As someone born without an elemental affinity, I've always known I was playing a rigged game. It's a cruel world for people like me, where everyone else starts with a gift, and I start with... restraint.
And that night, when I faced the Wraith, I knew immediately: I was at a grave disadvantage.
It had an affinity. A legendary one.
Shadow.
Among the rarest and most dangerous, legendary affinities like Shadow aren't just powerful — they're untouchable. They shrug off attacks from uncommon, rare, and even some special affinities, like whispers in the wind. Normally, that would've meant one thing for me: run.
But I didn't run.
Because I knew something. I remembered the stories, the scattered mentions in forbidden texts, the whispered myths from battle-scarred mercs who'd seen too much.
False-wielders.
A term often dismissed as fiction — people without an affinity who somehow gained one. Whether granted by an artefact, a forbidden pact, or some unnatural mutation… their connection to that element was flawed. Incomplete. They couldn't harness the full potential, couldn't control the element like a true wielder could.
That was the only reason I engaged.
The only reason I survived.
The only reason I won... barely.
But this is where it gets tricky.
"He's no false wielder. He's the real deal. A prodigy who shook the city's foundations with a single demonstration." Vice-Captain Ronith of the Lunar Knights.
Ronith. A name that once lit a fire in me. The senior of Sara and Lav during their orphanage years. A young knight-in-making, whom even I used to admire, from the distant shadows.
And now, here he stood. In front of me.
"You look… different," Ronith said, voice low as his eyes studied me. His gaze lingered on the thick bandages wound around my forearm, and the one that wrapped over the ruins of my right eye.
"I lost…" I started, voice barely above a whisper. The words clung to my throat like rusted chains.
"An eye? Or a battle?" he asked gently, not out of nosiness, but concern. Genuine, quiet concern.
I met his gaze, eyes firm.
"Both."
That was enough. He nodded, respectful of the silence that followed. But I saw it — the flicker of sympathy, the way his shoulders sagged just slightly.
Then, slowly, he raised one hand. A gesture that asked, May I? Just one more?
I nodded. He had earned that much, at least.
"Were you… overconfident?"
It was a fair question. Everyone knew how cautious I was — always analysing, planning, refusing to fight unless I knew the battlefield, the risks, and the exits. I didn't charge in blindly. Ever.
And I certainly didn't mistake myself for being superior, no matter who I stood against; man, monster or myth, especially against a fucking myth. I always remind myself one thing before any battle, hunt or clash: that I'm the challenger, the underdog. This approach sometimes demotivates me, but also prevents me from getting overconfident or reckless.
"I wasn't overconfident," I said. "The enemy was just better. More skilled. More precise. That night… I was outmatched."
The words didn't sting as much as I expected. Maybe because they were true.
Ronith nodded once, then turned his head to scan the area around us. Not out of boredom, but instinct. That ever-vigilant knight's habit. The same one Mercy had. The same one we both learned to adopt.
And for a brief second, I felt like that kid again — the one who looked up to young warriors like him and wondered if I'd ever stand where they stood.
Now that I was here?
I wasn't so sure anymore.
***
The ground was massive—plain green grass stretched out like a soft battlefield, clipped short, with a few lonely trees breaking up the space here and there. At the centre of this playground, no, training ground, stood the orphanage. Once a humble little home, it had grown into something bigger over the years. Big enough to host fifteen, maybe eighteen kids now. I could tell it had been renovated not too long ago… the walls looked too fresh to be ancient. Some part of me appreciated the upgrade. Another part… hated how nostalgic this place made me feel.
Ronith and I stood in silence, facing nowhere in particular. Just breathing. Just existing.
Then she arrived.
Ninia.
She strode across the field, holding a wooden chair in one hand like it weighed nothing. She set it down without a sound and sat, giving both of us that look—the one that says you don't get a choice in what happens next.
Ronith gave her a respectful nod.
I followed suit.
He looked surprised. Good. Keep him guessing.
Ninia's voice cut through the air, carried by the wind, sharp as ever. "Roni, you see the man in front of you? Yeah, he lost quite a lot during his last mission. Which you can probably tell—unless your eyesight's getting worse."
Her tone was laced with sarcasm, but her meaning wasn't lost on either of us.
"Spare with him. Go all out. No spellforms. And don't injure him too badly or kill him, please."
Ronith gave an eager nod, loosening his shoulders as if he'd been waiting for this moment.
I stared at the both of them—are they serious?
An SS-ranked knight. With an elemental affinity. Going all out against me?
My body was barely holding together. The bandages were still fresh. My armour? Still in Ninia's possession. All I had were my weapons and whatever scraps of mana I could cycle through my damaged core.
I opened my mouth to object—my voice cracked halfway through the breath—and then a boom echoed ahead of me.
Ronith was already charging. No weapons. Just fists. A full-speed hand-to-hand assault.
Classic.
I didn't have time to think. I let my instincts take over, flicked my core into motion, and braced for impact. My palms flared—bare hands, reinforced with mana, wide open to absorb or redirect his strikes.
He was everywhere. Each punch of his carried compressed mana, like miniature detonations packed into his fists. I blocked where I could. Dodged when I couldn't. Evaded by a hair's breadth more than once.
Above us, I felt the hum of mana shifting. Ninia had cast something—a veil? A dome?
Isolation spell.
