One breath.
Two.
Damien stood still across the rubble from the Captain and let the near-miss settle into something useful.
Not fear. He had processed the fear component in the fraction of a second between seeing the blow and moving away from it—felt it, acknowledged it, filed it. What remained now was cleaner than fear.
Information.
The Captain's output at this level of escalation exceeded what he could reliably block. That was the honest assessment and he was not interested in dishonest assessments.
He had managed the fight well up to this point—had stayed in it, landed real hits, forced the Captain to earn every exchange. But the blow that had just carved a crater in the ground beside him had come from something that was no longer in the range he had been prepared for when the fight began.
He had no idea the captain would scale this strong. Damien was certain he'd never fought a Grade Three creature this strong and he wasn't certain he would face another like this captain.
