The silence of the lake was almost sacred, broken only by the soft bubbling sound rising from its depths. I stared at the still surface for a long time, trying to understand whether this was victory or just another absurd repetition in this hell. The air felt too thick, the mist pressed down on my shoulders, and for a moment, I began to wonder if I'd been looking at everything the wrong way all along.
Maybe the mistake had been mine from the very beginning.
I had been searching for the technique as if it were an object, something tangible — a hidden scroll, a sealed sword, a power waiting to be taken by force.
But… what if the answer wasn't something to be taken, but something to be understood?
I lifted my head.
The full moon hung above me — the same moon that never set, that shone constantly over this cursed place. Its light cut through the fog and reflected on the water like a silver mirror — still, unchanging. I closed my eyes, letting that glow seep through my eyelids, and began to replay everything that had happened over the past twenty-four hours: every fall, every strike, every time I died and came back to life within this same mountain.
"What the hell is the Phantom Moon Technique?" I thought.
And for the first time, the echo of that question didn't sound like frustration… but like the beginning of an answer.
I was certain there was something I wasn't seeing.
The feeling was clear — as if a distorted lens stood between me and the truth, twisting what really mattered. And more than ever, I felt that I needed to look at all of this differently.
What was the connection between the full moon and this silver mist?
Why did it never set?
And why was that abomination the only thing that existed here — chasing me endlessly?
Why didn't the concepts of life and death apply to it?
"It's almost as if that thing is the only purpose that matters in this place."
But what if it is?
It was strong. And it grew stronger every time it died.
The mist — that thick, shimmering veil covering everything — was clearly the fuel behind its power. And judging by how much of it there was, I'd die long before it ran out.
Besides, its movements… they weren't elegant. Nothing refined, nothing like a divine technique. It didn't wield its blade like a swordsman, but like a starving butcher.
"That makes no damn sense," I muttered.
I sighed, letting the moonlight drape over me like a cold sheet.
For a moment, I considered fleeing — finding a hiding place before that bastard managed to free itself from the bottom of the lake — which, judging by how things were going, was only a matter of time.
"What's different about it?" I asked myself.
Maybe I'd been beaten so many times that I'd forgotten the most important detail.
But there was something… something that always happened whenever our blades clashed for more than a second.
That brutal impact. That sensation of being struck by an invisible train, hurled away by a force that made no sense.
And as the memories overlapped, the idea began to take shape.
"So… this place is a training ground?" I thought, eyes locked on the unmoving moon. "A training ground with a teacher who wants to kill me?"
** Thirty-six hours earlier
The arm guards of my armor were gone. The metal had shattered somewhere amid the dozens of battles I'd already lost count of. Now I stood on relatively flat ground — a good battlefield, dry, covered in cracks and black fragments scattered like the bones of some forgotten giant.
The creature before me stood nearly four meters tall. Its marble-like body released ash from its joints with every movement, and its faceless head — no eyes, no nose, no mouth — still sent a chill down my spine. A colossus of stone and mist whose sole purpose seemed to be my death.
I, on the other hand, no longer fought with the same fury as before. I observed more than I attacked. From time to time, I'd channel the energy of my halo, reinforce my body, and advance only to test it — to provoke that same invisible impact that kept throwing me to the ground.
"One…" I murmured, bracing my stance.
"BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!"
The collision shook the air. The sound echoed like thunder breaking the world's bones. The mysterious force manifested again — as if I were fighting two monsters at once, and one of them was made of pure pressure.
But this time, I was ready. My body slid a few meters back, heels carving lines into the ground, but I wasn't thrown.
"Nothing…" I growled between clenched teeth. "I can't see anything."
The creature roared silently, moving in jagged, violent lines. It chased me with the madness of something that didn't understand exhaustion — no restraint, no strategy, only a storm of power and insanity.
"What do I have to do to see?"
The energy of my halo spread across my body, crackling like liquid fire. I raised my sword again and entered what I called my "waiting phase" — an endless sequence of dodges and redirections, spinning my body to disperse the impact of its blows while my internal energy flow stabilized my muscles and dulled the pain.
But things didn't go as planned.
