Harem Training System: Every Girl I Train Makes Me Stronger!

Seraphina launched herself forward. She didn’t run; she exploded across the sand like a comet of fire and rage.

Her broken arm swung wildly, but her good hand gripped her blade with enough force to make the steel creak. She was no longer a duelist; she was a predator who had tasted blood and found it intoxicating.

The fight hadn’t ended with the counterstrike; it had just entered its most lethal, suicidal phase.

Seraphina was a nightmare incarnate, a comet of green gold flame tearing through the haze of blood and ash. Her approach was relentless, each footfall leaving a charred crater in the arena floor.

She wasn’t just attacking; she was hunting.

Lia’s world was shrinking. The roar of the crowd was becoming a distant, muffled hum, like water rushing past her ears.

All she could hear was the thunderous pounding of her own heart and the wet, grinding sound of her own labored breathing. Her muscles felt like they had been replaced with molten lead.

Every time she tried to shift her weight, a spike of agony shot up her spine, threatening to collapse her entire frame.

’Move, you worthless bitch, MOVE!’ Lia screamed at herself internally. Her mind was a fractured mirror of pain and terror. ’If you fall here... if you fall now... it’s over.’

She saw Seraphina’s blade descending, a killing stroke aimed to bisect her. With the last reserves of her conscious will, Lia forced her body into motion.

She didn’t have the strength for a full parry, so she slipped into the drifting tide stance. Her greatsword moved in a desperate, lazy arc, not to stop the blow, but to catch it, to let the lethal energy slide off the enchanted steel like water off a stone.

Clang shriek!

The impact sent a fresh jolt of pain through Lia’s arms, nearly dislocating her shoulders. She stumbled backward, her boots skidding through the blood-slicked sand.

Her vision flickered, black spots dancing across her sight like carrion flies.

"She’s barely holding on!" Catherine cried out, her voice breaking into a sob. "William, look at her legs; they’re shaking too hard!"

"She can’t hold the stance!"

"She’s buying seconds," William said, his jaw clenched so tight it looked ready to shatter. "She’s trying to find the rhythm again..."

"She’s trying to rebuild the tide."

Lia’s mind raced through the mechanics of her breathing, desperate to reassemble the Undertow Surge. ’Inhale through the pain...’

’Exhale through the blood...’

’Find the center... Find the weight...’ But the weight wasn’t coming.

Instead, there was only emptiness, the hollow, terrifying void of total exhaustion.

’I can’t lose,’ she thought, a sob catching in her throat. ’If I lose this... Father will still think I’m a failure...’

’He’ll drag me back to that cold, silent house...’

’He’ll strip me of everything... I won’t have the academy... I won’t have Kaela and the others... and I won’t have...’

’...Instructor Wade.’

The thought of William’s face, the steady, knowing look in his eyes when he believed in her, was the only thing keeping her upright. The thought of the academy, the first place that had ever felt like more than just a prison of expectations, felt like a lifeline stretching across a bottomless chasm.

’I can’t go back to being nothing,’ she snarled at the darkness encroaching on her vision. ’I refuse to be nothing!’

Seraphina loomed over her, a vengeful goddess of fire. "Why do you still struggle?"

Seraphina taunted, her voice distorted by the magical heat pouring off her body. "Your body is broken, Lia."

"Your spirit is spent... Look at you... you’re already dead; you just haven’t stopped breathing yet!"

Seraphina raised her sword high, the flames licking the sky. "Let me end this mercy for you!"

Lia gritted her teeth so hard she tasted copper. Blood leaked from the corners of her mouth as she forced her greatsword up one more time.

Her arms screamed in protest, the tendons feeling like they would snap like overstretched bowstrings. Her left leg gave a treacherous twitch, but she forced herself to plant it deep.

’Just one more...’ Lia pleaded with her own failing body. ’One more gather... One more surge...’

’Give me the strength to break her, or let me die trying...’

"LIA! DON’T YOU DARE GIVE UP! "Kaela’s voice pierced through the fog, raw and desperate. "FIGHT HER! FIGHT HER TO THE GODDAMN DEATH! "

"Come on, Lia," William whispered, his eyes fixed on the minute tremor in her sword’s tip. "Find the flow..."

"Don’t let the tide go out... Bring it back...!"

