Chapter 60: Training
"Yeah, talking to you is like talking to a wall. A really annoying wall." He turned and waved his hand over his shoulder. "Goodbye, you annoying goddess."
He took a step toward the ship.
She lunged from behind.
And got exactly nowhere.
The ground split open beneath her—vines erupting in long, ropey lashes, snapping around her wrists, her ankles, her throat, suspending her in the air like a puppet with its strings yanked tight.
Shiro turned. Expression blank.
"You really think he’d let you lay a hand on me?"
A smile crawled across her lips. Wide. Then wider. Almost ear to ear—the kind of smile that didn’t belong to a goddess anymore. Something darker. Something uglier.
"He can’t keep me here forever, and you know it, my dear." Her voice was sweet. Patient. "It’s only a matter of time."
He sighed. The kind of sigh that was almost a smile. The kind that came out when you were too tired to be angry anymore.
"Aren’t you exhausted? After all this time?"
She tore straight through the vine holding her wrist. More shot up instantly, trying to yank her hand back down—but before they could, Shiro lifted a hand and shut that down in a blink.
Her palm brushed gently against his cheek.
Soft. Almost tender.
"That’s the beauty of you, my love," she whispered, and her voice was the kind of soft that left bruises. "You are one of a kind. Worth more than every treasure I have ever owned, every kingdom I have ever held in my hand. You are the one thing in all of creation that no one—not gods, not kings, not even me—is allowed to keep." A pause. "And that, my dearest king, is exactly why I want you."
Shiro pinched the bridge of his nose. Took a deep breath.
"Take this crazy goddess away."
The vines yanked her across the ground—pulled backward toward the mountain, dirt and stone closing around her as she went. And the entire time, she laughed. Wild. Maniacal. The kind of laugh that wasn’t joy, or madness, or even amusement—it was something else entirely. Something that didn’t have a name.
"I’ll find you, Gil!" she called out as the mountain began to swallow her. "You belong to me!"
And then she was gone.
Shiro stood there for a moment, staring at the spot where the earth had closed over her.
’What a pain in the ass.’
He turned and made his way toward the ship waiting for him on the shore.
At the edge of the deck stood Richard. Waiting. His injuries were almost gone.
Below him, Ana crouched beside Luca and Darius, patching up their wounds with the kind of focused efficiency that said she’d done this way too many times before. Empty elixir bottles were scattered next to them. The numbers didn’t match—which told him they’d shared.
He stepped onto the deck, expecting—well, he wasn’t sure what he was expecting. A welcome back, thanks for not dying? A pat on the shoulder? Maybe a hey, great job not getting a golden horn shoved through your stomach, top-tier work?
Instead, he got the look.
You know the one. The look parents give their kids right after something expensive shatters on the floor—that frozen moment where they haven’t decided yet whether to scream or just sigh themselves into an early grave. Disappointment with a side of barely-restrained rage. A whole emotional buffet, and Shiro hadn’t even ordered.
And he was not in the mood for their complaints.
So he didn’t say anything. Just walked past them like they weren’t there.
But Richard had a different idea.
"Wait."
His voice cracked across the deck like a whip. He took a step forward.
"Do you have any idea what you’ve done? We needed that divine artifact."
Ana grabbed Richard’s arm, murmuring something soft and calming that Shiro couldn’t quite catch.
Shiro stopped.
He turned slowly, pressed his foot down against the deck—and the entire ship dipped, shoved down into the sea like it had suddenly remembered gravity was a thing. Just a little reminder. Just a taste.
"That wasn’t the divine artifact you were looking for," he said quietly. "The one that seals away gods? It doesn’t exist anymore. It was destroyed."
"How do you know?" Richard asked, voice almost cracking. Like he already knew the answer and just really, really didn’t want to believe it.
"A close friend of mine did it." Shiro’s voice was flat. Empty. "So no one could ever chain me away."
Richard’s knees hit the deck. "Then this was all pointless."
Ana’s brows pulled together. "Shiro. What are you talking about?"
