Lucien took one single breath.
Then he ran as fast as he could, leaving everyone behind him.
Without hesitation, he sprinted through the metal gates first, leaving behind dust clouds and the frozen recruits.
His eyes scanned alleys and rooftops, his senses heightened, and blood pumping through his veins with raw determination. This was the moment he had been waiting for—no more training, no more theory—only real monsters and payback.
In the control center overlooking the arena with cameras in every little corner, Rylen stood there as live camera feeds blinked across the holographic screens.
Behind him stood Emiluna, Jason, and captains from the other four Nightguard Corps divisions, all watching closely to see what would happen today.
"Remember," Rylen's voice echoed in a flashback in Lucien's mind, "there are Nightguard operatives spread throughout the arena who are close to the action.
If you're in mortal danger, they'll intervene and kill the monsters. But only then. This is a real battlefield—treat it like one or else you won't make it."
Lucien's fist crashed into the face of a hunched, yellow type-skinned Level 5 monster. It gave a sickening crunch before the beast flew backward into a collapsed building, its body limp and not moving.
One down. Lucien turned, catching a second one stalking from a narrow alleyway. Before it could even move, Lucien raised his hand, unleashed a burst of telekinetic force, and crushed it against a crumbling wall. The monster died in an instant
[2 Points awarded]
He continued straight away, no break, and on to the next one.
Somewhere behind him, heavy footsteps echoed in the darkness.
Kagetsu....
Lucien caught a glimpse of the black- haired boy leaping onto a rooftop and killing a level 5 monster with a blade-like weapon.
The day before:
The bay had low windows and rows of racks. Rylen Minazuka moved like someone who had measured every inch of the space a thousand times. He set the Phantom Lotus suit on a mat and folded his hands as if it were a tea ceremony.
Kagetsu watched the suit up close for the first time. It looked simple at rest: matte black plates, seams so fine they might have been painted.
When Rylen brushed a palm along the back, faint violet blue veins woke along the joints and rippled like ink through water. The light was small, precise. It traced the suit the way moonlight found temple eaves.
"This is not for show," Rylen said. His voice did not rush. He put the helmet on Kagetsu's knee and tapped the narrow visor. "Phantom Lotus suit MK. It hides you, helps you hit where it counts, moves you before anyone thinks to look."
He clicked a switch. The visor bloomed with a HUD. Characters slid across Kagetsu's vision like a paper talisman being unwrapped.
A ghost of a petal hovered over a hanging target and then settled on the weakest stitch of its fabric. Rylen stepped forward and slit that exact stitch with a single precise swipe. The cut ran clean. Kagetsu felt the point of wrongness in his chest answer to the blade.
"Aim assist locks onto openings," Rylen explained. "It feeds the visual threads into your hand. Trust the line, not the noise." He smiled once, small as a closing shutter.
Then Rylen moved as if testing the floor. He set one foot forward and the sound that should have come did not.
The mats did not whisper. A cup at the corner of the mat did not clink. Kagetsu noticed the presence of a man and then the absence. Rylen's shape blurred at the edges until the suit matched the shadow behind a column. When he stepped back into the light, the violet veins pulsed more slowly.
"Silent Flow," Rylen said. He let the words hang. "It takes breath and weight and makes them disappear for a few heartbeats. Use it for entry or a quiet leave."
Kagetsu tried to imagine moving like that, imagined the city asleep and him a ghost among sleeping lights. Rylen took two twin daggers from the mat. They were slender, thinner than he expected.
When he pressed the blades to a tester drone the steel sang at a frequency Kagetsu could feel in his teeth. The edges cut as if the material were paper.
Rylen's fingers flicked. A hair-thin thread of plasma uncoiled from a hidden spool and wrapped the drone's leg.
The thread tightened, snapping servo whine into silence. With a motion like folding paper, Rylen vanished and reappeared twenty paces away, leaving a faint afterimage that blinked once and dissolved. Kagetsu's pulse jumped; the room still smelled of metal and rain.
"Speedblitz," Rylen said. "Short moves. Leave a promise where you leave your body." He tapped a seam on the suit where the wrist would rest and showed Kagetsu a tiny launcher. The device spat a needle so small it could slip between a joint. It was embedded without a sound.
Finally, Rylen set the training drone to limp. Sparks flared along a cracked casing. He approached slowly, not rushing.
The visor's petal marker pulsed. Rylen's hands became a storm. Six strikes, each one finding a gap in the drone's plating. The machine died not with a scream but with angles folding into each other.
Pieces collapsed to the floor like ink on rice paper.
"That is Execution," Rylen said quietly. "It does not create openings. It finishes them. Don't waste it on something whole."
Kagetsu kept his eyes on the suit, on the way light lived and died along it. Rylen folded the daggers and set them against the Phantom Lotus as if sheathing prayer beads.
Back to the present:
One clean move. Efficient. Kagetsu had his own 1 point with ease.
But Lucien wasn't watching anymore he couldn´t care less about Kagetsu.
He turned left into a small street, ducking under a collapsed bridge, and then he saw it: a low-level Level 4 monster.
It was a blend of polar bear and rhinoceros—standing at 8,2 feet tall with an armored snout, fur like snow-laced steel, and limbs thick as tree trunks.
