After the Eclipse Shadow Tigers had retreated in terror and vanished entirely into the sea of dark green mist, Dex did not waste a single second in celebrating their survival. The old Prisoner's instinct branded into his very DNA was screaming at him that remaining in a place that had just witnessed a colossal Mana disturbance was open suicide. He seized Lumia's cold hand and they ran together through the interlocking roots until they found a temporary shelter: a natural hollow inside the trunk of an enormous dead tree whose diameter exceeded twenty metres. The interior was comparatively dry, fragrant with ancient wood and fossilised resin, offering them visual and magical cover that broke the outward flow of their aura.
The moment he confirmed the space was clear of smaller predators, Dex sat on the rough wooden floor, leaning his slightly blazing back against the inner wall. He was gasping in a manner not of physical exertion from running but of the psychological and mental load of what he had just witnessed. He had to act and formulate a rapid plan: a companion possessing this absolute cosmic aura with no capacity for control would not be a permanent shield-it would be more like lighting a massive beacon in a pitch-dark night teeming with pirates.
Lumia's aura had succeeded in frightening Rank C- beasts. That was true. But Dex knew with certainty that the forest's deepest reaches contained older, far more formidable creatures: Rank A and perhaps Rank S entities that had lived for hundreds of years and had transcended the stage of animal instinct to arrive at a form of cunning intelligence. These beings would not flee from Lumia's pressure. They would treat it as a challenge to their sovereignty-or worse, as a divine meal worth the risk. And if Lumia could not fight consciously or direct that power, she would transform from a saviour into a lethal liability that would bring about both their deaths.
"Listen to me carefully, Lumia, and look at me," Dex said in a strict tone entirely free of pleasantry, breaking a small dry branch and beginning to trace geometric combat shapes and lines on the dusty wooden floor.
Lumia sat before him, drawing her knees to her chest, her silver eyes following the movement of the branch with the curiosity of a child seeing writing for the first time.
"Your latent power is terrifying-that is beyond dispute," Dex continued, pointing the branch toward her. "Even though the aura you released a moment ago brought Rank C- beasts to their knees, I can feel that your effective capacity to control this Mana in the form of a directed attack currently does not exceed Rank B. The problem is not the size of your energy reserve-it is that the tap is broken. Your power is erratic, impulsive, and cannot distinguish between defence and offence. In this brutal world, in the hellish prisons where I lived among killers and criminals, I learned a lesson written in blood: it does not matter how powerful you are, or how large the muscle or the magic you possess, if you do not know when to strike, where to strike, and how to avoid the counter-blow. The knife you do not know how to grip by the hilt will cut your fingers before it ever touches the enemy."
He drew a small circle around a central point on the floor.
"This point is you. We begin now, at this very moment, with what I call Active Defence Basics. You cannot rely solely on frightening them with your presence. The beasts in the Forbidden Zone are hungry and desperate enough to challenge their primal terror if they sense a chance to swallow you."
Dex rose and asked her to stand. He began showing her how to draw out an extremely small portion of her Void Mana-not to detonate it in all directions, but to condense it into a space no more than a few square centimetres: to build a small, invisible but diamond-hard shield around her lethal weak points: the neck, the heart, and the joints.
"Fighting is not merely an exchange of blows. It is a physical conversation," he said, standing before her and adopting a mock attack stance. "Do not watch the weapon. Do not watch the enemy's eyes. Watch the movement of the shoulder and the distribution of weight between the feet. The muscle contracts fractions of a second before the blow is launched. If you read the shoulder, you will read the near future."
Lumia watched his movements with a concentration that was genuinely superhuman. Her eyes were recording every angle, every muscle contraction in Dex's body, every tremor in his breathing. And the moment he asked her to repeat the movement... she did it.
The speed of her learning was genuinely terrifying. What took gifted human knights years of gruelling, tearful training to master at an acceptable level, Lumia was doing in minutes-with a mathematical precision free of flaw. She was replicating his combat movements, honed in street fights and prisons, and executing them with a Celestial agility unhindered by gravity or muscular weakness. And with every blow she deflected, with every correct direction of the small Void shield she had just learned to create, the spiritual bond between them strengthened and tightened.
The Fire Prisoner-the man who had survived hell-was shaping with his own hands the Heavenly Blade that would protect his back and open the path for them through the bloody days ahead. Lumia had begun, guided by his unyielding instruction, to understand the geometry of her own body, and to grasp that her power was an instrument that could be tamed-not merely a natural catastrophe that occurred of its own accord.
But in the midst of this quiet training harmony, the collapse came.
Dex stopped abruptly and retreated two steps. He began to cough with violent severity: a dry, painful cough that appeared to tear his vocal cords. He dropped to one knee, clutching his throat, feeling his lungs as though they were burning from within with corrosive acid.
For all that he possessed the absolute Phoenix Core, his physical vessel-his material body-still functionally stood at Rank D. This frail human body had not been biologically or magically conditioned to absorb or even endure the density of poisonous magical energy present at the heart of the Forbidden Zone. The forest air was not oxygen. It was a mixture of ancient Mana, biological decomposition gases, and the spiritual pressure of the beasts. The Phoenix Core was fighting fiercely to keep him alive-burning the toxic Mana that entered his lungs-but the heat of this internal combustion was slowly destroying his lung tissue.
"Damn it... the air... the air weighs tonnes in here," Dex whispered in a broken, hoarse voice, leaning his back and shoulder against a protrusion from the tree trunk. The veins of his neck and brow were standing out, pulsing blue from the strain and pressure, pearl-sized drops of sweat falling to the ground. He understood he was suffocating under his own power and the environment of the forest.
In that moment, Lumia approached. No signs of human panic showed on her face. She acted with a decisiveness born from the new protective instinct he had planted in her. She sat beside him, placed her smooth, profoundly cold hand at the centre of his back-precisely behind the position of his lungs.
She did not use the aura of terror. She used what she had just learned about precise control. She released a thin, continuous current of her Celestial aura-cold and extremely pure-to permeate his pores and envelope his scorched lungs in a layer of soothing void frost. This aura functioned as a cosmic filter: a supernatural sieve that cooled the excess Phoenix heat and purified the toxic Mana before it could touch his tissue.
Dex closed his eyes and drew the first deep, painless breath since their descent into these depths. He felt the gentle cold extinguish the fires devouring him from within, allowing him to recover his breathing with difficulty. He opened his eyes to look at Lumia, who was watching him with concentration.
He understood in those few seconds an absolute truth: he was teaching her how to fight and survive the beasts, and she was keeping him alive so he could breathe in this hell. They were depending on each other for survival-a bond that had transcended mere mutual interest to become an existential necessity.