[SYSTEM RESTORE COMPLETE]

  HP: 100% | Neural Sync: Stable

  Death detected in Training Module 1

  Reloading…

  [MODULE CONDITIONS MET]

  Initializing Training Module 2: FOOTWORK & FLOW

  “Sorry Guro. She told me I had no other choice.” Amihan’s whispers pierced the void as Remi opened his eyes. She was close, leaning over him. Remi jolted and scrabbled away like a hermit crab, sticks clicking like carapace as he scuttled back. He clambered to his feet and settled into a defensive stance, his weapons held at the ready.

  Amihan had gotten to her feet, slowly retreating with her palms extended, giving him space.

  “Easy, Remi.” Her voice stayed calm, tone even, so as not to spook him. “You’re safe. Nel needed it for the reset.”

  Remi didn’t feel safe. His skull still remembered the sound of breaking. He touched the side of his head and checked his fingers. They came away clean. His breathing was haggard, and it took an effort to slow it down. Just to be safe, he too backed away.

  “Why did you do that?” he asked.

  It wasn't Amihan that answered, but the warm voice of Nel from the speaker. It sounded practiced and off. He recognized it as an attempt to calm him, and since he could see her nervousness written all over her face through the glass panel, he gave her some grace.

  “I asked her to do it, Remi. She didn’t want to, but it was necessary.”

  Remi turned, making eye contact with Nel. He could see the concern on her face, but they had both earned this moment of trust.

  “Explain. Quick.” The words came out harder and sharper than he had intended. Even though he trusted them both, they had just killed him—on purpose. He pointed his sticks directly at Amihan’s center, “And from now on, you ask first, or we're no longer friends.”

  Thankfully, Nel heard the edge in his voice and didn’t make him wait. “Remember when I told you I found an exploit. I also told you that you wouldn’t like it.”

  Remi blinked. He had thought the part he would like was crapping in a bucket, not that he would be kicking one. “You were correct. I didn't like that at all.”

  He could see a smile tug at her lips. “I noticed that the module system had a small gap in time after completion. I asked myself why it needed a countdown. A little digging showed that the system used this window after conditions were met to preload the next module. This was done for efficiency.”

  Remi said, “Okay,” trying to sound like he understood. Even though he didn’t.

  “The normal process for this room is you train, you complete the module, and it cues up the next module during the countdown. When the timer finishes, the room will reset. Having a blank room, you would exit through the portal door. This would dump you in your bedroom. Locking you out of the training bay until next time we visited a great hall.”

  He couldn’t even pretend to understand anymore. “I think I understand all that, but what I don’t get is why you had to kill me?”

  The warmth leaked from her voice as she shifted to directness. “You had to die so that we could exploit this space.”

  “I still don’t get,” he was getting frustrated now, “why it was necessary for my brain to be exploited all over the floor?”

  “I know you don’t. So let me finish. Normally when you die in a module, it just respawns you. This is a function of the room. Think of it as lives in a video game. You get infinite lives until you complete the task. But the Crucible designed the space so that you could only get one module completed per visit. We changed that.”

  “How so?”

  Nel shifted tactics for a bit. “Have you ever read a time-loop fantasy? Where the main character lives a life, then dies, and comes back to do it again?”

  Remi thought for a bit. He hadn’t, but he’d seen movies where that situation played out. One involved a groundhog where a weatherman learned to be a better person, but the more fun one was an action flick with aliens and Tom Cruise. In both cases, reliving the day allowed them to grow because of the repetition. “I get the concept,” he said, “but I am not sure how it applies here.”

  Nel nodded. “Okay, in short, we did something similar. Your anchor point acted like your personal save file.”

  Finally, something he understood.

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  She continued. “The loop reloaded you, but instead of you living the same day over and over, you get to live that same day, but we get to change what happens during that day.”

  “You hacked the training tutorial!” Remi wasn’t asking; of course she had!

