The field waited behind the mansion, enclosed by the same iron fencing and watched by the same faceless statues that lined the dead gardens. The air was cold, but not unbearable beneath the cloak Malachi had given him.
Malachi walked ahead of him with a smaller dagger in one hand.
It looked ordinary compared to the weapons Shunjiro had seen in the forge. Its blade was plain steel, its handle wrapped in dark leather, and it carried none of the strange presence that came from the Devil’s Luck Dagger. Even so, Malachi held it with the ease of someone who could turn anything sharp into a threat.
When they reached the center of the field, Malachi turned to face him.
“Draw it,” he said.
Shunjiro moved his cloak aside and pulled the Devil’s Luck Dagger from its sheath.
The darkfire blade came free with a soft sound. Its rough black surface caught almost no light, while the sharpened edge looked clean enough to split the air in front of it. Shunjiro adjusted his grip carefully, remembering Malachi’s warning about treating it like a dagger instead of a short sword.
Malachi noticed.
“Better already.”
Malachi lifted his own dagger.
“Before you try to fight with it, you need to understand what it is. A dagger does not win through reach. It wins through timing, position, and angles. If you swing wide, you waste motion. If you stay too far away, you lose before you begin. If you enter carelessly, you get grabbed, disarmed, or killed.”
Shunjiro looked down at the dagger in his hand.
“So I have to be closer than I usually am?”
“Yes and no,” Malachi said. “You already fight close. That will help you. But fighting close with your fists is different from fighting close with a blade. Your hand can strike and recover from almost any angle. A dagger has an edge, a point, and a direction. If you do not respect those, you will move like a brawler holding something sharp.”
“That sounds bad.”
“It is bad.”
Malachi demonstrated with one smooth movement.
He stepped forward, turned his wrist, and cut through the air in a short diagonal line. The motion was compact, controlled, and over almost before Shunjiro fully registered it. There was no wasted reach. No dramatic swing. Just a quick line that would have opened someone’s guard if they were standing in front of him.
“Again,” Malachi said, doing it slower this time. “Your shoulder does less than you think. Your wrist does more than you expect. Your feet decide whether the cut matters.”
Shunjiro watched closely.
Malachi repeated the motion several more times, then stepped aside and nodded.
“Copy it.”
Shunjiro raised the Devil’s Luck Dagger and moved through the same cut.
It felt awkward immediately.
The blade was balanced, but his body did not know how to let it move naturally yet. His first cut came too wide. His second turned too late. His third was closer, but his feet stayed behind him, making the strike feel disconnected from the rest of his body.
Malachi did not correct him right away.
He let Shunjiro repeat the motion several times before speaking.
“Your hand is trying to learn faster than your feet.”
Shunjiro stopped and looked down.
“You are stepping as though you are throwing a punch,” Malachi said. “That is useful, but not enough. With the dagger, your step and cut should arrive together. If the blade reaches before your body is positioned, the strike has no authority behind it. If your body arrives before the blade, you have entered danger without making your opponent respect you.”
Shunjiro nodded and tried again.
This time, he focused on his feet first.
The next cut felt better. Not good, but better.
Malachi taught through demonstration. He showed Shunjiro how to hold the dagger close without making his arm stiff, how to move the blade from low to high without exposing his wrist, and how to cut with the edge instead of swinging with the whole arm. He showed him a straight thrust, then corrected the way Shunjiro’s shoulder leaned too far forward during the motion. He showed him how to step offline rather than charge straight in, how to use a small angle to make a larger opponent turn, and how to keep the dagger near his center so it could defend as quickly as it could attack.
Shunjiro copied everything.
At first, each movement had to be thought through one piece at a time. Foot, shoulder, wrist, edge, recovery. He would fix one problem and create another. When his cut became tighter, his stance became too narrow. When his stance improved, his wrist stiffened. When his wrist loosened, he forgot to return the dagger to a defensive position.
