James felt like hell. Every single day, he was being pushed to his absolute brink, surviving only on the potent recovery potions they forced down his throat.
Now that Mira knew he could actually keep up with her, she didn't hold back in the slightest during their sparring sessions.
Physically, James was the stronger of the two—more than ten times stronger, in fact—and he could handle her raw strength.
But the second she activated her aura, the gap closed so fast it wasn't even funny.
The sheer versatility of the buffs provided by aura was something his mind couldn't even fully grasp yet.
Seeing that fighting Mira alone was no longer pushing him past his limits, Caius, in his infinite wisdom, decided to throw James straight into the fire without a safety net.
He summoned Talia to fight alongside Mira.
It was an absolute disaster; it felt like fighting Luna all over again.
While individually the two women might have been weaker than James, they had been fighting together as a team for more than thirty years.
Their coordination was flawless.
Mira took the vanguard, keeping James occupied at the front, while Talia provided seamless support.
If James focused too much on Mira, Talia would exploit his blind spot; if he shifted his attention to Talia, Mira would punish him for it.
None of his punches landed. Talia was always fast enough to physically yank Mira out of harm's way or use wind magic to deflect his fists just enough to miss their mark.
Now, James lay flat on the training ground, bruised from head to toe.
His advanced Alpha regeneration was working overtime, his bones audibly realigning themselves to go back where they belonged—which was safely inside his skin, rather than sticking out of it.
Talia loomed over him, a bright smile on her face.
"Drink up, pup," she said, uncorking her gourd and tipping it over to pour the contents directly toward his face.
James opened his mouth to catch the stream.
The liquid was a thick, earthy amber color that smelled strongly of pine and citrus.
When the gourd was empty, Talia closed it and looked down at his beaten, shirtless body.
His shirt had been incinerated earlier—an accident, Mira had sworn, though James didn't believe her for a second.
With a heavy groan, James managed to push himself up into a sitting position.
Every ounce of his energy felt completely drained. Is this what the ancient Spartans felt like?
"Good, you're up." Talia looked entirely ready to start the next round. James winced.
The women in this camp had stamina for days.
"Next drill: you're running ten kilometers while I chase you down."
"I'd really rather not," he groaned, his muscles screaming in protest.
"Why not? I promise to be gentle, I swear," she said, giving him wide, adorable puppy-dog eyes.
It might have been convincing if she hadn't launched a wind blade earlier that literally tore a hole in his back.
Despite the agony, James was starting to get used to their brutal, high-intensity drills.
He highly doubted even the Navy SEALs went through anything this physically demanding.
Their training perfectly simulated real-world combat conditions.
For this ten-kilometer drill, his goal was simple: reach an outpost ten kilometers away while being hunted by Talia, who would be using every asset at her disposal.
To make things worse, he would be wearing armor laced with silver and wolfsbane, heavily restricting his strength and regeneration.
It was designed to simulate fleeing from a vastly superior enemy while severely injured.
To ensure he focused on the objective, he had to carry a scroll to the outpost, while Talia's job was to steal it from him.
Sometimes, to simulate carrying a wounded teammate, they would make him run the distance while carrying a heavy weight, or even Mira herself.
Because werewolves were notoriously resilient and difficult to kill, Talia didn't hold back.
It hurt like hell.
For all their brutality, James quickly realized the pack weren't just mindless meatheads.
They heavily researched and optimized their magic.
Because the camp was a melting pot of different cultures, he learned a vast amount of supernatural lore during his downtime.
He discovered that runes hadn't originated here; they were created by the dwarves before the Norse adopted them.
Since there were descendants from those regions in the camp, runes were actively integrated into their defenses, and Latin was taught to the young children.
While the modern human world had moved on from ancient tongues, the supernatural world was old and lagged behind.
Latin remained a highly common language, frequently used for spellcasting within the hunter system.
Most demonic rituals relied heavily on Latin or the ancient language of the realm the demon originated from.
