The boy had rose-red hair and golden eyes. Aslan was certain he had never seen that face before, yet strangely, it did not feel unfamiliar.

An odd sense of déjà vu. Where had he seen him? No, he had never seen him before. Then, instinctively, Aslan understood.

“You... Could you be...”

Aslan felt the blood in his veins drawn powerfully toward the boy. His heart pounded of its own accord, and he realized that the boy before him shared a profound bond with him.

“My... son?”

Aslan’s lips trembled. It seemed impossible. This sword maniac did not even have a proper grasp of how long he had shut himself away in the cultivation room.

That was how completely he had devoted his time there to the sword.

He would swing his sword all day, then sink to the floor when he felt he could no longer move, practice his mana cultivation method, and immerse himself in meditation. Whenever he discovered a new course for his blade, he would leap up and swing his sword again. When he could no longer stay conscious, he would collapse into a sleep more like a blackout. Upon waking, he would stagger outside and chew down some pills. Then he would swing his sword again, cultivate his mana, meditate, swing his sword...

Twelve years of living that way had utterly destroyed Aslan’s sense of time. The years he spent obsessed with the sword had slipped by that quickly.

It was not that he had never missed Arian. Many times, he had wanted to go outside and see her. She would surely be furious. He had abruptly left her side with nothing but a letter saying he needed to enter seclusion.

But this ignorant, foolish man had considered that piercing longing another part of his trial. He believed that only by suppressing it and continuing to swing his sword could he grasp something more.

More. He would swing his sword more. Once he broke through the barrier, he would go outside, kneel before Arian, and apologize. With that thought, he steeled his resolve.

All without realizing that twelve years had passed.

‘How... old is he?’

Aslan swallowed hard. The weight of all those years he had let slip by in his obsession, never truly registering their passage, came crushing down on his mind with tremendous force.

The boy before him was undoubtedly his and Arian’s son. Of that he was certain. But the boy’s age... Even by the most conservative estimate, he looked over ten.

‘I’ve been shut away in here for over ten years?’

Did that mean Arian had already been carrying their son when he wrote that letter announcing his seclusion? Aslan began to shake. Ignorant and foolish he might be, but he was not shameless trash.

He could not say exactly how long he had spent inside the cultivation room. But the price of those years spent doing nothing but swinging his sword in his obsession felt unbearably cruel.

What had he been doing while Arian gave birth alone, raised their child, and watched him grow this big? Swinging his sword. Nothing but swinging his sword. Overcome with fierce self-loathing, Aslan staggered to his feet.

Or tried to.

He stopped short and stared at Kyle.

There was something unusual about the eyes of this son whose name he did not even know. He could sense no longing or resentment in them. As a swordsman, Aslan recognized that look.

Like a predator facing its prey. Like a swordsman sizing up a sparring partner—eyes assessing an opponent. That cold, sharp gaze swept over Aslan’s entire body.

It was not a look a boy should possess, nor an air a boy should be capable of exuding. Without so much as blinking amid the vicious storm of mana swirling through the cultivation room, his son was assessing him.

‘What in the...’

Then Aslan’s warrior instincts sounded an alarm. Quite apart from the pull of blood, he felt a spine-chilling tension. His awkward, half-risen posture instantly shifted into a fighting stance, and the sword he had laid on the floor shot up as though drawn into his palm.

At that same instant, Kyle kicked off the ground. Never since his reincarnation had he summoned such killing intent. Nor had he ever resolved to fight with this much of his strength—to stake his very life on it.

All of it guided his sword toward a killing blow.

ROAR!

The mana of the Primordial Chaos Circulation Method coursed through his body. Jorm, coiled within his middle energy center, unleashed its power as well.

THUMP! THUMP! THUMP! THUMP!

Mana bolstered by Jorm’s power crept around the wooden sword like a snake, forming sword aura of a purity incomparable to what Kyle had used to break the cultivation room’s lock.

WHOOSH!

The mana erupting through his circuits transformed even his body’s movements. The instant Kyle pushed off the ground, he crossed the distance and reached a position from which he could kill Aslan.

He did not stop there. Kill him, he had ordered Jorm. It was also his own resolve.

Did he truly want to kill Aslan?

Did he have a reason that left him no choice?

Such things held neither meaning nor weight for Kyle. Having loved and wielded the sword since his previous life, he knew very well what swinging a sword meant.

The only blades in this world that saved lives were the surgical knives wielded by doctors. A battlefield sword was a weapon from its very inception, and the beauty of its edge found true worth not in being admired, but in being swung at another person. Even if killing one person could save ten thousand, it still meant that one person had to die.

Kyle could swing a sword with the intent to kill without any special reason or heartfelt conviction.