In a blink, the creature moved faster than in any previous fight.
Its grotesque arm swung down in a savage arc, pushing my blade aside with a force I could barely follow.
"AGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"
The cut was clean.
My right ear flew off, and the world spun in agony.
Pure reflex — my body exploded with strength and speed. My knee shot up, crushing the hand that held its serrated blade, and then my sword drove straight through its head, impaling it to the hilt.
"Damn it!" I shouted, spitting blood.
A shrill, deafening sound rang inside my skull. Hot blood ran down my face, mixing with the dust and ash on the ground.
And even with the creature frozen for a moment, the sword buried to the guard, I knew — I hadn't gained anything from that fight.
** Twenty-four hours earlier
I was kneeling, blood dripping down my body, staring at what was left of my dear "teacher" — that marble-and-mist abomination.
My muscles trembled with violent spasms, my strength had all but vanished. I felt like my body could collapse at any second; each breath was a battle, and every heartbeat felt like an impossible challenge.
Beneath me lay my last hope for even a moment of rest. The 'teacher' was still alive — barely — but grotesquely restrained: no arms, no legs, its blade impaled in the ground, my own sword driven straight through its torso.
I had pinned it down, yet somehow it remained conscious.
But my mind was elsewhere.
"Looks like an arm is moving…" I muttered, extending my hand through the mist, following the faint shift in that shapeless mass.
"Yes… it really is an arm." Finally, it clicked. "So that mysterious force is like a second attack — one that manifests with a delay, moving slower than the original body… it makes sense. The name of the technique… Phantom Moon. The movement is invisible because it happens between what we see and what we feel."
But that line of reasoning only brought sharper questions, cutting like blades. "And now? How do I learn to reproduce it? If I can't see it, how do I uncover the principle behind the technique? I can't feel any energy — no prana, no mana, not even that strange force from the Nephilim. Nothing. So… what exactly is used to perform it?"
The heavy silence of the Shadow Echo Valley replied only with the faint rustle of the mist. I was alone, on the brink, surrounded by a world seemingly designed solely to test every fragment of my sanity and endurance. But for the first time, that partial understanding brought something far more valuable than strength: direction. A faint thread to follow.
That was when I turned my attention again to the mist surrounding me.
"It has to be this… but what exactly is it?" I thought, studying each subtle movement of the silvery gas that seemed to pulse with a life of its own. It wasn't natural. It possessed a power that clearly revived the creature, yet I personally couldn't feel a thing.
I closed my eyes and decided to try something I had never even considered before. The energy from my halo surged through my body, reaching critical levels; I was literally on the verge of collapse. But instead of reinforcing my muscles or reflexes, I directed all that energy toward a single point — my eyes.
The pain came like daggers piercing through my corneas, so intense that my body nearly gave out. Slowly, I reduced the flow of energy, adjusting it until it reached a tolerable level.
Then, with effort, I opened my eyes.
What I saw couldn't be described as mere sight. "Nothing" wasn't the right word.
It was more accurate to say that I saw white — but there were subtle differences my mind began to decode.
With my physical eyes, the mist shone silver, like liquid metal suspended in air. But through the energy I had channeled, that same mist turned into a pure, calm white, almost silent in nature.
"What… is this?" I whispered, a chill running down my spine.
A strange déjà vu washed over me — as if I had seen this before.
But where? My mind raced, ignoring the pain bubbling through my muscles and bones. I replayed every moment since I had fallen into the lake — every failed attempt to fight and learn, every strike taken and returned. Nothing.
I went further back, to the instant I had first awakened in this body. Still nothing.
And then deeper still… back to that moment when I floated in that blank void, right after my first trial in the Celestial Pagoda. That was when the connection finally clicked.
Everything made sense.
The white I had seen before, even before my body was reconstructed, was the purest essence I had ever touched:
"Soul energy…"
It was where willpower was channeled. And it was a completely different, unreachable energy — at least, until now.
Then came the last and most important question.
"Okay… now how do I control soul energy?" I muttered to myself, feeling every muscle still throbbing, every bone trembling from the previous battle. It wasn't just strength or speed — it was something deeper, something residing in the very essence of life pulsing within me.