[AN: Check chapter 8 comment to see the picture of the Sovereign Spiralblade, if you havent seen it yet]
From the balcony doorway he simply intended to be in his room by controlling the distance of space and warp between the doorway and his room.
And without suspension, he was in his room.
No blur or sensation of crossing distance. One moment the doorway, the next the room, with nothing in between except the decision.
He tried the kitchen. Then back to the doorway. Then to the bathroom and back.
Each displacement was instantaneous and completely effortless, the space between locations folding around his intent without resistance. No energy cost he could meaningfully perceive because he had a perfect control over the space and not letting any form of energy going to waste. No recovery period. Just presence, and then different presence, with nothing between them.
He stood in the doorway again and smiled.
It wasn't a controlled, carefully managed expression. It was the genuine article — the smile of someone who had just discovered something wonderful and had not yet remembered to be measured about it.
"This is very good," he said, to no one in particular, with complete sincerity.
He picked up his food containers and used Space Movement to go directly to his room.
There was still many application of space control he had to master.
He warped to his room door and about to open it when the adjacent door opened and Lyanna emerged in her cat-print pajamas, eyes at approximately thirty percent operational capacity, clearly committed to a bathroom visit and completely unprepared for company.
They looked at each other.
Nova was holding enough takeout containers to comfortably feed five adults. Lyanna's gaze traveled the stack from bottom to top, arrived at his face, and traveled back down to the stack.
"Brother Nova. Why are you awake."
"Training."
"It's four in the morning."
"Hunger doesn't observe a schedule."
She stared at the containers for another three seconds. Then something behind her eyes shifted with the specific clarity of someone who had identified an opportunity and was not going to let it pass on principle.
Fifteen minutes later.
They were both sitting cross-legged on his bed with containers distributed between them, Lyanna eating with the focused commitment of someone who had made a decision and was at peace with it.
"Eat quiet," she said, though her mouth was half full. "Mom will end me if she finds out that I am eating the food you bought for training."
"Then why are you eating my food."
"You have too much. I'm helping. You're welcome."
"I'm genuinely starving. This might not be enough."
Lyanna stopped chewing and looked at him. "You're calling yourself a glutton."
"Accurately, yes."
"That's so weird." She returned to her container without further comment, which was about as much philosophical acceptance as the situation required.
A comfortable while later she tipped backward onto the bed with the satisfied collapse of someone who had reached a ceiling and was content there. "So full. Perfect. I'm finished." She rolled onto her side and watched him continue working through containers with sustained dedication. "Brother Nova, you're eating like something that hasn't seen food in two weeks. Did you secretly awaken a Void Stomach talent and just not tell anyone?"
Her expression brightened suddenly. "Oh! Speaking of which — the ceremony! What did you awaken? Mom said to ask you tomorrow but it is technically tomorrow now so—"
"E-rank," Nova said, without looking up from his current container. "Shadow Reaper profession."
Lyanna sat straight up. Shock moved across her face, followed by genuine sympathy, followed by a theory that apparently explained everything.
"Oh no. That's really rough." She studied him with new understanding. "I get it now. You're converting your grief and frustration into appetite. Classic emotional eating response. I completely understand and I'm not judging you at all."
Nova said nothing and opened another container.
"But listen." Lyanna straightened her spine and lifted her chin with theatrical authority. "As an emerging genius, future S-rank talent holder, and certified powerful woman — I, the Great Demon Queen Lyanna, shall extend my protection to you going forward. You can consider yourself formally under my wing."
[AN: Don't forget Great Demon Queen Lyanna, she will be back in the future.]
"That's very generous."
"It really is." She nodded seriously. "You're very welcome."
She lasted another ten minutes before the paranoia about her mom discovery radius became too much to sit with comfortably. She extracted a formal food-sharing agreement as the price of her silence — specific terms, verbally negotiated, witnessed by no one — and slipped back to her room with the satisfied air of someone who had managed the situation well.
Nova finished everything.
His body registered approximately seventy percent satisfaction and filed the remainder as an ongoing concern. He was starting to understand that the [Martial Cultivation God] profession and the Immortal Titan Foundation together had fundamentally renegotiated his relationship with caloric requirements, and the new terms were not in his favor financially. A normal person ate to live. He was apparently going to need to eat like he was fueling a small industrial process.
The income problem was real and needed a real solution. Very Soon.
He collapsed onto his bed and was unconscious before he finished the thought.
