Kaelen's booming laughter finally faded, leaving a heavy, tense silence over the handful of us still standing in the arena.
He stopped pacing. When he spoke again, the theatrical, booming volume was gone. His voice dropped into a grim, gravelly rumble that demanded absolute attention.
"Listen closely," Kaelen said, his eyes locking onto each of us one by one. "Over the next three weeks, I am going to teach you exactly what is waiting for you out there in the Void-Sector. I'm going to teach you what to fight, and exactly how to kill it."
He took a slow, heavy step forward. "More importantly, I am going to teach you what not to fight. I will teach you what to run from. I will teach you how to recognize the threat when it is already too late to run—the things where your only option is to drop to the dirt and start praying to whatever gods you still believe in."
He crossed his massive, furred arms, the crimson aura around him dimming into a steady, intense simmer. "It is my job to make sure that at least some of you make it back alive. And just maybe, if you take this seriously, you'll make it back a hell of a lot stronger than when you left."
Kaelen suddenly clapped his massive hands together, the sound echoing like a gunshot.
"Now, pair up!" Kaelen barked. "We are going to start with a sparring evaluation. Absolutely no powers."
My stomach dropped.
"No Qi, no mana, no auras, no spells, " Kaelen continued. "Just raw, physical combat. You and your beast against an opponent, and there's. I am going to sit back, take notes, and see exactly what your foundation looks like when your fancy powers get stripped away."
Snow looked up at me, her ice-blue eyes narrowing. Without her Ethereal Frost-Weave, she was just a very agile, very angry, slightly cold cat. And without my Voltaic Step and Jolt Burst, I was just a guy with a Strength stat of 4.
"After the spars, we'll run through some basic, common-sense survival knowledge," Kaelen grinned, showing off his carnivorous teeth. "And then you're out of my fur until tomorrow morning. Choose your partners. Now!"
The remaining recruits immediately began to scramble.
I looked around the scorched arena. Besides Snow and me, there was the heavily armored Dwarf with his massive rune-shield, the incredibly agile Elven archer, and a pair of bruised but determined-looking human brawlers who had managed to survive the geode rounds.
"Noah," Snow projected into my mind, her tone flat. "Your striking power is negligible.' If we are forced into a pure physical contest, our current strategy of 'overwhelming them with magical superiority' is compromised."
"Yeah," I muttered, unhooking my wire daggers. They were practically useless if I couldn't channel the Dissonance through them. "I know. We're going to have to get creative.
"Alright, listen up!" Kaelen's booming voice echoed across the arena, cutting through the murmurs of the recruits. "No magic! No stats boosting! Just the metal in your hands and the dirt beneath your boots! Begin!"
Garret didn't waste a single second. He dropped his chin and settled into a surprisingly recognizable boxing stance, bringing both of his heavy knuckle-daggers up to guard his face. He lunged forward, closing the distance fast. He led with a quick, testing jab from his left, immediately followed by a brutal, heavy cross from his right.
My instincts flared. I went to trigger Voltaic Step, but the warning glare of Instructor Kaelen on the sidelines forced me to suppress my mana pool. I had to do this raw.
With a Strength of 4, trying to block those thick steel blades with my thin wire-daggers would just end with my own weapons getting smashed into my face. So, I didn't block. I relied on my 15 Dexterity.
I wasn't some master hand-to-hand fighter. Back in the day, I had taken a few taijutsu classes strictly because I thought it looked cool, but my actual technique was amateurish at best. But what I lacked in disciplined form, my stats made up for in sheer, raw speed.
As Garret's right cross came barreling toward my jaw, I ducked—a little too wide, stumbling slightly on my left foot. The heavy blade sailed inches over my head, cutting the air with a vicious whoosh that ruffled my black and white hair.
Garret had committed entirely too much weight to the punch. Because my dodge had been so exaggerated, he missed his target entirely and stumbled forward.
I panicked slightly, grabbing for whatever I could to keep him from recovering. I remembered a basic redirection move from my old classes. It wasn't pretty, and it definitely wasn't a master-level execution, but I slapped my left hand against the back of his extended tricep and shoved him forward, using his own momentum against him. At the same time, I clumsily swept my right foot behind his ankle.
Garret's feet tangled. With nothing to catch his balance, he pitched forward and slammed hard onto his chest against the scorched stone, the breath leaving his lungs in a heavy grunt. Both of his knuckle-daggers scraped loudly against the floor.
Before he could scramble back up or roll over, I practically fell onto his back, pressing my knee awkwardly but firmly between his shoulder blades. I brought the cold, thin edge of my right wire-dagger around and pressed it against the side of his neck. My heart was hammering against my ribs.
Simultaneously, a sharp, metallic screech echoed a few feet away.
I didn't even have to look to know what happened. The Steel Sparrow had dive-bombed Snow, aiming its bladed wings right for her eyes. Snow, operating on pure feline malice, had simply flattened her ears and casually backhanded the mechanical bird out of the air with her front paw.
The sparrow slammed into the stone floor, skidding to a halt in a tangle of metal feathers. Snow casually stepped over to it and placed one soft white paw firmly on its metallic head, pinning it to the ground. She looked up at Garret, her ice-blue eyes radiating pure disdain.
Garret lay frozen beneath my blade, staring at the floor with wide eyes, his chest heaving against the stone. The whole exchange had taken less than four seconds.
"You were right about one thing," I said, my mental voice a little strained as I realized how close that actually was. "I'm not a front-line fighter," he thought at snow.
I pulled the dagger back and stood up, offering him a hand.
From the sidelines, Kaelen let out a low, rumbling chuckle. "Messy, human. Very messy, but I've seen worse."