Malachi remained patient in a way that made the training more intense, not less.
He did not praise too early. He did not scold unnecessarily. He simply demonstrated, watched, and gave short corrections that made Shunjiro aware of mistakes he had not known he was making.
“Too wide.”
Shunjiro adjusted.
“Your elbow is late.”
He tried again.
“Better. Now move your feet.”
The hours stretched on.
Without a moving sun, Shunjiro had no way to mark time except by the ache building in his legs and the sweat dampening the inside of his shirt. The cold air helped at first, but after enough repetition, even that faded beneath the heat of training. His arm began to tire from holding the dagger, though the weapon itself was not heavy enough to blame. The exhaustion came from unfamiliar control. Every motion demanded attention.
Still, he improved.
Slowly, the dagger stopped feeling like an object he was carrying and began to feel like a line added to his body. Not part of him, exactly, but connected to his intention. When he stepped, the blade moved with him. When he turned, the edge followed the angle instead of fighting against it. His close-range instincts, the same instincts he had built through fighting bare-handed, began helping him instead of getting in the way.
He understood distance.
He understood pressure.
He understood how to enter someone’s space without freezing.
The dagger changed what those things meant, but it did not erase what he already knew.
Malachi seemed to notice when the shift happened.
He had Shunjiro repeat a short form. At first, Shunjiro moved through it like he was remembering instructions. After enough repetitions, his body began connecting the movements without stopping between them.
The final cut came cleanly across the air.
Shunjiro held the ending position, breathing hard.
Malachi watched him for several seconds.
Then he lowered his own dagger.
“It looks like it was meant for you now.”
Shunjiro looked at him, surprised.
“It does?”
“For the moment.”
That pulled him back down.
Malachi’s mouth twitched.
“Do not mistake that for mastery. You are still new. A trained dagger user would see openings everywhere.”
“I know.”
“But it no longer looks like you are holding someone else’s weapon.” Malachi nodded toward the Devil’s Luck Dagger. “That matters.”
Shunjiro looked down at the blade.
Pride moved through him before he could stop it. Not arrogance. He knew he was still at the beginning. He knew one day of training did not make him skilled. But the dagger no longer felt impossible in his hand, and that was enough to make his chest feel lighter.
“It feels different,” he said.
“It should.”
Malachi sheathed his practice dagger at his side.
“Now we move to the next part.”
Shunjiro lifted his eyes.
“Imbuing energy into it?”
“Yes.”
His grip tightened slightly around the hilt.
He had expected this to be harder than the forms.
Malachi had said the dagger might help, but Shunjiro still remembered the way his energy had flickered and vanished in the field the day before. Even standing still, even under Malachi’s instruction, he had struggled to keep it present. Trying to push energy into a weapon felt like another chance to fail in a new way.
Malachi seemed to read the concern on his face.
“You are thinking about it like forcing energy through your hand,” he said.
“Isn’t that what I have to do?”
“No.”
Malachi drew the practice dagger again and held it in front of him.
“Your body is one path for spiritual energy. A weapon can become another. When you try to reinforce your fist, your instinct interferes because the energy remains inside you. Your body has learned to shut the flow down before it becomes stable. With the dagger, we are giving your energy somewhere else to go.”
Shunjiro looked from Malachi’s dagger to his own.
“So I should not try to strengthen my arm first.”
“Correct. Do not think of the dagger as a thing you are filling by force. Think of it as a point your energy can reach. Your grip is the bridge. Your intention is the direction.”
Malachi’s spiritual energy moved into the practice dagger with quiet precision. It did not flare or pulse wildly. It simply settled around the steel blade in a thin, controlled pressure, so steady that it made the act look effortless. That control impressed Shunjiro more than any dramatic burst of power would have.
He stared at the blade. “It can really stay that steady?”
“It can,” Malachi said.
“You make it look easy.”
“I have had more practice.”
“That is a generous way to say more than a thousand times my experience.”
“It is also accurate.”