‘If you spent twelve years in seclusion and can’t even block this, you might as well have thrown all that time in the fucking trash. Better to die.’

He had seen the emotions flash across Aslan’s face as he stopped awkwardly halfway to his feet. Regret and self-reproach. Kyle had no desire to watch this man who was supposedly his father wallow in guilt, blubber, or beg forgiveness. If he had secluded himself for twelve years for the sword, what he owed his son now was proof that those years had not been wasted.

CLANG!

The wooden sword thrust precisely at Aslan’s throat slid sideways. Kyle’s wrist hurt as though it would shatter, but he grinned brightly. With a motion utterly free of waste, Aslan had deflected his attack.

His body, moving at top speed, pitched forward.

THUD!

Bracing one leg as a pivot, Kyle spun his whole body in the direction his sword had slid. The wooden blade, wreathed in undisturbed sword aura, swept toward Aslan again.

BOOM!

This time Aslan did not deflect the attack sideways. Without moving a single step, he met Kyle’s wooden sword head-on. His eyes widened at the heavy impact transmitted through his palm.

This weight did not come from mere muscle. It was crushing force produced by compressing, rotating, and detonating mana. It was so ferocious that he could scarcely believe it was carried by a single wooden sword. His son was controlling mana with an absurd degree of perfection—and aggression.

‘What in the world is this mana?’

The violet sword aura enveloping his son’s wooden blade was an unknown power whose nature even Aslan could not guess. It felt as though various things were muddled together, yet it was not unstable. Within that sword aura, mana of different properties existed in harmonious balance.

ROAR!

White aura enveloped Aslan’s sword, and the mana he released became a fierce storm that swept over Kyle.

‘Wind.’

The instant the storm struck, Kyle poured more mana into his wooden sword. Aslan possessed a wind spiritual root. His sword technique transformed every current of wind into an attack, a slashing blade. Kyle reacted on instinct, and his response was correct.

SHRRRAK!

The sword aura wrapped around his wooden blade writhed, then erupted like dozens of snakes rearing their heads.

“Oh...!”

Aslan voiced his admiration in a low murmur and guided his sword. The wind being shredded by Kyle’s aura withdrew all at once and wrapped around Aslan’s blade. Concentrated there, it became aura again and spun like a tornado.

‘I have no chance in a head-on fight.’

Kyle assessed the situation coolly. His body was still immature, his mana insufficient, and his Primordial Chaos Circulation Method incomplete. In that state, he had no hope of winning a contest of strength by meeting Aslan’s blade head-on.

Then he would whittle it away. He compressed the sword aura around his wooden blade into a thin, sharp edge and used all his remaining mana to reinforce his body. Faster. More precise. The instant a golden gleam flashed in his eyes, Kyle accelerated even further and charged at Aslan.

Naturally, Aslan could not muster killing intent like Kyle’s. After all, this was his son, whom he was meeting for the first time today. But neither could he accept his son’s murderous intent and offer him his neck. Aslan hoped to subdue him without injury if at all possible.

But—it was harder than he had expected. His charging son’s wooden blade did not take the bait of the openings Aslan deliberately exposed. Instead, it persistently targeted Aslan’s sword.

Just as the wooden sword and steel blade were about to collide again, the wooden blade seemed to shift slightly off course, then skimmed past his sword. Aslan’s eyes filled with shock once more.

‘He cut through my sword aura?’

Rather than colliding head-on, the blade had sliced away his sword aura in a glancing pass. Aslan immediately swung his sword. Kyle swung his wooden blade as well. But once again, the two weapons did not collide.

‘He read my sword’s path?’

Impossible as it seemed, there was no other explanation. His son was seeing through the trajectories of Aslan’s answering swings, narrowly avoiding each collision and shaving away only the sword aura.

‘It’s no coincidence. He really is reading my sword’s path...!’

It was absurd. They had never crossed swords before, yet he had read his opponent’s sword trajectories in their very first encounter? He had gone beyond simply predicting and responding, meeting blade with blade to shave away sword aura. Reading those trajectories was outrageous enough, yet he showed not the slightest doubt in his own reading. His precisely compressed sword aura was astonishing, but there were far too many things even more astonishing than that.

‘Is he shaving away my sword aura to exhaust my mana? No... No, that’s not it. He’s... playing with my sword.’

Whittling away his aura like this would never drain Aslan’s mana. Why, then, was the boy wielding his sword that way? To exchange techniques without clashing head-on. Aslan stared wide-eyed at his son. A brilliant smile hung on the lips of the boy whose bloodshot eyes followed every trajectory of his sword.

