Sokram needed to abandon orthodox tactics to have a chance.

  After parrying the tenth attack, he swiftly summoned five needles from the glove, sending them in random directions with a blast of wind he controlled through Elemental Manipulation.

  Drokmin, seeing the needles surrounding him, wouldn’t wait for an unpredictable attack. He decided to strike them away before continuing to attack Sokram.

  He deflected the needles away to the far corners of the room even before Sokram could teleport.

  “Mithril, hm?” A flicker of surprise colored Drokmin's tone, noticing that his blade failed to cut them and break the spell.

  In the brief instant his focus shifted to the needle, it was all Sokram needed to create distance between them.

  While holding the defensive stance of Swift Wind - Leaf on the Wind to help him dodge any incoming attacks if necessary, he used Swift Wind - One Step.

  “Tired already?” Drokmin said in a mocking tone, but Sokram wasn’t merely tired.

  The surge of adrenaline faded considerably, leaving behind a throbbing pain in his ribs and left arm that sharpened into a stabbing agony with every breath.

  The wounds that had been steadily recovering before their clash were reopening now that he wasn’t focusing his energy on healing himself.

  “You should have healed yourself fully before walking through those doors. Being reckless can be your undoing, Sokram.” Drokmin lowered his sword for a moment, once again trying to decide something.

  Then he nodded, “Alright, here’s what I’m going to do: I’ll spare you three times. This is the time you have to show me everything you've got. By the third time I spare your life, this test will end one way or another.”

  Sokram took a deep breath, restabilizing his heart rate while ignoring the growing pain, and nodded, agreeing.

  “Come, my descendant, show me how powerful my bloodline has become!” In that moment, Drokmin assumed a stance that Sokram knew very well, the absolute defense of the Black Lotus War Art, Black Lotus – Blooming Flower.

  “Tsk! Alright, ancestor! Here I come!” Sokram partially sheathed his katana, preparing for a quick draw.

  Chaos Energy swirled around him, but only for an instant.

  ‘Killing Blade Art – Original Style- Natura’s Dance.’

  Sokram decided to use one of his new trump cards, a move he reinvented after enduring the hellish training from Kamus.

  One that allowed him to use the three energies along with Chaos Energy in perfect synergy.

  Drokmin was impressed.

  The air in the chamber grew heavy and static.

  Dust grains lifted and spiraled in unnatural patterns, drawn toward Sokram’s sheath as if inhaling before a scream.

  He could sense Magi stirring the wind to empower the fire around the sword inside the sheath.

  "Zzzzt!"

  Arcs of blue lightning danced across the stone floor, scorching black marks into the rock as they coiled around Sokram's boots, hungry for release.

  Lightning crackled beneath Sokram’s feet and coursed through his body.

  Drokmin also sensed the energy of the stony ground empowering Sokram's muscles through Aura and Vitha, and the weight of gravity over his puppet increasing at every step Sokram took toward him.

  But just as Sokram was two meters away from him, the lightning under his feet turned dark.

  The lightning covered his body and split into ten, like an erratic snake, circling Drokmin, signaling the multidirectional attack incoming.

  Drokmin stepped back quickly, adjusting his stance, and as soon as Sokram unsheathed his sword, thunder roared.

  Sokram blurred into a legion of one.

  Speed shattered reality, and he appeared in ten places simultaneously, ten blades descending on the puppet from different deadly angles.

  But even before Sokram’s sword reached Drokmin, Drokmin’s figure was also divided into ten directions, meeting each one of Sokram’s attacks.

  “PENG!”

  The sound of metal colliding echoed through the chamber. A single deafening impact disguised the truth of the ten simultaneous strikes.

  Sokram was pushed back more than ten meters, while Drokmin remained rooted in place.

  “Amazing move,” Drokmin praised. He raised his Chokuto, only for the metal to shatter like glass. Piece after piece hit the floor as they watched, as if in slow motion, the ping of metal against the stony floor echoed through the chamber.

  Drokmin looked at the shattered Chokuto, shook his head, saddened by the loss of a good sword.

  But the pride in his tone after witnessing Sokram's move was unmistakable.

  “Coating your blade in fire, using wind to empower its flames, and increasing the sharpness of your strikes. While also charging your body with lightning to increase your movement speed.”

  He nodded and threw the shattered blade away, and continued, “At the same time, you harnessed the elemental mana accumulated in the stone floor because of my arrays, increasing the gravity to slow me down and increase the weight of your attacks, and lastly using water to cool down your blade so it wouldn’t shatter as mine did.”