For instance, rituals involving Baal, a god of storms, originally required Hebrew, Phoenician, Punic, or Moabite.
But because modern eras only preserved Hebrew, that was all that remained accessible.
"Also... what exactly was that stuff you just gave me?" James asked, looking up at Talia.
She had looked annoyed that he was resisting the next phase of training, but the question instantly perked her up.
"It's an intensive metabolic recovery brew," she explained proudly.
Seeing his raised eyebrow, she quickly corrected her tone to sound more clinical.
"Don't worry, it's completely natural stuff. No weird magical synthetics that'll warp your core. The shamans engineered it using high-potency concentrates of Earth's natural anti-inflammatories and cellular adaptogens."
She pointed to the gourd as James wiped his mouth.
"The base is a hyper-concentrated blend of tart cherry juice and wild turmeric root, packed with active curcumin to completely halt the cellular damage and muscle soreness Mira keeps inflicting on you. To force your nervous system to handle the massive adrenaline spikes, it's loaded with ashwagandha and rhodiola rosea—adaptogenic herbs that lower your cortisol levels so your brain doesn't fry from the stress."
James figured that every single ingredient in the blend had been pre-enhanced by magic.
He had noticed that when magic was used to enhance an object, it magnified both its positive and negative traits, though the effect usually dissipated over time since a natural plant could only contain so much external energy.
He couldn't remember the exact magical theory behind it; between Mira and Talia, he had sustained so much simulated concussive trauma that his memory was a bit hazy.
He did, however, remember reading that you could permanently turn a regular item into a magical artifact by consistently infusing it with your own magic over a long period, allowing the object to inherit specific traits.
The books he read during his rare moments of free time were incredibly helpful.
They covered spirits, ghosts, and yokai, though Caius had instructed him to strictly focus on entities native to the United States—specifically the East Coast and regions near large bodies of water.
Consequently, James had been studying various regional classifications of merfolk.
Apparently, the specific creatures they had fought in the lake belonged to one of the weakest classifications, purely because landlocked lakes offered very little evolutionary competition.
The truly dangerous variations lived deep within the oceans. The further away from land they evolved, the less hair they possessed.
On coastal variations, hair merely served as a visual camouflage to mimic a human silhouette from a distance; deep-sea variations had absolutely no need for it.
As a result, the deep-ocean merfolk were completely bald and easily twice the size of their freshwater cousins.
Surprisingly, the text noted that even the deep-sea variants possessed highly specialized lungs rather than gills, which James found unusual for an apex underwater predator.
He shrugged the thought off and listened as Talia continued her lecture.
"We also infuse it with concentrated bromelain extracted from pineapple stems to accelerate tissue repair, along with beetroot extract to maximize the nitric oxide levels in your bloodstream,"
Talia added, watching him digest the information.
"It forces your blood vessels to open up, sending oxygen and nutrients to your torn muscle fibers at roughly five times the speed of a normal human's circulatory cycle."
James stared at her for a moment.
"How do you even know what those words mean?" He wasn't trying to call her stupid, but the sudden medical vocabulary was jarring.
"I am smart, that's all," she said, puffing out her chest proudly.
"She is simply regurgitating exactly what Lady Selene told her yesterday," Caius chimed in without looking up from the book he was reading nearby.
"HEY!" Talia snapped, glaring at him for ruining her intellectual moment.
"Ah... I see," James said, cracking a small smile as the truth came out. Looking at Talia's suddenly deflated expression, he added,
"Hey, the fact that you managed to memorize and repeat all of that perfectly is still really impressive."
"Really?!" Talia's eyes lit up. If she had a tail in her human form, it would have been wagging at maximum speed.
"Yeah, seriously," James replied, smiling.
"Don't go filling her head with delusions," Mira muttered, stepping into view.
Ever the critic, she refused to let Talia enjoy the compliment in peace.
"You're just mad because nobody called you smart," Talia shot back, her bright mood instantly returning.
"I am plenty smart," Mira barked.