Lia’s eyes snapped open, bloodshot and wild. The terror was still there, but beneath it, a cold, desperate fury began to crystallize.

She could feel the faint, ghostly echo of the Undertow Surge, stirring in the depths of her exhaustion like a drowning person reaching for the surface. It was fragile, pathetic, and barely there, but it was there.

’One more time,’ Lia thought, her knuckles whitening around the hilt as Seraphina’s shadow fell over her. ’One more time, I will make the world shake.’

The world began to dissolve into a nauseating kaleidoscope of crimson and gray for Lia. Her consciousness felt like it was fraying at the edges, unraveling like an old rope under too much tension.

Each heartbeat was no longer a pulse but a sledgehammer strike against her skull, each breath a searing agony that burned her lungs as if she were inhaling broken glass.

The disconnection between her mind and her body became terrifyingly absolute. Her brain screamed ’Rise! Stand! Fight!’ but her body responded with nothing but the cold, dead language of failure.

Her fingers twitched involuntarily around the hilt of her sword, a ghostly reflex of a warrior who no longer possessed the strength to grip. Her knees felt hollow, as if the bones had turned to water.

’Please,’ she begged the universe, a silent, broken prayer. ’Just five more seconds...’

’Just let me stand for five more seconds...’

But the universe was indifferent to her desperation.

Seraphina didn’t pause to savor the moment. She moved like a predator that had sensed its prey’s final convulsion.

"You’ve grown stronger, Lia," Seraphina said, her voice unnervingly calm amidst the chaos, though her breathing remained ragged and wet. "I can see it..."

"That last strike... it was almost beautiful. " A twisted, cruel smile touched her lips as she closed the distance, her boots crunching on the debris. "I suppose that Instructor William Wade... he’s been the spark, hasn’t he?"

"He taught you how to find that spark."

Lia tried to snarl, to spit defiance, but all that emerged was a pathetic wheeze of blood.

"But spark isn’t enough to stop a wildfire," Seraphina whispered, her eyes glinting with a terrifying mix of disappointment and contempt. "You improved, yes..."

"But you’re still too late... You’re still too weak and need time."

It happened faster than William’s own trained instincts could fully track. The moment Lia’s guard wavered, the moment her eyelids fluttered in that fatal second of cognitive collapse, Seraphina struck.

She didn’t swing for the head; she swung for the foundation. With a vicious, practiced motion, Seraphina swept her blade low in a brutal arc.

The enchanted steel caught Lia across both shins with the force of a guillotine. There was a sickening, wet thwack followed by the unmistakable grinding sound of bone meeting magical force.

Lia didn’t even have time to scream before her legs were swept clean from beneath her.

"LIA!" Kaela’s scream was torn from her throat, a sound of pure, unadulterated horror that echoed off the stadium walls.

Lia hit the blood-soaked sand hard. The impact was catastrophic; her shoulder took the brunt of the fall, and the sound of her own clavicle snapping echoed in her ears like a gunshot.

Her greatsword, her lifeline, skittered across the arena floor, spinning away until it came to rest several feet beyond her reach.

Pain exploded through her, white, blinding, and absolute, but it was immediately followed by something worse: helplessness. She lay there, gasping at the sky, her chest heaving in shallow, desperate jerks.

Blood pooled beneath her, spreading faster than before as the wounds from the fight reopened under the impact.

Then came the cold kiss of steel.

Seraphina stood over her, silhouetted against the harsh arena lights like a vengeful wraith. She pressed the tip of her blade against the soft flesh beneath Lia’s chin.

The edge was razor sharp, drawing a thin, perfect line of blood that trickled down Lia’s throat.

"It’s over, little sister," Seraphina said, her voice carrying across the suddenly deathly silent arena. "Yield..."

"Admit you failed."

The blade held steady an inch from Lia’s jugular. A careful, controlled, and undeniable signal of absolute victory.

"NO!" Kaela roared from the stands, his voice breaking as he threw himself against the railing. "LIA, GET UP!"

"GET UP NOW!"

But Lia could only stare up at Seraphina, her eyes glassy and unfocused, the taste of copper filling her mouth as she realized that the dream of the academy, the dream of William, and the dream of home were slipping through her fingers like blood through sand.

Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!