An ambush is devastating because its victim is unprepared. A strategy may not always succeed, but lack of preparation will always lead to failure unless you have inhuman luck.

~Lugh, God of Battle and Craft

Outside the deactivated Spirit Shrine, Crow sighed. His eyes still bore into the space where the portal once existed. He instinctively knew his mother only looked that way based on his memory. It didn’t mean he couldn’t sense how much she’d suffered. Her aura was weak because of her lack of vitality. She was an anomaly that Crow didn’t understand. Not alive and not dead. It felt like her next breath would be her last, and it was stuck in a time loop preventing that from happening.

Time… Is my shared bloodline related to time? If true, it would explain my unnatural affinity toward it.

“That’s two, young master. Would you like to take a break or continue?” The golem asked, interrupting Crow’s thoughts. It didn’t matter since it was all speculation with no way to prove it—for now.

“Let’s continue.”

“You sure? Spirit Shrines are the most taxing on mental energy. Even the most powerful cultivators must be wary of exhausting their mental energy.”

“You mean my Mind?”

“No. Your Body has limits based on stamina, and mental energy is the primary limiter of your Spirit. Think of it like a warning system; if you push beyond your capability, you will harm yourself.”

“What about my Mind?”

“Mind is closer to a balance between stamina and mental energy, but it all depends on actions taken. All three aspects of the Soul use both stamina and mental energy. It’s just that the Mind and Spirit related actions use more mental than stamina. The Body uses more stamina, but that isn’t always the case. Actions taken are the primary determination.”

“Isn’t cultivation supposed to remove those weaknesses?”

“It doesn’t remove them. Ever wonder why we talk about primordials slumbering? They may function for eons, but if they don’t rest periodically and exhaust their Souls, even they aren’t immune to rest. Their state determines the length of their slumber. So I’ll ask again… do you wish to take a short break?”

“Nope, it’s fine. I’m not at my limits. It wasn’t exhaustion but the nostalgia that left me in this state. Maybe wishing things had turned out differently, but at the same time, I’d never want to change the past because I might not have met the people I have by my side. I find my thoughts conflicted.”

“Then you should find a way to escape those thoughts. Combat?”

Crow chuckled at the stone golem because he was venting his issues to an inanimate object. At the same time, it offered a solution so earnestly that he felt the entire thing was comical.

“Yeah, let’s beat something up.”

Crow stepped through the gate and saw the same creepy scarecrow-type dummy staring at him. A massive two-handed sword, almost two meters long, came crashing down toward his head.

Only his father’s rigid training saved him as Crow reacted before he realized the dummy wasn’t standing on the block like usual. It was already on the offensive the moment Crow arrived.

Worse, this nightmarish construct has a vicious-looking weapon. That long black blade struck the ground hard enough that the floor rippled from the impact. Crow dove to the side and rolled to his feet with his falcata in hand. It was too close for him to use his exploding arrow unless he wanted to injure himself.

Because he was unprepared, he was on the defensive and scrambled to deflect the large blade away from him. He could not withstand a direct hit, pushing it away from his body with all his might and only narrowly avoiding getting bisected. Sparks flashed every time the blades met, and he felt his wrist aching from the poorly deflected blows. Half a dozen overhand strikes and Crow’s forehead was already covered with a cold sweat.

Suddenly, it backed off, and Crow silently let out a sigh of relief. He had a brief second to correct his mental state and center himself before his jaw opened in disbelief. The scarecrow now looked like an ice porcupine with splinters of ice sprouting from its body. Horrifyingly, each sliver of ice pointed at him like a sunflower turning to face the sun. Stepping to the side only sent more chills down his spine as they seemed to follow his movements.

“What the fuck!?” Crow shouted and quickly summoned a wall of thorny vines in front of him. On a whim, he set them on fire right before the dummy launched its attack. The slivers of ice were too tiny to make it through the flaming thorn wall, but the barrage was so heavy that it shredded the vines like paper, and if not for the fire, Crow was sure they’d have found his flayed corpse. Sadly, it tore apart his defensive structure, leaving a significant gap in the thorn wall.

It was the first time he’d seen one of those things casting spells. It shocked Crow to the point of inaction. His earlier confidence was gone entirely, but his resolve hardened. He wouldn’t be stopped here.

When the dummy tried to barge through the hole in his defenses, Crow used the surviving vines to wrap it up. The massive sword hacked vines apart left and right, but Crow wasn’t about to stop sending them. The two stared at each other, attempting to gauge who would last the longest in this battle of attrition.

Crow wasn’t even sure if this thing tired because it definitely wasn’t human. Using both the vines and blade, he beat back the dummy, but it wasn’t without taking a few hits. Even now, blood was running down his arm from a gash in his shoulder.

Snick!

Dodging back, he misjudged the distance between his head and the scarecrow’s blade. The blade tip scraped his forehead, and he could feel it scratching against the bone under his flesh. Crimson splashed down, nearly blinding him, and Crow’s world went silent.

Everything slowed to a crawl, and the mana inside and outside of him went haywire. Vines formed out of nothingness and exploded from his flesh in a torrent that overwhelmed the scarecrow’s ability to fight back.

The more it struggled to escape from Crow’s counterattack, the more tangled it became until it could not move. Its left hand held onto the two-handed sword, but it couldn’t muster up the strength or momentum to raise it.

Crow activated Blood Transfusion on a whim and felt the thorns piercing into the construct’s body, and a drop of pure mana entered his meridians. Its effect on his body was nearly instant. All the strain from the constant use of his spell disappeared, soothed away as if it never existed. While the amount he could siphon wasn’t much, it was enough to tip the balance hugely in his favor.

More and more vines sprouted from his hands and wrapped around the dummy. Like the victim of a boa constrictor, its body was crumpling under the tightening vines. Especially as the mana that maintained it was being sucked away one drop at a time.

However, the dummy and challenge faded away before he could enjoy his gains. Crow would be lying if he said he wasn’t angry about that. That kind of mana was rare and very beneficial to his cultivation. Sadly, he knew there was nothing he could do except sigh in regret and let it go.

It didn’t lessen his anger. Before the mini Colossus could speak, Crow directly entered the Body gate. Looking across the room, he saw an obstacle course and knew what had to be done.