"The Lotus Palace will fall," Arin said, standing alone in the small room at the Eastern Wall Inn. His eyes were fixed on the wall before him, though his mind was elsewhere entirely. "And I will bring them down alone."One spell, he thought, his fingers clenching into fists. I will walk to their mountain and unleash a single spell. Their sect will cease to exist.But even as the thought formed, doubt crept in. He had unleashed ARCANE BLAST – Wave of Annihilation against the crimson-robed fighters, and it had drained him severely. An entire sect would require far more power than he currently possessed. The disciples alone would number in the hundreds. The masters would present their own resistance.I am not strong enough, Arin admitted to himself, the words tasting like ash. Not yet.He moved to a shelf where a single scroll lay, unrolled and covered in his own handwriting. Notes about cultivation realms, the structure of Ki within living bodies. But there was something else written at

"This pressure," Arin gasped, his small body trembling against the vault wall. "It's Ki. Pure, concentrated Ki being weaponized as a force."The realization struck him like a blade through bone. The strange sensation he had felt was not some mystical phenomenon—it was the Alliance Leader's cultivated Ki, compressed and released with the precision of a master who had reached the Grandmaster realm. A martial artist's ultimate expression of power drawn from thousands of hours of meditation and cultivation.I was arrogant, Arin thought bitterly, his breath coming in shallow gasps as the pressure mounted around him. I believed my mana superior to their Ki. I believed my magic would be enough. I believed that in a world without magic, I would be a god among mortals.But standing here, pinned against cold stone by sheer pressure alone, unable to move more than a fraction of an inch, he understood the terrible truth. His current strength was pathetic. Insignificant. Utterly inadequate. A chil

"Will you surrender peacefully, or shall I be forced to restrain you?" Kang Myeong-ho asked, his hand already beginning to extend forward, reaching toward Arin's small frame with the confidence of someone who had never faced resistance they could not overcome.But in that exact moment, something shifted within Arin's consciousness. The chaotic energy swirling through his mana channels suddenly aligned, the wild beast core power synchronizing with his reawakened arcane abilities. The blue light surrounding him stabilized, coalescing into controlled patterns of devastating potential.Perfect, Arin thought, his eyes snapping open fully. The moment I needed.His hand moved with speed that transcended normal perception, and mana erupted from his body in response to his will. ARCANE BLAST – Wave of Annihilation, but this time channeled through forty percent of his previous archmage power, amplified by the absorbed beast cores, transformed into something far more destructive than anything th

"Who are you?" Song Dae-jung gasped, his body pressed against the wooden floor by the crushing gravity, his eyes wide with the realization that he had faced something beyond his comprehension. "Such a small boy... what right do you have to interfere with matters of the Lotus Palace?"Arin's laughter filled the entire inn, echoing off the walls with a quality that seemed almost inhuman in its intensity. The sound was not the laughter of someone amused by a joke, but rather the laughter of someone who had glimpsed something truly pathetic and could not contain his contempt."Weak," Arin said, his voice cold and sharp beneath the layer of maniacal laughter. "So incredibly weak. All of you. This Lotus Palace disciple who speaks with such arrogance despite lying broken on the floor. These bandits who believed their combat experience made them formidable. All pathetic. All insignificant."He stepped forward slowly, each footfall a deliberate statement of dominance. The gravity pressure inten

"Begin," Arin commanded, his voice cutting through the tense silence of the common room like a blade. "Show me which of you deserves to continue breathing."The bandits and the Lotus Palace disciples erupted into motion simultaneously. It was chaos, but chaos with structure—a multi-directional battle where every fighter had to watch for threats from all angles.The first bandit charged toward one of Song's companion disciples, his sword raised high. The Lotus Palace disciple responded with a defensive stance, gathering Ki into his body.FLOWING LOTUS – Silk Redirect. The disciple's movement was fluid and graceful, his body twisting to allow the incoming blade to pass harmlessly beside him while redirecting the bandit's momentum. The bandit stumbled, suddenly off-balance.But the bandit recovered quickly, using the momentum to spin and counter with his own technique.RAGING TORRENT – Whirlwind Strike. The bandit rotated his sword in a wide arc, channeling the raw desperation and surviv