The faint pressure around Malachi’s dagger faded, leaving the blade ordinary again. He lowered it slightly and turned his attention to the weapon in Shunjiro’s hand.
“Now you.”
Shunjiro looked down at the Devil’s Luck Dagger and lifted it slowly.
At first, he tried to do what he always did. He reached inward for his spiritual energy, found the thin warmth inside him, and attempted to draw it toward his arm.
It resisted.
The familiar feeling appeared immediately, as if something inside him tightened around the flow before it could move.
Shunjiro frowned.
Malachi’s voice came calmly.
“Stop.”
Shunjiro lowered the dagger slightly.
“You were trying to pull it through yourself.”
“I know.”
“Then don’t do it.”
Shunjiro took a slow breath and tried again.
This time, he did not imagine energy filling his muscles. He did not try to strengthen his arm or force power into his hand. He focused on the dagger itself, on the weight of it, the shape of the hilt against his palm, the edge waiting beyond his fingers.
The dagger is not me.
He loosened his shoulders.
But I am holding it. I can reach it.
A faint flicker moved inside him.
It slid toward his hand, then vanished.
Shunjiro exhaled.
Again.
The second attempt lasted longer. The energy moved down his arm in a thin, unstable thread. For a moment, he thought it would disappear like before, but then something changed when it reached the dagger.
The energy did not crash against the same wall inside his body. It moved through his grip and into the weapon as though the dagger had given it a place to settle before his instinct could shut it away. The flow flickered once, then twice, almost breaking apart.
Then a black aura crawled along the blade.
Shunjiro went still.
The aura was faint at first, a thin shadow rising from the edge as though the weapon had begun breathing darkness. It did not look like the spiritual energy he had seen from others. It did not shine. It did not crackle. It wrapped around the dagger in a quiet black haze, unsteady but present.
His eyes widened.
“I did it.”
Malachi did not visibly react.
“Hold it.”
Shunjiro tried.
The moment he focused too hard, the aura stuttered.
It almost disappeared.
He forced himself not to grab at it.
Do not pull it back. Do not shove it forward. Let it stay where it already is.
The black aura steadied again.
Shunjiro’s breath caught in his throat.
For the first time he could remember, his energy was doing what he wanted without immediately collapsing back into nothing.
“It is easier,” he said quietly.
Malachi watched him.
“Why?”
Shunjiro looked at the blade, still holding the aura as carefully as if one wrong thought might shatter it.
“Because I am not trying to keep it in my body.”
Malachi remained silent, letting him continue.
“When I use it on myself, I think I am trying to strengthen my arms or legs, but maybe I start holding it back because it feels like too much inside me.” Shunjiro swallowed, trying to understand the feeling as he spoke. “With the dagger, the energy has somewhere outside of me to go. It is not leaking away because I am fighting myself. It is moving into something I am connected to but not trapped inside.”
Malachi’s eyes sharpened slightly, though his face stayed calm.
“And what does that make the dagger?”
Shunjiro thought about it.
“A bridge.”
Malachi nodded once.
“That is a good word for it.”
The black aura trembled, then settled again.
“This does not fix the problem,” Malachi said. “You still need to learn how to maintain energy through your body. You cannot become dependent on a weapon to access yourself.”
“I know.”
“But this gives us a path. If you can keep your energy stable through the dagger, we can use that stability to teach your body what steady flow feels like.”
Shunjiro nodded, still staring at the blade.
The explanation made sense in a way that did not feel like a shortcut. The dagger had not magically solved him. It had not unlocked some hidden power by accident. It had simply given his energy a target that his own instinct did not immediately suppress. It was easier to let power flow into something outside him than to let it fill the body that had spent years shutting it down.
That was why it worked.
That was why it felt different.
Malachi turned toward the edge of the field.
Several training dummies stood there, arranged in a loose line near the broken stone posts. Shunjiro had noticed them earlier but had not paid much attention while practicing forms. Now they looked much more important.