His spirit was very exhausted after the Enlightment.
Morning came in through the east-facing window with the particular quality of early light that preceded the city's upper towers cutting into the sun's angle. Nova stood at the bathroom mirror and conducted his morning assessment with the thoroughness of someone who understood that his body was no longer updating on a predictable schedule. He had no idea how strong he was. In fact he was actively suppressing his strength to move about the house and accidentally not destroy everything in his surroundings.
His eyes had changed overnight. The dark brown he had looked at for seventeen years had shifted to a light golden amber that carried a faint inner glow — subtle, not immediately dramatic, but permanent in the way that some changes announce themselves even when quiet. His hair was slightly longer, dark strands falling across his forehead with a casualness that would probably generate comments at the academy and was already generating mild irritation from him now. His face had refined itself further, the features sharper and more defined than the previous morning, approaching the kind of arrangement that made strangers look twice without being able to explain why.
He was also, he confirmed against the door frame, somewhat taller than yesterday. And leaner, and more precisely constructed, every visible muscle sitting exactly where it needed to be for the kind of functional power his physique was being reorganized around.
He clenched his fist and felt what answered.
The urge to test it properly was significant. He looked at the load-bearing wall to his left and thought about what his current Strength stat would do to it and made a conscious responsible decision and looked away.
Aunt Mira's apartment had done nothing to deserve that.
Breakfast was already on the table when he came downstairs, and both Aunt Mira and Uncle Torven were up and settled in their chairs with the unhurried energy of a morning that had nowhere urgent to be. Nova sat down, served himself, and delivered his prepared account of the previous day's results with the measured calm of someone who had thought through the telling in advance.
E-rank origin talent. Shadow Reaper profession. Plan for the next month: intensive training, the Martial Aptitude Examination, Combat University.
Both adults managed their disappointment with genuine care, their expressions doing the work of people who loved him and understood that talent awakening was not something effort could override. Uncle Torven nodded with quiet approval at the training plan. Aunt Mira noted that Combat University made guild placement after graduation considerably more accessible, her tone carrying the warmth of someone building the most optimistic case available from the materials on hand.
They were picturing a third-tier institution. Respectable, achievable, a reasonable destination for a hardworking student whose talent classification had not cooperated.
Nova ate his breakfast and did not correct the picture.
The Four Supreme Combat Universities of the Valdris Federation were not institutions that found their way into ordinary students' personal ambitions. They were discussed the way continental landmarks were discussed — with appropriate respect for what they represented and no particular expectation of personal relevance.
Divine Martial University. Kunlun Academy. Civilization Institute. Starfall University.
Built a hundred and fifty years ago when humanity's survival had been a genuinely open question, all four existed for a single purpose that had never changed — to produce warriors capable of defending humanity against the Eternal Abyss at the highest possible level. The resources they controlled were not comparable to anything available through conventional channels. Exclusive dungeon access with spawn densities unavailable elsewhere. Legendary and supreme-tier equipment as standard training provisions. Cultivation methods and techniques that the general warrior population would never see, held behind institutional walls that only enrollment could open. Forbidden knowledge accumulated across a hundred and fifty years of humanity's most capable warriors pushing the boundaries of what was understood.
Every Tier 7 and above warrior currently active in Thornhaven City had either graduated from one of these four institutions or had been trained by someone who had. They were not simply academies. They were the mechanism by which humanity produced the people it depended on most.
Their admission requirements reflected that without sentiment.
Top one hundred in the entire province. The Martial Aptitude Examination was the filter — students entered designated dungeon zones, eliminated Abyssal Spawn, accumulated points based on difficulty and volume. No written component, no background consideration, no adjustment for circumstances. Combat capability in hostile territory, measured directly.
Your score determined your future. The Eternal Abyss did not negotiate, and neither did the admissions process.
Nova cleared the table, washed his bowl, set it on the drying rack, and picked up his bag.
His family would understand his actual target when the results came back with his name at the top of the provincial rankings. The explanation would be considerably easier to deliver at that point than it would be over breakfast.
First place in the entire Federation.
Everything between now and the examination was preparation.
He had techniques to create,
intents to push to breakthrough,
a grey soul to gradually unlock,
a spirit beast egg to feed weekly,
a revenue stream to establish,
a Qi circulation method to build and integrate and train,
techniques to master and practice,
a good combat experience
and many more
and approximately one month to do all of it in.
He stepped out the door into the morning city and started walking.