The abandoned warehouse smelled like rust, ash, and dried blood. Riku didn't care anymore. He stood shirtless at the center of the cracked concrete floor, sweat steaming from his body, each breath sharp and hot. Cursed energy rippled along his arms in jagged waves, distorting the air, flickering like lightning on the edge of snapping.
"Echo Delay," he muttered.
Around him, a faint, mirror-thin sheen shimmered, forming an unstable bubble of cursed energy. This was the second branch of his technique—the five-second return. A delayed reflection of an attack that had already landed. The idea was simple: store the moment an enemy struck, then unleash it again, five seconds later, from an unexpected angle.
In theory.
So far?
"Still fucking useless," he hissed, hands clenching.
He stood still, breathing hard. He needed to feel something. To lock in an impact. He took a deep breath and slammed his own knuckles into his ribs—hard.
Pain bloomed.
He focused.
Five seconds crawled by.
The cursed energy shimmered. A flicker. A twitch in the air beside him. Then—snap! A phantom punch reappeared from the side, smacking him in the ribs again, just a bit off-center.
He gasped.
It wasn't strong. It wasn't fast. But it worked.
He stared at the air like it had spoken.
"Holy shit."
It had reflected the strike—not just the force, but the moment. Not a memory. Not a recording. An echo. Tangible. Delayed.
But the energy cost hit him like a sucker punch. His breath caught in his throat, and for a second, his knees buckled.
"Okay. Too much cursed energy output. I need to... trim the fat. Compress the layer. Store, then release."
The air around him buzzed as he tried again. More strikes. More attempts. Gradually, the reflection became clearer, faster—still imperfect, but real.
Each successful delay was a victory. Each failure a lesson.
As the repetitions blurred together, Riku began muttering to himself.
"If reflection isn't just impact... then what else can I bounce?"
He stared at the ground, brain spinning.
"Motion? Vibration? Sound? ...What about gravity?"
The idea slammed into him like a curse spirit.
Gravity. Constant. Unrelenting. Always acting downward. If it was always hitting him, always applying pressure, then—
"I can reflect it," he whispered. "I can bounce gravity."
He scrambled up a stack of crates and stood at the top, nearly twenty feet off the ground. A rusted metal beam stretched above him. Riku inhaled, cursed energy swirling down his legs.
He concentrated on the soles of his feet. Focused on the feeling of downward pull. He condensed cursed energy there like a coiled spring.
Then—he flipped the vector.
The world spun as he was blasted upward, straight into the beam. The metal groaned and rang like a gong as he slammed into it.
He fell.
Hard.
"FUCK!"
Pain exploded through his ribs. He rolled, coughing, vision blurring—but he was laughing.
"I can reflect gravity," he wheezed. "I just have to not break my goddamn spine doing it."
He didn't get up right away.
But he did get up.
The moment he could stand, he walked straight to the broken water pipe sticking out of the wall, grabbed it—and rammed it through his shoulder.
Pain exploded.
[Regeneration (Level 2) has activated.]
Blood poured out, then slowed. The wound closed. Not fast enough.
Riku gritted his teeth.
Again.
A broken brick to the leg.
A piece of glass across the back.
[Regeneration (Level 2) has activated.][Regeneration (Level 2) has activated.]
He wasn't trying to toughen up.
He was grinding.
"I'm going to level you up if it kills me," he snarled, dragging his battered body to the next self-inflicted punishment.
Every strike, every wound, every scream that echoed off the steel walls brought him closer.
When the pain became static in his brain, he shifted tactics.
Near one of the concrete pillars, he surrounded his torso with cursed energy—dense, reactive—and punched himself in the chest with a reflection-layered strike.
His body flung backward like a ragdoll, slamming into the pillar hard enough to crack it.
He peeled himself off with a laugh.
"Self-launch. Stupid. Suicidal. But it works."
His cursed energy twitched with each heartbeat now, sizzling across his skin. He meditated in bursts—ten breaths between injuries. Ten breaths before the next experiment. A fragile rhythm between violence and focus.
Even fatigue became part of the training.
Every time he blinked, he visualized the reflections: the hand that struck him, the delay, the curve of gravity bending away, the way energy could rebound, twist, return.
All of it—Echo Delay, Gravity Reflection, Self-Launch, Regeneration, cursed energy modulation—it was coming together. Slowly. Brutally.
By sundown, Riku stood under the blood-orange skylight like a half-dead war god.
Chest heaving. Arms shaking. His reflection shimmered faintly in a puddle of blood by his feet—delayed, distorted, yet echoing the same madness in his grin.
"This cursed technique," he whispered, "is going to be a nightmare."
He limped to the corner, collapsed onto the Pillow of Supreme Comfort—dragged there hours ago when he still had a spine that didn't ache—and blacked out instantly.
As consciousness slipped away, the system finally spoke:
[Regeneration has leveled up: Level 4.]
Riku didn't even smile.
But before darkness took him, one thought echoed in his mind—
You're not ready for what this will become.
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Shout out to King_Jackel for the idea for this chapter. Also I will be doing a Q&A so ask as many questions as you want and I promise to answer them....maybe