Chapter 250. It Felt Like I Was Swinging a Mountain, and I Still Don’t Understand It
Lia froze. For a heartbeat, the world seemed to stop breathing. Her pupils were dilated until her eyes were almost entirely black, reflecting the raw, primal terror of a predator that had suddenly realized it possessed fangs.
The accumulated energy inside her wasn’t just a feeling anymore; it was a physical agony, a screaming pressure behind her ribs and down her arms that felt like molten lead coursing through her veins.
’Release it,’ William’s voice echoed in her mind. ’Let the dam break...’
"I... I can’t," she gasped, her voice breaking as a fresh trickle of blood ran from her nose. "Instructor Wade, it hurts!"
"It feels like I’m going to explode!"
"Then explode!" William roared, his eyes blazing with a terrifying intensity. "Don’t fight the release, Lia!"
"Channel it through the steel! Give it to the blade!"
Lia screamed a raw, guttural sound that tore from her throat and threw herself forward. She committed fully to the motion, twisting her hips and driving every ounce of that stored, stolen momentum into a wide, sweeping arc.
The collision was catastrophic.
When her greatsword connected with William’s raised Aetherion, it wasn’t the sound of metal meeting metal. It was the sound of a thunderclap trapped in a confined space.
A shockwave erupted from the point of impact, sending a visible ripple through the air that kicked up a cloud of choking dust and debris. The force was obscene.
It carried the combined weight of every strike William had delivered throughout the entire session, every blow she had deflected, and every lunge she had parried.
William felt his bones shudder to their core. The impact was so violent that it felt like his radius and ulna were being ground together.
His boots skidded backward across the packed earth, carving deep furrows into the ground as he fought to maintain his balance. His teeth slammed together with enough force to draw blood from his own gums.
He staggered half a step back, his muscles seizing from the sheer, impossible heaviness of the blow.
For a moment, they stood locked in that position: Lia, shaking violently as the last of the energy bled out of her stance, and William, braced against a force that defied every law of physics he knew.
The silence that followed was deafening, broken only by their ragged, desperate panting and the distant drip of blood from Lia’s blade.
William slowly lowered his sword, his arms quivering from the residual vibration. A slow, dangerous grin spread across his face, a grin that was equal parts pride and genuine awe.
"That," he said, his voice rough but carrying an unmistakable note of triumph, "is what they call an Undertow Surge!"
"And you just executed it flawlessly on your very first attempt."
Lia collapsed to one knee, her greatsword clattering to the ground beside her. She stared at her hands as if they belonged to someone else.
Her fingers were twitching uncontrollably, stained with sweat and specks of dried blood. She looked up at William, her face pale beneath the grime, her expression one of disbelieving wonder mixed with profound confusion.
"I don’t... understand," she whispered, her voice trembling. "That shouldn’t be possible..."
"I’ve never trained for anything like that. I’ve never... I’ve never felt power like that." Lia gulped. "It felt like I was swinging a mountain."
William stepped closer, reaching down to offer her a hand, though his own body still hummed with the aftershocks of her strike. He couldn’t tell her the truth that the System had handed her the blueprint, but he could give her the truth she needed to believe in herself.
"Sometimes talent works that way, Lia," William said, his voice softening but remaining firm. "You didn’t learn this from a book or a master."
"You already had the instinct for it buried somewhere deep inside in every repetition, every bruise, and every moment you refused to break."
"All I did was give you the right way to think about what you were already doing."
The sun began its slow descent toward the horizon, painting the training grounds in bruised purples and fiery oranges, but neither of them noticed. The world had narrowed down to the space between them, a space defined by steel, sweat, and the intoxicating promise of power.
The initial shock of the first successful Surge had passed, replaced by a grim, focused hunger. William knew that understanding the theory was one thing; mastering the execution under the threat of actual injury was another entirely.
He would not let her practice in a vacuum. He would not let her learn in safety.
"Again!" William barked, his voice echoing off the stone walls of the courtyard. "Don’t wait for me to give you a clean strike!"
"Create the opening yourself...! Force me to give you the energy you need to steal!"
He lunged forward, not with a simple slash, but with a complex series of feints. He drove Aetherion upward in a threatening thrust toward her throat, then immediately dropped his shoulder, spinning the blade into a vicious horizontal cleave aimed at her midsection.
Lia moved like liquid. The hesitation that had plagued her earlier was gone, replaced by a predator’s calculation.
She didn’t just parry; she danced. She stepped inside his guard, the hem of her tunic snapping against her thighs.
Her greatsword met his blade with a controlled crack, not a full block but a glancing deflection that allowed her to roll the momentum into a defensive pivot.
’There,’ William thought, his eyes narrowing. ’She’s starting to anticipate the buildup.’
"Faster, Lia!" he roared, stepping into her space.
He unleashed a relentless barrage, a flurry of strikes that would have broken a lesser warrior’s spirit. He hammered at her guard with increasing ferocity, each blow designed to be heavy enough to stagger her but precise enough to allow her to catch the force.
The choreography was brutal and hypnotic. William was the storm: unpredictable, crushing, and relentless.
Lia was on the shore absorbing the waves, channeling the fury, and waiting for the moment to break back.
Clang. Clang. Clang.
The sound of their blades became a continuous rhythm, punctuated by the wet slap of feet on blood-slicked stone and their synchronized, ragged breathing.
At one point, William deliberately overextended on a downward strike. Lia saw the opening instantly.
She didn’t swing wide; she stepped forward, meeting his descending blade with the flat of her sword, catching the downward force mid-flight. Her body coiled, her muscles tensing visibly through her sweat-soaked shirt as she began the process of gathering.
"Now!" William shouted, knowing she was close.
Lia’s eyes flashed with a dangerous light. She didn’t release it immediately.
Instead, she deliberately misdirected the force upward, forcing William to adjust his stance, and then, with a guttural cry of effort, she snapped her hips around.
The resulting surge wasn’t a single blow but a controlled burst that sent William stumbling sideways, his shoulder taking the brunt of the kinetic discharge.
He grunted as his shoulder joint popped audibly, a warning shot from his own body, but he didn’t stop. He turned on a dime, sweeping his blade low to take out her legs.
Lia leapt over the steel, the motion sending droplets of sweat flying like diamonds in the fading light, and as she descended, she brought her sword down in a punishing overhead strike.
William caught it on the crossguard, the impact sending sparks cascading over his face.
"Better!" he panted, his teeth bared in a grimace. "But you’re still releasing too early!"
"You’re bleeding off the pressure like a cracked vessel!"
"Hold it until the very last millisecond! Make them feel the weight before they even see the strike coming!"
Lia’s face was a mask of agony and determination. A fresh cut along her forearm bled steadily, crimson rivulets mixing with the grime on her skin, but she didn’t seem to feel it.
"I’m trying!" she screamed back, her voice raw from exertion. "It feels like I’m trying to hold back a landslide with my bare hands!"
"Then use the landslide!" William countered, launching into a series of rapid-fire thrusts that forced her into a desperate, backpedaling retreat. "Don’t fight the weight, Lia... become the weight!"
They pushed each other further than they ever had before. The sparring session ceased to be a lesson and became a test of survival.
Every strike carried real consequences; every mistake resulted in a bruise, a cut, or a bone-jarring impact that left them both gasping for air. Yet, in the midst of the violence and the pain, something miraculous was happening.
The fluid motion of their combat was improving, the gap between thought and action narrowing until they were moving as two halves of a single, deadly machine.