"Know your enemy and know yourself, and you need not fear the result of a hundred battles." — Sun Tzu.
The second Vice-Principal Jason dropped his hand, all hell broke loose.
The Saber-claw Bear let out a loud roar. Spit flew from the monster’s mouth. It dripped down its scattered yellow teeth and hit the bloody sand.
SZZZZ!
The beast didn’t rush at him blindly, It paced sideways. Its glowing red eyes stared right at Micah, looking him up and down. It was basically sizing him up.
Up in the safe, reinforced stands, the other recruits watched the monster.
The sight of the monster wiped the initial smugness off their faces.
A few of the guys who were just laughing a minute ago now swallowed hard. They wiped cold sweat from their faces.
"Better him than me," one guy whispered. He held his own iron sword tightly, his hands shaking.
Everything faded in Micah’s ears. He was too busy trying to stay alive. All he heard was the sound of wind blowing.
His brain worked overtime, trying to put the pieces of the old owner’s memories into place inside his head. He needed to figure out how strong this thing was before it ripped his head off.
In this world, everything revolved around something called "Flux Unlock." It was the genetic power system everyone lived by. It was the only thing that mattered.
If your percentage was high, you were a king. If it was low, you were nothing.
Right now, Micah was stuck at a sad 10% Flux Unlock. He was basically a nobody.
To everyone, he was just a regular, fragile guy who could barely throw a proper jab without losing his balance. To the academy, he was useless. A food meant to feed the beasts.
He looked at the Bear pacing in front of him.
According to his new memories, a fully grown Saber-claw Bear sat at 30% Flux Unlock.
"Thirty percent?" Micah muttered. His voice cracked.
That meant the monster was three times stronger, three times faster, and three times tougher than him. It was a huge advantage.
The memory showed him the rest of the power ladder.
First was the Basic Flux Unlock. That was where Micah was at the moment — the absolute bottom.
A Basic Flux user could probably channel enough flux to harden their knuckles or run a little faster than the average man. There was really nothing special about them.
Next was the Awakened Soldier. That was when a person became a genuine threat. Their bodies had absorbed enough flux to fundamentally change, giving them denser muscles, faster reflexes, harder bones.
Then came the Genetic Soldier. The flux had already rewritten their DNA by this point. Their bodies didn’t even look human anymore.
After that was the Transcendent Warrior. These were the monsters people told stories about. The kind that made generals reconsider their battle plans.
They were the kind of stories parents told their children to scare them into behaving or going straight to bed.
And at the very top sat the Legendary Warrior. Nobody alive had actually seen one. The few historical records that mentioned them were so absurd that scholars still argued whether they were exaggerated or just outright fabricated.
Micah waited for his cheat code to kick in.
"Damn it! When is this system coming to save me?"
The Daily Gacha System stayed completely quiet in his head. It neither gave him a magic shield nor a sudden burst of crazy strength. It just sat there, waiting in the dark.
It had one simple rule. He had to take physical damage from an enemy. He might probably need to even bleed. Only then would he get a reward.
He needed a graze or minor scratch, just enough to trigger the system without losing an arm or a leg. But playing tag with a monster the size of a military truck was not exactly safe.
One wrong move, one tiny miscalculation, and it was game over for good!
Suddenly, the Saber-claw Bear stopped pacing.
The monster got low to the ground. It bent its legs back like metal springs and was about to launch.
He locked his eyes onto the beast’s hips. In mixed martial arts, the eyes can lie. Shoulders can fake you out. A fighter can feint a jab to hide an uppercut. But the hips never lie. If the hips moved, the whole body was coming with them.
He planned his next move carefully in his head. If the beast jumped high, he would use a quick shoulder roll recovery to slip past its claws and get back on his feet.
If it lunged low, he would use a fast leg-sweep with his back foot to pivot his body completely out of the strike zone.
He had to be perfect because his life literally depended on it.
Up in the stands, the crowd got quiet. The wild betting stopped and tens of thousands of people sat on the edge of their seats, waiting for the blood to spill.
Then, the beast moved!
BOOOM!!
The ground behind the monster actually shattered. The force of its back legs kicking off broke the solid stone underneath the sand.
A loud shockwave resonated through the pit. It kicked up a thick cloud of dust and flying rocks. Small stones struck Micah’s legs, stinging his skin.
The Bear shot forward. It moved crazy fast. It covered the fifty yards between them in a split second.
Micah dug his boots into the dirt. He shoved his fear down deep into his stomach.
The beast leaped into the air. Its body swallowed the sun whole, throwing Micah into shadow. Its jaws opened wide, aiming right for his neck!
The claws came directly at his face.
Micah performed a scissors twist to the right side. The beast’s jaws snapped shut where his neck had been. He felt the wind from the bite brush past his ear, but he wasn’t fast enough.
The Bear’s left claw caught his shoulder. It tore through his cheap uniform like a paper and bit deep into the flesh underneath.
An intense pain went through his entire arm. Blood spilled down his bicep immediately. It dripped off his elbow and hit the sand in thick drops.
"AHH!" Micah grunted through his clenched teeth. He hit the ground, rolled twice, and scrambled back to his feet.
Up in the stands, the crowd lost their minds.
"FIRST FUCKING BLOOD! The coward is bleeding already!"
"Two seconds! I said two seconds! Pay up, stupid!"
"I told you he’s dead meat!"