James internally wondered when Mira would finally learn that she could never win a petty argument against Talia.
"Says who?" Talia countered instantly.
And just like that, the two were right back at it.
They seem friendly with each other.
Later that night,
James was experiencing what he could only describe as a secondary form of abuse.
If the daytime drills were meant to shatter his bones, the nighttime sessions with Rowan were designed to slowly dissolve his sanity through an overwhelming bombardment of academic theory.
Rowan was entirely different from the others.
He felt more like an assassin—quiet, methodical, and clinical. That meant their curriculum consisted of darkness magic theory and a casual regimen of poison resistance testing.
Because werewolves naturally possessed highly resilient immune systems, Rowan had managed to build an absurdly high tolerance by actively administering lethal toxins to himself on a regular basis.
He seemed to prefer neurotoxins, muttering something about how they were incredibly expensive but worth the investment.
Currently, as he was lecturing, Rowan was casually dissecting a highly lethal pufferfish.
He even sliced off a piece of the raw, toxic meat and ate it without flinching.
James decided it was best to just ignore that entirely.
"Darkness is not merely the absence of light, James," Rowan explained, holding out a single hand. A small, perfect sphere of absolute blackness materialized above his palm.
"It is a physical, fluid medium. It possesses mass, friction, and an inherent pulling mechanism. To control it, you must not think of it as an element you shoot from your hands, but as a vacuum you open within the world."
James leaned forward, his analytical mind completely locked in.
"So, when I used the vacuum property against Mira earlier... I was basically just opening a localized low-pressure zone?"
"In a structural sense, yes," Rowan answered politely, offering a small, encouraging nod.
"But you can take that mechanical concept much further. If you compress darkness magic to an absolute extreme, its dense mass begins to generate a localized gravitational field. Compress it perfectly, and you can create a baseline singularity—a minor black hole."
James's eyes widened. "A literal black hole? Like, infinite density?"
"Not quite infinite within our current limitations, but dense enough to collapse the immediate space around it," Rowan clarified calmly.
"It can even function similarly to Space Magic. If you compress the darkness just below the threshold of a singularity and turn the suction property to its maximum frequency, it will distort the spatial coordinates around the target, violently pulling in everything within a thirty-yard radius—weapons, spells, and physical bodies alike—and crushing them under the weight of the pressure."
James absorbed the information greedily, jotting down mental notes.
The sheer versatility of the element was insane. "That is incredibly broken. It's like having a gravity build and a stealth build wrapped into one."
Dozens of tactical ideas began pouring into his mind. He was going to have a lot of fun testing this out.
"It is a highly efficient toolkit," Rowan agreed, letting the sphere dissipate smoothly into the night air. "But to truly master the darkness, you must also understand our relationship with the celestial bodies. Specifically, the moon."
Oh, neat, James thought.
"Right. Talia mentioned that our stats get altered by it," James said, leaning back.
"But I've been meaning to ask... how exactly does the transformation schedule work? Do we have to turn during a full moon?"
"No. We do not need the moon to transform at all."
James blinked. "Wait, what? Then why is there such a massive cultural focus on it? Every single piece of lore back home says werewolves are bound to the lunar cycle."
"Think of it logistically, James," Rowan explained, his tone completely reasonable.
"If our biology forced us to transform on a rigid, predictable schedule every single month, our enemies would have a flawless tactical calendar. It would be incredibly easy for rival factions to organize high-tier ambushes or coordinate strikes precisely when an entire pack is locked into a fixed physical state. Evolution would not permit such a glaring vulnerability."
It made perfect sense.
If every werewolf turned exclusively on the full moon, they stopped being apex predators and became beasts on a predictable schedule.
They would lose all their terror factor because enemies would always know exactly when to prepare.
James's brow furrowed.
He had never thought about it like that, but he really should have.
For all their supernatural traits, the creatures he had encountered still fundamentally adhered to evolutionary logic.
Werewolves didn't have wings because they didn't fly, so there was no biological need for them.