Its breath steamed in the cold air, and its red dark eyes locked on Lucien with pure hate.
Lucien attacked instantly.
He sprinted forward and landed a clean punch to the creature's nose. The monster staggered, then roared out of anger.
Lucien didn't stop. He followed through with a bunch of punches—to the ribcage, then the shoulder, then the jaw.
The creature flew backwards and smashed into a container, leaving a dent in the steel with its spine.
Lucien dashed to finish the monster but the beast lunged with abnormal speed.
A massive paw struck Lucien across the chest with monstrous force.
Lucien's body was flung through the air like it was nothing. He smashed through two buildings—stone and dust exploding with each impact—and landed among twisted glass and rebar. Blood spilled from his mouth.
In the control center, all three of them—Rylen, Jason, and Emiluna—stood upright as the footage flickered.
Jason yelled. "I'm going in!—"
"No," Rylen said, voice tight.
"He's missing an arm," Emiluna whispered, crying. "We have to—"
And then, on the monitor, they saw it.
Lucien's body twitched. Then shook. Then—
Regeneration.
A dark energy surged through his veins like liquid shadow. Bones twisted, flesh grew on his arm, and within seconds, his severed right arm grew back—muscle, sinew, and skin reborn like nothing had ever happened.
Everyone watching gasped and watched closely.
"What the hell…" the captain of the first whispered. "That's… that's not normal healing. That's divine-level regeneration."
Rylen stared in silence and thought. "He's evolving."
10 Minutes Later
Lucien's eyes opened.
He took a deep breath, still lying in rubble, his chest covered in blood. Pain throbbed faintly, but he felt stronger.
Lighter. His vision sharpened even more—he could see the grains of sand in the cracks of the pavement.
He stood up, now completely healed.
Two figures fought in the distance.
Kagetsu and a girl—one Lucien hadn't seen before—were fighting the creature that had nearly killed him. The girl was a blur, darting with inhuman grace, slashing and vanishing like wind in a beautiful suit.
Kagetsu moved like a tactician, delivering precise blows to weaken its legs. Together, they overwhelmed the creature until it crashed to the ground and let out one final roar before it died.
[2.5 Points Each]
Lucien's jaw tightened. That was his kill. Lucien got angry.
But there was no time to cry about it.
He sprinted back into the battlefield, fully focused, sharpening his every move.
He hunted like a machine.
One Level 5 monster tried to ambush him from a dark alley. He dragged it out telekinetically and stomped its skull in.
[3 Points]
A second charged from behind a rusted bus. He dodged it, spun behind it, and shattered its spine with a spinning back kick.
[4 Points]
Two more appeared in a pack. They were 2 ugly wolves. He fought them bare-handed, breaking their bones and ripping one's throat with nothing but brute strength.
Lucien had no time to play.
[6 Points]
One last Level 5 beast tried to run.
Lucien didn't let it.
He used telekinesis to pin it against a concrete wall, then crushed its skull and jaw with a single flying knee.
[7 Points]
He paused to catch his breath. Time was slipping. Only four monsters remained: three Level 5s and one low Level 4. That meant only 8 more points available.
He needed 3.
But he couldn't find the Level 5s—they were scattered all over the area.
So he made a choice.
He hunted the Level 4.
He tracked the beast through the cracked city roads, following the monster his claw marks. Then, finally, he found it.
It was a lizard-like— 10 feet long, its scales a deep blue, glowing faintly.
A mutated salamander, clearly low-level in the 4th tier, but still far beyond a human in power. It hissed at Lucien, its tongue flicking with sulfurous smoke. Lucien could see the monster his tongue was poisonous and deadly
Lucien didn't wait..
He leapt onto the creature's back and began slamming his fists into its spine—over and over—each blow heavier, angrier, more savage.
Ten hits. Then twenty. Then thirty. In a matter of seconds
The creature screamed, bucked, and clawed, but Lucien was relentless.
Forty-five… forty-six…
Blood and ichor spilled all over Lucien.
Fifty.
The creature's spine cracked. Then collapsed.
It lay still.
Lucien stood atop it, fists dripping with dark blood, chest heaving.
The scary thing was. Lucien didn't look like the good guy here.
He was covered in blood and licking the blood off. He looked like the bad guy.
[+5 Points] → [12 Total Points]
He had done it.
The arena was silent.
From fifty recruits, only fifteen remained standing when the metal gates closed.
Rylen gathered them at the command post courtyard.
His eyes swept over the bloodied, bruised but unbroken faces of the recruits.
"You have fifteen survived Week 2," he said. "You've passed week 2, the Trial of Combat."
Lucien stood at the far left of the line, blood dried into his clothes, his body aching.
"But this is only the beginning," Rylen continued. "Week 3 will push your body even more. So you've earned six days of rest. Use them well."
Jason offered Lucien a water bottle with a proud smile, Emiluna approached Lucien from behind and whispered, "You scared the hell out of us, you know."
Lucien laughed. "Yeah. Scared myself a little, too."
Kagetsu stood a few feet away. He glanced at Lucien and nodded once—respectful, maybe even with a bit of curiosity.
Beside him stood the unnamed girl with short blond hair, her eyes sharp and green. She said nothing, but she didn't look away from Lucien either.
They were rivals now.
And Week 3 was coming.