Ethan’s pupils contracted slightly.
*This kid… he only saw it once?* Just once.
He had been hit by the low sweep kick a single time, and he had already mastered the timing to predict and evade it.
He didn’t even need repeated practice—his body remembered the rhythm and trajectory of the movement, making the correct reaction before his conscious mind even registered it.
This was not the result of training; it was a deeper form of instinct.
An instinct Ethan had never seen in any human being in his past life.
Upon landing, John immediately transitioned to the attack.
His punches were no longer driven by brute force alone—he began imitating Ethan’s body mechanics, utilizing shifts in his center of gravity to amplify his power.
When John threw his first punch, Ethan blocked it, but noticed the mechanics behind John’s power had shifted—it was no longer simple arm strength, but unified force transmitted up from the soles of his feet through his hips and torso.
That was the exact kinetic principle Ethan had used during the throw.
On the second punch, Ethan dodged, but John’s line of attack became trickier, tighter in its arc, and faster.
On the third—John found a micro-gap in Ethan’s rhythm.
Pivoting his left foot inward, his center of gravity dropped sharply, and his right fist drove upward diagonally—a precise uppercut striking Ethan’s left ribs.
Pain.
Real, sharp pain that forced Ethan back three steps.
A dull ache throbbed in his ribs, as if struck by a hammer.
He tasted iron in his mouth—blood.
He pressed his tongue against the inside of his cheek, confirming it was only minor bleeding, not a severe injury.
Shock surged through his body like an electric current.
Was this 117’s true talent?
No need for tedious practice, no need for endless refinement—a single glance was all it took for him to integrate an opponent’s techniques into his own combat system.
This wasn’t learning.
This was evolution.
A real-time, millisecond-level self-iteration taking place in the heat of battle.
In two lifetimes, Ethan had never encountered such an ability—it transcended talent, bordering on something supernatural.
John gave him no time to recover.
He pressed forward, throwing punch after punch, each strike more precise than the last.
His balance control had evolved from crude imitation into something akin to pure instinct—Ethan’s techniques, Ethan’s rhythm, were being dismantled and reassembled by this seven-year-old boy at mind-boggling speed.
The first two punches were exploratory, the third pressuring, and by the fourth, he began altering his angles—John was comprehending combat in his own way, not merely copying Ethan’s movements.
Ethan was forced to defend with absolute concentration—blocking, dodging, retreating.
His refined techniques sustained him, but the terrifying rate of John’s growth sent a chill down his spine.
Looking into John’s eyes, Ethan saw no emotion in those vivid blue orbs, only cold, pure calculation.
That was not the gaze of a seven-year-old boy.
It was the gaze of a hunter.
By the one-hundred-and-eighty-second mark, the fight had ascended to a whole new level.
Their exchanges grew faster and fiercer.
The children in the bleachers could no longer make out individual techniques, seeing only two figures moving at high speed across the mat, the heavy thuds of clashing limbs ringing out continuously.
It was no longer a scuffle between two seven-year-olds; it was a dialogue between two souls conducted through their bodies.
Every collision transmitted information; every dodge exchanged intelligence.
Sam’s hands had stopped rubbing his knees; he stared with his mouth agape.
Kelly’s green eyes sparkled with a strange intensity; she didn’t say “I told you so,” but her expression said everything.
Ethan’s technical advantage was being chipped away second by second by John’s ability to adapt.
With every passing second, John grew stronger—no longer just imitating, but forging a combat style uniquely his own.
His striking angles were no longer copies of Ethan’s, but new trajectories extrapolated from Ethan’s defensive habits.
Yet Ethan’s experience kept him afloat—he had lived an entire lifetime longer than John, fought in far more battles, and understood the human body’s vulnerabilities inside out.
He compensated for the shrinking technical gap with veteran foresight, meeting John’s increasingly ferocious onslaught with razor-sharp rhythm control.
Ethan drove an elbow strike into John’s forearm.
Bone met bone with a sharp crack—like a dry branch snapping.
John’s arm trembled, muscles twitching involuntarily, but he didn’t pull back.
His lips pressed into a tight line, his eyes unswerving.
Ethan saw the red welt on John’s arm, the skin turning from pale to deep crimson in less than a second.
*This kid… he doesn’t even know what pain means.*
John delivered a sudden headbutt.
It came without warning—no windup, no preliminary shift in weight; his forehead simply surged straight forward.
Ethan snapped his head back in the final split-second, John’s forehead grazing his temple in a spray of heat and sweat.
In that instant, Ethan could feel the scorching heat off John’s forehead, like an engine running beyond redline.
Had Ethan’s reaction speed not been slightly faster than his peers’ due to his adult consciousness, that headbutt would have knocked him cold.
The two separated, establishing distance once more.
Both were panting heavily, sweat dripping onto the mat to form irregular blotches.
