— Day thirteen. Dacia Training Forest. Eastern clearing. Midday.
The Eastern Clearing Was Exactly What It Looked Like from the Ridge
Open ground—the canopy pulling back to let actual sunlight reach the forest floor, creating a fifty-meter circle of flattened grass and packed earth with a wide stream running along its southern edge. Animal paths cut in from three directions, well-worn, which meant the clearing was used regularly by something heavy. The grass near the center was shorter and had a particular press to it, the kind left by something large that rested in one spot.
King stood at the tree line and looked at the clearing.
"Something's been sleeping here," he said.
"I see it," Riku said. He had the map out. "The pressure marks in the center. The grass pattern." He looked at his notes. "The Ironback Bear is listed in this zone. B-rank boundary variant. The training materials say it ranges the eastern section and retreats to this clearing to rest."
"B-rank," Haruto said. He said it with interest rather than alarm.
"It's listed as a zone boundary variant," Riku said. "Meaning it's at the upper limit of B-rank and counts toward trial points at that level."
"The trial points for a B-rank are significantly higher than E or D-rank," Sora said. She was standing slightly behind King, her notebook open to the trial scoring page she'd copied from the orientation documents. "One Ironback Bear counts as much as twelve D-rank wolves."
"And we were going to do E and D-rank in the clearing," Aki said. She was looking at the center of the clearing with the calm assessment of someone running triage calculations. "The Ironback is—" She checked the training materials she'd folded into her pack. "Significant hide thickness. Iron-plate scales along the dorsal spine. Resistant to standard mana-based attacks below B-rank."
"So my fire enhancement needs to be at full output," Haruto said.
"Haruto," Riku said.
"I know what B-rank means," Haruto said.
"You're C-rank," Riku said.
"Currently," Haruto said.
"That's not how—" Riku stopped. He had decided something. "We should not engage a B-rank boundary variant on day one of the first trial."
"The trial points," Haruto said.
"Are not worth getting someone injured," Riku said.
"We have Aki."
"I can't heal everything," Aki said. This was said simply, not defensively. "If you go up against an Ironback at full output and it decides to sit on you, my talent doesn't help with that."
King was still looking at the clearing.
Miso was sitting on his boot.
The fox kit had followed them from the fallen trunk to the ridge to the eastern approach path without any visible effort, treating the transition as though joining a group of humans in a training forest was a reasonable thing to do. At some point between the ridge and here it had graduated from following to sitting on King's boot when he stopped moving, which was where it was now.
"It's not here yet," King said.
"What?" Haruto said.
"The bear. The sleeping spot is from earlier—the grass displacement is at least six hours old. The clearing is empty right now." He looked at the tree line on the far side. "It'll come back."
"How do you know when?" Sora asked.
"I don't," King said. "But it's a resting spot. Resting spots get used on a pattern."
Riku wrote something. "If we're going to engage the Ironback we need to plan it," he said. "Not improvise it when it walks into the clearing."
"Agreed," King said. "What are its attack patterns?"
"Forward charge, primary," Riku said, consulting the materials. "The dorsal spines deploy during the charge—they eject at speed when it's fully committed. Flank attacks are secondary. It doesn't retreat unless the threat is significantly above its rank."
"So if we engage it, it stays," Haruto said.
"Until it decides we're not worth the effort," Riku said. "Or until it's defeated."
"I can blind it," Sora said. "Stillwind can create concentrated atmospheric distortion—disrupts vision and spatial orientation. It won't stop it but it'll interrupt the charge cycle."
"That's useful," King said.
"I've never done it in a combat context," she said. "I've done it in practice. The output is there."
"I believe you," King said.
She looked at him briefly. Wrote something. Looked back at the clearing.
"If Sora disrupts the charge cycle and Haruto hits during the window," Riku said, working it out, "the armor on the dorsal section is the weak point—between the spine plates, the hide is thinner. C-rank enhanced fire at full output concentrated on that point should penetrate."
"Should," Haruto said.
"Should," Riku confirmed. "I don't have more certainty than that."
"I'll take should," Haruto said. He was already rolling his right shoulder, the unconscious pre-combat motion of someone settling into their range of movement. The scorch mark on his sleeve from the cafeteria was still there. He'd told King this was because he was going to earn a better one.
"And King?" Aki said. She looked at King. "What's your position?"
King looked at the clearing.
What's my position, he thought. Good question.
"I'll take the charge if it breaks through," he said.
"Takes the charge," Haruto said. "From a B-rank Ironback."
"Yes," King said.
"At F-rank."
"Yes," King said.
"That's—" Haruto stopped. He had reached the place in the argument he always reached when he tried to push back on King's physical positioning. He made a noise. "Fine," he said. "King takes the charge if it breaks through. What does taking the charge look like, specifically."
"I'll stand in the way," King said.
"And then?"
"And then we'll see," King said.