  “Technically, I optimized it,” she replied with a grin. “As you know, I hate inefficiency. I removed the downtime between training sessions. We need to capitalize on this opportunity because they sure as shit are going to patch it as soon as we leave. But they can’t fix it while we are in here.”

  “Sure,” Remi said, “unique opportunity and all that, I get that, but how did we do it? And I’m still a bit fuzzy on why my head needed to turn the floor into an inkblot painting.”

  “By having you set your anchor point in the portal, we created a loop around the module. We killed you in the time gap between when the new module was loaded and when the room kicked you out. But since the module was done, the regular life saves did not apply, and your anchor point took over. That meant you were spawned at your personal save point. Inside the portal. This forced the Crucible to spit you back out into the training room, but as the module had already been advanced and because you completed the last one, there is no other option but for it to move on. So we get to bypass the one module per visit rule.”

  Remi finally understood. “So you had to kill me so that my anchor point would activate. If we had waited, then the module would have just ended.”

  “Correct,” she said approvingly. “And the best part is that we can do it again at the end of each module. The AI can’t even stop us until this whole training regime is finished. So we are in this for the long haul.”

  “And all I have to do is die on cue?”

  “Exactly, but the first one is the hardest.” She beamed, and her flash of teeth felt slightly predatory to Remi. “And it’s only like four more times.” She laughed. “Don’t be a baby!”

  Remi didn't laugh. Instead, he exhaled slowly and rubbed his palms together, letting the friction ground his thoughts. “So to be clear,” he said, voice steadier than he felt inside, “what you’re saying is this only works if I die repeatedly.”

  Nel didn’t answer but nodded slightly.

  “That’s what you’re saying,” he pressed. “I have to die over and over.”

  Finally, she answered. “Correct. That would be the most efficient.”

  Something tightened behind Remi’s eyes. This all felt a bit too close to what the Crucible wanted to do with everyone—death for a purpose. “And if I say no?”

  The room felt quieter, even though Nel had dropped her eyes and started to type. He knew she was using it as a distraction. She leaned closer to the panel. “Then we run the modules the way the Crucible intended. One per visit. Your progression would be slower. Fewer reps means less survival and less growth. We’d also likely lose this opportunity again.”

  “I see,” Remi said. “In my experience, playing with the underworld always has a cost. So I just want to be clear on what you’re asking.” He looked down at the sticks in his hands. His grip tightened. “How many times?” he asked.

  Nel hesitated again. It was a fraction of a second, but it was enough that he noticed. “Enough to matter,” she said.

  “So, a veritable shit tonne,” he said. He sighed and nodded once. “Fine, but I decide when I’m done. If I need to tap out, this little experiment is over. No questions asked.”

  Nel nodded. “Agreed.” Her voice was stripped of the previous joking. “You control the cutoff.”

  It was good enough for Remi.

  “Also,” she continued, “if it makes you feel any better, you have your new reward that you can play with. Apparently, the Crucible thinks it’s a good idea to give you matches. I think that’s a terrible idea; you’re likely to burn the whole place down!”

  The thought of burning this place to the ground suddenly did make him feel a bit better.

  If Remi had hoped for another apology from Amihan, he would have been disappointed. Instead of another sorry, he got instruction instead.

  “You’ve learned another rule, Guro. The system doesn’t say when we are done here. I do.” Amihan didn't smile, which would have indicated she was joking. Instead, her words were delivered matter-of-factly, and left no room for doubt that she too had an agenda, and they were going to check off all the items on that list.

  The first was apparently to understand the new rune. He understood the marking implicitly. He extracted his scrivener set from his murse and etched the symbol in ink at the top of one of his blades.

  [RUNE INSCRIBED - GLYPH OF EMBER]

  Converts friction into flame. Momentum amplifies heat output.

  As the mark sank into the wood, a faint warmth pulsed up through the handle. The stick shimmered, and veins of dull orange crawled down its length like cooling lava. The normally cool wood suddenly felt warm under his palm.

