SSS-Ranked Talent: Endless Adaptation

Raymond didn’t hesitate.

Seeing the dark, primal grin stretch across the commoner’s blood-stained lips only fueled his deep-seated disgust. With a savage twist of his wrist, he threw Thomas violently back down into the black sand and followed him down like a hawk diving for carrion.

The beatdown that followed was systematic, merciless, and blindingly fast.

Raymond’s twin stilettos blurred through the morning air, leaving faint crimson trails of mana in their wake.

Shlick! Shlick! Shlick!

The blades bit relentlessly into Thomas’s flesh. Carving into his forearms, slicing across his thighs, and puncturing his shoulders. Raymond wasn’t aiming to kill; he was intentionally targeting every major nerve cluster and mana meridian in the farm boy’s body. He wanted to leave Thomas a completely paralyzed, drooling shell in front of the entire Holy City.

To the thousands of spectators in the stadium, it looked like a literal execution. Ryan’s knuckles turned white as he gripped the stone railing in the back rows, his voice caught in his throat. Even the lazy senior girl by the pillar had completely stopped looking at her historical scroll, her ebony eyes narrowing to slits behind her spectacles.

Yet, deep inside the suffocating dark of his conscious mind, Thomas was counting every single blow.

[ PROGRESS BAR: 50% ]

* Status: Internal Meridian Damage reaching Critical Threshold.

* Current Action: Re-routing peripheral nervous system through adaptive fiber loops.

The physical pain was excruciating, a blinding white heat that threatened to tear his mind apart. Every time Raymond’s stiletto pierced his skin, it felt as though liquid fire was being injected directly into his veins. Thomas’s farm-boy biology was being pushed past its absolute breaking point, his limbs flailing clumsily as he rolled across the dark sand, desperately trying to protect his vital organs.

I need to stall, Thomas thought through the haze of agony. Just a few more seconds.Bracing his right palm against the shifting sand, Thomas reached deep into his fracturing soul. He ignored the burning lacerations and grabbed hold of his remaining mana, violently forcing it through his upper pathways to activate the high-tier senior shielding technique he had practiced the night before.

"A shield?" Raymond mocked, his figure blurring as he closed the distance again. "Too late, trash!"

Thomas shoved his hands forward. A thick, crystalline dome of high-density blue mana exploded to life around his trembling frame. But because his body was heavily damaged and his focus was splintered by the sheer physical trauma, the barrier was unstable, rippling violently like glass under immense strain.

Raymond didn’t stop. He wound his arm back, channeling a dense, focused spike of blood-red assassin mana straight into the tip of his right stiletto, and drove it directly into the center of Thomas’s barrier.

CRACK!

The senior shielding technique held for a fraction of a second before the sheer, concentrated precision of Raymond’s talent shattered the blue dome into a million fading fragments. The explosive backdraft of the shattered barrier blasted right back into Thomas’s chest, throwing him violently backward. He skidded across the black sand, leaving a trail of dark crimson fluid in his wake.

He lay flat on his back, his breath coming in ragged, bloody gasps. He couldn’t feel his legs. His arms were shaking uncontrollably, the flesh completely shredded and bleeding heavily.

Raymond walked through the settling dust, his silver hair still perfectly in place, his stilettos dripping with Thomas’s blood. "Your little tricks are over, lesser. Now, crawl back to the dirt where you belong."

Far above, on the elevated noble platform, Julian stared down at the crater, his face an unreadable mask of cold disappointment. He began to turn away, assuming the lesser anomaly had finally been erased.

But inside Thomas’s head, the majestic, long-awaited chime of the system suddenly drowned out the roaring cheers of the high-bloods.

[ PROGRESS BAR: 80% ]

* Current Action: Cellular fortification complete.

* Current Action: Commencing absolute genetic and structural rewiring.

[ WARNING: Severe physical trauma successfully digested. Core integration imminent. ]

Thomas’s fingers twitched against the black sand. The overwhelming, paralyzing agony running through his body suddenly began to shift, transforming from a blinding fire into a deep, chilling, and unshakeable cold.

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