"That's not a plan," Riku said.
"It's the honest version of the plan," King said. "The real plan is: Sora disrupts the charge, Haruto hits the gap between the spine plates, Aki watches our backs and handles anything that goes wrong. I'm there if something unexpected happens. That's the plan."
Riku looked at him. He wrote something. "Defined positions, clear sequence, one contingency role." He closed the journal. "Acceptable."
"When do we—"
---
The tree line on the far side of the clearing moved.
A disturbance in the upper undergrowth, a sequence of branch movements tracking whatever had pushed through it.
The Ironback Bear came into the clearing.
Oh, King thought. Bigger than the materials suggested.
Seven feet at the shoulder. The dorsal spine-plates folded back at rest, running in two parallel rows from the base of the skull to the midpoint of the back. The hide was dark, almost black, with the particular matte quality of something that absorbed rather than reflected.
It moved into the clearing without urgency. Found its center. Lowered its head to smell the ground.
It smells us, King thought. Two seconds.
The Ironback's head came up.
It looked directly at the tree line where Squad Zero was standing.
"That's two seconds," King said.
---
Haruto came out of the tree line.
He came out fast and loud—the Crimson Edge releasing in his right hand as he moved, a blade of compressed heat-mana forming from his palm, the air above his forearm shimmering with significant heat output.
"Takahashi—" Riku said.
"I'm going," Haruto said, already twenty meters into the clearing.
The Ironback reacted with the efficiency of something that had assessed threats before. It dropped its head, shifted its weight backward, and the dorsal spine-plates rotated—from folded to deployed in three seconds, thirty-centimeter spines standing at forty-five degrees along its back, iron-grey and sharp at the tips.
Spine deployment is the charge preparation, King thought.
"Tell me when," Sora said from beside his ear—she had her hands up, Stillwind output at the surface, waiting.
"When it commits the front feet," King said.
The Ironback charged.
Front feet left the ground, full body weight forward, five hundred kilograms moving at speed.
"Now," King said.
Sora released.
The atmospheric distortion hit the clearing mid-point. The Ironback's head swung wide, its trajectory shifted left, the charge angle breaking. The animal stumbled—not badly, it was too heavy, but enough.
Haruto was already inside the distortion zone, tracking the bear's altered angle with the instinctive adjustment of someone who had trained for close-range combat for three years. His right hand came forward in the concentrated strike—Crimson Edge output focused to a single point.
He hit the gap between the fourth and fifth spine plates.
The crack of concentrated heat impact against thinner hide was sharp and clean.
The Ironback's rear section lurched sideways. It caught its footing. It did not go down.
B-rank boundary, King thought. Good hide thickness.
Haruto moved right—the good instinct, not standing still after the strike.
The Ironback pivoted faster than it should have at that size. The rear haunches swung, and the tail swept laterally with significant force.
It hit Haruto's left side.
Haruto went sideways. He hit the clearing ground, rolled—good form—and came up on one knee. His right arm was down, Crimson Edge dropped to zero.
"Haruto," Aki said. Already moving.
The Ironback had located Haruto and was pivoting fully toward him. Spine plates still deployed. The strike had slowed it but not discouraged it.
King walked into the clearing.
Not ran.
Walked.
The pace of someone crossing a room.
---
The Ironback noticed him. It was four meters from Haruto and fully committed to the pivot when King stepped between them.
He stopped.
He stood there.
The Ironback's charge came.
The paw came down.
It contacted King's left shoulder.
King did not move.
He moved slightly—a small adjustment, the way a person shifted weight when something bumped into them. Not the way a person responded to a B-rank Ironback Bear's full-force paw strike.
The Ironback stopped.
Not a trained response. Not a strategic decision. When the paw came down on King's shoulder and King did not move, the animal's instinct—the same instinct that had kept its species alive long enough to develop iron spine-plates—processed this as something that required a pause.
It pulled back the paw.
It looked at King.
King looked at it.
Don't fix anything, he thought. You are standing in a clearing between a bear and your squadmate. That's all.
The Ironback was very close. King could see the texture of its hide—the iron-plate sections, the scarring from previous encounters, the small imperfection in the third dorsal spine where the tip had broken at some point and grown back slightly crooked.
Those are old scars, he thought. This animal has been in this forest for years.
The Ironback's head lowered slightly—not a charge preparation. The assessment posture.
It was looking back at him.
They looked at each other for six seconds.
Then the Ironback Bear sat down.
Not dramatically. Not forced. It simply sat—the way an animal sat when it decided the situation did not require standing. Its spine plates folded back slowly. Its head went lower, the body language of something that had downgraded the situation from a threat to uncertainty.
King was still standing between it and Haruto.
I don't know why you sat down, he thought. But thank you.
He took a step to the side. Out of the direct line between the bear and the squad—no longer between them, just beside the situation.
The Ironback watched him move.