“Come,” Malachi said.
Shunjiro followed, keeping the aura around the dagger as steady as he could.
By the time they reached the dummies, his arm had begun to shake from concentration more than fatigue. The aura dimmed twice along the way, but it did not vanish completely.
Malachi stopped beside the nearest dummy and stepped aside.
“Cut.”
Shunjiro adjusted his stance.
The dummy stood motionless in front of him, simple and worn from use. Old marks covered its surface, some shallow, others deep enough to show that Malachi used these often when testing weapons from the forge.
Shunjiro raised the dagger.
For a second, nerves threatened to break his focus.
Do not make it bigger. Do not force it. Let the energy stay where it is and move with the blade.
He stepped in and cut.
The dagger sliced across the dummy with a sharp sound.
The cut was clean.
Deeper than it should have been.
Shunjiro stared at the mark.
He had not used a massive burst of power. He had not felt anything like his S-rank spikes. The aura around the dagger had been weak compared to what he knew strong fighters could produce, yet the blade had bitten into the target with a force that felt noticeably beyond the energy he had been able to use through his fists the day before.
“That was stronger,” he said.
“Yes.”
Shunjiro looked at Malachi.
“I barely used anything.”
“You used it correctly.”
The answer struck harder than praise would have.
Shunjiro looked back at the dagger.
The black aura still clung to the blade, though it was thinner now after the strike.
I used it correctly.
The thought brought a quiet thrill through him.
Not because the cut was perfect. It was not. His angle could have been cleaner, his recovery faster, his stance more balanced after the motion. Malachi would likely point out all of that if Shunjiro gave him the chance.
But the energy had stayed.
It had moved into the dagger, remained there, and followed the strike.
That was new.
They continued.
For the rest of the day, Malachi had him repeat the same process until the motion became exhausting.
Shunjiro learned quickly that maintaining energy through the dagger was easier, but not easy. If he became too excited, the aura flickered. If he tried to force more into the blade, it scattered. If he focused only on the energy, his footwork became sloppy. If he focused only on the cut, the energy thinned before impact.
Malachi made him correct everything.
“Your feet.”
Shunjiro adjusted.
“Your wrist.”
He cut again.
“You are forcing the energy.”
He stopped and breathed.
“Do not chase more power. Hold steady power.”
The words became the rhythm of the session.
Hold steady power.
Shunjiro repeated it in his mind as he moved. The black aura around the dagger grew easier to summon as the hours passed, though it never became effortless. At times, it appeared after only a breath. At others, he had to stand still and wait for the energy to find the path through his grip again.
The difference was that it returned.
Again and again, it returned.
That alone made the day feel like progress.
Malachi never allowed him to celebrate too long. When one cut improved, he moved to another. When a diagonal slash became steady, he added a step. When the step became natural, he added recovery. When Shunjiro managed to keep the aura through a short sequence, Malachi had him repeat it until his arm burned.
The dummies gathered more marks.
Some cuts were shallow. Some were clean. A few were deep enough that Shunjiro stopped to look at them, surprised by what his energy could do when it did not vanish halfway through the motion.
As the hours dragged on, his body began reaching its limit.
The Shadow Realm offered no sunset, but exhaustion became its own clock. His shoulders ached from holding the dagger. His legs felt heavy from repeated footwork. His hands were sore from gripping, adjusting, and learning how not to tense too hard around the hilt. Sweat cooled beneath his cloak whenever he stopped moving, making the cold air bite harder against his skin.
Still, when Malachi told him to repeat the form again, Shunjiro did.
The black aura flickered along the dagger as he moved, thinner than he wanted but steadier than it had been that morning. He finished the form with a short cut against the dummy, then stepped back and held his guard.
Malachi watched from several paces away.
For a long moment, he said nothing.
Then he lowered his practice dagger.
“That is enough.”
Shunjiro blinked through the sweat on his face.
“We are done?”
