The absolute worst part about hand-to-hand combat training in the 104th Cadet Corps wasn’t the physical pain.
It was the agonizing, suffocating heat of the afternoon sun baking the hard-packed dirt of the sparring yard.
Dust coated my throat, sticking to the sweat on the back of my neck.
The air smelled of dry earth, cheap leather harnesses, and the collective desperation of a hundred teenagers trying to prove they weren’t entirely worthless.
I stood near the edge of the designated sparring rings, my wooden training knife hanging loosely from my fingertips.
Around me, the yard was a chaotic symphony of grunts, wooden clatter, and Commandant Shadis screaming obscenities.
Most of the cadets were treating the exercise like a glorified tavern brawl.
They were grappling in the dirt, throwing wild, uncoordinated haymakers, and completely ignoring the fundamental physics of human anatomy.
I didn’t have to consciously analyze them.
The knowledge was simply there, seamlessly integrated into my waking mind.
I watched Eren aggressively charge at Jean Kirschtein two rings over.
My brain instantly highlighted the fatal flaws in my brother’s approach.
‘Center of gravity is entirely too far forward.
Stride length is uneven.
He’s leading with his right shoulder, effectively telegraphing his kinetic intent a full second before the strike lands,’ my mind calculated coldly, laying a glowing, invisible geometric grid over the two boys.
Jean sidestepped smoothly, using Eren’s own reckless momentum against him, and shoved my brother face-first into the dirt.
Eren immediately scrambled back to his feet, spitting dust, his green eyes burning with offended rage.
He didn’t adjust his stance.
He just charged again, completely ignoring the tactical data of his previous failure.
I let out a long, heavy sigh, pulling my flat cap a little lower to block the glaring sun.
‘Fighting other humans is a completely illogical training metric for a military branch dedicated to fighting giant, regenerative biological anomalies,’ I mused lazily to myself.
‘A wooden knife is mathematically useless against a Titan.
This entire exercise is nothing more than a psychological conditioning tool designed to breed aggression.’
It was pointless.
But unfortunately, it was a mandatory pointless exercise, and I was currently facing a massive logistical crisis.
I needed to fail.
After accidentally utilizing flawless, high-level CQC to flip Reiner Braun onto his massive back the previous week, I had drawn entirely too much attention.
If I didn’t aggressively lower the instructors’ expectations today, I was going to be placed in the advanced combat brackets.
Advanced brackets meant more effort, more scrutiny, and significantly less time for my afternoon naps.
I had spent the entire night formulating the perfect, mathematically precise plan to lose.
I couldn’t just fall over.
The instructors would recognize a fake dive and punish me with extra laps.
I had to actually take a hit.
‘The human nasal cavity is a highly vascular area,’ I reviewed my internal blueprint, calculating the density of the cartilage and the depth of the capillaries.
‘A blunt-force impact delivered at precisely a forty-five-degree angle with approximately twelve pounds of kinetic pressure will rupture the superficial blood vessels without causing a structural fracture.’
It was the perfect strategy.
I would intentionally step into a mild punch, angle my face to catch the strike on the bridge of my nose, and bleed profusely all over the dirt.
The sheer volume of blood would force the supervising instructor to call a medical stoppage.
I would look pathetic, I would fail the drill, and I would get to sit in the shade of the infirmary tent with an ice pack for the rest of the afternoon.
It was brilliant.
It was foolproof.
“Yeager.”
The cold, entirely inflectionless voice cut through the ambient noise of the sparring yard, freezing the blood in my veins.
I slowly turned my head.
Annie Leonhart was standing exactly three feet away.
Her blonde hair was tied back, her pale blue eyes locked onto me with the terrifying, unblinking intensity of an apex predator observing a particularly suspicious gazelle.
She wasn’t holding a wooden knife.
Her hands were wrapped in standard-issue canvas bandages, resting casually at her sides.
“Annie,” I replied, maintaining my deadpan expression despite the sudden, violent spike of survival adrenaline flooding my nervous system.
“Lovely day for a concussive brain injury.
Who is your sparring partner?”
“You are,” she stated flatly, stepping into my designated ring.
My brilliant, foolproof plan instantly shattered into a million mathematical pieces.
