Chapter 420: Magical Lineage [1] Sand’s face grew grim with desperate determination. He gathered every ounce of mana his body could channel, drawing on reserves that would leave him completely exhausted. The energy coalesced between his palms, forming a sphere of concentrated power that represented his absolute strongest attack. This was everything he had, the technique he’d spent years developing and had used to kill other practitioners who threatened his interests. With a shout of effort, Sand launched the sphere directly at Noah’s head, expecting at minimum serious injury and potentially a fatal blow. Noah simply raised his right hand and caught the mana sphere mid-flight. His fingers closed around the raw magical energy, and with a casual flex of will backed by master-rank mana control that dwarfed anything Sand could comprehend, Noah made the attack dissolve into harmless wisps of dissipating energy. The sphere that represented Sand’s ultimate technique, his trump card that had killed others, vanished like morning mist under Noah’s casual negation. Complete silence filled the warehouse as Sand stared in absolute horror at what he’d just witnessed. That level of mana manipulation, that effortless control over magical energy, was so far beyond his capabilities that he finally understood the true scale of his mistake. He hadn’t confronted a talented martial artist who got lucky in tournaments. He’d attacked a genuine practitioner whose power existed in an entirely different realm of possibility. Noah’s expression shifted slightly, a small smile appearing that somehow made him look more dangerous rather than less threatening. "Alright," Noah said conversationally, his tone almost pleasant despite the circumstances. "I have a few questions for you that I need you to answer. And I suggest you be very honest, because as you’ve just discovered, killing you would require less effort than swatting a fly." He took a step forward, and Sand instinctively stumbled backward, his body recognizing predator dynamics even if his mind was still catching up. "First question," Noah continued. "How did you learn to use mana? Earth doesn’t have magical instruction or cultivation resources. Where did you get the knowledge and methods to reach apprentice rank?"​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ Sand’s face turned grim as the reality of his situation fully sank in. His breathing was labored, his mana reserves completely depleted from that final desperate attack, and his confidence shattered beyond repair. "You... you’re not just a champion," Sand said, his voice carrying a mixture of fear and dawning comprehension. "You’re a powerful magus, not a mere swordsman. How did you hide this? What are you really?" Before he could finish the thought, Noah appeared directly in front of him. One moment Noah had been standing twenty feet away. The next, he was right there, close enough that Sand could feel the overwhelming pressure of his aura. The speed was so far beyond what Sand could perceive that it looked like teleportation. Noah’s hand lashed out in a casual backhand slap that caught Sand across the face with enough force to snap his head sideways and send him stumbling. The impact echoed through the warehouse, and Sand tasted blood immediately as his lip split and his cheek began swelling. "I’m not here to answer your questions," Noah said coldly, his earlier composure replaced with barely contained violence. "I want YOU to answer. Don’t make me repeat myself." Sand spat blood onto the concrete floor, his now-swollen face making speech slightly difficult but fear providing excellent motivation for compliance. "Alright, alright!" he gasped, raising his hands in surrender. "I’ll tell you everything, just don’t kill me!" Noah crossed his arms and waited, his expression making it clear that Sand’s survival depended entirely on the quality and honesty of his answers. 𝙧𝙚𝙚𝔀𝒆𝓫𝓷𝙤𝓿𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝙤𝓶 Sand took a shaky breath and began explaining, his words tumbling out quickly. "I come from a family of mages. Practitoners who can use mana for basic enhancement and simple techniques. We have knowledge that most people on Earth don’t possess." "How?" Noah demanded. "Where did that knowledge come from?" "From scriptures," Sand continued, wiping blood from his mouth. "Ancient texts passed down through our family lineage for generations. They contain breathing techniques, meditation methods, and basic mana circulation patterns that allow us to develop these abilities even without Earth’s environment supporting cultivation." Noah’s eyes narrowed. "Scriptures from where? Who wrote them originally?" Sand hesitated for just a moment, then apparently decided that holding back information would be more dangerous than revealing family secrets. "Our ancestor," he said quietly. "The one who founded our family’s power and left us these techniques. Napoleon Bonaparte." Noah’s eyes widened in genuine shock, his composure cracking for the first time since the fight began. "Napoleon? As in THE Napoleon? The French emperor who conquered half of Europe?" Sand spat out more blood, nodding despite the pain in his jaw. "Yes, him. How else do you think he was able to amass so much power and conquer so many nations so quickly? A minor Corsican noble becoming Emperor of France and nearly dominating all of Europe? That doesn’t happen through normal military genius alone." He met Noah’s stunned gaze with bitter pride despite his defeated state. "Napoleon was a practitioner. The scriptures he left detail how he discovered these abilities and developed techniques to cultivate mana in Earth’s low-energy environment." Noah’s mind raced with the implications. One of history’s most famous military commanders had been a mage? Had used magical enhancement to fuel his legendary campaigns? It actually made a disturbing amount of sense. Napoleon’s seemingly supernatural ability to process information, his tireless energy during campaigns, his strategic brilliance that bordered on precognition, his ability to inspire fanatical loyalty, even his relatively small stature hiding incredible personal presence and force of will. All of those could be explained by someone using basic mana enhancement and mental reinforcement techniques while everyone around him operated at purely mundane human levels. "The scriptures explain everything. How Napoleon awakened to mana during his youth in Corsica, how he developed techniques through experimentation and meditation, how he used subtle enhancement to dominate battlefields and political negotiations. He left detailed instructions for his descendants to continue the practice, to build a lineage of practitioners who could maintain power through generations."