The instant he saw that, Aslan’s gaze changed completely. This was not an opponent he could underestimate merely because he was a young boy, or his son. The killing intent he radiated was no bluff, and there was nothing false about the sword he wielded. The son he had met for the first time today had truly tried to kill his father, and now he was enjoying the sword as a fellow swordsman.

The moment Aslan recognized that, his presence erupted. This was an opponent against whom he could not lower his guard. Wooden sword or not, before him stood a genuine swordsman.

‘Ah.’

The instant Aslan’s gaze changed, so did his sword. The trajectories Kyle had read shifted out of alignment. Unfortunately, his body could not keep up well enough for him to read that change and adjust his own blade’s course. Filled with bitter regret, Kyle guided his sword. The collision he had done his utmost to avoid finally occurred.

CRACK!

The aura around the wooden sword shattered, and Aslan’s blade broke the sword itself.

Aslan’s hand darted in and seized Kyle’s shoulder.

BOOM!

After smashing the wooden blade, Aslan’s sword plunged into the cultivation room floor. The entire room shook, and a straight slash was carved from floor to ceiling.

“You...”

Aslan swallowed hard and looked at Kyle. Panting, Kyle met his gaze. Agony wrung his insides. The pain of depletion from his exhausted energy center made his vision swim.

“Are you really... my son?”

He could not believe it. No, he found it hard to believe. The boy before him was a monster utterly beyond the bounds of Aslan’s understanding.

At the question, Kyle forced the reluctant corners of his mouth upward. Sweat drenched his face, but his expression could not have been brighter.

“And you really are my father.”

Kyle acknowledged Aslan.

He did not know how skilled a swordsman Aslan had been twelve years ago. But at the very least, the Aslan he had seen today was skilled enough to deserve being called “Father.”

“Ha... Haha.”

Overcome by an indescribable feeling, Aslan laughed. He released the sword in his hand and placed that hand on Kyle’s shoulder.

“What’s your name?”

“Kyle. Kyle Alastor.”

“Alastor...? Don’t tell me...”

“I decided to make him an Alastor pureblood.”

The voice came from behind them. Startled, Aslan raised his head.

Julius stood beyond the doorway with his arms folded.

“His gifts are far too great for him to carry on the Antares name. Do you have any objections?”

Horrified, Aslan released Kyle’s shoulders and dropped to one knee.

“F-Father-in-law.”

“So you do call me your father-in-law. Shameless wretch. You abandoned my daughter for twelve years, and you dare call me that?”

At Julius’s icy voice, Aslan’s face turned deathly pale.

“T-Twelve... years?”

“Your son is eleven.”

Julius strode into the cultivation room.

“Aslan. You shut yourself away without even knowing your wife was pregnant. For twelve years.”

“...”

“Judging by your expression, you lost yourself in swinging your sword without a thought for how much time had passed.”

“I’m sorry... I’m so sorry.”

“If your swordsmanship hadn’t improved enough to justify twelve years shut away, I was considering cutting off an arm as the price of all that wasted time.”

Julius’s cold gaze left Aslan. When it turned to the panting Kyle, his eyes held a warmth Aslan had never seen in them before.

“What did you think?”

“His swordsmanship is too good to waste by cutting off an arm.”

“Then I suppose I mustn’t.”

Julius clicked his tongue as he muttered.

“F-Father-in-law, I...”

As Aslan hesitantly opened his mouth to continue, Kyle frowned and kicked him hard in the leg.

“Whether it’s an excuse or an apology, give it to Mom, not Grandfather.”

He had acknowledged the man as his father, but he did not feel remotely inclined to speak respectfully to him. Having snapped at him, Kyle staggered toward Julius.

“How much did you see?”

“From the moment you tried to kill Aslan.”

“So, from the beginning. I told you to come in when I called.”

“I felt a vicious killing intent coming from in here and grew concerned. I thought perhaps Aslan had lost his mind, failed to recognize his son, and gone berserk.”

Julius set his hand firmly on the head of Kyle, who had staggered up to him.

“I certainly never imagined you would know how to unleash such killing intent.”

“Well, I just... tried it, and it worked.”

“You remain an unfathomable boy.”

Julius shook his head with a disbelieving chuckle.

“What will you do, then? Take your father back to the Sword Tower?”

“I’ll make him kneel in front of Mom and beg her forgiveness.”

“That is what your son wishes to do. Aslan, what do you say?”

Aslan, who had been hanging his head with a devastated expression, started and looked up.

“O-Of course I’ll go. I’ll go... and beg Arian’s forgiveness.”

“Then go and bathe. Cut your hair and beard as well. To appear before my daughter in such a hideous state after twelve years...”

“No, let’s take him just as he is.”