The Harlven’s charge was fulmineous. Rocks broke under its weight, sending bursts of dirt and pebbles into the air. Each step it took rippled through the ground, heavy enough to shake the bones in Raime’s legs.

  He exhaled once, calm and focused, the faint hum of psionic energy coiling within him like a second pulse. His perception stretched outward — his awareness unfurling across the glade, brushing the air, the leaves, the trembling surface of the small pond behind the beast. The world didn’t feel still anymore, everything was moving, vibrating with layered intent.

  He dodged the first charge, Because he moved before the harlven did.

  A flick of thought sent a jolt of energy through the correct sequence of muscles — ileopsoas, quad, lower oblique for torsion, soleus — and his body blurred to the side, fast enough that the creature’s frontal rush met only air. Its massive claw struck the ground, carving a trench where he’d been standing. A wave of psionic pressure burst from the impact, flattening nearby bushes in a fan.

  Raime’s feet slid, leaving shallow grooves in the soil. He didn’t want to use energy to stop his momentum just yet, first he needed to get a feel for the beast. He could feel his energy expenditure, each spark of it, precisely quantified in his mind — no waste, no overextension. His training with Neimar was paying off.

  Contol over raw power, Neimar had said. A blade cuts better the thinner it is, and the more skillful is the wielder.

  The harlven reared, a guttural roar bursting from its torso. It wasn’t just sound — it was vibration, a shockwave of raw intent that rattled Raime’s psyche. Its mind was primitive but vast, burning with an animal fury that shook him for a moment.

  Raime refocused his breathing and pushed back, a ripple of psionic force expanding to encompass him like a shield. Dust lifted, pebbles floated briefly before falling again. The mental noise diminished, leaving him standing in relative quiet.

  Focus. Don’t react — act. I can’t afford to be passive here.

  Raime moved, and the beast lunged again, faster this time. Its four legs dug into the ground like pistons, its sinews glowing faintly under mottled, steel-like hide.

  Raime recalibrated his trajectory. His psionic threads entwined — they followed a precise formation around his hand — his right arm shot upward from behind him, a blade of condensed force appeared barely visible as a distortion in the air. It whistled toward the beast, an open hand thrust toward the nearest leg joint.

  The harlven’s forelimb met the strike. Somehow it managed to lift the limb and strike back despite being in a less than optimal position. Force clashed against hardened skin, and sparks went flying. The strike rebounded through the bones of his arm.

  Damn, too shallow. How can skin be that hard? I can cut metal like butter with this technique.

  He flicked his fingers and repositioned himself, opting for a follow up instead of retreating. He kicked it this time, applying another blade at the sole of his feet, aiming again at the joint of the creature’s other leg.

  The beast twisted its leg unnaturally, catching the strike between two bone ridges, and with a convulsive movement threw it aside. Unfortunately the damage was superficial, not even enough to make the beast bleed.

  Raime’s eyes narrowed. “Alright, then.”

  He dashed forward. The earth cracked under his reinforced steps, his body light but charged, moving with a rhythm that felt both instinctive and calculated. The harlven met him head-on, one claw sweeping in an diagonal arc that could have split a car in half.

  Raime dropped low, sliding beneath the limb. The edge of the claw grazed his back, slicing through the fabric of his reinforced training robe as if it wasn’t there. He felt a cold line passing through his skin, then blood bloomed, but the pain only sharpened his focus.

  His right palm met the ground, while his left was directed upwards, perpendicularly and perfectly aligned — and energy burst outward. A Psionic Pulse, one of his newly refined techniques, compressed into a thin disc that expanded under the Harlven’s chest, while the hand touching the ground absorbed the recoil. The explosion lifted several tons of beast into the air. Briefly.

  The sound was like thunder. Soil erupted, and shards of stone rained down.

  Raime didn’t wait to admire the result. He reached out with his mind, pulling himself standing, in the moment of respite he had, he started to weave his Threads into a more powerful technique than the one he used before. The beast landed standing, unharmed. The only difference was that it was angry now. Its body was emanating a faint psychic haze that distorted the air around it. The creature was tier three for a reason; it wasn’t just strong, it was aware. Its psychic energy flared with the chaotic brightness of an unstable sun.

  Raime felt its mind brush against its — a rough, scraping contact. The creature wasn’t intelligent in a human sense, but it understood defiance. Its thoughts were crude and primal: Challenge. Intruder. Prey that fights back.

  The connection lasted a heartbeat before Raime severed it while reinforcing his psychic barrier. There was no controlling this beast, or even stopping it with the power of his mind alone, it was too damn powerful. He felt a rush of adrenaline, of energy crackling behind his eyes.

  Alright, then. Let’s see who breaks first.

  He moved again — and this time he didn’t hold back.