  Remi flinched at the sudden heat and tightened his grip. “Okay,” he muttered. “So that’s new.” He got to his feet and gave the stick a hesitant swing. As it arced through the air, he heard a crackling sound, and orange lines along its edge flared. As if he had blown on a campfire log, the wood burst into neon vibrancy. The warmth increased. It was hot, but not painfully so.

  Nel’s voice crackled from the intercom. “Let’s see what it does when you hit something.” She didn’t give him a chance to react. He heard a few keyboard clicks and then there was a digital block hurtling towards him. He had just finished days of playing this game, and so spun without thinking, slamming the orange blade into the block as it came within reach.

  The block burst apart, but not in the shower of digital sparks that he expected. Instead, it combusted as the heat from the blade transferred to it. The box disappeared in a puff of glowing ash. Heat shimmered around the edge of the stick, then cooled with a faint crackling sigh.

  “Cool!” He swung the blade a few times in quick succession, completing a few strike triangle patterns. Each stroke made the stick flare a little more, and the movement through the air seemed to stoke its internal flame. “Send me another!”

  This block, when it was struck, didn't melt into ash; it instead exploded, and heat radiated outward from the point of contact. Remi’s skin stung a bit from the ambient heat, similar to when his hand got too close to the stove’s element.

  Before Remi could try a third time, Amihan stepped in front of him. “Playtime is over, Guro. You can play with fire, like my son in the backyard, when you have more time. For now, our next module is about footwork. You can put those away.” Her nod told him she was referring to his Kali sticks.

  Reluctantly, Remi fused them together with a click, walked over and leaned it against the wall beside Nel’s panel. Normally, he would dismiss it; he had even started to, but thought better of it. He remembered the warning about opening dimensions inside other ones. He wasn’t sure if anything bad would happen if he dropped his blade through a rip in space, but didn’t see the need to test it out.

  He returned to the space before Amihan, in the room’s center, where she waited for him.

  “You’ve mastered how to move your sticks; now it’s time to master moving your feet and body. Kali is about breath, and it's also about flow. You need to shift, like water around a rock in a river.” She pointed down at the ground with her Kali stick and drew a triangle. The floor grid illuminated, and a glowing triangle appeared, drawn starting at its tip.

  “Your foot goes inside. Toe to point, heel to base.”

  Remi followed the directions, setting his foot inside the triangle. There was just enough room for it to fit without touching the lines. “What happens if I touch the lines?”

  “This,” Amihan said, and she gave Remi a gentle shove. The line of light was solid—real as a metal cable. He lurched forward, trying to recover, but his foot was snared. The triangle’s edge caught him mid-step. The line held firm. His balance didn’t. Remi crashed to the ground. The triangle flickered and disappeared.

  Remi got up, brushing himself off. What he was brushing off he didn’t know, but the process made him feel better.

  “Now, you understand the rules. Step into the triangle. Don’t fall.”

  Remi nodded in understanding. “Right. Place foot in. Got it. Seems easy enough.” He heard the clicking of keys just as he recognized the ominous look of delight that appeared on Amihan’s face.

  “Nel designed the last game. I offered a suggestion for this one.”

  “Oh?”

  “It’s one of my children’s favorite video games. Have you ever played Dance Dance Revolution?”

  Remi had. Once. It was bad. Really bad. A look of horror must have passed across his face, because Amihan giggled. She actually fucking giggled!

  ?? Even gods need to be held sometimes

  What to Expect:

  - An epic, multi-book space opera with a large found family and multiple POVs.

  - A powerful but emotionally vulnerable protagonist with chaotic powers he struggles to control.

  - Strong, capable, and sometimes morally gray women.

  - High stakes, cosmic threats, and detailed world-building.

  What NOT to Expect:

  - LitRPG/System elements

  - Lone wolf power fantasy

  - A story that is only about romance

  This story contains mature themes, explicit sexual content, and graphic violence. It is not suitable for readers under the age of 18.

  90+ Chapters in the first month

  500,000+ words already written and backlogged