Chapter 52 Training For The Fight (3)

Yet another memory, huh?

I woke up and rubbed my drowsy eyes with a little bit of vigour. Ever since the day I turned into a Vampire, I had been dreaming about my past. And not just any past, the memories I shared with Irina and Lilith. Most of the time, I would see snippets of how our relationship blossomed and the pleasant moments where we bonded alone.

I had to admit, those days did seem rather peaceful. Although I don’t know how we’d met in the first place, from the memories that I saw, I could tell that we were in a loving relationship far before the Outer Demon attacked us.

At the same time, I was frustrated. My soul was still sealed, and most of my memories with the girls were still locked away. And apparently, there were two others that were with me fifteen years ago.

I felt like a piece of shit since I couldn’t even remember their names. Oddly enough, ever since I’d met Irina and Lilith, the connections with the mysterious girls only seemed to strengthen. While I couldn’t pinpoint where they were, I started to feel random emotions, albeit small ones, coming from an unknown source.

If I were to guess, I likely shared an unbreakable bond with all four of the girls. After all, they did sacrifice a quarter of their souls to keep me alive.

I wanted to meet them… I wanted to remember the misty parts of my memory… And I wanted to become whole again…

But that’s for another time… The most pressing thing I had to worry about was the duel that would occur three weeks from now.

As I yawned, I looked to the side of my bed only to see my beloved sleeping beauty happily snoozing away without a care in the world. Contrary to my half-naked self, Lilith was still donned in her conservative pyjamas, don’t get it twisted. Unlike Irina, it seemed that Lilith didn’t have the same social intelligence as most girls her age. She knew about love, but the things that lovers did… Well, I would say she’s purer than a virgin.

However, I too, didn’t want to cross the final border with her yet. While I would drink her blood every night and occasionally sneak a few cuddles here and there, I won’t force myself on her.

Why?

Because I needed that extra motivation.

To improve myself at a faster rate to match the monster that was Sirius Moonreaver, I needed to train doubly as hard. No, I had to go beyond the speed of light and train harder than I’d ever done before. Otherwise, I wouldn’t even be able to breathe the same air as the man. And to do just that, I needed to place a shackle on myself.

If I tasted Liltih’s sweet nectar, I was certain that I would indulge in her for days. Perhaps, I might even spend the entire month on the bed, never to see the sunlight or lift a single dumbbell.

Furthermore, if I restrained myself and treated Lilith as a reward that I would get for defeating the strongest Moonreaver, I was definitely going to train twice as hard. Fortunately, the girl was ignorant of my mental state and was more than happy with the little skinship that we had. Come to think of it, I was lucky that Irina was in secluded training. If she were around, I might not be able to train as effectively as I did.

“Lilith… Lilith… I’m going to wash up and head to the training room, alright?”

“Huehuehue… Not there, Jin… What if Lisa walks in?”

Haha, what kind of dream was she having? Well, it doesn’t matter. I gently kissed her forehead and immediately got dressed. Lilith’s place was massive, and the walk to her training facility was at least thirty minutes. Fortunately, someone in the room was a master of Spacetime.

I found the coordinates of the simulation chambers and teleported over just like I normally did. And funnily enough, the first person that I saw was precisely the woman that Lilith was dreaming about.

“A-Ah! Master Jin! You shouldn’t scare me like that!”

“Sorry, it wasn’t intentional.”

“Tsk, no matter how many times I see it, Spacetime magic sure is convenient, huh? I wasn’t even able to sense your magic!”

My teleportation was vastly different from the instant movement that the Vampires of the Moonreaver House used. Accordingly to Lilith, my teleportation was practically instantaneous, while the Moonreaver House’s teleportation had a few milliseconds of delay. And it made sense, given how they were weaving through the dimensions while I was directly manipulating Spacetime.

There was a slight time delay in their teleportation but make no mistake, in a battle where creatures moved at the speed of sound, those few milliseconds were key. Alas, even if my teleportation was much faster than theirs, I’m sure that Sirius’ reaction speed could deal with me.

“Would you mind booting up the system for me? I would like to practice.”

“Again?! But you just left for bed with the Young Miss six hours ago!”

“No problem,” I smiled back confidently. “I had a good four hours of sleep. That’s more than enough.”

“… You’re really something else, Master Jin.”

I shook my head and ignored the stunned maid. Apparently, most Vampires didn’t train this hard. After all, they were effectively immortal and were blessed with magic. Did a Lion need to sharpen his claws daily if he was already the apex predator? That was the mentally of most undying Vampires.

It was even common to see True Vampires hibernate for centuries at a time, never mind sleep a mere four hours. Even the most studious of Vampires got their eight hours of sleep, and if they weren’t in the Nightmare realm, they would likely sleep through every hour that the Sun was up.