“For today.”
Shunjiro glanced toward the dummies, then back at him.
“How long was that?”
“Ten hours.”
Shunjiro stared at him.
“Ten?”
“Yes.”
“I trained for ten hours?”
“You did.”
Shunjiro looked down at himself as though his body might suddenly realize it had been tricked. Now that Malachi had said the number aloud, the exhaustion seemed to settle fully into his muscles.
“I thought it was less.”
“That happens when you are focused.”
Shunjiro let the black aura fade from the dagger.
It disappeared slowly, slipping away from the blade instead of vanishing all at once. Even that felt like a small victory. He had ended the flow by choice, not by losing it.
Malachi noticed, though he did not say so directly.
“You improved.”
Shunjiro looked up.
“A lot?”
“Enough for one day.”
He slid the Devil’s Luck Dagger back into its sheath with careful hands. The motion felt smoother than it had that morning. His fingers knew the position better now. His body knew the weight.
Malachi turned toward the mansion.
“Eat. Wash. Rest. Tomorrow, we do it again.”
Shunjiro looked toward the training field one last time.
The dummies stood marked by his cuts. The field was still cold. The dead forest still waited beyond the fence, and the black sky above them had not changed.
But something inside him had.
For the first time, his energy had stayed steady because he had found a way to guide it instead of fight it. He was still far from strong enough. Far from ready. Far from the person he needed to become before returning to Radiance.
But the path was clearer than it had been yesterday.
Shunjiro followed Malachi back toward the mansion, exhausted down to his bones, with the dagger resting at his side and the memory of black aura still lingering in his hand.
﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌
Five days later, Malachi brought his sword to the training field.
Shunjiro stood in the center of the field, the Devil’s Luck Dagger in his right hand, and watched Malachi lift the massive blade as if it weighed no more than a walking stick. The weapon was the same one he had seen in the forge and during their first meeting, a giant dark sword with a thick spine and an edge that caught what little light existed in the field. The sight of it made Shunjiro’s grip tighten.
“You are using that?”
Malachi rested the blade across one shoulder.
“Yes.”
“You said you were not trying to cut me in half.”
“I am not.”
“That sword looks like it disagrees.”
“It is not in charge.”
Shunjiro looked from Malachi to the sword.
This is going to be brutal.
The thought did not scare him as much as it should have.
It excited him.
Malachi did not fight him seriously. That became obvious within the first exchange. If the older man had wanted to end the spar, Shunjiro would not have been able to stop him. Even with his energy concealed to almost nothing, Malachi’s presence filled the field. His sword moved with terrifying control, never wild, never wasteful, always stopping exactly where he wanted it to stop. He blocked with the flat of the blade, redirected with the hilt, used the sword’s size to control space, and forced Shunjiro to think about distance in a way training dummies never could.
A dummy did not punish hesitation.
Malachi did.
The first day of sparring was mostly failure.
Shunjiro could move comfortably with the dagger now when the opponent was wood and straw. Against Malachi, every comfortable habit was tested. When Shunjiro stepped in too straight, Malachi’s sword cut off his path. When he circled too wide, Malachi turned once and made the distance meaningless. When Shunjiro tried to rush under the sword’s reach, Malachi shifted the blade just enough to remind him that getting close to a larger weapon was not the same as being safe.
But Shunjiro adjusted.
His close-range instincts helped him more than he expected. He was used to entering danger. Used to finding narrow openings. Used to fighting where a single step mattered. The dagger gave him a new tool, but the foundation was still his own body. By the end of the first sparring day, he was no longer freezing when Malachi’s sword came down. He was moving, reading, slipping away from the center of danger even when he could not fully escape it.
Over the next few training cycles, the sparring became steadier.
Malachi went easy on him, but easy for Malachi still meant Shunjiro had to fight with everything he had just to stay in the exchange. The older man never overwhelmed him for the sake of proving the difference between them. He left openings, but not free ones. He slowed his blade, but not enough for Shunjiro to become careless. He let Shunjiro reach him sometimes, but only when the approach was earned through movement, timing, and control.