  His soul sense focused on the beast again, now that it was enraged raime could feel it even better than before, its aura was expanding beyond the bound of its body, broadcasting its intention to whomever was capable of reading it. The harlven rushed forward again, but Raime was already moving, weaving between its limbs like a torrent around a stone. Each motion was guided by his intuition, every dodge timed by an invisible rhythm that came from his understanding of his enemy.

  A claw came from above — he leapt sideways, barely a whisper of distance. Another swept low — he jumped on it, twisting mid-air. He landed on a broken pillar, crouching to absorb his momentum.

  He launched from his perch again, using a quick pulse to redirect mid-air while pushing his hand forward, the energy coating it spun into motion, faster and faster, vibrating at high frequency. Then he stepped on the air, a small telekinetic panel appeared under his feet, and he used it to veer downwards and to the right.

  He struck the harlven’s flank, cutting deep this time — a cleanly slicing the skin, but got stopped by the bone plates protecting its innards. The beast roared, turning sideways and swiping the air by reflex. Viscous blood sprayed across the ruins, sizzling wherever it touched, be it stone or grass.

  Raime yanked his hand back; flicking the caustic liquid away. He repositioned, and changed his stance as the creature lunged again.

  He’s learning how I move, Raime thought, teeth clenched. Good.

  He wanted it to adapt. He wanted the challenge.

  The next exchange was brutal. The harlven came in low, faster than before, its movements erratic. Raime parried one claw with a barrier that formed on his forearm and used the momentum to roll beneath another. Then slammed a psionically charged fist into its leg joint. The impact was thinner than a coin, all the energy was concentrated in a thin spike of force that punctured the ball-like joint, fracturing it.

  The creature howled, spinning in a frenzy. One of its other limbs caught Raime mid-motion. He blocked with his forearm, energy reinforced, but the sheer force sent him flying backward. He hit a tree trunk and gasped as air left his lungs.

  The world blurred for a second.

  He stood, slow but steady, pain radiating through his arm and ribs. So this is a tier three beast’s for you.

  He grinned. “It’s not enough to take me down, you know?.”

  Energy surged through him again — but not recklessly. Each thread was guided carefully. The psionic threads in his mind hummed, resonating with the rhythm of his breathing. He extended his hand, palm forward, and the technique he was preparing was finally ready. Pure energy extended out like a luminous wire.

  The harlven hesitated, sensing danger.

  Raime struck — not physically, but mentally. The thread coiled and lashed, striking into the creature’s mind. The contact was jarring, like pressing against a storm. He didn’t try to dominate it; he focused instead on disruption.

  The beast faltered, its movements slowing for an instant.

  But that instant was all he needed.

  He dashed forward, closing the distance, then leapt. His other hand gleamed with condensed energy, forming a shimmering, vibrating edge. He swung upward — once, twice, three times. Each strike aimed at the same spot, intersecting at a single point and amplified by his telekinesis, cutting deep furrows across the creature’s side.

  Blood sprayed, and the ground steamed where it landed.

  Stolen story; please report.

  The harlven bellowed, releasing a psychic shockwave in retaliation. Raime was thrown backward again, this time maintaining his balance. But his mind reeled; his vision fractured into light and static.

  For a heartbeat, he was somewhere else — a memory, a reflection of Neimar’s voice echoing in the recesses of his mind.

  “Control is not suppression. It’s the art of harmony. Let your power flow as naturally as you breathe.”

  He inhaled slowly. The noise faded. The pain dulled. The energy within him settled into balance again.

  He opened his eyes.

  The beast was circling him now, slower, its confidence dimmed but its fury unbroken. The ground around them was a ruin of crushed stone and torn grass.

  Raime flexed his fingers. “Round two.”

  They clashed again.

  Each motion blurred into the next — claws against energy, shockwaves against psychic barriers. The air distorted with every impact, waves of energy collided and then deflected on the surrounding, sounding like the detonations of invisibles explosions.

  Raime ducked beneath a claw and thrust his palm against the harlven’s chest. He poured energy into it, raw psionic compression that detonated point-blank.

  The explosion hurled both of them apart. Raime hit the ground, rolled, came up in a crouch. The harlven stumbled, smoke rising from its cracked skin.

  It roared again — but now there was something else in that sound. Fear.

  Raime caught it instantly through his soul sense — the hesitation, the flicker of doubt. And beneath that, something strange. The creature’s aura was changing, twisting.

  He frowned. It’s adapting. No… it’s mutating?

  The air grew heavier. The psychic pressure around them began to condense, forming visible ripples that warped the light. The harlven’s blood, still steaming on the ground, shimmered with faint luminescence.

  Raime’s instincts screamed. He stepped back, raising his guard.