He sighed—the kind of sigh that came from somewhere deep and ancient. The sigh of a guy who had explained too many things to too many people in too short a time.
"This whole thing was a trial. Set by him. It was never about the artifact."
"So this was a trap set by—" Richard whispered, but stopped.
And even though betrayal was written across his face in three different languages, Richard still wasn’t ready to give up the masked man’s name.
’Loyal as always.’
"Not a trap," Shiro said, shaking his head, hoping maybe—just maybe—that would make Richard feel a little better about being played. "More like... you all completed your purpose."
A small pause. The kind of pause that exists specifically to make the next sentence land harder.
"And that woman? She was a goddess. Her name is Ishtar."
Three jaws dropped in perfect synchronization.
Honestly, if Shiro hadn’t been having the worst day of his entire life, he would’ve taken a moment to appreciate the choreography. That was Olympic-level. Gold medal in synchronized disbelief.
Before any of them could unleash the avalanche of questions he could see forming behind their eyes, he held up a hand.
"I get it. You’ve got a lot of questions." His expression darkened. "So do I. And I’d like to save mine for my so-called father."
He didn’t wait for a response.
He climbed down into the belly of the ship while the others stood frozen above, faces stuck somewhere between what and what the actual—
Shiro reached his room. Stepped inside. Locked the door.
Then locked it again, because once didn’t feel like enough.
Then—and he was not proud of this—he checked the lock a third time. Just to be thorough. Just in case the lock had developed sudden trust issues.
He sat down in the middle of the floor. Legs crossed. Back straight. Closed his eyes.
And one by one, he started peeling the world away.
The sea slamming against the hull. Gone.
The creak of the ship shifting in the waves. Gone.
The muffled voices above deck. Gone.
His own thoughts—gone.
Until there was nothing.
Just blank.
Just quiet.
Just Shiro, alone in the dark.
Then, slowly, the throne room began to form around him. The statues rose from the black. And at the center of it all, his ebony knight stood waiting. Patient. Silent. Like he always was.
"Don’t hold back," Shiro told Enkidu.
He was deep inside his inner realm now, trying out a new training method for the first time. Was it going to work? No idea. Was it going to hurt? Almost definitely.
But hey—that was kind of the whole point.
He didn’t have to wait long to find out.
Apparently his words landed a little too well, because the armor around Enkidu’s body tightened with a low metallic hum—the kind of sound that, in Shiro’s limited but painful experience, usually came right before something terrible happened to his ribs.
Then the knight moved.
Shiro’s eyes didn’t.
He didn’t see the fist. He didn’t see the wind-up. He didn’t see anything except a brief, blurry suggestion of oh no before a fist the size of a small boulder buried itself into his stomach.
And here’s the fun part—Shiro had also released the seal earlier. Which meant Enkidu had access to a huge pool of mana to play with.
Translation: that punch was not a normal punch.
That punch was a war crime.
The blow didn’t just hit him. It evicted him. Kicked him clean out of his inner realm and back into the real world like a bouncer tossing a drunk guy out of a bar.
He hit the floor on all fours and immediately started throwing up what felt like every internal organ he’d ever owned. Possibly some he hadn’t even grown yet.
[Passive Skill: Limitless — Activated]
[You have sustained damage.]
[Your body grew stronger.]
He wheezed, eyes watering, body shaking.
’Damn... that hunk of metal really didn’t hold back...’
A pause. Another wheeze.
’...at least it worked.’
He could barely string a word together. He flopped onto his back, staring at the ceiling like it had personally betrayed him, chest heaving as he dragged in shaky breath after shaky breath.
After what felt like a small eternity—and probably looked very dignified, thank you very much—he closed his eyes and sank back into his inner realm.
"Okay," he croaked, raising one finger at the knight standing perfectly still in front of him. "Let’s, uh... tone it down. Slightly. And work our way up. Slowly. Like reasonable people. Or reasonable knights. Whichever applies."
Enkidu did not respond.
Somehow, that was always worse.????????????????????????????????
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