James lay sprawled across the stone floor, his breathing ragged and uneven.
He couldn't see.
His eye sockets were in far worse condition than they had any right to be.
Two jagged bones protruded straight through both of his eyes. Raze's brutal attack had driven James's own shattered forearm bones through his sinus cavity and deep into his eyeballs.
The pain was indescribable.
Still, James reached up with trembling hands and grabbed hold of the protruding bones.
Then he pulled.
"AHHHH!"
"Fuck!"
"That shit burns like a motherfucker!"
With a sickening squelch, the bones slid free from his skull. The horrible sensation of having something lodged inside his head finally disappeared.
Unfortunately...
Now there were simply two massive holes running clean through both of his eyeballs.
James couldn't see anymore.
His vision was gone.
There wasn't even darkness.
Darkness implied color.
Darkness was still something you could perceive.
This...
This was nothing.
An endless void devoid of light, color, shape, or meaning.
Was this what people born blind experienced?
He couldn't tell.
He blinked several times, feeling his eyelids open and close, yet seeing absolutely nothing.
He waved a hand in front of his face.
He could feel the movement of the air.
He knew his hand was there.
But he couldn't see it.
Not in any traditional sense of the word.
James slowly reached toward his face, his fingertips brushing against his ragged, blood-soaked eye sockets.
He could still feel traces of Raze's lingering magma aura embedded inside the wounds.
Shit...
That meant his eyes weren't going to regenerate anytime soon.
The foreign aura was actively slowing the healing process.
...
Then something changed.
His hearing sharpened.
No...
Everything sharpened.
He could hear the steady rhythm of the war drums echoing throughout the arena.
The distant murmurs of thousands of spectators.
His own heartbeat.
Raze's heartbeat.
The rustling of clothing.
The crackling heat radiating from Raze's body.
He could even hear tiny ants crawling beneath the dirt below the arena floor.
It was...
Far too much.
His brain struggled to process the overwhelming flood of information.
It felt as though something deep inside him was beginning to awaken.
Meanwhile, Raze watched James's blind, unsteady posture with a dark smile spreading across his hybrid features.
Maybe going Hybrid against a newborn was excessive.
...
But honestly...
Fuck that guy.
"Oh?" Raze sneered.
"Did you finally learn your fucking lesson?"
James continued blinking uselessly into the void, his ruined eyes burning with unbearable pain.
Internally, however...
His thoughts remained surprisingly coherent.
...They haven't stopped the match.
So this still isn't considered deadly.
That realization honestly disturbed him.
How brutal are werewolf fights...?
He had never really thought about it before.
With regeneration like theirs...
With physical strength like theirs...
Their fights had to be absolutely horrifying.
Either that...
Or Raze was deliberately holding back just enough to avoid accidentally killing him.
That honestly sounded more likely.
James slowly turned his head around, looking every bit like a lost puppy despite being unable to actually see anything.
Oddly enough...
He found himself impressed with his own pain tolerance.
He probably should've been screaming nonstop.
Instead...
The pain almost felt...
Muted.
Like his brain had simply decided it couldn't process any more suffering.
Without warning—
Raze stepped forward.
His massive hand wrapped around the back of James's neck with crushing force.
Then—
BOOM!
He slammed James's head straight into the stone floor.
The impact was so violent that it left a noticeable crater in the arena.
...
That shit stung like a motherfucker.
Without slowing down, Raze yanked James back up by the collar before violently hurling him across the arena.
James's body smashed hard against the ring's stone edge.
Raze immediately caught him by the head before he could even hit the ground properly.
Then he started dragging him across the arena's outer wall.
It honestly reminded James of Broly dragging Goku through an entire glacier.
Before James could recover—
BOOM!
His back slammed directly into one of the arena's massive support pillars.
The stone cracked from the impact.
Raze didn't stop.
He unleashed an absolutely savage twenty-piece combination straight into James's chest.
Each punch landed harder than the last.
The final blow carried enough force to completely shatter the pillar behind James.
