The Reborn Young Master's Guide to Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse BL-Chapter 6: Step Six: Move Fast, Strike Hard — Seize Every Moment Like Your Life Depends on It

Chapter 6: Step Six: Move Fast, Strike Hard — Seize Every Moment Like Your Life Depends on It

Because in this world, hesitation kills. Act decisively before the chance slips through your fingers.

He stepped out into the mansion’s courtyard, silent except for the faint rustle of orchard trees swaying gently in the highland wind.

The air here was crisper, thinner, laced with faint energy that made his skin prickle.

Above him, the sky was a moody gradient of dusk violet, the sun just brushing the horizon like it didn’t dare set without permission.

Asher sat on a velvet cushion placed on the elevated stone platform beneath a centuries-old orchard tree.

Its leaves were a soft green as it swayed from the wind.

Silvia circled Asher slowly, her paws silent on the marble floor of the courtyard as he came down from his meditation.

Her fur shimmered silver under the filtered sunlight, her eyes sharp and otherworldly.

"The first lesson I’ll teach is control. To have control is to understand your new abilities. Darkness doesn’t mean despair," She told him.

"It’s the realm of memory, concealment, and transition. When you embrace it, it will hide you from what hunts, and reveal what lies unseen. But try to dominate it... and it will consume you."

"And space," She’d added, with that almost smug expression, "belongs to beings like me. Celestials and Celestial Beasts. It’s a divine gift, born of the stars and stitched through with the bones of time.

"Celestials and Celestial Beast are different? Are the Celestials gods?"

Silvia shook her head.

"Second Young Master, the Celestials are ancient beyond measure, far above even the gods themselves," Silvia began, her voice steady but carrying the weight of ages.

"My Master... the Forgotten God of the Void, died long ago. Before his passing, he created five Celestial Beasts to serve him. I was the firstborn, the wolf born of time and space. The others... all perished in battles lost to time, leaving only me behind to watch over what remains."

She lowered her gaze, silver eyes flickering as they met Asher’s.

A strange sensation stirred within her.

A whisper of something buried deep beneath her instincts.

There is something about him...

The thought was fleeting, almost like a dream dissolving at dawn, but it unsettled her nonetheless.

Silvia could not say why she felt drawn to Asher.

He was unlike anyone she had encountered before.

There was no arrogance in him.

No cocky bravado but rather a quiet determination that stirred something deep within him.

From the very moment of his death, she had felt his soul crying out across space, a desperate echo reaching her like a distant song.

Within him was a quiet strength, an unspoken weight in his presence that went beyond mere power.

It was as if he carried the very space her master had left behind eons ago, an empty place only the true successor could fill.

That invisible thread bound her to him, compelling her to make him her Second Master, even when she did not fully understand why.

Perhaps it was fate, or some invisible thread weaving their paths together.

For reasons she could not fully grasp, she chose to stay by his side.

Not out of knowledge, but because something within her told her he was meant to be more.

He was the successor her Master spoke of.

The one to fill the void left by Master Kareth.

Whether Asher knew it or not, his path was entwined with her Master’s legacy.

Silvia’s tail twitched softly as she averted her eyes, hiding the conflict within.

She would protect him.

She would wait.

And maybe, one day, the truth would reveal itself.

When the shadows finally parted, and the forgotten God’s heir stood fully in the light.

As Asher listened, a faint sensation prickled at the back of his mind.

It was as if countless unseen eyes traced his every move, watching from realms beyond sight and time.

It was a presence both distant and intimate, like being the star of an endless spectacle no one dared to interrupt.

Asher clenched his fist in slight confusion as he asked, "Then why do I posses this power?"

"You have it because something—or someone—gave you another chance. But that means the world will want to take it back."

"So someone gave me a second chance at life? How is that possible?"

"The world works in mysterious ways Second Young Master. I see that you’re beginning to understand it," She said.

"The space around you is not empty, Second Young Master. It’s memory. It’s potential. It listens."

He tilted his head toward her, wiping sweat from his brow.

"The way it bends... the way I felt time stretch when I first enter this Space... What was that?"

Silvia sat down and flicked her tail, her voice soft but firm. "That is the first taste of control. At Rank 1, ou are currently at the red stage, almost at Rank 2. You’ve awakened two branches of spatial manipulation. First: localized time distortion. You can slow time within a five-meter radius around you. You move as normal, but everything else slows like a slow down button. Five seconds, maximum, for now."

She paused, letting the weight of that sink in.

"Second: anchoring," She said, her eyes glowing faintly.

"You can mark a place in space. And for five seconds, you hold the right to return that place—rewind it—to its anchored state."

"You mean... like a rewind button?" Asher asked, brow furrowed.

Silvia nodded. "If you anchor a hallway, and your enemy charges in and if you rewind, their movements vanish. Wounds disappear. Even death can be rewritten, briefly. But only what occurred within that radius and time frame. And only what you choose to bind."

"Just five seconds," Asher murmured.

"Time is a luxury most don’t have," Silvia said, rising to her feet.

"Now you do. But use it wisely. Anchor too late, and it’s wasted. Anchor too soon, and you might miss your real chance."

"I understand. Can I use space to teleport?"

She stepped closer, gaze steady. "This is not teleportation. Not yet. You are not moving through space, you are shaping it. Bending it. Folding it. And when the time comes, you’ll learn to tear it wide open."

"Now, you must meditate, and connect with your new powers and let them familiarise themselves with you."

"Yes, Silivia."

He crossed his legs, straightened his spine, and closed his eyes.

His breathing slowed as he let the darkness consume him.

The shadows pooled in his chest, in his lungs, behind his eyelids.

It wasn’t empty, not like before.

