Byeok taught Emmanuel the way she did Chi-Woo. It was a 24-hour close-contact training. After requesting Chi-Hyun to open up his image representation space again, they trained all day outside of eating and sleeping. Three weeks passed like that. Considering that the passage of time could be manipulated inside the image representation space, it wasn’t a short training period.

Emmanuel pulled all-nighters repeating piercing and stabbing motions. Byeok sighed as she watched him. Over the past three weeks, she had tried twenty-seven different ways to revive Emmanuel’s Heavenly Drum ability, but there was no fool-proof training method. Some methods completely failed for some while succeeded for others. Knowing that there was a training method suitable for each individual, Byeok amassed all the knowledge she had to train Emmanuel, yet Emmanuel showed no progress. He was the same from the beginning even though he put in the maximum effort he could muster.

The fact that he couldn’t improve meant only one of two things. Either Byeok wasn’t a good enough teacher, or there was a problem with Emmanuel. But whatever the reason was, this meant that it was a waste of time to cling to him any longer. She would’ve already given up on him if not for Chi-Woo’s request. Continuing this training was something that wouldn’t do either party any good, so it was time to put an end to it.

“Dawn is coming.” Byeok looked up at the sky and got up from the porch. “I heard the tenth reinforcements were arriving today.” She glanced at Emmanuel, who was making stabbing motions...