(Rodova Military Academy – Two Months Later)
After the challenging first mid-semester exam in Basics of Magic Theory, the rest of the exams proved significantly easier for Leo to handle.
In Physical Training, he was already miles ahead of his peers, and when evaluated under the same grading lens, he naturally secured a perfect score.
In Practical Combat, he stood shoulder to shoulder with Su Yang as one of the strongest fighters in the first-year class, once again earning the highest possible grade without much difficulty.
In Basics of Perception, his perfect mastery of [Absolute Vision] made the entire course feel like cake-walk, as he breezed through assessments that left others fumbling.
Stealth and Planning posed no threat either, as his instincts, discipline, and natural talent allowed him to pass with flying colors.
And in Basics of Assassination, a subject where many struggled to find footing, Leo thrived—his precision, fondness of learning about poisons, and natural killer instinct shining through, as he secured yet another excellent mark.
Hence, with all his subjects handled and his academic footing solidified, Leo was finally free to focus entirely on what truly mattered to him—his training.
And for the next sixty days, that was all he did.
Leo trained like a man possessed—reshaping his body, refining his instincts and sharpening his mind, as he transformed himself into something far more dangerous than what he had been before.
Because it wasn't just the skills he was mastering, or the countless hours poured into the combat grounds.
It was the atmosphere itself—the pressure, the rivalry, the pace of Rodova—that pushed him to evolve beyond his limits.
And evolve, he did.
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[Absolute Vision] had long since become a part of his subconscious.
A permanent layer in his awareness—always active, always running.
As one part of his mind remained solely dedicated to maintaining the skill, filtering through the sensory information of his surroundings in a never-ending loop, that allowed him to monitor every blind spot without thinking.
But what surprised him most—was what he began doing with his actual eyes.
As what happened next wasn't something that Leo had consciously planned or trained for.
But after weeks of fighting against Grandmaster-tier opponents and getting repeatedly pummeled, knocked flat, and outpaced, his instincts began to adapt in subtle ways that his conscious mind only later caught onto.
As he started to subconsciously watch for patterns.
Patterns like the way an opponent's shoulder tensed before a punch.
The twist of their ankle before a kick.
The smallest twitch in their fingers before they cast a spell.
It was never a full motion—just a contraction of muscle, a shift in stance, a whisper of movement that gave away what was coming next.
And although it all happened in the span of just a few microseconds—that was all Leo needed to predict what was coming next.
His brain, now trained to split its focus, allowed [Absolute Vision] to monitor his surroundings for attacks and any big movements.
While his real real eyes focused purely on reading his opponent's body, giving him a reaction window that, while tiny, was often the difference between taking a hit and slipping past it, as his real eyes only focused on the muscle contractions on his opponents body.
Telltale signs such as the direction their pupils were gazing in.
The extent their biceps were contracted at.
And the tension in their ankles.
This was all that Leo monitored constantly using his actual eyes, as he tried to stay one step ahead of his opponent, whenever he could.
Unfortunately, it wasn't a perfect system yet.
As he often made mistakes in his reading of what that muscle movement meant.
However, they were mistakes he undoubtedly learned from—each one sharpening him further, as every subsequent fight brought him closer to becoming untouchable against opponents within the same tier.
With his superior speed and reflexes already giving him an edge, the added ability to predict his enemy's movements made him borderline impossible to hit.
And this phenomenon was evident in his recent spars with Su Yang—who, despite advancing rapidly in his own craft, now struggled to land even a single clean blow on him.
—--------
At the same time over the last sixty days, Leo's training with [Celestial Veil] had become the most grueling—and expensive—part of his daily schedule, as every afternoon after class, he would beg Professor Hen, Muiyan Faye, or even Mu Shen to attack him with live spells or high-speed projectiles, forcing him to activate the shield at the exact right moment to block the incoming hit.
It was frustrating. Painful. And completely draining.
As with every failed attempt, not only was he left brutally bruised and injured.
But it also left him costing 25% of his mana pool, as Leo burned through four dozen mana potion bottles a day, drawing more than a few concerned glances from the academy supply staff who were worried about the expense his training cost the academy.
But the pain and the expense were worth it.
Because after two months of this brutal regimen—
He broke through.
[Celestial Veil] finally reached (Advanced) mastery, as his understanding of the technique sharpened through repeated use.
And it was at this stage that everything changed.
The activation time dropped to just 0.3 seconds—quick enough to deploy mid-fight, quick enough to save his life even in close quarters, as he finally began weaving the skill seamlessly into real combat and not just drills.
The mana cost, too, dropped from a crippling 25% to a far more manageable 10%, making it viable to use not once, but multiple times across a drawn-out fight without completely draining his reserves.
Where once the skill felt like a gamble—an expensive shield he prayed would trigger in time—it had now become a reliable, instinctual part of his arsenal.
As he no longer hoped it would activate, but rather confidently knew that it would.
And that certainty transformed everything.
He could now afford to take risks. To charge in. To press harder. To walk into danger without flinching.
Because for 1.2 full seconds—Leo wasn't just defending.
He was simply invincible.
—--------
Finally—and perhaps inevitably—the most noticeable leap came in his offense.
[Thousand Phantom Strikes], once a flashy but slightly clumsy skill, had evolved into a legitimate nightmare to defend against.
As after two months of relentless use and refinement, Leo had finally pushed the technique to (Advanced) mastery.
Gone were the flickering, transparent illusions that once betrayed the move's mechanics.
Now?
They looked real.
With every step, ghostly afterimages peeled off from his body, scattering in every direction like echoes in motion.
With every swing, a dozen phantom blades mirrored the real one—each strike timed with surgical precision to overload his opponent's perception.
As the skill no longer looked just fast.
It was elegant.
Fluid.
Deadly.
Even Major Hen began misreading the attacks during their spars, slipping up in ways he never had before, creating rare openings that Leo could now regularly exploit—landing clean, undeniable blows against someone who once toyed with him.
Because once the afterimages took hold, it became nearly impossible to tell where the real Leo was—or which blade was going to land.
And when paired with [Blade Switch], which allowed him to reposition through spatial gaps at will—
Leo became a blur of motion and illusion.
An unpredictable force of chaos that no opponent could easily anticipate, let alone pin down.