And then he did it again. And again. Before long, Karina had lost fifteen times in a row. She desperately asked for one more round, but the result did not change. Jin blocked her attacks with ease.
As he countered, he carefully evaluated her movements. Her speed was good. Her reaction time was not bad. Her strength was impressive, and every thrust of her spear carried real weight. Jin was honestly amazed by the raw power of an evolved human. But with one clean strike he knocked her spear down and defeated her for the sixteenth time, ending the match.
Karina still refused to accept defeat and shouted that she could keep going. Jin calmly told her there was no point. She was already out of stamina. The harder she pushed, the weaker her movements became.
He explained that Karina lacked endurance. Her combat style relied too much on physical ability, and her movements were not refined enough. Jin immediately understood why. In this era, spirit arts were the main focus of battle. Compared to the warriors of his time, the required skills were completely different.
That confirmed his first training goal. He needed to build the Holy Knights' stamina from the ground up.
Jin asked Karina whether she had any more complaints, then extended his hand to help her up. Karina stayed quiet, wondering why he was not even sweating. She did not want to admit it, but she had no choice. Jin was strong. She accepted his hand, and Jin told everyone to start endurance running.
After watching Karina get folded sixteen times, the other Holy Knights were suddenly very worried about what kind of training hell was waiting for them.
Meanwhile, deep underground in the royal castle prison, Terris walked through the cells and stopped in front of one particular cage. He opened it, and the prisoner inside was surprised to see him. Terris said he wanted to have a little chat with the man who had orchestrated the entire chaos, Lord Rudman.
Rudman claimed there was nothing to discuss, but Terris noticed how composed he was and asked whether he was still plotting something. Rudman played dumb, but warned that even if Terris had survived this chaos, the royal family would eventually fall.
Instead of getting angry, Terris looked pleased. He pulled something from his clothes and showed Rudman a pink pendant necklace, asking whether he had planned to use its power.
Rudman was shaken, and demanded to know how Terris knew about it. Terris asked whether Rudman really thought this was an exclusive secret. He already knew it was an invasion relic, a tool that sealed the power of an invader. He also knew Rudman had used a similar relic during the chaos.
Rudman panicked, but Terris told him to calm down, because this was where the real conversation began.
Terris said he knew Rudman was dissatisfied with the Kermesia royal family, and asked him to join hands. In his eyes, the king and Charlotte were too soft. If things continued like this, the kingdom would eventually be invaded and destroyed. Rudman asked whether Terris planned to destroy the kingdom himself, and Terris answered without hesitation. Yes. He believed the kingdom had to be rebuilt from the ground up into a stronger, more authoritarian nation. To make that happen, he needed Rudman's invasion relic.
Hearing his goal, Rudman agreed, but warned that he could not promise to make Terris king in the new nation. Terris said that was fine, but that he wanted Rudman to swear loyalty to him first. Rudman found this strange, but Terris explained that he wanted the oath so Rudman could not betray him later.
Rudman secretly smirked, planning to use Terris as much as possible and discard him in the end. After all, spoken oaths were meaningless. So he agreed, and swore loyalty.
The moment he said those words, the invasion relic released a purple power that entered Rudman's body. His mind was instantly possessed by the suggestion. Terris's relic had a terrifying ability. It forced anyone who spoke certain words to truly believe those words had come from their own heart, even if they had been lying at the time.
Rudman collapsed to his knees and asked for a command like a loyal dog. Terris called him pathetic, nothing more than another pawn to use. Then he quietly muttered that the one who should rule the kingdom was neither Charlotte nor the current king. The kingdom was meant to be led by him.
Back at the seventh unit training ground, Jin and the knights were running laps. For Jin, running felt refreshing. For the Holy Knights, who were quickly discovering how weak their stamina really was, it was pure nightmare.
Jin apologized to Argus for going overboard, but Argus said it was fine and thanked him instead. He had finally realized how badly he had neglected endurance training. The Holy Knights usually traveled by horse, and most battles ended quickly with spirit arts, so they had never had a reason to push their stamina to the limit. Argus told Jin he would focus heavily on improving their endurance, and Jin agreed.
Then he noticed that Charlotte was still watching them, and asked whether she should not be heading back soon. She asked whether she was in the way, but Jin explained that was not what he had meant. Charlotte clearly did not want to leave, but she knew she should return before someone scolded her.
Before going, however, she wanted to confirm something. She took a bag from one of her knights and showed Jin a red invasion relic.
Jin was visibly startled. He asked what exactly it was. Charlotte explained that it had been secretly confiscated from Rudman. It was a demonic tool that harnessed the power of Corruptors, or, as people in this era called them, invaders. They did not know who had created it or how it had been made, but it granted immense power to its user.
Jin was speechless. He could not believe something like this existed in the current era. To him it looked like a machine with part of a Corruptor embedded inside.
Charlotte noticed his reaction and guessed that he had seen something similar before. Jin confirmed it. He told her he had seen something like it in the academy underground. Since he had judged the relic too dangerous to leave behind, he had destroyed it. Argus remembered that this must be the device Jin had mentioned during the chaos incident.
Charlotte praised him for making the right call. If the enemy had recovered that relic, another disaster could have happened. She said she would investigate the relic's origin on her end, and asked Jin to share anything he discovered. Jin agreed.
After Charlotte left, Argus said they could not allow something like that to cause another incident. They needed to stay vigilant.
Jin did not answer right away, and Argus asked what was wrong. Jin said it was nothing, but in truth he was thinking deeply. Corruptors normally never stopped moving. They rampaged endlessly, yet lately they seemed to wait, to coordinate, to move with purpose. That made him wonder whether something beyond the invasion relic was controlling them.
Then he remembered Kagura's warning. Some Corruptors had begun evolving along with the changing environment. Maybe that meant there were now individuals capable of commanding other Corruptors.