Read Novel Full Chapter 781: Flashforge Cleaver
Chapter 781: Flashforge Cleaver
The dark took Ainen the same way it had taken Rudra, without ceremony, and when it let him see again he was standing in the same small grey room, five glowing tiles hovering at chest height.
[Choose one deck to rebuild. This process cannot be reversed.]
Slow Reduction. Feast Golem. Communal Feast. Spiceweave. Cellar Aged.
He didn’t need long to decide. He’d known which one he was choosing since the moment a woman with two blades that never held the same temperature twice had beaten him in front of a few thousand strangers by simply refusing to give him time.
"Slow Reduction," he said aloud, tasting the name the way he tasted everything, and touched the tile.
[Slow Reduction: erased.]
The tile crumbled to grey dust, and for a moment Ainen felt the small, strange absence of the very first real technique he’d ever built, gone as completely as if he’d never learned patience at all.
"Funny," he murmured. "Losing the thing that’s kept me alive for a year, on purpose, because it also nearly got me killed twice."
---
[Choose a prefix.]
Quick— / Flash— / Raw— / Searing— / Keen—
He read them over, thinking not about what he wanted to lose, but about what he’d actually needed in that fight and hadn’t had. Patience had built everything he owned. It had also, for one very public afternoon, been the exact reason he lost.
He chose Flash—.
[Choose a suffix.]
—wrought / —bound / —edge / —cut / —forged
Forged, he thought. Not simmered. Not reduced slow over an open flame. Forged, the way a blade was made in one decisive, undeniable moment.
He chose —forged.
[Enter one word of your own.]
The blank space opened, waiting, and Ainen thought of every kitchen he’d ever run, every blade he’d ever built from something that started as dinner.
He wrote: Cleaver.
[Deck seed accepted: Flashforged + Cleaver]
[Entering first trial.]
---
The grey room fell away into noise and color and impossible motion, stalls and awnings blurring past in every direction, a market that never once held still.
[Stage 1: The Flash Market]
Vendor-constructs darted between stalls faster than the eye could properly track, quick-fingered and grasping, and Ainen found himself a half step behind everything for the first several exchanges, old patient instincts fighting a battlefield that had no interest in slowing down for him.
"Wonderful," he muttered, ducking a stall-cart that nearly took his head off. "My own deck’s teaching me the same lesson that idiot swordswoman did."
He adjusted the only way he knew how, the way he adjusted to any kitchen that refused to cooperate. He stopped trying to out-patience the market and simply moved as fast as it did, reading less and reacting more.
[Boss: The Market Wraith]
The Wraith struck from a dozen directions in the space of a single breath, robes trailing stolen moments the way a thief trailed stolen coin, and Ainen met it with nothing but pure reflex, blade meeting blade in exchanges too fast to properly plan.
He won the same way he’d have won an argument with an especially rude ingredient, by refusing to blink first, and the Wraith finally overextended into a strike Ainen was, for once, already exactly where he needed to be to answer.
[Stage cleared. Choose one card.]
Quickdraw Sear — Active. An instant searing strike with no windup at all, the transmutation finishing the moment the blade lands rather than after.
Reflex Edge — Passive. Your blade begins answering incoming attacks automatically, faster than conscious thought.
Flash Marinade — Utility. Apply a debuff to an enemy instantly on contact, no prolonged exposure required.
Ainen read all three, and thought of every fight he’d nearly lost because his own hands moved slower than his own good ideas.
"Reflex," he said. "I need my hands to stop waiting for permission from the rest of me."
[Card acquired: Reflex Edge]
---
The second trial dropped him onto a kitchen line stretched to the horizon, conveyor belts of fire and blade moving in a rhythm that punished anyone who hesitated even once.
[Stage 2: The Searing Line]
Living cookware constructs rose off the line itself, pans and cleavers given hostile purpose, and Ainen fought them the way he’d have fought a line during the busiest dinner service of his life, no wasted motion, no lingering on any single problem longer than it deserved.
[Boss: The Timekeeper]
It didn’t fight so much as count, every second Ainen spent thinking costing him ground, every second spent acting winning it back, and for a fight built entirely around patience being a liability, it was, Ainen privately admitted, an extremely well-designed opponent.
He stopped thinking the moment he understood the shape of it, trusting the new reflex threaded through his own arm instead, and the Timekeeper’s count finally ran out on itself instead of on him.
[Stage cleared. Choose one card.]
Instant Reduction — Active. Collapse an entire slow transmutation into a single explosive burst, no waiting required.
Bladeflash Guard — Defensive. A counter that triggers the instant you’re struck, no windup.
Quickfire Dice — Active. A rapid flurry of small strikes instead of one large one.
Ainen didn’t hesitate this time either, which felt, he thought, like exactly the point.
"Instant Reduction," he said. "Let’s see how the woman who beat me likes fighting the version of this trick that doesn’t need time anymore."
[Card acquired: Instant Reduction]
A soft chime sounded before the line finally ended.
[Mini-Challenge available: The Sixty-Second Course. Prepare a full dish using only techniques that complete in under one second each. Reward: mutate an acquired card.]