Ethan rubbed his temple, where a dull ache throbbed as if seared by a red-hot wire.
John shook his trembling arm, the swelling on his forearm growing more pronounced.
Their eyes met again, and Ethan saw something troubling in John’s gaze—not anger, not competitive vanity, but pure curiosity.
The boy was enjoying the fight.
He was enjoying the process of learning.
Ethan’s mind remained razor-sharp: *If this keeps up, I’ll end up losing.* Not because he was weak, but because John’s rate of growth far surpassed his expectations.
The boy was like a mirror that not only reflected an opponent’s techniques, but instantly weaponized them.
Every passing second tilted the balance of power toward John.
Give him thirty more seconds, and he might see right through Ethan’s defensive system.
Give him a minute—Ethan didn’t dare think further.
Yet he couldn’t lose.
Nor could he win.
He had to make this fight look like a fair contest between two evenly matched opponents.
Maintaining that balance was far harder than the fight itself—a tightrope walk on the edge of a blade, where every step had to be measured to the millimeter and every action had to look like instinct rather than calculation.
Cold sweat drenched Ethan’s back, not from physical exhaustion, but from extreme mental strain.
The final thirty seconds.
Both launched an attack at almost the exact same instant.
Ethan locked his right arm around John’s neck in a chokehold—a carefully calculated ending designed to create a stalemate the moment the whistle blew.
But John didn’t struggle the way Ethan had anticipated; his left hand gripped Ethan’s arm to pry it off, while his right hand wrapped around Ethan’s elbow joint, locking it in an armbar.
He, too, was seeking an end to the fight, and the angle he found took Ethan completely by surprise.
Their bodies entangled, muscles bulging under skin in a clash of pure force.
Sharp pain shot up Ethan’s arm—John’s armbar had locked his elbow joint; another burst of force would dislocate it.
Meanwhile, John’s neck creaked under Ethan’s chokehold, pressure mounting on his carotid artery, seconds away from oxygen deprivation and dizziness.
Neither yielded; neither could afford to let go.
They remained locked in a stalemate on the mat like two interlocked serpents trying to strangle each other.
A whistle blew.
Chief Petty Officer Mendez stood at the edge of the mat, his face unreadable.
“Draw,” he announced.
His voice wasn’t loud, yet it resonated through the entire facility.
The two released each other.
Ethan rubbed his sore elbow joint, while John touched his reddened throat.
Standing less than half a meter apart, both gasped heavily for air, sweat dripping from their brows to splash onto the mat.
Ethan’s ribs throbbed painfully, and the swelling on John’s forearm had grown worse.
Both had paid a heavy price in this five-minute battle.
John looked at Ethan.
His vivid blue eyes held neither the resentment of the defeated nor the arrogance of the victor.
There was only a pure, unadulterated recognition between warriors.
That recognition required no words; it was written into every aching muscle in their bodies and every drop of sweat on the mat.
“You’re strong,” John said, his voice raspy but sincere.
“So are you,” Ethan replied.
Looking at the seven-year-old boy, Ethan knew with absolute clarity—he was witnessing the dawn of a legend who would one day save all of humanity.
And he, a reincarnator, was responding to that recognition under a mask of disguise.
The thought weighed heavily on his heart, though he let none of it show.
John extended his fist.
Ethan extended his as well.
Their knuckles bumped lightly together.
No further words were needed; it was the simplest acknowledgment between two warriors.
The touch was light, yet between them, it weighed heavier than any promise.
In the bleachers, the brief cheer was not for either individual, but for the fight itself.
Mendez stood by the mat, pulled a notebook from his breast pocket, and flipped to a page.
His fingers paused over the paper for a second before drawing a line connecting “007” and “117.” He offered no explanation for the line.
Perhaps he hadn’t fully made sense of it himself.
But he knew that something between these two boys had come into existence today.
In the shadows of the training facility, a figure in a white lab coat stood behind the observation window.
Dr. Halsey held a cup of coffee that had long since gone cold, her eyes fixed on the two boys wiping sweat off the mat.
Her gaze lingered on Ethan for a long time—much longer than on any of the other children.
That boy’s combat technique—she recognized that style.
It wasn’t the standard CQC taught by Mendez, but a far more advanced, refined variation.
Those joint locks, that balance control, that ability to make precise judgments in milliseconds—that was UNSC Special Forces combat doctrine, a system developed only in 2512 and still classified top secret.
Mendez couldn’t possibly have taught it, because Mendez himself had only completed instructor training for that doctrine just last year.
How could a seven-year-old child possess classified Special Forces combat techniques?
Dr. Halsey set down her coffee cup, the ceramic clinking softly against the window sill.
She turned and walked away, her white lab coat vanishing at the end of the corridor.
Her footsteps echoed through the empty hallway, gradually fading into the distance.
She needed to give this some serious thought.