  The beast’s body started to convulse. Its skin cracked, leaking radiant fluid. The glow intensified — not warm but cold, like light stripped of heat.

  “Neimar,” Raime whispered. “What the hell—”

  —An aberrant ability, Neimar’s voice echoed faintly in his mind, distant. Its core is destabilizing— it’s experiencing a deviation. It tried to forcibly advance during the fight and lost control of its energy. Do not let it complete the process if you want a chance at defeating it, it will gain a substantial increase in power, even if his advancement will probably be halted forever after this.

  Raime didn’t need further explanation. He moved instantly, pushing off the ground with a burst of energy. His Threads twisting into a peculiar configuration, ready to deploy a new technique.

  The harlven screamed — a psychic scream this time, so sharp that it made the air tremble. The vibration rippled through Raime’s skull, almost breaking his concentration. He gritted his teeth while blood started flowing down his nose, and poured everything into reinforcing his mental barrier.

  Then he lunged.

  He hastily constructed another blade and sliced the creature — arcs of silver against the storm of light. Each strike landed true, but the creature’s body was already changing, the wounds closing almost as fast as he made them. The glow spread across its limbs like veins of crystal.

  Raime backed off, heart hammering. The pressure was suffocating now. Every instinct screamed that if it completed whatever metamorphosis was happening, the fight would be over.

  He had seconds.

  He raised both hands. His psionic threads flared brighter still inside him, overclocked to a dangerous level. The air crackled, and dust lifted around the beast body seemingly in slow motion to Raime senses. He finished shaping the Threads into a single construct — using the principle of resonance he learned for his core formation he made the Threads behave like channels. He let go of any other thoughts, stopped scanning his surroundings, and focused deeply on the attack.

  On the Skill.

  He’d practiced it only once before, and nearly passed out afterward.

  The harlven bent in strange ways, its form twisting while its aura was peaking, blazing like a bonfire.

  Raime exhaled, focused all the energy he had into the point between his hands — a shimmering mesh of translucent Threads formed a peculiar formation, twisting the air into fractals.

  As soon as the beast showed his underside maw during one of its erratic movement, Raime angled his aim higher and released.

  “Kinetic lance.”

  A long and spiralling projectile formed between his hands for an instant before getting launched forward at a speed he couldn’t possibly follow with his naked eyes, straight into the harlven mouth.

  The impact shook the entire garden. Trees bent away from the shockwave, Part of the canopy got shredded by the residual energies. Dust billowed in a spiral, and the echo of psionic discharge rolled across the landscape like thunder.

  When the light faded, Raime was on his knees, blood flowing from every orifice on his face, body trembling from exertion. His vision swam, and his breath came in ragged bursts.

  In front of him, the harlven was still standing. On three legs.

  It managed to use one of its thick leg to defend itself, losing it in the process. Along with half of its torso — blasted to pieces by the lance — but now the remaining part glowed fiercely, regenerating even faster.

  Raime cursed under his breath, forcing his shaking body to stand.

  “Alright,” he whispered, blood dripping from his lip. “Round three.”

  The beast tried to roar, but only a wet gurgle escaped it’s mangled body, it was incredible the resilience it was showing.

  Nonetheless, a ripple of psionic force surged outward, bending the light around the beast as if gravity itself bowed to its rage. The air grew heavy — thick enough to taste, charged with the metallic tang of energy and blood.

  Raime felt it press against him, a suffocating weight trying to crush his soul. His lungs burned, his muscles trembled, and still he refused to yield.

  I can’t give it time to recuperate.

  He forced his perception wider. The world dissolved into lines of movement, threads of pressure, pulses of energy. Every flicker of the harlven’s aura mapped itself inside his mind. He could feel where it would strike before it even thought to move.

  The creature lunged, clumsily, its wounded half slowing it.

  Raime dove through the assault, each motion deliberate, the few scraps of energy he managed to recuperate were used with the outmost efficiency he was capable to — reinforcing muscles, bones and tendons in perfect harmony. A claw brushed past his cheek, a leg swipe slammed into his forearm, sending pain screaming up his arm as the impact cracked his bones.

  He didn’t stop it. He couldn’t.

  He spun low, using the rebound to slide beneath the beast, then jumped. His hand thrust forward like lightning, plunging deep into the already half-shattered flank of the creature.

  Another blast of psionic energy followed, erupting from the beast. The harlven shrieked, its body arching violently as cracks of psychic discharge spread all around.

  Raime managed to stay on the creature, being this close to it felt like his body was being microwaved by the energy emitted, his organs seemed on fire, blood was dripping from his eyes. But he didn’t let go.

  He felt it, he saw it. A network of luminous veins were running all across the harlven, and all converged at the center of its being, at its core. Raime hand was closed around that exact point, but the core wasn’t physical, he couldn’t just pluck it from the beast like a berry from a bush. So he coved his aura, compressed it, but not fully like he did before, he moved the most he could toward his hand and mixed it with the slivers of psychic energy he could muster, grounding down the defences of the core walls.

