CHAPTER 54: AFTER SPARRING WITH SERALYTH

Seralyth looked at Lucy and moved first. Her steps were sharp, closing the distance fast. Lucy braced, but she didn’t really know how to fight like this.

When they were barely two feet apart, Seralyth’s arm shot forward. Lucy slipped back at the last second, rotating her body to swing her leg in from the side.

The strike never landed. Seralyth caught her leg mid-motion, holding her in place with effortless control. Lucy twisted, using her other leg to snap out a kick.

Seralyth let go and stepped back, leaving Lucy to drop. She caught herself with her hands, flipped her balance, and slid back on her feet.

Seralyth watched her with calm eyes. "What do you think of this? Close combat without weapons or magic."

Lucy straightened, a bit breathless. "This is my first time fighting like that." She hesitated, then gave a faint smile. "Sorry... but can we use weapons instead? It feels too plain for me."

Seralyth tilted her head, then smiled back, eyes still serious. "Weapons it is."

Lucy nodded, already gripping the idea tighter than she expected. If she couldn’t use her magic until Caelen returned, then she’d throw herself into this.

Seralyth reached behind and pulled out two wooden daggers. Training tools, harmless in design but sharp enough in intent. She tossed one lightly in her hand. "What do you want to go for?"

"A sword," Lucy said without hesitation.

"Alright." Seralyth rummaged, then pulled out a wooden longsword and tossed it to her. Lucy caught it without faltering.

"Now we’ll see the difference," Seralyth said, stepping into a stance.

She flicked her wrist and sent one dagger flying toward Lucy. Instinct carried Lucy’s body to the side, avoiding the strike.

But Seralyth was already moving, predicting the dodge, slipping into that space, and reaching for her arm to lock her down. Lucy pulled back fast, refusing to be caught, and when the second dagger came, she was already in motion, raising the sword and slashing upward.

The blade cut the air close to Seralyth’s face, but she tilted away with ease, eyes sharp, unreadable.

Finally, the fight started to feel like something real.

Wood struck against wood, blades and daggers clashing, echoing in the quiet grass hall. They moved for minutes that stretched long, neither giving ground.

Lucy’s breath grew heavier as she kept dodging Seralyth’s precision strikes, trying to answer back with her sword, but every retaliation fell just short.

Ten minutes passed, and still Seralyth hadn’t slowed.

Lucy was the only one showing strain.

Lucy sat on the grass, chest still rising and falling from the spar. Sweat clung to her brow, but her eyes stayed sharp, watching the elf.

Seralyth wasn’t even catching her breath. She stood a few paces away, gaze fixed on a book laid open in her hands.

Her expression was too serious, as if the pages held something far more important than a mere training manual.

Lucy narrowed her eyes. "What are you looking at?"

Seralyth didn’t glance up. "Caelen’s book."

Lucy blinked. That didn’t make sense. "Book? He didn’t have a book when we came here. Where did you even get that? Are you... planning to give it to him?"

Finally, Seralyth raised her head, the faintest smile tugging at her lips. "No. This isn’t a book you hand over. It’s the system bound inside him. I borrowed it. I wanted to study it."

Lucy froze for a moment, confusion flickering across her face. "You... borrowed it? Don’t tell me Caelen just casually gave it to you?"

Seralyth’s tone was calm, but the edge in it was clear. "No. He didn’t give me anything. I took it. Think of it as my way of helping him get stronger."

Lucy wanted to argue, to say something sharp about boundaries and arrogance, which shocked her herself. But the words died in her throat.

Picking a fight with Seralyth now wouldn’t help. Instead, she shifted the conversation. "Fine, just give me the goal I need to fulfill, then tell me how I can get to his training area, and I’ll handle the rest."

The elf closed the book with a quiet thump and dropped it onto the grass beside her. Then, without hesitation, she reached into her ring and pulled out another.

This one was bound in worn brown leather, its edges frayed with age. She extended it toward Lucy.

"Learn this first," Seralyth said evenly. "Do what I tell you afterward, and maybe I’ll consider giving you the location."

