav because of a dungeon that did not yet exist.

Or rather, one that had not yet been discovered.

In his first life, the dungeon appeared in the records three years after his awakening, though later rumors suggested it had been there far longer, hidden under the old burial hill west of Prav. By the time the story reached taverns, every detail had already been turned into legend, then rumor, then lies, then drunken argument. But the core remained the same.

A dungeon that broke the strong.

That was what people called it after the first expeditions failed.

The Iron Vow mercenaries entered first with twelve awakened fighters and two veteran mages. Only one came back, hair white, tongue bitten half-through, hands shaking so badly he could not hold a cup. He said they had not fought monsters. They had fought themselves.

The second group was sent by Prav's local lord. Proper soldiers. Trained men. Disciplined men. They entered with priests, lanterns, warded shields, and a B-rank swordsman famous enough that bards knew his name. None returned.

After that, the nobles took interest.

Then the guilds.

Then the Crown.

Every powerful fool who heard the tale thought the same thing: if the dungeon created a copy of the intruder, then victory simply required being stronger than oneself. Train harder. Bring better weapons. Use secret techniques. Enter with enough confidence to mistake pride for strategy.

The dungeon punished that thinking.

The stronger the person who entered, the more perfect the reflection became. Not equal. Better. Sharper. Cleaner. It copied strength, then removed hesitation. Copied skill, then stripped away fatigue. Copied tactics, then corrected every weakness the original refused to admit. A swordsman entered and met his own blade without fear. A mage entered and faced his own spells without delay. A monster entered and found a hungrier monster waiting.

The dungeon did not test power.

It exposed vanity.

That was why it became famous.

Not because knights cleared it. Not because nobles conquered it. Not because priests sealed it.

A sickly child from the slums of Prav crawled inside by accident.

Lucien remembered the story because everyone remembered the story. It was too absurd to die quietly. The boy had been half-starved, feverish, weak in the lungs, barely strong enough to carry a bucket of water without resting. He entered the dungeon while running from older children, or guards, or debt collectors depending on who told it. When the dungeon manifested his opponent, it did what it always did. It copied him. Amplified him. Created a more extreme version of what had entered.

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The result was a creature so sick it collapsed on its face and died before the trial could begin.

The boy cleared the dungeon.

The world laughed.

Then stopped laughing when they learned what he had taken from it.

Two manuscripts.

The first was an ancient Mana Breathing technique older than Avaron's current royal line. It did not merely gather mana. It refined the body's internal rhythm to draw mana through blood, lungs, bone, and marrow, building strength in a way ordinary awakeners could not replicate. It was not flashy. It did not throw fire. It did not call lightning. But those who practiced it recovered faster, endured more, sensed danger through mana flow, and grew with terrifying consistency.

The second manuscript was a swordsmanship style.

Lucien did not know its original name. In his first life, by the time rumors reached him, the Empire had already renamed it.

The Ashen Sword.

A style so efficient, so brutal, and so adaptable that soldiers who learned even its lower forms began cutting through Avaron's border knights as if reading their movements from a book.

Because in a way, they were.

Avaron's official military swordsmanship, the Imperial Swordsmanship his father had suggested he learn, had been stolen generations earlier from the Empire, simplified, standardized, and distributed through noble barracks as proof that Avaron could take an enemy's weapon and make it its own. The kingdom had grown proud of that theft. Too proud. Entire houses trained their heirs in it. Valehart included.

Then the Empire came.

And the owners of the original blade showed Avaron what happens when imitation forgets who wrote the first lesson.

They knew every weakness. Every transition. Every habit built into the stance. Every overcommitment disguised as courage. Every defensive angle that failed under pressure from the left. Avaron's knights marched with confidence and died with confusion in their eyes.

The Ashen Crown Sword made that slaughter worse.

The breathing technique gave imperial soldiers the stamina to press without breaking.

The swordsmanship gave them a language of killing Avaron could not answer.

Together, those two manuscripts became one of the quiet reasons the Empire launched its full-scale assault years later and came out almost unscathed.

And all of it began near Prav.

With a sick boy.

A dungeon beneath a burial hill.

And loot nobody in the kingdom understood quickly enough to protect.

Lucien leaned forward slightly as the road dipped.

Wind pulled at his dark hair. The countryside blurred around him in greens and golds, peaceful in the way places looked before history bothered to step on them. Farmers worked fields. Children chased goats near a fence. A woman at a roadside shrine lit a candle and bowed her head before a weather-worn saint. None of them knew the war coming for them. None of them knew the Empire would one day march through roads like this, disciplined, breathing in perfect rhythm, blades moving with a style stolen from a dungeon no one should have ignored.

Lucien knew.

That was the advantage.

Not the cards. Not entirely. Not the S-rank class glowing invisibly behind his eyes.

Memory was the sharpest weapon he had brought back.

But memory alone would not let him clear that dungeon.

He was eighteen. Healthy, yes. Noble-trained, yes. But he had not yet spent years starving, running, bleeding, and surviving monsters by reading the smallest changes in air and silence. His current body was softer than his mind remembered. His swordsmanship was mediocre. His mana training was noble-standard, which meant expensive, rigid, and dangerously incomplete. If he walked into the dungeon now, it would create a copy of him.

Would that be good or bad?

Lucien almost smiled.

Compared to the monsters who had failed, he was weak.

Compared to the sick child who had accidentally cleared it, he was strong enough to be punished.

That was why he was not riding straight for the burial hill.

Not yet.

His first objective was downtown Prav.

He needed tools.

Specific ones.