Stone exploded outward as James was launched across the arena, skidding helplessly along the floor.
He finally came to a stop.
Lying flat on his back.
Blood spilled freely from his mouth.
His ruined eyes faced upward toward the moon.
Being in Hybrid form felt like absolute hell.
Every muscle in his body screamed.
His nervous system felt like it was on fire.
His regeneration worked desperately to keep him alive.
But none of that changed the real problem.
He couldn't see.
He kept trying to block.
Trying to react.
Trying to predict.
But how exactly were you supposed to block something you couldn't even see?
It was infuriating.
...
He needed a way to see.
Suddenly...
His ruined eyes widened ever so slightly.
An idea flashed through his mind.
Meanwhile, in the royal stands...
Aldric sat comfortably in his chair, calmly observing the one-sided beatdown.
Some spectators probably thought this was excessive.
Personally...
He didn't think it was all that bad.
Hell...
Back when he and his brother were younger, their "play fights" had been considerably more violent than this.
Granted...
That was before his brother decided to completely lose his damn mind.
But that was a story for another day.
His eyes settled on the battered young man lying in the arena.
"He possesses quite a lot of potential."
The boy had only been training for a month.
Yet he'd already grasped the fundamentals surprisingly well.
Against most low- and even mid-tier werewolves...
James would've been an absolute nightmare to fight.
Unfortunately...
Today, his opponent happened to be one of the strongest high-tier warriors in the kingdom.
A shame.
Then again...
Considering whose blood flowed through the boy's veins...
Perhaps it wasn't all that surprising.
His daughter's offspring had become quite the extraordinary werewolf.
Beside him, Luna sat silently.
Her brow furrowed slightly.
Without meaning to...
She had begun picking up fragments of James's internal thoughts.
She wasn't trying to invade his mind.
It was simply that his emotions were spiraling so violently that suppressing them had become nearly impossible.
She actively tried not to listen.
Yet even then...
Okay... mitigate the damage... compress the core... secure the liver...
Man... those punches hurt like a bitch.
...How the hell am I supposed to hit him if I can't even see his ugly face?
And seriously... what the fuck is this guy's problem?
Why's he acting like I fucked his girl and sent him the video?
I'm literally a month old!
…
Luna frowned.
For someone currently being beaten within an inch of his life...
His internal dialogue was...
Ridiculous.
Even while standing on the edge of complete physical collapse...
His brain continued operating on pure civilian bullshit.
"You really need better taste in mates."
Luna's wolf ears twitched.
A faint blush spread across her cheeks.
There her father went again.
To his credit...
Aldric genuinely didn't care who she chose to love.
Hell...
He might've even accepted a vampire.
...
Maybe.
A very heavy maybe.
Though he'd probably kill the poor bastard the instant he showed even the slightest sign of being untrustworthy.
Still...
He was exactly the kind of father who would never let his daughter forget her previous relationships.
"Father..."
Luna muttered, her cheeks growing even redder.
"Aww..."
Aldric smiled innocently.
"Wasn't he your everything?"
This.
This right here.
This was precisely why Luna hated sitting next to her father.
Meanwhile, over with Ironfang Squad...
The mood remained surprisingly clinical.
Kael leaned over the stone railing, letting out a sharp, excited laugh.
"Oof! Driving the facial bones straight through the skull? That's gonna sting for a while."
A wicked grin spread across his face.
"Raze isn't pulling any punches now."
Thanks to his enhanced hearing, he could clearly make out every snap, crack, and wet pop as James's broken bones slowly realigned themselves.
"The blood looks pretty under the moonlight," Toren chuckled, his glowing blue eyes following the crimson pools spreading across the arena floor.
Then his nose twitched.
"...Huh."
That scent...
He felt like he'd smelled it somewhere before.
Oddly enough...
Just catching that scent made his blood begin to race with excitement.
Lyra remained unimpressed.
She simply folded her arms.
"He'll be fine."
