Bloodhound’s Regression Instinct

Chapter 27

The chief instructor admired Yan, who was panting in front of him.

“You’re a real monster.”

Two years was a long time, but also a short time.

But as a time to learn skills, it was a very short time.

The usual age for children of noble families to start learning skills was five or seven years old.

Those who started at such an early age would practice diligently until they died of old age.

But even so, there were many who stagnated at the seventh or eighth level.

‘Compared to him…’

The chief instructor’s eyes swept over Yan’s body.

Before the first test, he was a barren land with no mana to be found.

His physique was small, and his stamina was lacking.

He was a lone wolf with only his eyes alive.

Now he was at a level where he wouldn’t lose to any knight of a decent noble family.

Look at that body that had changed dimensionally from two years ago.

He had grown much taller, and his whole body was filled with muscles.

Each and every muscle had a terrifying explosive power hidden in it.

And that wasn’t all.

“Huff, huff. Is this the end of the training?”

Yan had only one training with him for two years.

Something that he couldn’t catch in his hands.

It was no different from playing tag or hide and seek.

At night, he gave him some time to practice the black shadow sword he gave him.

For the first year of training, Yan was busy running away from him.

He would beat him up if he caught him, but he didn’t catch him easily as time went by.

And at some point, he started to fight back.

At first, he fought a guerrilla-style battle, hitting and running, but as time passed, the fighting time got longer.

And now…

“You’re telling me you held on this much even though I only used 20% of my strength?”

He didn’t intend to teach him slowly one by one like other noble families taught their children.

He thought that if he pushed Yan to the limit, his body would learn skills on its own to survive, and that would lead to growth.

But this was an unexpected growth.

He played with him with 20% of his strength, but he didn’t expect him to break so easily.

He broke all the training swords he had brought, but that was it.

And most of all.

“I’m pretty sure I taught you the black shadow sword… What are those?”

The black wolves stood by Yan’s side as if guarding him.

The difference from ordinary wolves was that black mist was swirling around them.

They were not living creatures, but creations made by Yan’s energy.

-Grrr.

“Tsk.”

The chief instructor was annoyed by those wolves.

He wanted to squeeze a few more out of Yan, who had grown so much, but those wolves got in his way and changed his direction.

It was a bonus that they made his eyes dizzy.

And above all.

He felt a strong sense of the black shadow sword from those wolves.

“How did you add something to my black shadow sword? I never taught you anything like that.”

“Shall I say I reinterpreted it?”

“What, reinterpreted?”

The chief instructor laughed with his eyes wide open.

He was an interesting guy.

He said he reinterpreted the black shadow sword, which he had only learned for two years since he entered mana.

How could he not be amused?

He was looking forward to the achievements that Yan, who had grown explosively in two years, would show from now on.

“By the way, are you going to end it here, chief instructor?”

Yan didn’t call him a master.

He could have, but.

“Ugh, don’t make me cringe with that kind of talk.”

The chief instructor refused first with a disgusted expression.

Yan had achieved tremendous growth in the two-year tag game with him.

First of all, he had achieved a little bit of the second stage of body strengthening, ‘Stealing Birth’, by constantly torturing his body.

And that wasn’t all.

As Yan thought, there was a lot in common between the black shadow sword and the dark dragon skill.

That’s why he had no trouble learning the black shadow sword, and rather created a new skill that suited him.

That’s how it came out.

-Grrr.

The black wolves stuck to his side as if guarding him.

[Hehaha! Could you have seen such sturdy guys without my help!]

As Momon said, Yan considered changing the black shadow sword to a dark skill when he tore it apart.

He was good at using the sword, but his specialty was handling the dark.

And he thought that was enough.

But Momon asked him an unexpected question, and things started to change.

“Why are you obsessed with the shape of a ‘dagger’? It’s a medium that doesn’t suit your image at all.

The image is something that each individual has that is unique to them.

For some, it could be a concept or a background, and for others, it could be an object or a creature.

Yan felt something strange at that time.