  The beast went mad, it started to trash its body around to dislodge Raime from its insides, it slammed against trees and boulders but Raime held fast, bearing the pain and the hits while doing his best to end the fight. The harlven finally smashed into the ground and twisted its body to use its pillars-like legs to hit him directly. Its joint bent in the opposite direction and slammed against Raime. The hit was so powerful that it took the air from his lungs and cracked some ribs.

  But Raime couldn’t feel the pain, he blocked all sensation to focus entirely on the mesmerizing fusion happening in the palm of his hand. His soul and will merged in a kaleidoscope of colours giving him a glimpse of the power he will get to bear if he managed to create a noetic core. The energy, while being just a sliver, was incredibly potent, and entirely in his control, with a thought he command it to coalesce in a single drop, and pierce the core of the beast.

  The sound that followed was like glass breaking under pressure.

  The harlven’s body froze, a wave of psionic feedback rolling out as the creature’s consciousness snapped. It convulsed so hard that it managed to threw Raime off itself.

  Raime landed hard, rolling to a stop a few meters away. He lay there for a moment, chest heaving, eyes fixed where the creature was. The harlven was still convulsing, starting to shine like a star, all its channels were burning with energy, and its core was spewing out an enormous amount of it. After what seemed like an hour, but was probably just five seconds, the beast lay still, body burnt from the inside out, part of the garden was charred by the energy emission, and a fire started spreading.

  He pushed himself up slowly, vision swimming. The harlven’s corpse was immense even in death, its luminescent channels still visible and smouldering. The once-overpowering psychic presence that had filled the garden was fading, dissolving into the air like fog after dawn.

  A faint sound announced a System notification, but for now Raime had something else to do. He approached slowly the fallen beast and put a shaking hand on the body. “You were a worthy foe,” he murmured to the fallen beast, the words came instinctively. “I won’t forget you.”

  He stood again, swaying. His body ached from head to toe — shoulders torn, right arm nearly useless, blood trickling down his pants from a gash that stretched across his whole back, multiple ribs broken, torn muscles, bruises and internal haemorrhage. The list of injuries just went on and on, a normal human would have been dead many times over. But the worst of the pain came directly from his mind, and his soul. He overtaxed his Threads to the point they were nearly useless for now, he will have to actively repair them, but his soul was the biggest of the problem he was facing right now, it felt spent, it felt like something was missing after the attack that destroyed the core of the harlven.

  But he couldn’t do anything about it right now. The rush of combat was fading, leaving behind exhaustion and an enormous amount of pain he was no longer capable of suppressing.

  The garden around him was unrecognizable — the ground torn apart, trees uprooted, water from a shattered pond pooling in the crater left by their clash. The scent of blood and ozone clung to the air, thick and metallic.

  Raime just layed on the ground, tilted his head back, staring up at the lavender sky of the Rift. Faint motes of violet light drifted across it like stars, silent witnesses to his struggle.

  A low hum stirred in his mind — Neimar’s presence, faint but approving.

  That was reckless, Raime.

  Raime smiled faintly. Yea, I almost died.

  That is the way of all the battles that shape us, Neimar replied. You have earned the right to call this victory yours. The energy you spent will return, and the pain will fade. But remember that sometime to win a battle some sacrifices are simply too great to pay, retreat is always an option to take in consideration.

  Raime nodded silently, “I knew you would have saved me if I was in any mortal danger, but in other circumstances I will consider retreating, I don’t have a death wish.”

  You misunderstand disciple, I was referring to the harlven. It developed a cultivation deviation in trying to overcome you, if it had been smarter it could have just fled, it was faster than you. Take it as a lesson and learn, remember that a smart man learn from his mistakes, but a wise one learn from the mistakes of others.

  Raime took one last look at the fallen harlven — a reminder of both his progress and his limits — then turned toward the palace in the distance.

  Each step back was slower than the last. His injuries protested with every movement, but he refused to stop. The pain was grounding, almost cleansing, and his body will heal given time.

  By the time he reached the garden’s edge, twilight was bleeding through the Rift’s horizon, painting the ruins in shades of violet and silver. He paused once to glance back.

  For a fleeting moment, he felt something stir in his chest — pride, anticipation.

  He knew the beast was a newly ascended Tier III, the lowest of the low. If this was only a fragment of what tier three beast could do… what awaited him beyond the Rift? Beyond Earth and the initialization?

  He smiled faintly, tired and spent, but resolute.

  One step at a time.

  Then he kept walking, the sound of his footsteps fading into the stillness — until only the quiet hum of the Rift remained.