Shunjiro began learning what it meant to fight a person with the dagger.
A person adjusted.
A person baited.
A person noticed when his breathing changed.
A person could turn one mistake into a lesson sharp enough to leave bruises.
By the time several more days passed, Shunjiro had begun to feel the difference in himself. His energy still was not perfect, but the dagger kept helping him hold it steady. He could move while keeping the black aura along the blade. He could strike without losing it immediately. He could recover after a miss without the flow collapsing into nothing.
It was still not mastery.
It was not even close.
But it was progress he could feel.
That was why, when Malachi raised his sword on the next sparring day and motioned for him to begin, Shunjiro entered the fight without hesitation.
The field was cold beneath his boots. The mist beyond the fence was thicker than usual, turning the dead forest into a gray wall around the estate. Shunjiro’s cloak had been left near the edge of the field so it would not catch on his movements. The Devil’s Luck Dagger rested low in his hand, black aura faintly wrapped around the blade.
Malachi stood across from him with his giant sword angled downward.
“Ready?” he asked.
Shunjiro nodded.
“Yes.”
“Then come.”
Shunjiro moved.
He did not charge straight in. He had learned better than that. Instead, he stepped left, forcing Malachi’s sword to shift, then cut inward toward the older man’s guard. Malachi blocked with the flat of his blade, the impact ringing through the field. Shunjiro let the force turn his wrist away and used the motion to drop lower, aiming a short thrust toward Malachi’s side.
Malachi stepped back, just enough.
The dagger missed.
The sword came down.
Shunjiro twisted away before it could reach him, feeling the wind from the controlled strike pass near his shoulder. He pushed energy into his legs, not perfectly but enough to move faster, and slipped toward Malachi’s right side.
Close the distance, but do not chase.
Malachi’s sword swept across.
Shunjiro ducked beneath the flat of the blade and felt the pressure of it pass over his head. He came up inside the reach and cut toward Malachi’s ribs.
Malachi turned his body.
The dagger scraped across his coat but did not cut flesh.
“Better,” Malachi said.
Shunjiro did not answer.
He had learned not to answer during the exchange.
Malachi’s blade reversed direction.
Shunjiro barely raised his dagger in time to deflect the angle, though deflecting a sword that large was not truly deflecting. It was surviving the contact without letting it crush through his guard. His arm shook from the force, but the black aura around the dagger held.
He stepped back, reset his stance, and breathed.
Malachi watched him.
Shunjiro attacked again.
This time, he used a feint with his shoulder before cutting low. Malachi saw through it immediately, but Shunjiro had expected that. The real attack came a moment later, a short step inward followed by a tight upward slash meant to catch Malachi as he adjusted the sword’s angle.
Malachi blocked with the guard of his weapon.
Steel met darkfire with a sharp crack.
Shunjiro felt his energy tremble around the dagger, but he did not let it vanish.
Hold steady.
He pivoted around the sword instead of pulling directly away.
A few days ago, he would have retreated the moment Malachi’s blade stopped him. Now he used the contact as information. If Malachi’s sword was here, the opening was somewhere else. If the larger weapon controlled one path, Shunjiro had to find the smaller path it could not cover in time.
His foot slid across the dirt.
His body turned.
The dagger came in close.
Malachi shifted again, but this time Shunjiro stayed with him.
The first cut missed.
The second cut forced Malachi to raise his arm.
The third came from a sharper angle than Shunjiro had used before.
For one brief moment, Malachi’s shoulder was open.
Shunjiro saw it.
His body moved before doubt could catch up.
The dagger cut across Malachi’s shoulder.
The blade touched.
Then the world snapped.
Black energy exploded from the dagger like lightning.
