Chapter 430 — Salazar I

"Damian."

He stopped, turning to see Salazar approaching, though something in his gait suggested he was favoring his left side.

"It’s been a long time since we talked."

Damian’s hands unclenched, relaxing a little.

"Yeah... It has."

Salazar stopped a few feet away, his hands sliding into his pockets.

"Let’s take a walk back to your headquarters." His voice came out casual, like they were still teacher and student meeting in the shooting range. "I could use the air."

Damian nodded, words caught somewhere he couldn’t quite reach them.

They fell into step together, moving through the building’s corridors and out into the open air.

The rain had stopped sometime during the meeting, leaving the world washed clean and gleaming. Puddles reflected the sky where clouds were breaking apart, letting sunlight through in scattered beams.

Damian kept his gaze forward, watching the light shift across broken concrete and shattered buildings in the distance.

For a while they just walked, neither speaking, their footsteps echoing against wet pavement.

Then Damian broke the silence.

"You’re severely injured." The words came out quieter than he’d intended. "Must have been quite a fight."

Salazar’s lips curved slightly.

"Yeah, it was." He rolled his shoulder slightly, wincing at the motion. "Those bastards knew exactly what I was capable of. Didn’t give me any chance to set up a proper shot." He paused. "Had no choice but to use the family skill."

Damian’s head turned sharply, surprise flickering across his face.

Salazar caught the look and his smile widened, gaining a touch of genuine amusement.

"What? You thought I only knew how to shoot?" He shook his head. "I’m still a Blackwood. Close combat gets drilled into us from the time we can walk. We don’t get a choice about that."

The memory surfaced unbidden.

’Titan’s Ascension.’

Damian had seen it once, during his fight with Gareth at the Academy. The way the fourth-year’s body had grown, muscles expanding, skin hardening, transforming into something that resembled the giants humanity fought beyond the portals.

’The Blackwood Imperial Skill turns them into walking siege weapons.’

The image sat strangely in his mind next to Salazar, who’d always seemed more comfortable behind a scope than in melee range.

They walked in silence for another block before Damian stopped beneath a tree whose branches still dripped with rainwater.

He turned to face Salazar fully.

"Thank you."

Salazar’s eyebrow lifted.

"For standing up for us back there." Damian’s jaw worked. "And for coming when the attack happened. I owe you–"

Salazar’s hand came up immediately, cutting him off.

"No." His voice came out firmer than before. "You don’t owe me anything."

He looked up at the sky, at the clouds breaking apart above them, his expression shifting into something harder to read.

"If it weren’t for my family head..." He didn’t finish the sentence, leaving it hanging incomplete between them.

Both of them knew what he meant.

Damian’s hands clenched again at his side.

"This time you helped me again." His voice came out barely above a whisper. "Won’t that create problems for you? Inside your family, I mean."

Salazar remained silent for a long moment, his gaze still fixed on the breaking clouds.

Then his hand moved to his spatial ring.

Light flashed as something materialized in his palm.

A handgun, sleek and compact, crafted from metal that caught the light in strange ways. The surface looked almost liquid, shifting between dark grey and silver depending on the angle and the barrel showed engravings too intricate to read from where Damian stood.

Salazar turned it over in his hands, his fingers moving across it with the familiarity of someone who’d spent hours in its creation.

"I know the gun I gave you before broke inside that portal." His voice came out quiet as he examined the weapon. "The materials couldn’t handle the strain of Omega Point, not at the levels you were pushing it to."

He touched a small mechanism near the trigger guard.

Click

The handgun’s barrel extended smoothly, stock materializing from compressed components, the whole weapon reshaping itself into a rifle in less than two seconds.

Click

It compressed back into handgun form, the transition so seamless it looked like liquid metal flowing into a new shape.

"This one can handle it." Salazar’s thumb ran along the grip. "Forged from materials specifically designed to channel and contain concentrated Aura. It won’t break no matter how much power you pour into it."

He looked up, meeting Damian’s eyes.

"It can switch between rifle and handgun based on what you need. Just channel a pulse of Aura into the transformation mechanism."

Damian stared at the weapon, then at Salazar’s face, his expression becoming complex.

"I’m not your disciple anymore, Professor." The words came out rough, scraping past his throat. "So why are you doing this?"

Salazar didn’t answer immediately.

He just kept examining the gun with gentle attention, his thumb tracing the engravings along the barrel.

Then he spoke, his voice going distant.

"You know... when I was a kid, I always felt like I was born into the wrong family."

He paused, still looking at the weapon.

"Everyone around me loved close combat. My father, my mother, my siblings, every cousin and uncle and instructor. They lived for the moment when they could activate Titan’s Ascension or other similar skills and feel their bodies transform into living weapons."

His jaw tightened fractionally.

"And then there was me." A bitter edge crept into his tone. "Fascinated by guns. By the mechanics of projectiles and trajectories. By the idea that you could end a fight from kilometers away with perfect precision instead of wading into melee like some kind of barbarian."

Damian said nothing, just listened as Salazar’s words spilled out.

"They tried to beat it out of me at first." Salazar’s smile turned sharp and cold. "My father especially. Thought if he made close combat training brutal enough, I’d abandon the ’cowardly distance weapon’ and embrace our family’s legacy."

He paused, his fingers tightening on the gun.

"But the more they pushed, the more I pulled away. The more they called me weak for preferring ranged combat, the more I buried myself in studying firearms and ammunition and every technical manual I could find."

His voice dropped lower.

"Eventually they stopped trying to change me. Started treating me like..." He searched for the word. "Like a curiosity. The eccentric Blackwood. The one who’d never live up to the family name."

Salazar looked up at Damian then, something vulnerable flickering across his face before he buried it.

"The more I grew up, the more they isolated me. Family gatherings where everyone else would spar and laugh and bond over close combat techniques, and I’d sit in the corner cleaning my rifle." He laughed, the sound empty. "You’ve probably heard the whispers about me by now... The one who doesn’t act like a noble."

Damian had heard, actually.

’Adrian mentioned something like that when I first told him who my gun weapon arts professor would be.’

The memory surfaced from more than a year ago, standing in the Academy cafeteria.

The reputation went beyond just guns. Salazar’s eccentricity colored everything about him, the way he taught, the way he interacted with people, the way he’d barge into places without caring about protocols.