  Drokmin praised Sokram with genuine astonishment, “Hahaha, I don’t think I ever fought someone as ingenious as you, Sokram, my descendant! I’m proud you inherited my name, truly am!” He couldn’t contain his admiration for the young dragon in front of him.

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  But then Drokmin summoned a new sword, a sheathed katana.

  It was like a weapon forged from the night itself. The obsidian-black sheath, its polished wood highly reflective, shone in the dim light.

  The gold guard and pommel gleamed with a cold, ancient luster even through the handle's wrapped cord of dark grey steel silk.

  But Sokram didn’t need to see its blade to know it was as dark as its sheath, forged from a rare alloy of Mithril, Adamantium, and Ebanium that only an Arcane Smith could succeed in fusing.

  The blade bore the name of the empire it had defended for centuries...

  “Draggonia…” Sokram muttered, but it didn’t escape Drokmin’s attention.

  “Hah, I guess you know of her, too, hm? Yes, this is the sword of my empire, Draggonia. My favorite sword.” Drokmin spoke with pride.

  But in his thoughts, Sokram cursed, full of jealousy, ‘She’s mine!’

  Yet he didn’t have time to be possessive as Drokmin stepped forward, and even if the puppet before him retained the same expression, Sokram could sense Drokmin's resolute gaze.

  “Your technique was incredible, but allow me to show you one last move; maybe it will enlighten your path if you have the eyes to see it.” Drokmin’s words froze Sokram’s heart.

  It was over, watching the stance Drokmin’s puppet assumed, he knew he had lost.

  ‘Black Lotus – A Hundred Flying Petals’

  Drokmin became two, then ten, then fifty, and then a hundred surrounding Sokram from all directions.

  No matter how Sokram saw it, they weren’t clones. They weren’t afterimages either.

  The room dissolved into a sea of Drokmin puppets. Everywhere Sokram looked, he saw the wooden face, the dark blade, the stances.

  The air rippled with the displacement of a hundred bodies occupying the same space, moving asynchronously and independently from each other.

  Drokmin was literally in a hundred places at once.

  “Can you see it, Sokram? This is where this War Art of mine surpasses the limit that the spacetime imposes on us. Watch tentatively, my heir!”

  In the next second, before Sokram could even think of reacting, ninety-six light hits slipped through every opening in his defense.

  Each strike was nearly weightless on its own, yet together they overwhelmed him.

  His body convulsed as if electrified, every impact sending shocks through his muscles, locking him in place, and tearing apart what remained of his defenses.

  The displaced air from the light-speed attacks imploded into a final, violent blast.

  “Shatter!”

  Sokram was sent flying across the chamber as his Magi Dark Glass sword shattered into countless tiny pieces.

  Sokram’s body slammed into the wall. Before he could slide to the floor, he teleported away.

  As he was about to move, one of the four remaining pseudo-clones of Drokmin disappeared from where he stood.

  When Sokram teleported, Drokmin had predicted where Sokram would appear.

  A shift in space no one else could sense had already been predicted.

  Drokmin didn't strike. He merely stood there, his tone carrying a terrifying calm. “One.”

  Sokram teleported again, thinking it could be a coincidence, but another Drokmin was there when he appeared, “Two.”

  Instead of teleporting, Sokram summoned a spare katana while facing the two remaining Drokmins.

  Assuming a drawing stance, Sokram swung his blade multiple times in a second.

  ‘Killing Blade Art – Original Style: Swift Wind: Annihilation Blades of Destruction!’

  Multiple blades of wind shot toward Drokmin, but with a simple swing of Draggonia still sheathed, they all broke apart.

  In the next instant, that same Drokmin appeared by Sokram’s side, “Three.”

  It was suffocating.

  No matter where Sokram aimed his intent, Drokmin’s presence was already there waiting for him.

  An inevitable shadow that smothered every escape.

  Sokram’s spare katana followed, shattering like glass.

  Sokram teleported away in despair as he felt death looming over him.

  Drokmin, already waiting for that, appeared before Sokram, swinging his sword down, aiming for his head.

  Defenseless, Sokram couldn’t do anything but watch death reach for him.

  The wind from the blade parted Sokram’s hair, cooling the sweat on his forehead.

  Draggonia's blade hovered over his skull motionless, a few centimeters from splitting Sokram’s head in half.

  “Huff… Huff…”

  Sokram's breath was ragged. A bead of cold sweat ran down his temple.

