Adrean alucard's Arc

Chapter 5 of 28

Adrean came back through the iron door the next day, and the next. He stopped counting after the first week. The void platform never changed. Cold blue light ringed the stone. Megalom waited at the center, arms crossed, blood streaking his white face. Each session began the same way. The abyssal god struck, and Adrean fell, and his blood learned. "Again," Megalom said. He drove a fist into Adrean's chest. Ribs snapped. Adrean coughed blood onto the glowing floor. His system flashed. STRENGTH climbed one point. He pushed himself up on shaking arms. "Again." The pain never dulled. That was the trick of it. Adrean's body healed between blows, so every hit felt fresh. But the numbers rose. Where a kill gave him one level, a beating gave him small, steady gains that added up. He stopped begging in his mind. He stopped counting the breaks. He only rose and took the next strike. Years passed on the platform. Time moved strange in the void. Outside the castle, days. Inside the ring, decades. Megalom hit harder as Adrean grew, always keeping him one blow from shattering, never past it. "Your blood remembers now," the god said once, watching Adrean stand after a strike that once would have killed him. "You fight without prey. Few last this long." Adrean lost track of his own face. He grew taller, broader. His hands learned to catch the god's fists sometimes, then to hold them. His system stat climbed into numbers he had never imagined at Level 2. Forty years of pain built him into something the slums could never have made. Then one day he caught Megalom's arm mid-swing and did not fall. The platform went quiet. The abyssal god looked at the hand gripping his wrist. Blood dripped between their fingers. For the first time, Adrean stood level with his teacher, breathing steady, ribs whole. "Enough," Megalom said. He pulled his arm free. His red eyes measured Adrean the way a smith measures a finished blade. "The training gives no more. Your blood has taken all it can from my fists. Grow past this, and you must feed again. Kills, not blows." Adrean flexed his hand. The old weakness was gone. He remembered Umbra pinning him with a shadow, Crimson snapping his arm with two fingers. Those memories felt small now. "Then I go back to the castle strong," he said. "You go back a threat," Megalom answered. "The three masters shielded a weakling. They did not plan to house a rival for the throne." He gestured. The iron door opened onto the bone halls. "Walk in and see how they look at you now." Adrean stepped through. The door sealed. He stood in the castle again, whole and huge and full of power. Down the hall, a shadow shifted. Umbra had felt him return. The three masters were coming, and this time they would not find the weak stray they had caged.