Leo's academic mind, used to processing complex linguistic structures, made a swift, cynical calculation: Death is final; data is reusable.
"Yes," he whispered, the word lost beneath Anya's high-pitched, sustained scream echoing across the cavern floor.
The moment of acceptance was instantaneous, but the reaction was not. The Failed Swordsman, its rusty blade hovering a hair's breadth from Leo's glasses, did not strike. It simply froze. The intense, predatory mana that had radiated from its core vanished.
Then, the Swordsman began to unravel.
It wasn't a physical collapse, but a conceptual one. The solidified mana armor lost cohesion, and the entity dissolved into countless streams of shimmering, black energy. These streams were not smoke or vapor; they were pure data, illuminated by an eerie, internal blue light that pulsed faster and faster, contracting until they formed a single, dense orb of shadow.
The shadow orb shot past Leo and into his chest, not breaking the skin but seeming to pass directly into his spiritual core. The feeling was chilling, like submerging his consciousness in a vast pool of negative space.
In the white-room Archive of his mind, the obsidian gate swung shut, and a single, newly manifested slot on a shelf glowed intensely.
[ARCHIVE SUCCESSFUL.]
[Specter Acquired: Blade (Class: Failed Swordsman)]
[Archived Data Points: 4,096 (100% Combat Proficiency.)]
Leo blinked. The heavy weight of the runestone paperweight, which he still gripped, eased. He was alive. The immediate threat was gone.
Anya, however, wasn't.
"H-husks! Behind us!" she shrieked, pointing with a trembling hand toward the cave mouth.
A cluster of the original, lumbering fungal husks—the low-tier trash they were supposed to be hunting—had shambled into the chamber, drawn by the residual panic and the lingering scent of death. They were slow, but Anya was cornered and defenseless.
Leo's training was useless. His body was still locked in a fear response, but his mind, freed from the impending execution, had already shifted back into high-speed analysis mode.
If I attempt a physical action, the delay will be 1.4 seconds. Anya is 1.8 seconds away from being consumed. Conclusion: Physical intervention is impossible.
He focused on the new entry in his Archive: Blade. A raw, authoritative thought—a mental command—flashed outward, bypassing his vocal cords entirely.
"Deploy. Engage and Neutralize."
In the physical world, the shadows cast by the cave crystals pooled and convulsed. From the mess of darkness arose the familiar silhouette of the Failed Swordsman, but fundamentally changed. It was no longer a rusted ghost; it was pure, refined shadow, its armor etched with sharp, blue lines of energy. It was a perfect copy.
Blade moved.
It didn't use the massive rusty blade, which was an external object; it manifested a sword of pure shadow. Where the original Swordsman had moved with calculated elegance, Blade moved with mechanical, absolute efficiency. There was no hesitation, no wasted breath. It was a flawless algorithm of murder.
The husks didn't stand a chance. Blade moved through them like water, the shadow sword cutting with such speed that the fungal creatures fell apart into silent dust clouds before their screams could even register.
Leo watched, his analytical gaze fixed not on the slaughter, but on the Specter's footwork—the key to its speed.
Within his mind, the Aetherial Comprehension Core—the lone, glowing conceptual engine—responded to his scrutiny.
[Analyzing Law Governing Blade's Movement: The Law of Momentum and Inertial Transfer.]
The Core instantly visualized the complex spiritual equations governing the Swordsman's movement: the perfect angle of the ankle, the split-second transfer of kinetic energy from the back foot to the blade. But beneath the perfect formula, Leo saw the flaw, the error.
There is a micro-pause, a conceptual hesitation between the end of the swing and the start of the deceleration. An unnecessary friction point.
Leo, the historian who analyzed dead languages, was now editing the fundamental physics of combat. His cynicism flared into purpose. Sub-optimal. Rewrite.
He didn't need to learn the technique; he needed to understand the underlying principle. He used the Aetherial Comprehension Core to excise the 'friction point,' replacing it with a conceptual command for instantaneous displacement.
He felt a massive, painful drain on his spiritual energy. It wasn't the deployment of Blade that hurt, but the act of rewriting reality. His spiritual well felt instantly sucked dry, leaving him gasping.
But the rewrite was complete.
[New Technique Created: Arcane Step (Aetherial Perfected Movement)]
"Leo! Run!" Anya screamed again, pulling him from his daze. Blade had dispatched the last husk and was turning to await command, its dark eyes vacant but alert.
Leo didn't run. He took a single, effortless step forward.
The 'step' wasn't movement. It was a flicker. He covered the twenty feet to Anya's side in zero time, appearing beside her with his hand already gripping her jacket collar. It wasn't teleportation; it was the perfected, instantaneous transfer of mass.
He felt the remaining dregs of his spiritual energy vanish. He was left hollow, weak, but entirely in control.
He dragged the gibbering Caster toward the Gate's exit portal, issuing one final, mental command: "Blade. Follow. Concealed state."
As they stumbled through the shimmering portal and back onto the mundane street outside the Gate, Leo glanced back. The shadow Specter had faded entirely, returning to the archive, leaving no trace but the silence.
Anya collapsed on the cracked pavement, dry-heaving. She looked up at Leo, her eyes wide not with gratitude, but with absolute, raw terror. She hadn't seen a friendly Specter; she had seen a shadow monster commanded by the cynical, weak-looking historian who had just teleported.
"What... what are you?" she stammered, pulling away from his touch.
Leo pushed his glasses up, adjusting to the sudden, blinding sunlight. He felt the cold, empty calm of the Archive settling into his mind, replacing the panic. He looked down at the paperweight in his hand, then at the dead leader, Ryker, left inside the Gate.
"I'm the cleanup crew," Leo stated, his voice flat, devoid of the irony he usually employed. "Call for extraction. The Gate is clear. Name the dead."
He had survived, not by luck, but by analysis. He was still Leo Maxwell, the historian, but the person who just walked out of the Gate was someone else entirely—a ruthless, analytical entity now bound to a conceptual army.
He was "Prof"