It burst outward in jagged lines, violent and sudden, cracking through the air with a force that made Shunjiro’s arm jolt back. The aura around the blade, which had been thin and controlled a heartbeat earlier, surged into something wild. The strike that should have been a shallow cut became something far heavier, far sharper, far beyond what Shunjiro had put into it himself.
Malachi moved with impossible speed.
His sword shifted, his body turned, and the explosion of force passed across his shoulder instead of driving deeper.
A line of blood appeared.
Shunjiro stumbled back, eyes wide.
The black lightning vanished as quickly as it had appeared.
For a moment, neither of them moved.
Shunjiro stared at Malachi’s shoulder. The cut had drawn blood through the fabric, a clean line across the older man’s skin. It was not deep enough to threaten him. It was barely anything for someone like Malachi.
But Shunjiro had cut him.
And the energy behind the strike had felt nothing like his own normal output.
His heart hammered.
“That was it,” he said.
Malachi lowered his sword.
“Yes.”
Shunjiro looked down at the dagger.
The blade had returned to normal, the black aura around it faint and steady again. No lightning. No explosion. No sign that it had released a burst strong enough to make even Malachi move more seriously.
“That was Devil’s Luck.”
“It was.”
Shunjiro’s excitement rose faster than he could contain it.
“I felt it. It was like the dagger pulled the strike forward and then everything burst at once.”
“That is one way to describe it.”
“How strong was that?”
Malachi looked at the thin line of blood on his shoulder, then back at him.
“With the multiplier, your energy likely spiked to around SS-level output for that one strike.”
Shunjiro stared at him.
“SS?”
“For that one strike,” Malachi repeated.
Shunjiro looked at the dagger again as if it had become a different weapon in his hand.
SS-level.
The words rang through his head.
He had never been anywhere near that level on command. Even his unstable spikes had been rare and impossible to control. But the dagger, through one random activation, had taken his attack and thrown it far beyond where it should have been.
A smile began pulling at his face before he could stop it.
Malachi saw it immediately.
“No.”
Shunjiro looked up.
“What?”
“I know that look.”
“I do not have a look.”
“You look like a boy who just discovered luck can make him feel stronger than he is.”
Shunjiro lowered the dagger slightly.
“It was SS-level.”
“It was a single strike multiplied by a random effect,” Malachi said. “You are not SS rank.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
Malachi stepped closer, his expression firm but not harsh.
“Listen carefully. Devil’s Luck is an unexpected chance. That is all. You do not plan around it. You do not count on it. You do not fight foolishly hoping it will appear when you need it. The moment you rely on luck, you stop improving and start gambling with your life.”
Shunjiro nodded, though excitement still moved beneath his skin.
“I understand.”
Malachi studied him for another second.
Then his expression eased slightly.
“Good. Because it was a clean angle.”
Shunjiro blinked.
“It was?”
“Yes.”
The praise hit him almost as hard as the warning.
He looked down at the dagger again, this time with a different kind of pride. The Devil’s Luck effect had been random. He understood that. But the opening had not been random. The footwork, the angle, the timing, the way he moved around Malachi’s sword instead of backing away from it, those things had been his.
The luck had multiplied the strike.
It had not created the opening for him.
Malachi lifted one hand toward the cut on his shoulder. A faint pressure of spiritual energy gathered there, and the bleeding stopped almost immediately.
“You are fine?” Shunjiro asked.
Malachi gave him a look.
“It is a line of blood.”
“You said the output was SS level.”
“And I said you are not SS rank. Both statements remain true.”
Shunjiro felt his face warm slightly.
“Right.”
Malachi sheathed his sword across his back.
“That is enough sparring for today.”
Shunjiro looked at him.
“Already?”
“You just triggered the dagger for the first time and cut your teacher. If we continue now, you will either get overexcited or overthink everything you do.”
“That is probably fair.”
“It is definitely fair.”
Shunjiro slid the Devil’s Luck Dagger back into its sheath, still feeling the memory of the black lightning in his hand.
