I Can Only Cultivate In A Game

Victor activated Wind Dash and appeared behind her, attempting a piercing thrust.

She pivoted and slammed her blade into his at the last second. The clash sent ripples of shockwave through the air.

Victor narrowed his eyes. He could feel her arm trembling from the impact, even if she hid it well.

"You're still forcing yourself," he said softly while pressing in. "This isn't a battle you can win by sheer will alone."

"I'm not trying to win with will," Elyra hissed back. "I'm trying to prove... that I deserve father's legacy!"

Victor eyes widened as the word 'Father' was mentioned.

She suddenly pushed back and activated a unique skill...

[ Verdant Bloom Has Been Activated ]

Her mana surged and vines erupted from her blade, attempting to entangle Victor's limbs.

Victor side stepped continuously to evade them and slashed through the vines he couldn't escape.

However, in the process of evading, Elyra had appeared behind him with her sword raised.

Victor spun around and held his blade up to block the attack at the last moment.

Clang!

He got sent flying backwards the instant their blades clashed.

'She's getting stronger by the second...' Victor couldn't understand how this was possible but he took note of it as he landed a few feet away.

He activated his Void Emperor bloodline, causing his skin to faintly glow as arrow like marks appeared all over.

Elyra had already charged at him with intense speed and swung her blade again twice as fast... Twice as powerful...

Victor activated Shadow blink and vanished before reappearing behind her as her slash sent a crescent shaped line of destruction surging forward.

He thrust his palm forward while activating Gale Strike.

A burst of concentrated wind gathered around his palm as it rammed into Elyra's back.

The force slammed her into the magical barrier wall, spiderwebbing it in the process.

Victor charged, moving faster than before.

But instead of swinging, he vanished at the last second.

Elyra's eyes widened. "Where—?"

"Above."

Victor descended with a powerful overhead strike with flames and shadows mixing along the blade like twin dragons.

Elyra brought up her blade, and the moment the clash happened—

**BOOM!**

The explosion within the barrier was so intense that many in the audience instinctively ducked or shielded themselves despite the barrier's protection.

Smoke filled the inside of the dome.

Then silence.

No one could see what had happened.

A long moment passed filled it tension and then...

Finally, a figure began walking out of the cloud of dust.

Slowly...

Victor Revenant.

His sleeves were torn and his half-white, half-black hair was slightly tousled, but he was walking with clarity.

Behind him, lying in the crater left from the last impact, Elyra's body could be seen.

Her greenish skin was dirtied and bruised. Crimson blood was drying near her lips, and her chest rose and fell faintly.

She was barely conscious and unable to rise.

Her sword lay at her side, trembling from her weakened grip as her aura slowly started to die down.

Victor exhaled and turned to look back. 'That was close... If I had continued letting her power rise... There's no telling how the battle would have gone.'

She met his gaze and Victor paused briefly as he noticed her sorrowful eyes.

'Why does she look so sad...?'

In the next moment, Elyra passed out.

A moment later, the magical dome around the battlefield dissipated.

Cheers erupted like a storm.

The crowd had lost it.

"VICTOR!!!"

"He actually won!"

"Elyra lost??"

"What does this make him now? Still B ranked or S ranked?"

The instructors exchanged glances and some even stood up to applaud.

"VICTOR! VICTOR! VICTOR!"

Reed was yelling from the stands with hands cupped to his mouth, "YOU BETTER HOLD THAT DAMN SWORD HIGH, BRO!"

Danny whooped next to him with a look of disbelief. "He actually did it! Holy shit—he beat Elyra Vorn."

Selene smirked with arms folded, though her expression slightly softened when she looked down at the fallen Elyra being carefully tended to by the Academy's healers.

She glanced back at Victor.

Victor slowly walked toward the central pedestal now rising from the middle of the battlefield... the prize he'd worked for across every grueling phase of the Legacy Weapons Competition lay waiting for him.

Five feet of polished dark blade like the fang of some divine beast.

The hilt itself was black steel but shimmered with crawling arcs of dark lightning that hissed and popped like contained thunder.

The sword didn't just sit... it chimed as if recognizing its true wielder had finally arrived.

Victor approached it as one of his hands tightened into a fist while the other reached forward.