"He's an Alpha hybrid."
"His eyes will knit themselves back together in a few minutes, give or take."
Granted...
By then the fight would already be long over.
Malkor quietly corrected her.
"No."
His eyes never left the arena.
"Those eyes aren't healing in a few minutes."
Raze intentionally flooded his fist with his passive magma aura. The blistering heat from the blow actively burned and cauterized the wounds, disrupting James's healing factor.
It would take at least a few hours, if not days, for his eyes to fully heal.
The damage was catastrophic, yet at the same time, it felt as though another pair of eyes were opening up within him.
Malkor frowned from the sidelines. Raze better end this quickly.
Meanwhile, with the Group...
Talia was absolutely not having it. Her fist slammed against the stone partition, her bright eyes flashing a very dangerous, volatile color.
"This is completely out of hand! Yes, our sparring sessions are brutal, but that level of gore is meant for the fucking battlefield, not a duel against a pup!" She pointed a trembling finger down at the pit. "Look at him! Is the fight over or what?!"
Caius watched the display without even blinking. He was still casually jotting notes down in his journal, analyzing Raze's fighting style.
It had been a while since he last saw Raze cut loose, and it seemed the power behind the guy's blows had grown astronomically.
"The rules are absolute, Talia," Caius said casually. There was nothing they could really do anyway; with the barrier active, only a select few individuals could just bypass it all nifty-like.
"The duel will not stop until one opponent is knocked out, admits defeat, or is physically unable to fight." Those were the rules.
"He's still standing," Mira added.
Down below, James was blind, his head turning as if trying to track something. Anything. But he was completely blind.
Kaela took another massive swig from her jug, chugging pure ale for a solid five seconds straight. When she finally finished, she wiped her lips with the back of her hand.
"The pup will be fine." She took another sip. "Look at his core. He isn't broken yet." Man, that wine was some of that good shit. "Raze is clearly taking pleasure in this, though."
It was annoying watching someone beat on a newbie just because of a crush.
Like, womp womp, you got dumped. Go suck a dick and leave the kid alone.
"Maybe he is, but..." Mira's gaze landed on James's back. Something in her gut told her this wasn't over. She remembered that fierce aura she had felt from him once before; maybe if he was pushed hard enough, it would finally manifest for real. "He hasn't crossed the line yet. He's surprisingly restrained."
From what she knew of Raze during their cabin's rare joint missions, he usually went straight for the kill.
The guy was notoriously gory. He hadn't ripped James's eyes out to play yo-yo with them yet, so by his standards, he was holding back.
While Talia didn't look happy, she conceded the point.
Noticing this, Caius chimed in. "Think of it like this: James's primary trait is adaptation. You've seen it yourself, haven't you?"
Talia did remember. Whenever a problem arose, James found a way to solve it—though it was less about instinctual adaptation and more about James being a total, curious geek. Having read endless comic books, manhwa, manga, and light novels, if it was fantasy, he had probably read about it.
This meant his learning curve was way lower than theirs; he almost always had a fictional reference point for whatever skill he was learning.
Combine that knowledge with the fact that he seemed practically blessed by nature, and he was bound to find a workaround.
Hell, when he fought Mira nowadays, he usually conjured a darkness vacuum to suck all the oxygen out of the area.
Since fire needs oxygen to burn, her flame armor would suffocate, forcing her to burn through way more mana just to keep it lit.
"He does learn fast," Talia muttered to herself. Speaking of which, didn't he actually beat Mira once?
Yeah, that was ragebait for later.
Back on the Field
Raze took a few slow, heavy steps toward James, the smoke rising from his shoulders growing thicker by the second.
"Is this really all the power you can muster as an alpha born of Luna? Weak."
James completely ignored the taunts.
This guy could go suck his own dick for all he cared.
Instead, James focused entirely on the empty sockets where his eyes used to be.
They weren't literally gone, but a hole the size of his iris had been burned straight through them.