The merfolk had evolved to mimic the sound of a crying baby to lure in prey, and Michael had mentioned that vampires possessed enhanced aesthetics to naturally attract their targets.
However, none of this changed the reality of James's own experience.
"But... I literally transformed the night I saw the full moon," James pointed out, gesturing to himself.
"That's how I ended up knocked out in a cage in the first place."
Rowan nodded patiently.
"That was your very first time. You transformed that night simply because you internally believed that was how a werewolf was supposed to turn. Your subconscious mind expected the full moon to trigger the change, so your internal magic pool reacted to your own psychological expectations."
James's jaw dropped slightly as the pieces clicked together. "Huh?"
"I am sure you have learned by now, but the way one views the world shapes how their magic functions. It shapes them."
James nodded. He knew that much.
The core difference between a curse and a healing spell was entirely dependent on intent.
"Well, your mentality affects your physical reality as well," Rowan said, pointing a finger toward James's head.
"If you truly believe something, you can make it happen through magic."
The concept sounded incredibly complex. James wondered what stopped someone from simply believing their water magic could nuke the world.
There had to be some level of restriction based on a person's total mana capacity and the strength of their psychological focus.
"So, I basically placebo-ed myself into transforming?" James looked down at his hands, bewildered.
"It is a remnant of the propaganda spread by the high-tier vampire covens to keep young, rogue wolves isolated and terrified during specific calendar days," Rowan explained.
"In reality, a true transformation is triggered entirely by internal biochemical markers—specifically, when a wolf experiences a profound sense of mortal danger, or when their psychological stress levels spike past their baseline threshold."
James blinked. "How much propaganda do these factions even have?"
"More than you are aware of."
Cryptic much, James thought to himself. "So, does the moon actually do anything at all? If it doesn't force the transformation, what's the point of it?"
"The moon does possess objective metaphysical properties that alter our core output," Rowan continued, raising his gaze toward the silver crescent visible through the canopy.
"The lunar cycle acts as a cosmic amplifier, not a trigger. Under a Blue Moon, our baseline physical and magical statistics receive a massive, uniform buff. Under a Red Moon, our internal cores are heavily flooded with aggression and primal instinct, making us far more prone to blind rage, though our raw destructive output increases significantly."
Rowan leaned forward slightly, his expression turning serious.
"A werewolf is universally at their strongest under two specific conditions: during a Blue Moon, and under the exact moon phase of their birth. For example, if a wolf was born on December 24th at midnight, their power will naturally peak when the moon reaches that exact alignment and height in the night sky."
James tilted his head, his gamer brain immediately calculating the potential stat stacking. "Wait. What happens if someone's actual birthday happens to line up perfectly with a literal Blue Moon?"
Rowan's calm demeanor remained entirely steady, but his dark eyes held a profound weight as he delivered the answer.
"If those two specific celestial alignments perfectly synchronize, the individual's power pool will explode exponentially. Their core will violently jump several tiers of authority entirely on its own. The structural strain of that much raw energy is immense, so the peak amplification will only last for precisely one minute—but for that single minute, their absolute dominance over the battlefield is completely unmatched."
That was incredibly good to know.
James spent the rest of the night studying under Rowan's quiet guidance.
Finding out that he had accidentally placebo-ed himself into a full-moon transformation hadn't been on his bingo card, but he accepted it.
Since he had grown up watching countless movies where that exact rule applied, his subconscious had accepted it as absolute truth. When he was infected and saw the moon, his mind had simply flipped the switch.
Despite everything he was learning, James wasn't satisfied with his progress.
He was growing stronger, but it wasn't happening fast enough. If Raze was truly as powerful as everyone claimed, James needed something radical to force his progression.
He needed an encounter that would push him to the absolute brink of survival—something to force his body to adapt instantly, or put him in a hospital bed for a month trying.
He needed to face Kaela.
A/N 3k words, next chapter should be the fight, this one should set up nicely, that his ass will train with Kaela for the remaining 1 week he has till the fight.