The restricted medical wing was quiet, save for the hum of the purification wards.
Mori sat rigidly on the edge of a pristine white bed.
Her abdomen was tightly bound in heavy compression bandages, the dark magic laceration sealed but still throbbing with a dull, venomous heat.
“You are going to pop those stitches if you keep tensing your core, Lady Mori.”
Matron Elara, a woman in her late fifties with kind eyes and an E-rank healing affinity, bustled into the room.
She was one of the few people in the academy who treated Mori like a teenager instead of a weapon.
She placed a steaming bowl of thick, spiced beef stew on the bedside table.
“I have a lot on my mind, Elara,” Mori murmured, staring blankly at the wall.
Her sister was currently hiding out somewhere in the academy after using forbidden magic.
Her father was hunting an imaginary intruder.
And an F-rank anomaly was currently picking a fight with the aristocratic hierarchy.
“The academy will survive an hour without you solving its problems,” Elara scolded gently, pressing a silver spoon into Mori’s hand.
“Eat.
Your body needs fuel to replenish the blood you lost.
You look pale.”
Mori sighed, the fight draining out of her.
The matron was right.
She scooped up a spoonful of the hot stew, the rich aroma cutting through the sterile smell of the room.
She raised the spoon to her lips.
Fuel.
Mori froze.
The spoon hovered inches from her mouth.
She had watched Kael’s shattered ribs fuse back together in two hours.
From her own medical training, she knew that cellular division operating at that impossible speed burned massive amounts of energy.
He had healed an entirely fatal injury on an empty stomach.
And today, he was fighting in the most grueling physical tournament in the region.
He hadn’t eaten.
He was running on absolute zero.
Mori dropped the spoon.
It clattered against the ceramic bowl, splashing hot broth onto the tray.
“Lady Mori?” Elara gasped as Mori vaulted off the bed.
Pain tore through Mori’s stomach as her stitches strained, but she ignored it, throwing her heavy white academy coat over her shoulders.
“I have to go.”
“You are bleeding!
Lady Mori, come back here!” Elara yelled, chasing her to the door.
Mori was already sprinting down the marble corridor, clutching her side.
Down in the Colosseum, the blinding midday sun felt like a physical weight.
Kael stood in the center of the sand. The source of this chapter is g.com.
He was running on fumes, his muscles heavy and his newly healed ribs aching with every breath, but his mind remained sharply focused.
Across the sand, Jaxen ‘Viper’ Vance twirled two curved, wickedly sharp daggers in his hands.
He was a lean, wiry C-rank wearing aerodynamic leather armor.
“You look awful, Morgan,” Jaxen laughed, his voice echoing in the quiet stadium.
“Sebastian said you were fast.
You just look like a corpse.”
Kael let out a slow, dry breath, settling into a defensive stance.
“I’d advise you to focus.”
The announcer’s voice boomed: “MATCH TWELVE.
BEGIN!”
Jaxen vanished.
He didn’t literally disappear, but his Frictionless Acceleration dropped the air resistance around his body to zero.
He moved like a bullet.
Kael’s Faster Brain registered the blur of motion darting to his blind spot.
Kael pivoted instantly, ducking under a horizontal slash that would have taken his head off.
Jaxen’s momentum carried him past, but the C-rank dug his heels into the sand, richocheting off the arena wall and launching right back at Kael.
Kael parried the next invisible strike with his forearm, deflecting the flat of the dagger, but the sheer kinetic force behind Jaxen’s speed sent a shockwave up Kael’s arm.
He stumbled backward, breathing hard.
The sudden, extreme exertion was the breaking point for his starved body.
Black spots danced in Kael’s vision.
The edges of the arena suddenly blurred into a blinding smear of light and sand.
A brutal, rhythmic pounding hammered behind his eyes.
[Warning: Host caloric reserves depleted.
Cellular breakdown imminent.] [System shutting down non-essential pain receptors to preserve consciousness.]
Not now, Kael thought, shaking his head to clear the double-vision.
A gust of wind hit Kael’s face, followed instantly by the cold sting of steel.
A shallow cut opened across Kael’s left cheek.
A split-second later, another cut opened on his right thigh.
Slash.
Slash.
Slash.
Jaxen was a human ricochet.
He darted in and out of Kael’s blurred vision, racking up shallow, humiliating cuts to bleed him out for the cheering crowd.
Kael tried to track him, but his legs felt like lead.
He couldn’t keep dodging, and he certainly couldn’t chase a speedster.
I can’t catch him, Kael realized, swaying as blood soaked into his gray provisional uniform.
Jaxen appeared ten feet away, perfectly clear for a fraction of a second, grinning as he tasted the blood on the edge of his dagger.
“Bored now, trench rat.
Time to sleep.”
Jaxen lunged, aiming a lethal, full-speed strike directly at Kael’s chest.
Kael didn’t try to dodge.
He didn’t invoke the Concept of Luck to push the blade away.
He forced his leaden legs to step forward, leaning his weight right into the strike.
He shifted his torso at the very last millisecond, ensuring the dagger missed his heart, and let the blade plunge deeply into the thick muscle of his left shoulder.
The sheer kinetic force of the stab brought Jaxen to a dead halt.
The C-rank’s eyes widened in profound shock, realizing his weapon was anchored in Kael’s flesh, halting his frictionless momentum entirely.
“Gotcha,” Kael whispered, coughing a speck of blood.
Before Jaxen could let go of the hilt, Kael brought his right palm up and slammed it flat against Jaxen’s sternum.
Resonance Strike.
The last desperate dregs of Kael’s mana discharged through his palm.
The kinetic vibration shattered straight through Jaxen’s ribcage, completely bypassing his aerodynamic armor.
Jaxen’s eyes rolled back.
He was launched backward by the concussive force, ripping the dagger violently out of Kael’s shoulder.
The speedster crashed into the arena sand, tumbling like a ragdoll before coming to a dead, unmoving stop.
The stadium fell completely, terrifyingly silent.
Kael stood swaying in the center of the arena, blood pouring from his shoulder and a dozen shallow cuts.
The referee frantically waved a red flag toward Jaxen’s unconscious body.
“Winner…
Kael Morgan!” the announcer stammered.
The blue screen flickered weakly in Kael’s blurry vision.
[Victory achieved.
Initiating emergency shutdown before Host does something else structurally catastrophic.]
The world went entirely black.
Kael pitched forward, collapsing face-first into the bloody sand right beside the boy he had just beaten.
High up in the tunnel entrance, Mori staggered out into the blinding light, gripping her bleeding side.
She looked down at the arena floor.
Two bodies lay unconscious in the dirt.
The crowd was completely stunned into silence.
Mori leaned her weight against the cool stone wall of the tunnel, staring down at the F-rank anomaly bleeding out in the sand.
She let out a long, exhausted sigh that aggravated her stitches.
“I don’t know if he’s the idiot,” Mori whispered to the empty tunnel, “or I am.”