She called out, voice relaxed, as if this was nothing more than a chess match, "I've sealed the ground within a 50-meter radius. Lucius, you've got approximately ten hours left before your mission with Forza Wal-Kins begins. Ronith's going to spar with you for eight of them. Continuous. No breaks."
Eight. Fucking. Hours.
Was she insane?
I didn't even get the chance to answer before Ronith slammed another blow into my side. I stumbled back, five, maybe six meters, barely catching myself.
He wasn't holding back. And the bastard had already locked onto my blind side.
Right. Of course.
Every strike came from the right—my newly inherited blindspot—testing the limits of my sensory perception. I blocked a few. Ate more. Each time I tried to pivot or react, I felt how slow I still was, how unfamiliar this new gap in my awareness had become.
I didn't even have enough mana to properly reinforce myself. Half of it was still being drained—healing internal injuries, feeding off the remnants of that special-ranked potion I'd taken just hours earlier.
This wasn't training. This was calculated torture.
And still… she spoke again.
"Focus on mana rotation and your mana senses. Combine them with your natural instincts—feel the attacks coming from the blind side. Let your body sense what your eyes can't. Sync your awareness with the dormant instincts buried inside."
I clenched my teeth and pushed harder.
She was right. Sight wasn't everything. I'd never relied on brute force or flashy magic anyway. My strength had always come from awareness—reading my enemies, adapting mid-fight, using terrain, movement, patterns.
Now… I had to do all of that, but with a piece of me permanently missing.
No depth on the right. No peripheral cues. Just space. Unreadable space.
I tightened my stance, breathing slower. Less reacting. More predicting.
I remembered the Wraith. The silence before its strike. The way the air pressure dipped right before its claws came swinging.
Same rules here.
Different enemy. Same war.
Ronith came again, faster this time. I missed the block, but I didn't miss the shift in his weight. I twisted. His fist grazed my shoulder. I stayed standing.
First small win.
Ninia said nothing, but I saw it. The faintest nod. Approval? Maybe.
This wasn't going to be pretty. Or fair.
But I didn't need fair.
I needed to survive and figure out as much as I could, probably everything.
The spar had stretched on for another two hours—strictly hand-to-hand.
Ronith kept shifting styles with no pattern. One moment a clean knight, next a savage beast, and sometimes something in between—an adventurer, unpredictable and fluid. His attacks carried purpose, his movements a constant reinvention. He wasn't testing me. He was forging me.
I had to keep adapting, refining the sync between my mana rotation, absorption, heightened senses, and the instincts that had been clawing their way up ever since the Wraith fight.
It wasn't just technique anymore. It was becoming a rhythm.
I even discovered something useful—my telekinesis wasn't limited to movement or visible manipulation. If I narrowed its focus, made it internal, subtle—I could attract nearby mana particles silently, increasing my absorption rate without revealing the technique at all. No aura flares. No visible tells. Just quiet, efficient replenishing.
And with Ninia observing, that knowledge became survival. Her cryptic suggestions, thrown casually into the wind, became lifelines. Hints, corrections, advice—coded in her tone, intended for both of us to catch mid-spar.
The dynamic had shifted.
Ronith wasn't the only one pressing forward anymore. I was beginning to counter. To challenge. Not dominant—far from it—but enough to force him to take me seriously.
Then it happened.
A single spark flickered from Ninia's side. I pivoted instantly.
The next barrage came faster, more brutal. Punches into kicks. He was testing the new me now.
And then the ground rumbled.
No.
He wasn't.
He is.
Shit.
Ronith was finally unleashing it—his elemental affinity.
Earth.
Out of the four uncommon elemental affinities—Wind, Earth, Fire, and Water—Earth ranked high. If you're going by raw destructive capability or elemental saturation in our environment, Wind and Earth sit comfortably at the top.
This isn't about power tiers—it's about mana availability. Density. Accessibility.
The skies are filled with ambient wind mana, ever-moving, ever-present. That's why wind mages—Sara, Edward, Forza—are elite from the moment they awaken. Wind grants speed. Precision. Range. It even grants flight early, long before the SS-rank threshold. That's why they're terrifying.
Earth comes next. The ground beneath us holds enormous reserves of condensed earth mana. Always there. Always stable. Reliable. You don't need to summon it—you're standing on it. Breathing above it. Fighting within its territory.
Fire and water? They're weaker only in terms of availability. Their mana particles are rarer in the ambient environment unless you're near a specific source. Without one, they're forced to rely on their core for everything.
And that's why wind and earth users—like Ronith—can dominate the battlefield.
As soon as he tapped into it, I felt the shift.
The mana beneath my feet twitched. Then a moment later—eruption.
Massive stone pillars, sharp and merciless, launched upward like the earth itself was trying to impale me. I reacted on instinct, flinging myself aside with everything I had, narrowly avoiding being skewered by inches.
I didn't even think—Snowhite was in my hand before I registered drawing her.
I pushed my senses outward again—expanding the invisible field around me. Feeling everything. Especially my blindside.
I glanced at Ninia, silently asking the obvious.
Weapon?
She nodded, almost amused.
Like hell I would've stopped if she'd said no.
Though for some reason, ever since I fought that damned son of a bitch, something in me had shifted. My telekinetic link, my senses, even my instincts—they all felt sharper, more attuned, as if that fight had unlocked something deeper. The only real difference between that battle and this spar—aside from the stakes and the looming shadow of death- was the absence of an eye, my eye.