The natural brown of his eyes was entirely eclipsed by blood, his sclera completely red from exploded vessels.
The hole tunneled straight back toward his skull.
It was healing, but painfully slowly.
'Come on, clear the heat,' James thought frantically. He needed to purge the remnants of Raze's magma aura from his wounds. He needed to see. He couldn't fight blind.
How can I possibly see without eyes...?
He paused. Wait.
Deep within his core, a torrent of magic that had been tightly bound in his veins was suddenly unleashed.
To the onlookers, the boy went from clutching his face in agony to violently erupting with magical power.
The energy rolled out in massive, visible waves, slamming against the perimeter barrier so it didn't obliterate the spectators.
James took a deep breath.
Flooding the arena like this might have seemed like a stupid, massive waste of magic, but as James blinked once, then twice, he realized something.
He was picking up signals.
Because the entire arena was now saturated with his own magic, he became acutely aware of every square inch within the barrier. Raze's presence—which was decidedly not his magic—stood out like a sore thumb.
In James's mind, a blurry shape began to form. A void in the magical field where Raze was standing. His remaining four senses kicked into overdrive to lock onto the target; he sniffed the air, his ears perking up.
The blurry silhouette in his mind slowly shifted into a humanoid shape.
The world didn't return to normal. He couldn't see faces, nor could he see the people watching from the stands. He couldn't tell who was who.
All he could perceive was Raze's aura, pulsing with a magma-like heat that wanted to swallow everything whole.
But he could perceive other things now, too. He felt the ambient magic in the air, realizing he could manipulate it.
He could even feel the ants crawling beneath the dirt. His senses were so overwhelmed that he had to forcibly narrow his focus to keep his brain from frying.
Suddenly, his senses picked up a massive spike in energy.
James snapped his gaze directly toward Raze. Instead of a man, he now perceived a colossal, roaring silhouette of pure volcanic orange aura—a massive wolf made of molten magma.
James sensed the magic flooding into Raze's legs a microsecond before Raze lunged, gripping him tightly by the neck.
Without wasting a single beat, Raze slammed James's body into the ground with shattering force.
BAM!
"You cannot beat me with a weak trick like—" Raze froze.
His fist had connected, but it was buried in nothing but a puddle of swirling shadows. A few feet away, James materialized safely out of the darkness.
Raze's mind reeled. How could the newbie have sensed him, let alone timed a dodge? The kid was blind, for fuck's sake!
James looked down at his own hands, watching the fluid, ink-like currents of his dark aura swirling around his knuckles.
He looked up toward the sky, realizing he could somewhat 'see' the moon. The ambient magic in the air felt incredible. He wondered if he could play with it.
He hadn't received a single lick of proper magical training yet; his past month had been strictly focused on aura and learning the bare basics of this world.
He just hoped magic here worked like it did in his fantasy novels and not like Garry Lotter—needing a wand for everything would be a massive pain in the ass.
Luckily, he'd seen people cast spells without them, so it was probably based on something else.
Intent definitely mattered, but science and a proper conceptual understanding of the elements probably played a part too.
Meanwhile, Raze's thoughts were racing. 'He can't see me. I literally burned out his eyes.'
He knew for a fact James was blind.
While blind werewolves could still fight using their heightened senses, adapting to total blindness took weeks, months, or even years to master.
For James to pull off a dodge like that right after losing his sight shouldn't be possible.
It couldn't be a fluke, either; this wasn't just dodging a basic punch. James had been gripped by the throat and driven into the dirt, yet he had timed his shadow-slip so perfectly that the exact moment his back hit the ground, he simply slid right through.
'How the hell is he seeing me?'
Raze's aura flared violently in frustration, and that's when he finally noticed it. The entire arena... it was completely saturated in James's magic.
'I see.'
A/N Like 2.9k words.
Also, how the heck are some author daily uploading for weeks on end with 2k word count without burning out.
Fight should only last 2 or more chapters, then a few small stuff before ending the first arc, roughly give or take chapter 60 ish.