He knew that he had to enter the godhood to realize his image in reality when he stepped into the third level.

But he was going to realize it in his current state?

But Momon, who was well-versed in theory, said.

“Of course, you have to mix magic.

Change it from realization to projection.

Magic is a discipline that projects thoughts into reality, so it shouldn’t be hard.

But how do you know how to realize your image or something like that?

Momon meant to mix magic as well.

That’s how he spent his days playing a fierce game of tag with the chief instructor, learning magic from Momon at night, and using his knowledge to tear apart the black shadow sword.

That’s how it was reborn as the Black Shadow Thunder… no, the ‘Black Shadow Wolf’.

[You wouldn’t have been able to do such an amazing thing without my help!]

‘What a load of crap, you got caught trying to pull a fast one.’

Momon, that bastard, gave him some helpful advice from time to time, but he also tried to pull some tricks in between.

He taught him magic that would cause mental breakdowns on purpose.

Or he put a spell that would transform the caster into a puppet that only obeyed his words into the structure of the Black Shadow Wolf.

But they all backfired on him and were blocked in advance.

[Ahem, that was just a test of your mental strength.]

‘Try that one more time. I’ll cut off the connection for good.’

Yan learned how to block Momon’s thoughts for two years.

Momon coughed at Yan’s attitude.

He had been lonely for a thousand years and finally got to have a conversation, but if he was blocked by Yan again…

[Ah, fine, just stop it.]

Yan, who was chatting with Momon, looked at the chief instructor.

The chief instructor smiled.

He held the black shadow sword he pulled out of the shadows.

“Let’s end it with this, it would be a waste to end it with what we’ve done so far.”

He wanted to see Yan’s limit.

He looked like he was doing his best, but he felt like he still had some room left.

The chief instructor released his mana.

It was about 40% of his full power.

Gooooh.

Black mana burst out from him.

Black mist fluttered from the black shadow sword.

‘A weapon to use…’

He had only fought with shadow blades until now, but it wasn’t hard to blow away the training sword that Yan had.

So he didn’t have any other weapons in his hand.

Momon clicked his tongue in his head.

[Then you can use that weird guy’s black shadow sword or something.]

‘I was going to do that without you saying it.’

Yan gathered his mana and the black shadow wolf that was standing next to him disappeared with a flick.

Saaak-!

The shadow that stretched out behind Yan wriggled and spread out in all directions.

The chief instructor’s eyes curved like crescents.

He liked how he handled his vision skillfully.

The shadow stretched out at least 10m and then seemed to break and twitch.

Yan bit his tongue at that.

‘Tsk, still not enough.’

The chief instructor had covered all the land around him with shadows, but he didn’t seem to be at that level yet.

The shadow that twitched at 10m quickly gathered back to the origin.

When all the shadows were compressed into one point.

Swoosh.

Yan bent his waist slightly and touched the shadow.

The shadow rose up his hand like a liquid and formed a shape.

That’s how Yan also made a black shadow sword.

Unlike the chief instructor, it was not a perfect black sword shape, but a sword-like shape.

But Yan didn’t show any signs of being overwhelmed by the chief instructor.

Rather, he had a smile on his lips.

“Should I go, or do you want to come?”

“It would be polite for me to go, right?”

With that, Yan’s figure shot out quickly.

Yan’s black shadow sword stabbed at the chief instructor’s heart.

“Puhah!”

The chief instructor laughed as if he was satisfied.

And then he raised his black shadow sword.

Jjaeng!

He blocked Yan’s black shadow sword. The power struggle between them began.

Kkigigigik. Kkigigik.

The metallic sound spread out from the black shadow swords made of shadows. Sparks flew.

Yan bit his tongue and turned his body around to unleash a series of sword attacks.

Chae chae chae chang! Chae chae chang!

Dozens of hits collided in an instant.

The offensive that seemed to never end began to lose strength.

A chilly aura flowed from the chief instructor.

His black shadow sword suddenly stretched out.

The tip of the sword pierced through the front of Yan’s black shadow sword.