Ainen laughed out loud at that one, delighted despite himself, and cleared the trial with the easy confidence of a man who had, in fact, once actually done this for real.
[Trial complete. Choose a card to mutate.]
He chose Reflex Edge.
[Reflex Edge → Reflex Edge Absolute: Your blade now answers not just attacks, but openings, striking the instant one appears rather than only when threatened.]
---
The third trial opened onto a cutting room lit by a hundred small fires, blades of every size hanging from the ceiling like a very sharp kind of rain.
[Stage 3: The Cutting Room]
Blade-wielding constructs came at him in tight, coordinated groups, and Ainen fought through them with Reflex Edge Absolute finally settled fully into his instincts, striking openings before his own conscious mind had finished noticing them.
[Boss: The Butcher’s Shadow]
It fought like every version of himself he’d ever been frustrated with, patient where he used to be patient, slow where he used to be slow, and beating it felt less like winning a fight and more like finally arguing himself out of an old, comfortable habit for good.
Instant Reduction ended it in a single collapsed burst that would have taken him a full minute to build the old way.
[Stage cleared. Choose one card.]
Cleaver’s Judgment — Active. One devastating strike, full power, zero preparation.
Sharpened Instinct — Passive. Read opponents faster, closing the gap between seeing a weakness and exploiting it.
Flash Sear Barrier — Defensive. An instant defensive sear that punishes anything that touches it.
"Instinct," Ainen said. "I’ve got plenty of strength already. What I needed was speed of thought."
[Card acquired: Sharpened Instinct]
---
The fourth trial dropped him into a kitchen under impossible pressure, steam constructs hissing from every surface, heat building toward something that clearly wanted to finish the fight by simply making the whole room unsurvivable.
[Stage 4: The Boiling Point]
He fought fast and low, using Sharpened Instinct to find every gap in the rising steam before it closed, and for the first time all cave, he genuinely enjoyed himself, old frustration finally converting into something that felt, unmistakably, like fun.
[Boss: The Pressure Bearer]
It didn’t attack so much as build, heat and force compounding with every second the fight ran long, and Ainen understood immediately that the old version of him would have tried to outlast it.
The new version simply ended things before it finished building at all.
[Stage cleared. Choose one card.]
Boiling Point — Active. A single overwhelming burst, strength scaling with how quickly you land it.
Steamguard — Defensive. Vent incoming pressure instead of absorbing it.
Rolling Boil — Passive. Chain instant techniques together with no cooldown between them.
"Rolling Boil," Ainen said. "If I’m fast now, I might as well be fast more than once in a row."
[Card acquired: Rolling Boil]
---
The fifth and final trial opened onto a single, spotless kitchen, one table, one dish half-finished, and a presence waiting behind it that felt older and more exacting than anything else the cave had shown him yet.
[Stage 5: The Perfect Plate]
There were no lesser mobs here, only the walk across a silent room toward a final, waiting judgment.
[Boss: The Head Chef]
It didn’t fight the way anything else in the cave had fought. It simply cooked, transmutation and blade and fire moving together in a display so patient and so perfect that Ainen understood, watching it, exactly what he’d spent this whole cave learning to become faster than.
"You’re everything I used to be," he said. "Before today."
The Head Chef said nothing, and struck with the same terrible patience that had once been Ainen’s greatest strength, and for a long, close exchange, old habits and new ones fought each other as much as they fought the enemy in front of him.
It was Rolling Boil that finally decided it, three instant techniques chained together faster than even patience could properly answer, ending a fight that patience alone would have lost.
[Final stage cleared. Choose your signature card.]
Flashforged Cleaver — Ultimate deck signature. Every technique in this deck fires simultaneously, one perfect instant, strength scaling with how many other cards in this deck are already active.
Absolute Reflex — Passive. Permanent, total reaction speed, faster than thought itself.
The Final Course — Transformation. Become, briefly, pure instinct, every motion already finished before it begins.
Ainen looked at the three a long moment, and thought about a year spent slow-cooking every victory he’d ever earned, and about one very fast, very humbling defeat.
"Flashforged Cleaver," he said. "Let the deck carry its own name. Seems only fair, after everything it just taught me."
[Card acquired: Flashforged Cleaver]
[Deck complete: Flashforged Cleaver]
1. Reflex Edge Absolute — blade answers openings before conscious thought.
2. Instant Reduction — a full transmutation collapsed into one explosive burst.
3. Sharpened Instinct — closes the gap between seeing a weakness and exploiting it.
4. Rolling Boil — chain instant techniques with no cooldown.
5. Flashforged Cleaver — every technique fires as one perfect, simultaneous instant.
The grey room reassembled itself, quiet and ordinary, and Ainen stood there a moment, five new cards settling into a deck built entirely out of the one lesson he’d never wanted to learn.
"Cleaver," he said softly, testing the name the way he once tested a new knife’s balance before trusting it near real food. "Yes. That’ll do nicely."
The stone arch opened behind him, and he stepped back out to find the others, already composing, in his head, exactly how he planned to describe losing an argument with his own kitchen to a room that had somehow made it worth losing.