Final Regression of The Legendary Swordmaster Chapter 34

Edward was neck-deep in the 970th Circle of inscriptions. Each inscription now felt like carving into diamond with a needle made of glass. The resistance was not coming from the ambient mana or the Null-Stone walls, but from his own core. The crystalline sphere in his chest, which had once been a vast, empty vessel, was now so crowded with many mana circles that there was barely room for a single thought to pass between them.

He pushed on, forcing his way through the 971st, 975th, and 980th circles with sheer willpower. In the world above, mages spoke of the Wall of a Thousand. It was the ultimate barrier of the True Mage Stage, the point where the soul reached its natural human capacity. To go from 990 to 1,000 was a journey that often took years of cultivation.

Edward, however, was running a marathon at the speed of a thunderbolt. By the time the final rays of evening sun touched the earth far above, Edward reached the 1,000th Mana Circle.

He stopped, gasping for air. His core spinning so fast they blurred into a wall of heat. He had reached the absolute peak of the True Mage stage. He stood at the precipice of the High Mage Stage, but the path forward wasn’t straightforward.

In the Seven Kingdoms, the transition to the High Mage stage was a defining moment. One did not simply inscribe the 1,001st circle and ascend. To go beyond a thousand, the core had to be matured. The current core could not handle the pressure of more inscriptions; to try would result in an instantaneous Core Fracture, where the mana would turn inward and shred the cultivator’s body from the inside out.

The only way to mature the core was to ignite the Saint Flame.

The Saint Flame was a fuel, a spiritual fire that acted as a growth furnace for the core. Achieving it was the greatest hurdle of any noble house. Most chose the Inheritance Method. Since Saint Flames are immortal, a dying patriarch can bless a descendant with their flame, passing down the maturity of their soul. This was how the Flame Phoenix Lord got his, the flame was an ancestral torch passed through generations of the royal Luminaris line.

The Marquis, however, had no such luck. The Vistro line lacked a Saint Flame inheritance, which was why Edward’s father had been stuck at the Peak of the True Mage stage for over twelve years, desperately trying to form his own. To create a Saint Flame from scratch required the formation of a Saint Flame Realm within the sea of consciousness—a mental space where the cultivator would painstakingly grow a Saint Soul, a projection of their soul’s absolute purity. For even the most brilliant genius, this process took no less than ten years of uninterrupted Cultivation.

But Edward had a secret that his father could never comprehend. Because he had used the Eleven Paths of the Verdant Heart—the Elven method—he had awakened a White Mana Core instead of the standard grey-red one that humans had. The Elven method was superior because it built the core with the Saint Flame already inside.

It was there, but dormant, a tiny seed of absolute white fire buried beneath the thousand mana circles inscribed. He didn’t need to create one, he only needed to activate it.

However, ’only’ was a word that carried the weight of a thousand deaths.

To activate a dormant Saint Flame, one had to perform a Precise Overload. He had to flood his core with a massive, discrete quantity of mana. If he were short of the required amount by even a single drop, the flame would remain dormant, and the effort would be wasted. If he exceeded the amount by a single drop, the pressure would exceed the core’s strength, leading to a fracture.

It was a big risk, and Edward had taken it many times before. Among his thousand regressions, over eighty-five of his deaths had been caused by this exact moment. He had seen his own body vaporized by a misplaced drop of mana more times than most men had seen a sunrise.

Edward opened up his meridians as wide as they could go. He stopped trying to control the mana and just started absorbing as much as he could.

His muscles started cramping, the fibers straining. A thin line of blood slid from the corner of his mouth. His body started shaking hard, rattling his bones.

Cough!

Edward bent over, spitting out a mouthful of dark blood on his clothes. His vision went blurry, turning red. He could feel his core burning, the thousand circles screaming as they were pushed to their limits.

"More," he growled.

He pulled even harder, now taking much more mana. Blood started dripping from his eyes, hot and thick, staining his vision. The pain wasn’t just a feeling; it was everything. It was an intense burning agony that threatened to destroy his mind. Even his tempered body, which could handle getting hit by an Adept, was starting to give out. His ribs felt like they were being crushed.

His spiritual sense began to flicker. He could see the white spark at the center of his core. It was shivering, reacting to the pressure. He needed just one more push – one final, perfect drop.

He reached out and grabbed the last bit of mana from the air. It was a thin, see-through thread. With hands shaking like he was trying to defuse a bomb, he guided it into his chest.

The mana touched the core.

For a moment, everything went silent. The spinning stopped. The humming died down.

Then...

"AAGH!"

Edward’s head snapped back, letting out a scream. The sound echoed through the Abyssal Cells, so full of pain that it would have scared the guards three floors above.

His body couldn’t hold him up anymore. He fell forward, hands clawing at the stone floor as the white spark at his core finally ignited. But it was too violent. The Saint Flame wasn’t just maturing the core, it was burning its way out.

The light in the cell turned super bright, almost blinding.

Edward hit the floor hard, his mind barely there. The pain was overwhelming. Even with a thousand lives of experience and a tempered body, activating a Saint Flame demanded everything he had.

He lay in the dark, struggling to breathe, his body covered in blood, as the white fire started eating away everything.

As the late evening birds began to chirp and the sun sank toward the horizon, Edward Vistro lay flat on the cold stone floor, soaked and drenched in a pool of his own blood.