Chapter 105: Homework from a Demi-God

The stick passed right through Valerian’s body, ignoring any kind of resistance he managed to muster up.

But strangely, the branch never broke skin or even ruffled his uniform; it just slipped through his body like a phantom.

Yet, when the branch left his body on the other side, he could feel that something had changed. He was feeling... happier? And even more motivated.

He touched the area where the branch should have touched his skin and felt that everything was normal, leaving him confused.

"What happened?"

Ravena stepped in front of him and picked up the blade that was cut in half. Without a care in the world, she just tossed the blade to the side as it was lit aflame, destroying it instantly.

"I severed your laziness and attitude. But I didn’t fully cut them; everything should return back to normal in a few hours."

"But until then, you will train harder than you have ever trained before."

Strangely, Valerian didn’t feel upset that she literally cut through his emotions, and he felt incredibly motivated to train.

"Where do we start!"

Ravena looked at the fully motivated and pumped-up Valerian with disinterested eyes.

"You will start by swinging this sword until I say stop."

A second katana appeared in her hands; it looked exactly like the one from before. And as she threw it to Valerian, he also found out that it was just as heavy, too.

But the weight of the sword and the instruction to swing it until she told him to stop didn’t even put a dent in his motivation. After standing up when the heavy sword took him down again, he went right to it and swung it.

Since the sword was so incredibly heavy, he only barely managed to raise it to his chest, let alone over his head. But Ravena didn’t say anything and just watched as Valerian went to it and swung the sword.

She took a simple chair from her spatial ring, sat down, and watched as Valerian swung the heavy sword with a cigarette in her mouth.

The first few dozen swings were the most difficult, as the sword dragged his arms down with every swing, and he had to pay extra attention that the blade didn’t hit the ground or else Ravena would punch him in the face, something that happened more often than Valerian liked.

But thanks to his physique, physical exhaustion wasn’t really a thing, so he didn’t need to take a break because his muscles were burning or he was losing strength in his arms.

When Ravena saw the [Infinite Cosmos Physique] in action, she became more than interested in it. When she asked Valerian about it, he was more than happy to tell her everything she wanted to know after she severed his caution.

With the knowledge of the physique, Ravena planned to only increase the training she intended to give Valerian, as the breaks she had planned to let his muscles rest were pretty much useless.

By the one-thousandth swing, a slight amount of unwillingness to continue began to build up inside Valerian, but his motivation was more than enough to keep him swinging.

Before Valerian even knew it, over five hours passed, and his motivation began to plummet hard.

By that point, he had already swung the heavy blade over four thousand times, and it had become more like a repetitive motion than actually thinking about swinging the sword.

"That’s it for now."

Ravena clapped her hands and took Valerian out of the hypnotic state of swinging the sword.

"I’m done?"

"Yes."

A huge sigh of relief escaped his body as he gently lowered the sword to the ground, so as not to gain the anger of the Demi-God standing next to him.

"For the next few weeks, this will be your training schedule. When the first classes start, I will come and get you, then you will train here for a few hours."

"You won’t be attending the normal classes like everyone else. I will personally train you, and the elf told me you had no interest in any of the classes anyway."

The thought of spending his entire time here in this blank white space with the woman in front of him and missing the classes, well, most of them he really didn’t have much use for anyway, still annoyed him slightly.

But what could you do? There was nothing he would be able to do if Ravena decided to kidnap him into this white space, and at least this would make him stronger.

"Fine, so can I leave now?"

Wanting to go and rest was something Valerian desperately wanted. Just because his body didn’t technically get tired didn’t mean that his mind wouldn’t be affected by swinging the heavy sword for hours on end.

"Before you leave, I will give you a task you will need to complete over the time I will be training you."

’Is she seriously giving me homework right now?’

The thought of getting homework from the [Goddess of Severance] was something that definitely wasn’t on his checklist for the academy. But Ravena ignored the weird look Valerian was giving her.

"I want you to forge that formless piece of goop into an actual sword."

"Not some jack-of-all-trades kind of bullshit. An actual sword that is worthy of being swung."

"I don’t care about the form or the design. I want you to ask yourself: ’What kind of sword is mine?’ That is the thing you will do over the next weeks."

Without wasting more time, Ravena moved her arm in a vertical line, and a thin cut in space appeared and was pulled open into a rift.

Before Valerian could process anything, she threw his body into the rift.

By the time Valerian could process his surroundings, he noticed that he was standing in front of the Year 1 dorm building.

He looked up and saw the night sky above him, with thousands of little stars twinkling in the sky.

’Forge my own sword...’

The sudden teleportation through the rift didn’t even startle him, as he had already experienced it once and knew that Ravena wouldn’t just throw him into an active volcano.

’Wait, maybe she would...’

Shaking his head, he began to walk toward the dorm building and turned his thoughts back to the task she had given him. He knew what she meant by forging the sword; she didn’t expect him to step into a smithy and mold Twilight into the shape of the sword he wanted.

He had to turn the mass that was Twilight, which was still in his body, into something that truly belonged to him. Not something that could be anything if he changed his mind later, it had to be a shape that truly resonated with his whole being.

It would take time and a lot of self-reflection to find out what kind of sword he wanted and what fit him. But it was something that needed to be done; he couldn’t always run around with Twilight just existing within him.

While Valerian was walking toward the dorm building, lost in thought, he picked up a mana signature that felt awfully familiar standing before the dorm building.

He looked up and saw Seraphine sitting on a bench under a streetlight in front of the building.

Maybe she also felt his mana signature, or maybe the gaze that was on her, but she moved her eyes in his direction, and their eyes met from the distance.

’What is she doing here?’

Valerian walked up to her and, with an exhausted exhale, sat down beside her.

Neither said anything for a moment, as both just enjoyed the cool night air and the beautiful view of the perfect night sky that was visible from everywhere inside the academy. Something that Sylas created himself so that everyone could marvel at the beauty of space.

"You seem exhausted."

Seraphine broke the silence first without looking at Valerian, who stayed silent for a moment before answering. ℴℴ𝘮

"It was a long day. You must have been surprised when I disappeared."

She turned her crimson-magenta eyes to the side and looked at Valerian’s side profile for a moment before turning back to the sky.

"I was worried. You just vanished. And there wasn’t even space mana in the air, so you didn’t teleport."

Her mana sense was something that was far beyond any normal person’s; as both a pureblooded Royal Elf and being [Loved by Mana], she should have been able to pick up the space mana if Valerian teleported, but she didn’t. To her, he had just vanished.

"I was kidnapped by my new teacher. I won’t be able to attend classes anymore, though."

While she was interested in this new teacher who could just kidnap Valerian without her noticing a thing, she didn’t pry and let him have his privacy.

"Valerian."

She suddenly called out his name with a serious undertone, causing him to turn to her and meet her gaze.

"I want to talk privately."

"Can we go to your room?"