  He was unharmed, but his pride was deeply wounded knowing he had been defeated.

  Even if it was under the rules he set for himself, Drokmin was also holding back.

  In a match at full power, Sokram didn’t know who would win.

  ‘I truly did lose this time, hm?’

  Sokram remembered that without the foundation he built with the many inheritances and treasures he found in his journey, and the sacrifices his loved ones made for him, this would have been his fate.

  Dying at the hands of a greater foe.

  Sokram sank to his knees, admitting, “I lost.”

  But Drokmin surprised him, “Yes, you did. But you passed my trial once you showed me those two techniques. As for this? It was only to remind you that in the Path of Evolution, there will always be a higher sky to reach, Sky-Reacher, my heir.”

  “Your mother or whoever named you has a cool naming sense, haha.” The puppet knelt and raised the sheathed Draggonia toward Sokram.

  Sokram felt his hand aching to snatch her from him.

  Before Sokram even raised his hands to accept it, Drokmin spoke, “You earned the right to receive my inheritance, but I can’t give it to you freely. Make an Oath to me, I know you don’t wish to rule, and I won’t ask this of you. But promise me at least that you will protect this land that I love for as long as you can.”

  The puppet remained kneeling, but Drokmin's astral projection stood up, leaving the puppet, “So?”

  Sokram summoned a dagger and cut his hand.

  The dagger bit deep.

  Warm blood welled in his palm, dripping onto the ancient stone with a heavy splat that echoed in the silent chamber, sealing the words of his Oath.

  “I, Sokram di Dracony vid Dracnakrid, your heir, promise you, by my Heart, Blood, and Power, that I’ll fight to unite the north, this land we both love, once more under the rule of a righteous and fair ruler…”

  Sokram then reached for Draggonia and continued, “… and that the sword I now accept will once more serve as its protector until the day I ascend, but its name will not name the new empire. Instead, it will be the name of my clan, or may Nhiria herself smack me down into a puddle of blood.”

  Drokmin nodded, smiling proudly, “Hah, such an ambitious Oath! I wouldn't expect anything else from my heir, now come, using this much energy depleted the power I held in this soul-fragment, follow me, my time is ending.”

  Drokmin led them toward the throne and pointed at it, “Sit, and place both gloves on the arms of the throne. It was a good decision to wear both, as this will spare us time.”

  Sokram followed Drokmin’s instructions, but couldn’t help thinking how different it was from his previous timeline when Drokmin had just opened a portal that led Sokram to a kind of vault.

  But this time, as soon as Sokram placed a hand on each arm of the throne, a spell activated.

  The ambient energy thickened until it became visible, shining so bright that it forced Sokram to close his eyes.

  The chamber began dematerializing while the two gloves were filled with countless spatial rings, pouches, and bracelets, and the world spun around him like a hurricane of Chaos.

  By the time the light dimmed again and Sokram opened his eyes, he found himself in a completely different place, an empty, spacious cave gallery, with no ornamented walls, floors, or pillars.

  The only thing that remained was the throne he sat on.

  For a moment, nothing moved.

  Behind it stood a skeleton, its bones chromatic as polished mithril.

  "Ancestor?" Sokram asked, his voice sounding smaller in the empty gallery. He looked around, but Drokmin was nowhere to be found.

  Then his gaze settled on the scroll clutched in the skeleton’s hand.

  Sokram carefully removed it and opened it.

  There was a simple message written on it:

  “To my heir, Sokram, I apologize for the lack of a proper farewell. I, too, wished to talk more, but I believe we reached mutual understanding speaking through our blades.

  Still, I must ask you one last favor, so forgive me for being selfish. Please bury my body alongside your fallen elders, as my last wish is to be buried with my kin.”

  As the scroll dissolved into dusty mana particles, Sokram answered firmly, “Yes, Ancestor Drokmin. It will be our honor to have you counted among the heroes of our family.”

  And for the first time since his visit to his family's burial grounds, Sokram bowed his head and heart, reverently toward someone, “Thank you for your teachings.”

  Sokram extended his senses into the glove to look for an empty ring but was surprised to sense how many new rings were inside the Void Gloves.

  But holding back his curiosity, he picked one of his own rings, cleared it, and transferred the items inside it to another ring.

  He placed Drokmin’s bones inside it alongside the throne.

  Sokram looked around the gallery again, thinking to himself…

  ‘To think it was all Mana Materialization, but it shouldn’t be possible unless he were already an Ascendant… But what would an Ascendant be doing here? Why would he stay behind instead of going back?’