"Don't celebrate yet," Art warned, totally deadpan. He saw the kid's eyes light up and immediately crushed the hope. "You fail tonight, the punishment doubles. You'll be scrubbing every stone floor in the manor. By hand. With cold water and a brush. Now, sit down."
Leo looked at the mud. Sit where? In a puddle? His pants were already damp from the fog.
Art didn't wait for him to complain. The Old Man just raised his bare hand and ripped a hole right in the air.
The space warped. It physically made Leo sick to his stomach to watch it happen. It came with this loud, aggressive tearing noise, like thick canvas being ripped apart by a machine. Suddenly, two massive red velvet armchairs literally materialized out of nowhere, landing squarely in the dirt.
They looked completely stupid. Absurd. Two pieces of expensive luxury furniture sitting out here among the thorns, rotting logs, and freezing mud. Mud splashed against the polished wooden legs.
Between the chairs, the ground simply cracked open. White fire shot up. No smoke. No sparks. Just this ghostly silver glow that lit up the tree roots but gave off absolutely zero heat. In fact, it actually made the clearing feel colder. It felt like it was leeching the temperature directly from the air.
"Theory," Art said. He dropped his weight into one of the velvet chairs, completely indifferent to the absurdity of the furniture.
The Old Man's tone shifted entirely. Leo ignored the mud and sat down on the very edge of the second cushion. He kept his spine perfectly straight for optimal movement. His hand hovered nervously over the Sting. He stared at the dark tree line, analyzing the threat levels, his heart rate spiking again.
The entire spatial setup made zero logical sense. Sitting on luxury velvet while wet roots dug into the soles of his boots. It was a tactical nightmare. The white fire was messing with the ambient light, making the shadows cast by the trees stretch out and distort his depth perception.
"Can you hear it? See it?" Art asked, staring right through him.
Leo closed his eyes to optimize his auditory processing. He pushed his hearing as far as it would go, filtering out the repetitive, useless sound of his own breathing.
He picked up the structural creak of a heavy branch somewhere to his left. He listened for rhythmic, bipedal footsteps. He should be able to hear a predator breathing from here. He heard the nasty scratching sound—probably a huge centipede moving over bark near his foot. He heard the wind howling higher up in the canopy. But no predator. No footsteps. Nothing creeping up on the camp.
"No," Leo admitted, opening his eyes. He felt a sharp spike of failure in his gut. He was supposed to be a Supreme. He should be able to hear a pin drop in the dirt from fifty yards away.
"Then how do you fight what you can't find?" Art pushed. He leaned his bulk forward, resting his elbows on his knees.
Leo gripped the velvet armrests. He was holding them so tightly his knuckles went stark white against the red fabric. "I... I can't. If I lack visual and auditory data, I can't calculate a strike. I can't cut what isn't there."
"Right," Art nodded slowly. "Never label a thing before you know what it is. The unknown is the threat. Anything out there is a threat until proven otherwise. A shadow is a monster until the light proves it's just a rock. Got it?"
Leo stared at the white fire. The light reflected in his gray eyes, making them look silver and hollow. He chewed on that thought.
He thought about the Academy instructors calling him 'Inept'. Trash. They charted his mana, saw zero, and defined him as useless. Then he thought about the 'Level 1 Supreme' secret. The Monster Soul hiding deep in his chest, wrapped around his core. Nobody outside the manor knew what he really was. He was the unknown.
"I get the logic, Grandpa," Leo finally said. His voice was heavy. Exhausted. "But out here? A bear cub is faster than me. A stray dog hits harder than me. If I react to every single breaking twig, my central nervous system is going to fry from stress before I even draw my knife. Survival out here requires more than just paranoid hyper-vigilance. I can't just jump at shadows."
He looked away from the white fire and met Arthur's clouded eyes. "It needs camouflage. I can't fight the unknown. So I have to make sure the unknown can't find me either. I have to blend in. Become part of the dirt."
Art's thick eyebrows went up.
A real, messy smile cracked the scars around his mouth. He looked at Leo like a blurry photo had just snapped into sharp focus.
"And that right there," the Old Man grunted, sounding genuinely, deeply satisfied, "is exactly why the Academy is absolute garbage."
Art tapped the velvet armrest with a thick finger. "They teach you math. Tiers and mana stats. Memorizing spells like it's a paper test for bureaucrats. They think the world is a controlled, sterile room. But out here? A gust of wind ruins your math. A wet rock kills a Level 5 Knight if he slips and cracks his skull open on the ground. Power isn't just hitting hard, Leo. It's the space you take up in the world. And sometimes, the absolute strongest thing you can do is take up zero space at all."
He stood up fast.
The velvet chairs and the freezing fire vanished. Just blinked out of existence. No smoke. No sound.
Leo dropped a few inches. His boots hit the mud with a wet, heavy slap. The dark rushed back in instantly. The cold hit his skin straight through his wool cloak, making him shiver violently.
"Lesson over," Art said, pulling his heavy cloak tight around his broad shoulders. "Now, the test."
He stood in the dark. The forest noises got ten times louder without the fire to distract them. The clicking of bugs. The rustle of dying branches. It felt way more dangerous now. It felt raw.
"First truth," Art whispered. His voice got caught in the wind, bouncing off the trees, making it hard to tell exactly where he was standing. "Academy builds hammers. They teach you to hit hard. I'm building air. You can break a hammer with a harder rock. You can't break what you can't find."
He stepped close. Grabbed Leo's collar and straightened it out. A totally normal, domestic grandpa move. But his eyes were darting around the canopy above, looking for trouble Leo couldn't even dream of.
"Remember the deal," Art said. "Survive the night. Find your rhythm. Fail, and you're scrubbing Trice's potion pots until your nails fall off into the soap water."
"I won't fail," Leo said, his jaw tight. He gripped the Sting. The cold metal felt like a second set of teeth.
"Don't hunt the beast. Just don't let it find you. That's winning tonight," Art said.
And then he was gone.
No flash. No wind. He didn't jump up into the branches. He just wasn't there anymore. Left absolutely nothing behind but a muddy dent in the moss where his boots had been a second ago.