The moment his fingers gripped the hilt, a rush of energy surged into him... It was familiar, terrifying and raw.

It was just like the moment he'd first touched the blade back during the screening.

It welcomed him.

A pulse of energy spread from the sword to his chest, like a heartbeat syncing with his own.

Wind swirled around the stage as if acknowledging the coronation of its new master.

Victor raised the sword high.

The crowd lost it.

Even the instructors seated above nodded in silent approval.

A few exchanged impressed glances.

One muttered, "He's different. That boy's not just talented— there's something about him..."

Victor stood tall with the sword raised and perfectly balanced in his hand.

The edges looked so sharp like they could cut a soul.

He felt its dark lightning slither across his arm and settle beneath his skin, as though claiming a part of him.

But even amidst the roaring cheers, his eyes found the team of healers lifting Elyra's unconscious body gently onto a hover stretcher.

His face darkened slightly.

He remembered how she had shouted "Father's legacy!" with desperation before he knocked her out with his final attack.

It seemed like this wasn't just about the sword for her.

There was something deeper.

Something personal.

---

(( Hours Later ))

Elsewhere, in the Academy's infirmary…~

Elyra's body lay still upon the white crystal bed with her form bathed in healing light.

Magical glyphs spun slowly in the air around which was responsible for healing her but her eyes remained shut.

Two instructors stood nearby, watching with concern.

"Why isn't she waking up?" Instructor Harlin questioned with furrowed brow. "Didn't you say the healing was complete?"

"I did," Instructor Linnea, the chief healinf mage of the Academy, replied. "Her physical injuries are gone. Every bone, every muscle, fully restored."

Harlin stepped closer with a look of worry. "Then what's keeping her unconscious?"

Linnea sighed softly while tucking a green strand of hair behind her ear. "Because some wounds go beyond the physical. I believe she's locked within herself… fighting something deeper."

"You mean her pride?"

"Perhaps..." Linnea voiced with her gaze fixed on the girl's pale face.

"Every win is commensurated with loss on an opposite end... Sometimes the rise of one, means the fall of another. The victor is always quick to celebrate but never stops to think about how their win has impacted the life of another..."

(( Within Elyra's unconscious mind… ))

There was fire... A warm crackling blaze surrounded by broken stones and twisted metals like the wreckage of a battlefield long passed.

Elyra stood as a little girl, perhaps no older than eight, peering from behind a massive fallen log.

A man sat before the fire, armored in brilliant darksteel.

His shoulders were wide like mountains, and his long hair was tied back with a leather cord. His emerald eyes glowed under the flickering firelight as he spoke in a gravelly but kind voice.

"Come on, little frostbite," he beckoned without turning. "I can smell you hiding."

Young Elyra emerged shyly, holding a too-large training sword in her little hands.

General Stormrend looked down at her and chuckled. "That sword's bigger than your head."

"I want to learn," young Elyra said while puffing up her cheeks. "Mama said it's okay."

From behind, a tall woman with bluish-green skin and elegant antlers atop her head watched silently with a small smile. Her eyes were like calm pools of starlight.

"She'll follow your path," the woman said.

General Stormrend nodded.

He took the blade from Elyra and held it out. "Then start by understanding it. A sword isn't just a weapon—it's a reflection of you."

Elyra reached for the sword again with a look of determination.

But as she gripped it…

A vision surged through her.

Her father bleeding. Her mother screaming. A battlefield filled with monsters and flames.

Her father's sword slipping from his hand as his body collapsed while a radiating blue light surrounded her...

Fwwhiii~

Her body suddenly jerked upward.

"Arrrghh!"

Elyra screamed as the memory crushed into her.

"I failed you, Father… I couldn't even protect your blade…"

She clutched her temples in agony as her body curled inwards. "How… how could I lose… to him…"

---

Victor sat silently on the steps of his dormitory courtyard. The sword rested against the wall beside him, wrapped in cloth.

He hadn't slept.

The cheers from earlier still echoed in his mind, but so did Elyra's fall.

Selene eventually approached and sat beside him without saying a word.

"You didn't do anything wrong, Victor," she murmured.

"I know," he said. "But I still don't feel fully excited about the win... Something about it feels off..."