Kwajak!

That’s how the chief instructor broke Yan’s black shadow sword.

“Kuluk!”

When the black shadow sword that was connected to his mind and body with mana broke, a red line appeared on Yan’s lips.

‘If I had used all the magic and hidden things, I could have done this much?’

He didn’t trust the chief instructor and didn’t show everything he had accumulated.

He only revealed what he could.

“I’m satisfied with this much, how about you?”

The chief instructor stretched his arms up to the sky and asked, yawning.

His black shadow sword was gone from his hand.

“Not bad.”

That’s how Yan finished his two years of intensive training and returned to the training camp.

On the way back to the training camp.

The chief instructor looked at Yan and chuckled.

“I wonder if the other kids will despair when they see you.”

“Isn’t that why you raised me, chief instructor?”

Two years ago, the chief instructor offered him to come down, and he accepted.

He had no reason to refuse.

He had to learn about the tattoos, and he also needed to make his relationship with the chief instructor more intimate.

But.

‘In the end, there was no mention of the tattoos or the ‘Liberation Army’.’

He seemed to have shown enough of his potential, but the chief instructor still seemed to be holding back.

He started to feel a little burned.

‘The second test is to go outside… I’ll have to make my own information organization while I’m out.’

He didn’t like relying on the chief instructor alone.

* * *

When he returned to the training camp, the trainees were already lined up in the central hall.

‘Wow, they’ve improved a lot, huh?’

They used to be chicks, but now they were sparrows, if he had to put it that way.

And Cruel, who was sending him a murderous glare, and Lorena, Roman, and Casa, who were staring at him, were hawks.

And he could feel a faint dark energy from them, as if they had learned the ‘Dark Skill’ properly.

Eudeuk.

He heard a grinding sound from Cruel next to him.

“You’re gonna break your teeth like that, bastard.”

“…Do you see this?”

Cruel pointed his finger at his cheek.

The blood had stopped, but there was a thin cut.

“What’s that?”

“It’s a wound from a sword fragment.”

Was it from the training sword that he had blown away in the last duel with the chief instructor?

But.

What did he want him to do about it?

Yan shrugged his shoulders.

“Do you want me to compensate you or something?”

“You son of a bitch!”

Cruel was about to explode with anger.

“Ugh, noisy.”

The chief instructor, who had climbed up to the podium, muttered.

Then Cruel’s face turned pale.

It was because the chief instructor’s aura was focused on Cruel alone.

Cruel collapsed, and the chief instructor turned his head.

It was the direction of the main gate.

“Let them in.”

At the chief instructor’s words, the instructors who were waiting at the gate opened the door.

People with various equipment came in.

Yan knew who they were as soon as he saw them.

‘The imperial knight examiners.’

They were the examiners of the test that measured the trainees’ levels.

The equipment they were installing was for measuring the user’s mana, and based on that, the examiners would record and calculate.

That would allow them to objectively judge the trainees’ levels.

And so far, the accuracy of the test was known to be high and reliable.

‘He’s going to make sure of the trainees’ levels before moving on.’

He was interested.

He could find out exactly what level the other guys had reached.

The chief instructor yawned as if he was sleepy.

“I’m going to sleep, so measure them and go.”

“Yes, sir. Chief instructor.”

The chief instructor disappeared from the central hall, and the oldest-looking examiner among them came forward.

“Alright, everyone, line up in order of rank and come over here one by one.”

He pointed to a direction where there was a device that combined a magic circle and a machine.

“First, the first-ranked trainee will start.”

As soon as he finished speaking, Yan walked over to the device.

The mana that flowed from the device wrapped around Yan’s body.

Beep- beep-

The young examiner who was recording something next to the device looked at the result and opened his eyes wide.

The old examiner asked him what was wrong, and he answered.

“It’s 5, 5th level!”

Yan came down with a matter-of-fact face.

Lorena, Cruel, Casa, and Roman were shocked to see him.

It was the appearance of the youngest 5th-level knight in the empire, excluding the current crown prince.