But since I was once human, I didn’t have that mentality. Heck, I felt like there weren’t enough hours in the day to train! Alas, I didn’t have a hyperbolic time chamber that turned a thousand years into one like in the novels.

Wait a second… I had the ability to manipulate Spacetime and Creation… Doesn’t that mean?!

I instantly hopped into the simulation chamber and immediately got to testing. Firstly, I summoned out my Soul Armament, the five chained rings. The ring on my thumb glowed first in the vibrant rainbow hue I’ve become accustomed to. The light miraculously turned into a simple capsule that I’d envisioned, one that seemed highly reminiscent of a tiny spacecraft.

Next is the hard part. I focused all of my magic power into my middle ring, channelling all my attention to manipulating Spacetime. The hyperbolic time chamber was capable of slowing down time over a thousand times so that a thousand years would pass in a year. And in real life, it was theoretically possible as well, given how time works on different planets.

If I could do that, the mere month I had to train could be extended to a thousand months! That would give me more than enough time to smash that arrogant Sirius Moonreaver.

But as I tried to mess with time, it seemed like time wanted to mess with me.

The more I attempted to control the flow of time, the more I realised how pitifully little I understood it. It felt like a linear stream, like a river that constantly flowed. But at the same time, I felt like it wasn’t that simple. As if time wasn’t just a straight line. It felt like it could branch in different ways; it could become a lemniscate, an upward flow resisting the linear path we were on.

Now that I could ‘see’ time plain in the face, it felt so confusing…

And the requisite condition for me to use my Vampire Aspect was that I understood how something worked. For instance, if I didn’t know the compounds for water, I would be completely unable to create it. The same went with time. The things that I thought I knew about it were completely off.

Hah… Now, that’s a dead-end…

Learning how time worked wasn’t a one-day journey. If I didn’t have a guillotine hanging over my head, I might have delved into the experiments. Alas, I didn’t have that luxury yet. With a heavy heart, I could only postpone my desire to create a hyperbolic time chamber.

At a loss, I decided to practise the things that I already knew. I started testing the limits of my Space manipulation, first by creating the biggest piece of metal I could. At the moment, my Creation magic is limited by the amount of magic power I could supply and so I couldn’t create anything outrageous like a mountain range or an entire ocean.

The same could be said about my Space manipulation. At the moment, my magic power was quite finite, which was expected of a two-month-old Vampire. And that was my biggest weakness.

This means that I wouldn’t be able to stand toe-to-toe with Lilith’s brother anytime soon.

“Let’s try this then…”

It was a long shot, but I decided to attempt the secret move I had planned. Closing my eyes, I focused solely on the Spacetime ring and gathered magic power like never before. It didn’t take long for the strain of the activity to hit my soul. I felt like the weight of the entire planet was resting on my body, forcing heavy beads of perspiration to fall. With gritted teeth, I endured the pressure and focused solely on the spell that I’d conjured up.

It looked like my body was spasming out of control to the outside eye. One second my face would be looking up, while the next, it would teleport to another direction. And after a few minutes of seizures, I dropped to the floor, as my body was entirely drenched with sweat.

“Hah… I barely managed to stop time for one nanosecond… Would that be enough to stop Sirius?” I thought out loud.

The spell was complete, no doubt, but I wasn’t sure it was enough to challenge the mighty Sirius Moonreaver.

Stopping time.

I’d first conceived of this spell when I’d learnt that I could manipulate Spacetime. According to the laws of physics, reversing time was virtually impossible. Even with my magic, the best I could do was accelerate or slow it down. Of course, doing such a thing would require an absurd amount of magic power, something I just didn’t have yet.

And so, I attempted to stop time just for the immediate space surrounding me. Well, stopping time was a stretch. I slowed it down so much that it felt like space was suspended in time.

However, just slowing time for an area that was one cubic metre around me instantly drained all of my magic power. Not to mention, my limit right now was barely one nanosecond.

All I needed to do in the duel was land a single hit on Sirius. If I could slow time down for just ONE SECOND, I would win immediately. But this trick could only work one time. If I failed to end the duel within that short time I had, Sirius would make the proper adjustments and would never be caught in it again.

So the spell had to be perfect.

“Hah… Hah… Let’s wait for my magic power to recover and try again.”

That was the problem with such broken spells. It consumed far too much magic power for anyone to properly utilise in battle. Still, it was the best move I had. I closed my eyes and went into a meditative state. But then…

“Hmmm?”

I abruptly opened my eyes. Being someone that had the power to manipulate Spacetime, I was highly sensitive to the changes within the fabric. And at that moment, a slight ripple could be felt within the Moonreaver Dimension.

It was very small, akin to throwing a pebble into a large lake, but I could feel it as if it were right next to me. This was the first time I’d felt something like this ever since I’d entered the stable Moonreaver Dimension. And judging by the lack of awareness from the other Moonreaver members, it seems like something weird is going on.

“Hmmm… Since I have time, let’s go and investigate!”