Aphelia woke to a surge of quiet certainty, like dawn light washing frost from the fields. She checked her body; the Valkyrie had been right. Her veins ran clear again. The once-chaotic Arcane Power was gone, replaced by a steady, river-like cycle.

The lethal wounds she’d carried were mended, scars erased like ink under rain. Better than before—her frame felt honed, iron tempered in a white-blue flame. Clearly, while healing, the Valkyrie had also forged her body harder.

She didn’t know how. Body strength was written by race; when she’d been only human, her limits were bones and grit. Victory through flesh alone had never been in the cards.

But ever since the Demon King’s heart and blood stained her, her flesh blurred the line between human and demon. Even she no longer knew where her body’s lower limit ended, where the ceiling began.

Still, to break past a Titleholder’s threshold wasn’t a thing of one night. Even the dragons, masters of flesh, couldn’t leap the gap from Titleholder to Demigod overnight.

Yet the Valkyrie—by some method—had done something that spat in the face of common sense, a feat past miracle and into myth.

She felt that trust rise first, warm and unguarded, like a hand pressed to a steady drumbeat. After that came thought: after that first touch, she trusted her teacher completely. If the Valkyrie told her she was a True God walking among mortals, Aphelia wouldn’t blink.

The problem was the same as ever: with her blurred race came a blind path. In those first five years after her change, Aphelia had tried everything the church’s vaults could offer, even absorbing special demonic remnants from corpses. All of it fell flat. Empty cups.

Now, though, she could taste power beyond a Titleholder in every breath. She hadn’t yet stepped into the god’s symbol—no Heart-Image World—but the reservoir within her flesh brimmed. She could flick a wrist and spill several spells, and the strength pressed at her skin like steam under lacquer. She half-believed she was a walking, two-legged dragon.

She wanted a Titleholder to test herself against, fists to iron, blade to bone. She could swear it: even if the Plague of Beasts reared up again, she wouldn’t be flung about like before. Arcane lockdown? Let them try. Her inner cycle was almost a small world now, stars turning in a sealed sky. And the Crimson Seal—once a glutton for power—would probably launch in less than a third of the time.

Even if those two hunters showed their faces again, Aphelia had the confidence to erase them here and now. Give her a little more time to get familiar, and she’d toy with them like kittens under the palm.

As for that Demonic Knight who called himself Oz—he was likely already at this level. Those two who chased her? Oz had handled them effortlessly, like snuffing candles.

What an outrageous strength, she thought, the smile small and sharp, like sunlight over snow. Better use the chance to drill the spells and sword arts the teacher left behind.

Her thought had barely formed when the Rune on the back of her hand flared, deep-blue as midnight tide. No chant. No gesture. Several arcane blades unfolded into the air beside her, exactly like the spells the young Ophelius had cast in her sea of consciousness.

“One Becomes Myriad.”

Her whisper was a pebble dropped in still water. The blades multiplied—ten, dozens, then hundreds—in visible cascades, like frost fractals racing across glass. Yet even with hundreds singing around her, Aphelia felt no weight. Her face didn’t shift.

Her body no longer bled Arcane Power into the air. Light tucked itself back into its scabbard. If not for those hundreds of blades orbiting her like cold stars, no one would have taken her for a cultivator. No aura. No ripple. She was a quiet villager under a gray sky.

So this is the true face of the technique, she realized, calm settling like mist over reeds. High-tier Arcane use—hand off the burden to the world. Leave yourself as a single thread in the loom.

Through this magic, she finally understood why such a link needed a Demigod’s flesh. She hadn’t reached it yet—no Heart-Image World—but she could feel it dimly. A Demigod’s body mimicked the world, a shard of the whole, which is why it could stitch itself to every thing under heaven.

“Return.”

Her word was a breeze, and the blades dissolved midair. They poured into light like deep-blue rain and streamed back through the Rune, back into her body. Only one blade stayed, hovering at her side, a faithful sparrow.

“Next comes martial skill.”

The Valkyrie’s spear flowed into a silver-white Elven Holy Sword, and Aphelia closed her fingers around its bright spine. The arcane blade by her side shortened, just longer than her forearm, a quick, hungry thing. She shut her eyes and chased the echoes the Valkyrie had left in her sea of consciousness. Twin blades in hand.

She moved, a leaf on a light current. Residual Arcane trailed her like afterimages. With each sweep, her blades left scars in the air—ink strokes on invisible paper.

Long blade out, short blade in. Two edges weaving. Lotus-light steps skimming the ground.

She didn’t look like she was striking so much as dancing, a wine-sweet performance under thin fog. Arcane dispersed like pale mist. Sword marks drifted like the brush of a sleeve. The technique flexed and folded—at times hard as a hammer, at times soft as a veiled hand.

Blade halted. Dance ended.

Aphelia drove both blades into the earth, grounding the current. She drew a slow breath, taming the rough rhythm of her lungs, the scattered notes that came from calling back a new technique.

Incredible, she thought, a rueful chuckle like gravel under a boot. Without leaning on Arcane, the body pays hard. The teacher’s imprint saved me years, but I’ll still need real fights to own it.

Ancient Martial Flow had taken seasons of war, lives on a blade’s edge, to master. This new skill had no name. She only knew it existed to be played by twin blades.

And twin-blade and single-blade arts were different at the root. Even though her Ancient Martial Flow sword arts could earn her the title of “Sword Saint,” they were still bound by that school’s frame. Unlike the legendary Valkyrie, who was a true master of all arms.

So breathing rough after learning a new art—expected. The river needed time to find its new bed.

Which meant she had to dig into this plain and find the truth, stone by stone. If things were as simple as Nero claimed, pigs could fly.

Too much had happened for it to be easy. A Demonic Knight was tangled in it—one of the Demon King’s own. If Nero’s story were really just an invading sister, why would the Demon World’s royal power step in?

Nero’s side was a problem, but another pressed closer. Aphelia’s temples throbbed, a drum under storm clouds. She pulled a map from her storage ring and frowned. She couldn’t tell where she stood. Only this was certain: she’d gone at least two-thirds into the plain. The exact point was still fog.

She could spread her senses and scan the whole plain. Doing that would paint her position on the sky for every wolf-hungry gaze. It’d be like tossing carrion to hyenas.

While she worried, a staggering figure slid into her sight, a crooked blade across a blank field. The abrupt aura snapped her alert, like ice touched to a flame.

Haidra folk? No… not a trace of elemental aura. Then what are you?

Aphelia hid her blades under Arcane, quiet as silk under sleeves. Enemy or friend, flashing steel first would draw a knife back. This plain was a pot of boiling water; her mind had to stay taut as a bowstring.

“Hey, you there,” she called, voice steady, like a bell over fog. “Are you of the Haidra tribe?”

Her senses flowed out, thin and wide, settling over the young man who lurched toward her. Any twitch, any spark—she’d feel it before it burned.

He walked on as if her voice were a wind that didn’t touch him. His mage robe was torn to threads. Dried blood flaked along the hem like rust.

His eyes were dull, the stare of someone who had crawled back from a grave. Fresh cuts leaked down his cheeks, but he didn’t react. The sight tightened Aphelia’s guard like a cinched knot.

Why? Because his state—minus the mad aggression—mirrored those Dark Dragon Soldiers who had swarmed her. The blankness in him made Aphelia squeeze her hidden grip, knuckles cool as stone.

They closed the distance. He kept on, as if she were fog to walk through, about to pass by her shoulder. In her palm, she shaped a tiny array, lines fine as hair.

At the instant they were about to brush past, Aphelia didn’t hesitate. Her blade flashed like cold rain, and the array in her hand burst into life.