It stayed sitting.
"Don't look at it directly," King said over his shoulder. "Indirect attention only. No loud sounds."
Haruto, back on his feet with Aki beside him checking his left arm, said very quietly: "King."
"Yes," King said.
"What did you just do."
"I stood there," King said.
"The bear sat down," Haruto said.
"Yes."
"Because you stood there."
"It seemed to have made a decision," King said. "I didn't know in advance what the decision was going to be."
A pause.
"That's a terrifying thing to say," Riku said. He was at the tree line still. His pocket journal was in his hand, but he had not been writing in it for the last forty seconds—something King had never seen happen before. He opened it now and wrote rapidly. He wrote a lot.
"Haruto," Aki said, both hands on his left arm, Radiant Bloom active at low output. "Tail impact bruised the ribs. Two of them. You're not fighting again today."
"I got the hit in," Haruto said.
"You got hit after," Aki said. "Two bruised ribs and your right arm has superficial heat damage from the Crimson Edge rebound." She looked at the arm. "Not fighting today."
"Does the trial score count the strike?" Haruto asked.
"Yes," Riku said. "Documented strike on a B-rank variant counts regardless of whether the target was defeated, as long as we have verification."
"Johnson is somewhere in the forest," Sora said. "He's been following us since the ridge."
Everyone looked at her.
"I've been tracking his position with Stillwind," she said. "He's in the eastern perimeter path. Visual on us for twenty minutes."
King looked at the perimeter path.
Hello, Johnson, he thought.
"We're disengaging," King said. "Tree line slowly. No direct eye contact with the bear. Sora first with Haruto, then Aki, then Riku, then me."
"You're last," Haruto said.
"I'm between the bear and the rest of you," King said. "That's where I should be."
Haruto had the expression—the familiar one, the observation-without-category expression—and then he said: "Okay."
---
They moved.
King watched the Ironback as the others retreated. He took one step back. Then another. Then a third, slow and deliberate.
The Ironback watched him.
One spine plate flickered—half-deployment, the mechanical sequence starting and stopping, as if it had considered restarting and decided against it.
King took another step back.
He reached the tree line.
He turned and walked into the forest.
Behind him, the Ironback sat in the clearing for forty more seconds.
Then it walked to its sleeping spot and lay down.
---
On the perimeter path, Edward Johnson lowered his observation scope.
He had watched everything. The approach. Haruto's charge. Sora's disruption. The strike between the spine plates. The tail impact. Haruto going down.
King walking into the clearing.
The paw coming down.
King not moving.
The Ironback sitting.
He looked at his scanner. Zero mana output from King's direction. Same zero it had been reading since the placement test. No defensive output. No technique. No activation.
And the Ironback had sat down.
He wrote in his observation sheet:
Paw impact on left shoulder. Full force B-rank contact. Student did not move. No defensive output detected. No injury visible.
He read it back.
He added:
The bear sat down. I have no model for this. I am including every detail because the details are important even if I cannot currently explain what they mean.
He thought about the shard of the Evaluation Pillar that had vibrated for the rest of the day.
He thought about three second-year students who couldn't remember walking down stairs.
He thought about a fox kit with a better paw.
He thought about sixty percent Sovereign Pressure and a question about wind.
He thought about three green numbers from no identifiable technique.
He thought about what it meant that a B-rank Ironback Bear had looked at an F-rank student and sat down.
He picked up his scope.
He followed Squad Zero's path into the forest.
I need to know what happens next.
He had been thinking that since day one.
---
In the tree line, thirty meters from the clearing, Miso the fox kit was sitting on King's boot.
It had waited at the tree line during the entire bear encounter.
"It waited," Aki said, looking at the kit.
"Yes," King said.
"Smart kit," Haruto said, holding his left side with one hand—trying not to, but the ribs were deciding for him. "Unlike some people."
"You got the strike in," King said.
"Between the fourth and fifth spine plates," Haruto said, with quiet satisfaction. "Like Riku said."
"Did it work?"
"It slowed the pivot after. I saw the rebound."
"Yes," King said. "It was slower."
Haruto looked through the trees at the clearing. The Ironback was visible in the distance, lying in its resting spot. "I want to come back for it," he said. "When the ribs are better."
"Not alone," King said.
"Obviously not alone," Haruto said. "With the squad. Better angle, second strike from the same gap."
"After your ribs are better," Aki said.
"After my ribs," Haruto agreed.
He looked at King one more time—the long, considering look of someone who has found a problem they intend to finish—and then turned toward the ridge.
Miso hopped off King's boot and trotted after him.
King watched.
Miso went three steps, stopped, looked back at King, and trotted back. It sat on his boot again.
Or not, King thought.
He started walking.
Miso trotted alongside his left foot, ears up, bioluminescent markings catching the filtered forest light in faint orange pulses.
Miso, he thought.
All right.