Chapter 234: Is It Thursday Yet?
He kicked away the thoughts of the Accord. He pushed aside the cosmic horror of the three chasms, the amnesia, and the threat of Marcus Delacroix.
He cleared his mind until only one truth remained:
The point of the spear moves forward.
Hour thirteen.
Creed took the basic thrust stance.
Thrust.
Retract.
Thrust.
No Aura. No Force. No Paths.
Just pure, unadulterated biomechanical repetition.
Ten thousand thrusts. The air in front of his spear tip whistled, then hummed, then began to hiss as the friction of his sheer, blistering speed superheated the atmosphere.
Hour sixteen.
The repetition ceased to be physical.
Creed was no longer looking with his eyes. His breathing synchronized with the faint, rhythmic heartbeat of the Pale Horizon. He remembered the Silver Spear Spirit resting within his spiritual realm.
He felt its metallic pride, its unyielding hunger to pierce the heavens. He didn’t force his Will onto the weapon. He let the weapon guide his Will.
Hour nineteen.
The air in the chamber had changed. The spherical training room was no longer silent. A faint, continuous sound filled the space—like thousands of microscopic needles scraping against glass.
Creed stood motionless in the center of the obsidian mirror.
His spear was held loosely in his right hand, pointed toward the ground. He hadn’t moved a muscle in two hours.
Yet, within the radius of his five-hundred-meter Spear Domain, the physical laws of the room were disintegrating.
Microscopic tears in the fabric of the air flickered into existence, tiny white sparks of spatial friction popping and vanishing around his silhouette.
Hour twenty-two.
In the darkness of his consciousness, Creed stood before a colossal, towering wall of translucent white jade.
It was the barrier of the Third Stage.
Behind him, the memories of his journey flickered: the hunger in Section 7, the blood of the Moonlake beast tide, the cold stone of the Pyramid of Dominion, the crushing weight of the six-hundred-kilogram collar.
Every single time he had moved forward, he had done so with a spear in his hand.
He didn’t choose the spear because it was elegant.
He chose the spear because it refused to compromise. A sword could slash, parry, and dance. A spear knew only one command: Go through.
Creed stepped forward in his mind.
He didn’t swing. He didn’t use an Art.
He simply unleashed the full, unadulterated weight of his living Will.
’Break.’
CRRRRRRRAAAACK!
The jade wall shattered into ten million glittering fragments.
BOOOOOM!
Inside the Tier 1 Path Resonator, an invisible shockwave exploded from Creed’s body!
The central faceted crystal suspended forty feet above groaned under the sudden spike in atmospheric pressure, its safety dampeners flashing violent amber warnings across the room’s consoles.
Creed opened his eyes.
A radiant, blinding silver light erupted from his retinas.
Around the Pale Horizon, the air didn’t just hiss; it shrieked. A blinding, ethereal white corona of pure, condensed Spear Intent wrapped around the three-foot spearhead, extending its effective cutting reach by an entire foot without adding a single gram of physical mass!
Comprehension Complete: Spear Intent — Stage 3!
Creed slowly exhaled.
The corona of white light faded, sinking smoothly into the cold metal of the Pale Horizon.
He stood in the center of the ruined, cracked chamber, his clothes tattered, dried blood painting his chest, his headband soaked through.
Yet, he felt neither tired nor hungry.
His body hummed with the smooth, terrifying resonance of a perfectly tuned engine of war. A soft, mechanical chime echoed from the archway.
[SESSION TERMINATED.]
[TIME EXPIRED: 24 HOURS, 00 MINUTES.]
[DISENGAGING CONTAINMENT SEALS.]
With a long, pneumatic hiss, the four-foot-thick doors of null-iron slowly parted, letting in the cool, synthetic air and bright morning sunlight of the academy’s outer concourse.
Creed strapped the Pale Horizon across his back.
He reached up, adjusted the headband, pulling it securely down to hide the silent, dormant brand on his brow. He smoothed the lapels of his torn uniform, wiped the dried blood from his jawline with the back of his hand, and stepped through the threshold.
The moment his boot touched the exterior floor, the air in the hallway seemed to physically drop by several degrees.
Two second-year students who were laughing as they walked toward the lifts abruptly choked on their words, their laughter dying in their throats.
They stumbled back a half-step, their instincts screaming at them as their eyes locked onto the figure emerging from the private vault.
It was Creed Walden.
Yet, it was completely, terrifyingly not the same boy who had entered the chamber yesterday morning.
The slight, nervous restlessness that had plagued him after his failure in the simulation was entirely gone. His spine was straight as a drawn bowstring, his shoulders relaxed with an unnatural, lethal ease.
His presence was no longer that of a talented freshman trying to prove his worth.
He walked with the silent, terrifying gravity of an apex predator that had just finished gorging itself in the dark.
Every stride was silent, precise, and completely devoid of wasted motion. His eyes—cool, piercing, and terrifyingly clear—scanned the concourse, and beneath the surface of his blue pupils, there was a dormant, coiled violence that felt like a crouching tiger waiting for the exact microsecond to snap a throat.
Across the hall, leaning against a marble pillar while checking his holographic datapad, Nicholas Grey looked up.
The silver-haired youth froze.
Nicholas’s sharp gray eyes swept over Creed’s silhouette, taking in the dried blood on his collar, the effortless, predatory cadence of his steps, and the terrifying, bottomless stillness rolling off his aura.
A slow, involuntary shiver ran down Nicholas’s spine, the hair on the back of his neck standing straight up.
Nicholas slowly lowered his datapad, a strange, breathless mixture of absolute shock and cold, conspiratorial thrill spreading across his pale face.
Creed stopped three paces away, looking down at Nicholas with a lazy, razor-thin smirk.
"Morning, Nicholas," Creed said smoothly, his voice carrying the deep, resonant purr of a sleeping storm. "Is it Thursday yet?"