Lucy hesitated but accepted the book, her fingers brushing against the rough cover. A strange weight pressed against her hand as she opened it. On the first page was the sketch of a humanoid figure, lines tracing its body like diagrams of shifting forms. As she flipped through, she saw descriptions—spells for altering appearance, reshaping limbs, even adopting temporary forms.

Her eyes widened. "This... is a transformation spell book, and why so many spells in one book?"

Seralyth noticed her expression and gave a knowing nod. "If you do one well, I may introduce you to the ice friend I mentioned before. She could offer you advice... maybe even show you techniques beyond what’s written there."

Lucy hadn’t expected that. Hospitality, offers of mentorship, rare books—it felt too generous. Her instincts told her nothing came free.

People weren’t this kind. Not without wanting something back. Still, she knew too little about elves, about how they thought or what they valued.

For now, she decided to accept it. She held the brown book close, eyes scanning the sketches again. If this path gave her more power, then questioning motives could wait.

"Thank you," Lucy said, running her fingers over the rough cover of the book she’d just been handed.

Seralyth, sitting calmly in the grass with the other book open on her lap, only replied, "It’s fine."

Lucy set her new book beside her, but her eyes lingered on the other one. The system book. Caelen’s book. The thing she hadn’t even known existed. It bothered her how focused the elf was, as if every word on the page was something worth dissecting. That wasn’t just reading—it was an obsession.

Her curiosity finally slipped out. "What are you even reading from that? Does it tell you information about Caelen?"

Seralyth didn’t even lift her gaze, just flipped a page slowly. "Of course. I already saw that. But it’s not worth much."

"I want to really understand this hidden feature here." She tapped the parchment, pointing at a section, though she didn’t angle it so Lucy could see.

Lucy frowned, unsettled by how casually she said that. "Really?"

"Yeah." Seralyth’s tone shifted into something closer to explanation, like she was speaking to someone who already followed her thoughts. "It seems this system is designed to stop working at certain points."

That caught Lucy’s attention immediately. Her doubts about intruding vanished as she got up and walked over, kneeling beside her to read.

She leaned closer, but what met her demonic eyes was nothing, just a page of foreign symbols. Jagged, sharp, curling shapes that looked alive, twisting in a way that made her head ache if she stared too long.

"I can’t read any of this," Lucy admitted, her frustration plain.

Seralyth gave her a side glance, faintly amused. "Of course you can’t. These aren’t words you can just... sound out. They’re powerful symbols. Each one carries force on its own. Runes. This is rune-crafting—the kind of thing that makes artifacts work, that holds space in place, that makes enchanted rings or weapons possible. Whole areas can be constructed with this."

"Those symbols..." Lucy started, her voice low, thoughtful. "They don’t just look strong. They feel like they’re alive."

Seralyth glanced at her again, this time with a sharper look, like she was measuring how much she should say. "Good instincts. That’s exactly it. The runes themselves resonate. Each is like... a seed of power. When combined in the right sequence, they rewrite reality in specific ways."

"Rune-crafting," Lucy repeated the word like it was heavy on her tongue.

"Mm." Seralyth finally smirked, closing a hand on the book as though claiming it fully. "Humans can’t really master it. Takes decades. And even then... most won’t waste so much of their short lives chasing something they might never understand. Worse, it drains an absurd amount of magic."

Lucy leaned back, arms folding. "That... does sound time-consuming."

It wasn’t just time-consuming. It was suffocating to imagine. Years spent bent over books, trying to force magic into symbols you couldn’t even understand yet.

She thought about how she’d hated studying at home, how she’d refused to learn when her family pushed it. Now, oddly, she didn’t feel the same weight pressing her down. Looking at the transformation book she’d been given, she didn’t feel dread. Just... curiosity.

Her eyes lingered over the cover, tracing the faint lines of the human figure etched there. She thought back to her new sisters—Evelyn and Emma.

Right now, they were probably training, pushing themselves. That was who they were. They wouldn’t stop, wouldn’t slack off, not for anything.

Lucy exhaled slowly. Maybe she needed that same mindset. Maybe she needed to stop brushing things off just because they felt annoying or hard.

If she wanted to stand beside them—no, if she wanted to surpass them, she couldn’t keep looking away.

[Hope you enjoyed the Chapter, which this one came a bit later, sorry for that.]