The gym had settled into its rhythm.
Yura and Tomoe were exchanging light sparring rounds across the mats while Momo and Reya drilled magic circles at controlled intervals. Tsubaki and Saji had retreated into their own corner—silent, but not cold. Only Sona stayed unoccupied, clipboard in hand, eyes quietly monitoring everything, including him.
Sam didn't approach. He wasn't planning to.
Instead, he kept to his side of the gym, breath steady as he rolled out his shoulders.
"Alright," he muttered to himself, "let's see what this body can really do."
He called up Exoskeleton with a surge of intent.
The shift was smooth—second nature by design. Blue-white light flickered along his skin, trailing upward from spine to chest, then branching out across his limbs. Metal plates—sleek, contoured, and impossibly light—slid into place over his body like liquid steel freezing in midair.
Helmet last. Vision clear. Power humming.
And yet… it felt weightless.
Not like armor—like skin. A second shell, alive and wired into his nerves.
Back in the hallway yesterday, it had come on instinct. No control, no clarity. Just tension, anger, adrenaline. He'd barely registered the form, let alone how it felt.
Now?
Now he had time to feel it.
And it felt good.
He paced, shifted his weight side to side. No resistance. No drag. Every motion translated cleanly from thought to action.
The energy drain was subtle but present. Like holding a light flex across every muscle.
"Feels like… half a percent per second?" he guessed aloud. "If that. I could probably stay in this a few minutes, easy—assuming I'm not tanking hits the whole time."
He didn't have a stamina bar to check—just a slowly growing sense of strain near his core. The kind that only showed up when energy dipped below safe margins. It wasn't exhaustion. It was deeper. More abstract. Like static in his spine.
The moment that feeling began to creep in—he killed the armor.
Light pulsed. Plates melted back into his body with a faint hydraulic hiss.
Then he swapped gears.
"Let's refill the tank."
Energy Regeneration sparked to life. It didn't feel flashy—not like the others. Just a current pulling inward from muscle to mana, converting stamina into something deeper.
And that's when he noticed it.
The effect was smoother than before. Cleaner. Less taxing.
His Enhanced Stamina trait wasn't idle—it was doing work. Counterbalancing the burn, dulling the cost. It made the regen feel not just viable—but sustainable.
"Huh." He smirked. "So you do play nice together. Good to know."
That alone was a tactical win. But Sam wasn't finished.
He activated Reactive Activation next.
Reactive Activation online. Please select ability to assign condition.
A soft menu unfurled in the back of his mind—like flipping a mental switch to a HUD overlay.
He selected Exoskeleton first.
Please specify activation condition for [Exoskeleton].
One condition allowed.
Sam paused, then nodded to himself. "Trigger it when I'm hit with medium or greater force. I don't need it flaring up just because someone bumps into me."
Condition registered: [Exoskeleton] will activate upon receiving moderate to high physical impact.
Acknowledged.
That lock-in felt final. Snug. Almost satisfying.
Next up: Energy Regeneration.
Please specify activation condition for [Energy Regeneration].
"When my internal energy drops to twenty percent. No earlier."
Condition registered: [Energy Regeneration] will activate when internal energy reaches 20%.
Acknowledged.
Both conditions now lived in the background—tucked behind his thoughts but ready to go.
He nodded to himself, pacing again.
"Alright. Let's stress test this thing."
He tried simulated hits against reinforced padding—testing just below and just above the threshold. Sure enough, once the impact registered at the right force, the armor burst online automatically.
No delay. No hesitation.
Sam grinned under his breath. "That's gonna save me more than once."
He ran a few more loops to restore his energy back into a safe zone, burning stamina and watching that weird conversion ratio again.
Mana wasn't stamina. It didn't feel like stamina. It was something else entirely—still internal, still his, but separate.
Like trying to track water through fog.
Next, he tried to assign a condition to Lightning Claws—but came up blank.
What condition made sense for a melee ability like that?
"On proximity? No, that's asking for accidents… Maybe if disarmed?" He shook his head. "Nah. I'll table it for now."
Which left only one thing.
Lightning Breath.
Sam took his stance, feet apart, arms loose, jaw slightly slack as he summoned the energy into his core.
The charge began slow—like lighting a furnace. A low hum. Then it climbed.
Power gathered deep in his chest, pressing outward and upward like rising steam. He could feel the glow inside his ribcage before it reached his throat—lighting up beneath the skin, illuminating his collarbones in faint pulses of white-blue.
His breath hitched slightly. His skin crackled.
Lightning arced around his shoulders. Sparks danced from his fingers.
He was glowing from the inside out.
And it felt amazing.
"Okay," he muttered to himself. "Let's go for broke."
He tapped Energy Regeneration again to funnel more fuel from stamina into mana—channeling every bit into the surge building in his lungs.
Then—on a possibly terrible impulse—he let a sliver of Holy Hero Energy leak in.
Bad idea.
The glow in his chest shifted. Blue turned to gold. A sharp, divine pulse seared upward through his throat.
There was no charge time. No aim. No warning.
It fired.
A blast of radiant lightning—white-gold and screaming with power—erupted from his mouth and slammed into the far wall of the gymnasium.
The impact scorched a full third of the reinforced padding black. The air buzzed, hairs stood on end, and the smell of ozone blanketed everything in a ten-meter radius.
Silence followed.
From the other side of the gym, Yura's head slowly turned.
"…What the hell was that?"
Sam wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Still steaming.
"…Whoops?" he offered. "My bad."