Malachi started toward the mansion.
“Come.”
“Are we done training?”
“For today.”
Shunjiro followed him across the field.
The exhaustion had not fully reached him yet. His body was tired, but excitement kept him moving easily. He had triggered the dagger’s ability. He had cut Malachi. He had felt, for one moment, what it was like for his attack to become something far greater than it should have been.
He knew Malachi was right.
He could not rely on it.
But he could still be excited.
Malachi glanced back at him as they neared the mansion steps.
“I am going to treat you to a Shadow Realm special dessert.”
Shunjiro slowed.
“A Shadow Realm dessert?”
“Yes.”
“There is dessert from the Shadow Realm?”
Malachi’s face remained completely serious.
“There is now.”
Shunjiro narrowed his eyes.
“That sounds suspicious.”
“You are learning.”
They entered the mansion and went straight to the kitchen, where warmth and the smell of food still lingered from earlier. Malachi moved with purpose, gathering bowls, spoons, a knife, and several ingredients from different parts of the kitchen. Shunjiro sat at the table and watched him with growing curiosity.
The Shadow Realm special dessert, apparently, involved bananas.
And ice cream.
And brownies.
Shunjiro leaned forward.
“That is not from the Shadow Realm.”
Malachi sliced a banana lengthwise with the seriousness of a man preparing a royal ceremony.
“You do not know that.”
“I am very sure.”
“You have been here for less than two weeks.”
“Bananas do not grow here.”
“Not with that attitude.”
Shunjiro stared at him.
Malachi placed scoops of ice cream between the banana halves, then added pieces of brownie around the sides. He drizzled something sweet over the top and finished with a calm nod, as though he had just completed one of his finest forged weapons.
He set the bowl in front of Shunjiro.
“The Shadow Realm special.”
Shunjiro looked down at it.
“It is a banana split with brownies.”
“It is my banana split with brownies.”
“That does not make it a Shadow Realm special.”
“It does if I make it in the Shadow Realm.”
Shunjiro tried not to smile and failed.
Malachi sat across from him with his own bowl.
“Eat.”
Shunjiro picked up the spoon and took a bite.
For a second, he forgot to say anything.
The sweetness hit him first, then the softness of the ice cream, the warmth still held in the brownie pieces, and the banana underneath. It was unlike anything he had expected to eat in a place surrounded by dead trees and monsters beyond the fence.
Malachi watched him.
“Well?”
Shunjiro took another bite.
“It is really good.”
“Of course it is.”
“You are very confident about dessert.”
“I am confident about many things.”
“That does seem true.”
They ate in the warm kitchen while the mansion remained quiet around them.
The conversation was lighter than usual. Malachi asked whether Shunjiro’s wrist hurt from the Devil’s Luck activation, then told him his grip had been slightly too tight during the third exchange. Shunjiro accused him of turning dessert into another lesson. Malachi said that was what made it nutritious. Shunjiro told him he did not think that was how nutrition worked, and Malachi informed him that he had been alive for fifty-seven years and had earned the right to be wrong occasionally.
By the time the bowls were half empty, the excitement in Shunjiro’s chest had settled into something warmer.
He was not home.
His friends were still far away.
He still had no idea what Tsubasa wanted from him or how long it would take to return to Radiance.
But sitting across from Malachi in that kitchen, eating a dessert that had absolutely nothing to do with the Shadow Realm despite Malachi’s insistence, Shunjiro felt the distance between them change. Malachi was still his teacher. Still one of the eight strongest people in the world. Still a former king with more secrets than Shunjiro could count.
But he was also becoming someone Shunjiro could sit with after training and laugh.
That mattered.
Shunjiro looked down at the dagger resting at his side, then back at the bowl in front of him.
“Thank you,” he said.
Malachi raised an eyebrow.
“For the dessert or the training?”
“Both.”
Malachi’s expression softened slightly.
“You earned both.”
Shunjiro smiled and took another bite.