‘Abort.
Catastrophic variable introduced,’ my tactical instincts screamed.
Annie wasn’t a clumsy cadet like Connie or Thomas.
Annie was a living weapon.
I had watched her dismantle three different recruits in under two minutes earlier that morning.
Her strikes were flawless, utilizing a brutal blend of Muay Thai and Judo that maximized kinetic transfer and minimized energy waste.
If I intentionally leaned my face into one of her punches, she wouldn’t just give me a bloody nose.
She would drive my nasal bone directly into my frontal lobe.
“I respectfully decline,” I said smoothly, taking a deliberate step backward and dropping my wooden knife into the dirt.
“I am experiencing severe muscular fatigue in my left calf.
I am medically unfit for combat.”
“Pick up the knife, Yeager,” Annie said, her voice dropping to a low, quiet murmur meant only for my ears.
“I want to see the move you used on Reiner.”
“I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.
Reiner tripped on a rock.
It was a tragedy of local topography,” I lied effortlessly, keeping my hands entirely relaxed at my sides.
“Recruit Yeager!”
The booming, furious voice of Commandant Shadis echoed right behind me, causing the back of my neck to prickle.
I turned to see Shadis looming over the ropes of the ring, his face twisted into a scowl.
“Are you fraternizing with the dirt again?!
Pick up your weapon and engage your partner before I have you running laps until you vomit your own boots!”
I looked at Shadis.
I looked back at Annie, who was now raising her fists into a highly specialized, tightly coiled guard position.
I was completely trapped.
I couldn’t run.
I couldn’t fake an injury without Shadis executing me on the spot.
And I couldn’t fight back without exposing the lethal combat programming hardwired into my brain.
With a heavy, deeply depressed sigh, I bent down and picked up the wooden knife.
“Fine,” I muttered.
I didn’t take a proper stance.
I intentionally adopted the worst, most amateurish posture imaginable.
I stood flat-footed, my chin exposed, holding the wooden knife completely limp by my waist.
“Ready?” Annie asked softly, her eyes narrowing as she analyzed my terrible form.
“I am actively dreading this,” I confirmed.
She moved.
It wasn’t a clumsy lunge.
It was an explosive, terrifyingly fast burst of kinetic violence.
She closed the three-foot gap in a fraction of a second, her lead foot pivoting flawlessly to generate maximum torque from her hips.
She threw a blindingly fast left jab aimed directly at my jaw.
To a normal cadet, the punch would have been invisible.
But to my unified mind, the world seemed to violently decelerate.
‘Velocity: fifteen meters per second.
Impact vector: inferior maxilla.
Anticipated force: sufficient to cause a level-two concussion and localized bone fracturing,’ my brain calculated instantly.
My survival instincts roared to life.
My central nervous system desperately tried to hijack my limbs.
Every fiber of my being screamed at me to slip the punch, grab her extended wrist, apply a radial lock, and shatter her elbow over my shoulder.
It took every single ounce of willpower I possessed to manually override my own reflexes.
It felt like trying to stop a speeding train by grabbing the rails with my bare hands.
‘Do not counter.
Do not block,’ I commanded my body.
‘Evade the lethal damage, but take the hit.’
I intentionally delayed my reaction by exactly half a second.
Instead of slipping outside her guard, I clumsily jerked my head backward.
Her canvas-wrapped fist grazed my cheekbone with the force of a swinging brick.
The friction burned my skin, and the sheer kinetic impact snapped my head to the side, rattling my teeth.
But Annie didn’t stop.
Her jab was just a range-finder.
As my head snapped back and my balance faltered, she was already transitioning her weight into a devastating, sweeping low kick aimed directly at the side of my knee.
‘Targeting the lateral collateral ligament.
If that connects, the knee joint will hyper-extend and snap,’ my tactical awareness diagnosed in a blind panic.
I couldn’t take that hit.
A bloody nose was a tactical retreat; a shattered knee was a permanent disability.
I had to move.
I executed a highly complex, mathematically perfect micro-evasion, desperately disguising it as a panicked stumble.
I collapsed my right leg entirely, dropping my center of gravity toward the dirt right before her shin connected.
