At the fifteen-minute mark, my meridians were burning. Not the three-minute wall of the entrance exam — the expanded, Nihil-amplified channels had pushed the wall to twenty minutes through weeks of combat cultivation. But fifteen minutes of full-power exchange against a fighter of Liora's caliber was draining reserves faster than the feedback loop could replenish them.
I was slowing. Not much — a fraction of a percent per minute. But Liora saw it. Because Liora saw everything that happened in a fight the way Ren saw everything that happened in a text.
She should have pressed. The tactical play — the optimal strategy, the game-theory-approved response to a weakening opponent — was to increase pressure and exploit the degrading defense.
She didn't.
She slowed to match.
