"I’m sure." Valeron nodded, tapping the metal branch against the Camellia’s stem.

"Okay, with me." Lith put his hand on Valeron’s, and Kamila and Solus put their hands over his. "There is no turning back, son. Last chance."

"Please." Valeron clenched the branch hard, trying to make it bloom with sheer force of will.

"Then so be it." Lith used a tier zero Creation Magic spell to fuse the branch with the stem and then a tier one spell to enchant the branch and make the Camellia blossom appear.

"Are you that good with Creation Magic already?" Kamila asked in surprise.

"No, but the tower is always in the keep." Lith replied. "Also, I didn’t undo the Camellia’s original spell. I never did. Each branch has its own enchantment, just as each one of our children is a unique individual.

"One imprint recharges all the blossoms, but they are independent and will grow along with our children. This way, when they grow up, the children can take their own branch away when they leave home or leave it with ours."

"No!" Valeron and Elysia yelled in unison. "No leave!"

"Sure, pumpkins. Sure." Lith caressed the babies’ heads. "We’ll resume this conversation when you two are teenagers. Unluckily for you, I’ve recorded this entire conversation, and I’ll use it against you when the moment comes."

Elysia and Valeron exchanged a puzzled look while Kamila and Solus chuckled, pretending their tears were of hilarity.

***

Verhen Mansion, Training Hall, the following day.

"You are a poor excuse of a fighter, my disciple." Dawn sneered as she effortlessly deflected the blade-long spike coming out of the Agni’s forearm. "When was the last time you faced a worthy opponent? I’m afraid peace made you soft!"

"Shut up!" Nalrond snarled as he conjured a hail of hard-light constructs shaped like stakes and threw them at the Horseman in a burning hail.

"That’s the best you can do?" A flick of her hand conjured a hard-light sphere around the stakes that trapped them like flies in a web. "You split the mana of your spell among too many constructs.

"Their individual power is negligible, and you lack the skill to move them in a battle formation. That’s why a barrier that’s barely half as strong as your spell can contain them with ease."

"I noticed!" Nalrond replied.

He charged at the much smaller woman while lunging with the blades of his arms, knees, and lashing with his tail. At the same time, he merged the spikes constructs into a single colossal blade that pierced through Dawn’s barrier.

"Cool stuff." The Horseman just extended her left arm with the palm out, and a tier three heat ray hit Nalrond from point-blank range with the momentum of a speeding truck.

The Agni’s attacks hit only air and his spell faded as he crashed into the wall, opening a several-meter-deep crater.

"How?" He grunted in pain. "Why?"

Dawn didn’t move from her spot like she had done from the beginning of the fight to offer him a fixed target. She even halted her attacks to give Nalrond the time he needed to recover and strategize.

"You suck and I don’t." She swept her raven-black hair behind her ear. "That’s how."

"I need a better explanation." The silence prolonged until the Agni added, "Please."

"If you’re asking yourself how can such a beautiful woman much shorter than you kick your ass despite the mass gap between us, the answer is simple." Dawn replied. "The problem is not our core gap.

"I’m not much more powerful than a bright violet-cored Awakened, and you are not that far from becoming one. The problem is that you have no idea how to use your powers.

"When you fight as a Rezar, sorry, an Agni, you let your beast side take control, relinquishing tactics and cunning in favor of instinct. That works against another beast or an unskilled opponent, but it’s a terrible choice against someone who can bait your beast side with fake openings.

"The reason you can’t move me from my spot is that you keep falling for the traps I lay for you. You have danced in the palm of my hand like a puppet the entire time, and you didn’t even notice it."

Dawn paused, and Nalrond used that time to catch his breath and mull over her words.

’She’s right. Her body is nothing special. Dawn is no different from a human woman with a powerful mana core. She didn’t fight harder than me, she fought smarter.’ He thought.

"That’s bad news." He actually said. "I’ve always fought like that because it worked and because it allowed me to focus on weaving my spells. I let my body fight on instinct and my mind cast magic."

"A nice trick, but a trick nonetheless." Dawn replied. "Save it for small fish. Now that you have access to body casting, you have to master it and use it to deal with big fish, or you’ll always end up like this."

"What about Light Mastery?" He nodded. "I did my best and yet I never managed to touch you. Heck, you never used more than half the strength I employed."

"You noticed?" The Horseman smirked. "I guess you’re not the hopeless case I thought, after all."

"Less insults, more teaching." Nalrond snarled, receiving a dreadful glare in reply until he added, "Please."

"You won’t like the answer." Dawn said. "Are you sure you want to hear it?"

"I’m sure. Please." The Agni didn’t know what was worse.

Whether to be forced to ask nicely his worst enemy for help or the fact that being polite to Dawn was getting easier the more he did it.

"Fine." She nodded. "You Rezars are a bunch of arrogant idiots. You believed everything you extorted from me with violence and were so conceited that you never suspected I was setting you up for failure in revenge."

"What?" Nalrond was flabbergasted. "That cannot be. We double-checked everything you taught us. We used every spell we learned on animals before using it on ourselves."

"I never said you were mindless zombies." Dawn’s reply cut deep. "Otherwise I wouldn’t have needed Zepho’s help to break free from my prison. Yet you were arrogant idiots. You never questioned my teaching methods, nor did you improve on them.

"Just like I can easily teach Aran and Leria how to form constructs with tier one Light Mastery and you can’t, I can use Light Mastery in a fight while you can’t. Do you understand now what I meant by setting you Rezars up for failure?"

"You taught us to use Light Mastery wrong in a fight!" The Agni’s eyes widened in realization. "You did it to ensure that when you broke free and we tried to stop you, we would use our skills poorly so that you could overpower us with ease.

"That’s how you destroyed us despite having no coordination with your host and we Rezars having the advantage of numbers and centuries of practice! That’s why Lith needed but a glance to spot the mistakes in my battle techniques even though he had mastered only tier zero Light Mastery!"

"And my plan worked like a charm, didn’t it?" Dawn’s otherworldly beauty only made her cruel smile even more terrifying.