It pulsed now, like it was alive.

The darkness thread wrapped around him before penetrating his heart, striking like a bullet.

Asher coughed out black blood, his heart on fire, before slowly, the darkness retreated, leaving behind nothing but the black blood on his face.

He wiped the blood off using the back of his hand, and felt a weightless pressure within his body.

It was the space ability.

The space around him folded with a soft, unnatural pressure, like reality itself was inhaling.

The courtyard blurred.

All sounds dulled.

He was neither here nor there.

He was like a ghost caught between space and time.

The realm of space opened like a lotus behind his mind, petal after petal unfolding into void.

It was beautiful in its stillness, endless and yet enclosed.

Here, time didn’t obey the rules.

Seconds could stretch into hours.

Whole minutes could be compressed into heartbeats.

He felt it now—the elasticity of it.

Like he was standing on the surface of time itself, and if he pushed just a little, it would ripple.

It wasn’t just a storage room.

It wasn’t just a pocket dimension.

It was a field.

A battlefield.

A hidden dimension that could be manipulated, accelerated, collapsed, or distorted, depending on the strength of the user’s core and their control.

Right now, at Rank 1, Asher could slow time within a radius of five meters for no longer than five seconds but those five seconds could change everything in a fight.

But the most intoxicating part?

He could reset a location.

Anchor it.

Rewind it only briefly.

Five seconds max but just enough to rewrite death.

The darkness inside him didn’t fight the space.

Instead, it wrapped around it like a sheath.

Protective.

Quiet.

And patient.

Together, they didn’t clash, they merged, like twin shadows casting across a mirror.

And with each breath, Asher learned to listen to them.

Not command—but negotiate.

The power wasn’t something to be controlled with brute will, it was something to wield through understanding.

Asher exhaled slowly, and his eyes snapped open.

The world slammed back into place.

The orchard trees solidified around him, rustling in the wind like they’d always been there.

The stone beneath him hummed faintly with residual charge.

His heart pounded like a drum inside his chest, not from fear, but power.

Pure, ringing, terrifying awareness.

He flexed right, feeling the electric charge building beneath his skin, lightning waiting to be unleashed.

Then came the darkness erupting from his other hand, a slow-burning shadow curling at the edges of his vision, like a living fog he could pull close or push away before it disipated.

With a breath, Asher unsheathed the Aether Fang.

The weapon responded instantly.

Lightning crackled along the blade’s edge, kissing the air with blue fire.

A low hum pulsed from the core of the sword, a resonance, like it recognized him.

The training grounds were equipped with holographic drones, made to withstand an ability users power.

Asher gripped the hilt with both hands, stepping into a wide stance.

Then he moved.

The first strikes were slow, and measured, and an old rhythm reawakened in his muscles.

He hadn’t touched a blade since his rebirth, but his body remembered.

In his past life, after awakening as an ability user, he’d trained with the sword out of desperation.

His lightning had been unstable, his control pitiful and the blade had given him something grounding, something real to hold onto while the world around him burned.

"Step, pivot, cut..." He murmured under his breath, rotating into a low sweep, then flipping the blade upward in a clean, diagonal arc.

The air hissed as energy split it.

He inhaled, channeling lightning.

The charge rushed from his core down his arms, bursting from his fingers into the blade.

Aether Fang drank it eagerly, no resistance and no pushback.

The blade wasn’t just a conductor; it was a partner.

The lightning wrapped along the fuller side of the sword, forming bright, jagged sigils that pulsed with life.

With each swing, electricity burst outward in sharp blue arcs, crackling against the air, sizzling over the ground.

Then, without warning, he stilled and closed his eyes to let the darkness rise.

It came like a whisper at first, cold, slick, familiar.

Not malevolent, but ancient.

It curled along his spine and pooled in his lungs like ink.

Asher breathed it in and welcomed it.

He lifted the sword again.

When he struck this time, the shadows followed.

They clung to his blade like a living smoke, warping the air around the steel.

Asher shifted his stance again, weaving between the dual forces of electric fury and obsidian void.

Each motion carved through the space around him, each step flowing with surgical precision.

He lunged forward, then twisted mid-air, disappearing into a blur, his form flickering through folds of shadow.

He reappeared behind one of the holographic sparring drones as it activated, slicing it down before it could register him.

The blade cut clean through the projection.

It fizzled, glitching, and exploded in a shower of sparks.

Asher exhaled.

More drones floated in from the edges of the field, sensing his rising energy.

Three. Then five. Then seven.

They circled him, moving fast, each one programmed to adapt to an ability user’s pattern.

Perfect.

Asher rolled his neck, the tension bleeding away.

Then he moved.

Lightning burst from his heels as he shot forward, sword flashing with white-blue arcs.

He struck low, then spun upward, using the momentum to hurl himself into the air.

Aether Fang cleaved through one drone, then he twisted his wrist, redirecting the power through the blade into the second and third.

The air around him shimmered as he focused, folding space just slightly, warping distance.

One step turned into five.

He blurred again, appearing behind the largest drone before it could track him.

But this time, he didn’t strike.

Instead, he anchored.

A quiet pulse spread out from the soles of his feet, through the stone, locking the environment in a moment of time.

Five seconds. 𝐟𝕣𝕖𝐞𝐰𝕖𝚋𝐧𝗼𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝗰𝐨𝐦

He let the drone attack.

It fired two plasma bolts at him fast.

They struck him.

His shoulder jerked back from the force, a hiss escaping his lips.

But he didn’t panic.

Instead, he rewound.

The moment snapped backward like a rubber band, the plasma vanished, the drone returned to its idle position, unaware of what had just happened.

Asher was untouched.