Instead of striking my vulnerable knee joint, her sweeping kick slammed heavily into the thick, fleshy muscle of my upper calf.
The pain was agonizing, blooming like white-hot fire radiating up my leg, but the bone remained perfectly intact.
I used the momentum of her brutal kick to throw myself entirely off my feet.
I threw my arms out wildly, intentionally flailing like an uncoordinated amateur, and launched myself backward into the dirt.
I hit the ground hard, rolling backward in a cloud of dust.
As my face hit the dirt, I quickly, violently bit down on the inside of my own cheek.
The sharp tang of copper flooded my mouth.
I rolled onto my stomach, staying completely flat on the ground, and dramatically spat a mouthful of bright red blood into the dusty earth.
“Time!” Shadis roared from the edge of the ring, blowing a shrill whistle.
“Match goes to Leonhart!
Get up, Yeager, you pathetic sack of potatoes!”
I stayed entirely limp in the dirt, clutching my leg and groaning loudly for maximum theatrical effect.
I had done it.
I had survived an engagement with a martial arts prodigy, suffered only minor tissue damage, produced a dramatic amount of blood, and successfully looked like a complete, uncoordinated failure in front of the Commandant.
I was a genius.
I slowly pushed myself up onto my hands and knees, keeping my head bowed, waiting for Annie to walk away in disgust.
But she didn’t walk away.
A pair of standard-issue leather boots stepped into my field of vision, stopping just inches from my hands.
I looked up.
Annie was crouching down in the dirt right in front of me, completely ignoring the other cadets moving on to their next matches.
She wasn’t looking at the blood on my chin.
She was looking at my hands.
“You didn’t stumble,” Annie whispered quietly, her voice entirely devoid of emotion, but laced with a chilling, undeniable certainty.
I froze, keeping my face perfectly slack.
“I assure you, I was violently separated from my own center of gravity.”
Annie leaned in closer, her cold blue eyes piercing straight through my carefully crafted mask of mediocrity.
“When a normal person falls backward from a leg sweep, their natural reflex is to throw their hands out flat to break the fall,” she murmured, tracing a line in the dirt with her wrapped finger, diagramming my exact movement.
“It usually results in a sprained wrist or a shattered collarbone.
But you didn’t do that.”
She looked up, meeting my eyes with terrifying clarity.
“You tucked your chin to protect your brain stem.
You perfectly rounded your shoulders to absorb the kinetic impact across your back.
And your right hand didn’t slap the dirt—it instinctively hovered over your hip, exactly where a soldier would keep a secondary weapon drawn for a ground counter-attack.”
My breath hitched almost imperceptibly.
She had seen right through it.
While Shadis saw a clumsy idiot falling into the mud, Annie Leonhart had mathematically deconstructed my fall and recognized it for exactly what it was: a flawless, highly advanced tactical breakfall executed under extreme duress.
“I have very flexible shoulders,” I offered weakly, wiping the blood off my chin with the back of my sleeve.
Annie just stared at me for a long, heavy moment.
She didn’t yell.
She didn’t call Shadis over to expose me.
She simply stood up, dusting off her knees with calm, deliberate movements.
“You’re a terrible liar, Kai Yeager,” Annie said quietly, turning her back to me.
“But you’re a survivor.
I respect that.”
She walked away, seamlessly blending back into the crowd of exhausted cadets.
I remained kneeling in the hot dirt, the blinding sun beating down on the back of my neck.
My cheek throbbed, my calf was throbbing with a deep, ugly bruise, and my heart was hammering a frantic rhythm against my ribs.
My brilliant, mathematically perfect plan to become invisible had just backfired in the most catastrophic way possible.
I hadn’t lowered expectations.
I had just accidentally proved to the most dangerous, perceptive recruit in the entire 104th Cadet Corps that I was exactly as lethal as she was.
‘Tactical failure,’ my brain summarized coldly, pulling up the logistical reality of my new situation.
‘Cover identity compromised.
Hostile asset has established a psychological lock on our combat capabilities.’
I slowly climbed to my feet, limping heavily toward the shade of the infirmary tent, entirely defeated by my own unavoidable competence.
I was officially on Annie Leonhart’s radar.
I was definitely going to need a longer nap today.