Chương 33: Chapter 32 - One Round

Ant gave Maren a small kick to bring her back from wherever she'd drifted off to.

"We — need your help," she said, the words coming out half-spoken, half-squeaked, her composure only partially recovered.

"You already said that." Kalsar's eyes hadn't moved from Ant once since the door had opened.

"And I'm guessing it isn't you who needs it. If you had half a brain back in my classes — which, from what I remember, you did — then whatever this is about, it's him." Maren swallowed, but pushed forward anyway.

"He's bonded a Kithren. But he's too old for the academies. He never got one at seventeen, the way the rest of us did."

"So he has no talent, then." Kalsar said it flatly, without any particular malice, the way a man states an obvious conclusion.

"I can't turn a stone into a diamond. At best I can polish something that's already worth polishing. Might do him more good to face reality, turn around, find himself a simple job. Guard work. Something steady with a clan."

"He has no clan," Maren said, some of her composure returning with the correction. Kalsar's eyebrows rose slightly, though his expression didn't change much beyond that.

"He's strong, though," she continued.

"He and his Kithren defeated two level five Kithren at once. His own Kithren is only level three." Kalsar raised a hand to his chin, scratching thoughtfully at the beard there, weighing the claim with the flat scepticism of a man who'd heard a great many exaggerated stories in his time and had learned not to take any of them at face value.

"So he has some talent, then, I suppose." A faint, humourless smile crossed his face.

"I haven't had a decent fight in a while. Tell you what — if his Kithren can last more than one round against mine, I'll train him." Maren looked at Ant, something urgent and hopeful in her expression, the look of someone who'd already decided what answer she wanted and was silently willing him toward it. Ant considered it for exactly as long as it took to weigh the alternatives — which was to say, barely any time at all, because there weren't any.

This was the best shot they had, possibly the only one, and he was confident enough in what he'd already seen Mahkir do that the odds felt reasonable. More than reasonable. He'd watched Mahkir dismantle a level ten opponent through nine full levels of increasingly difficult resistance before finally losing. Surviving a single round against one unknown Kithren didn't seem, on paper, like it should be difficult at all. He nodded.

"One round," Maren confirmed, something in her voice steadying now that the decision had actually been made. Kalsar led them around the side of the house to a modest yard at the back, moving aside pieces of the same homemade equipment they'd noticed out front to clear a rough circle of space.

He handled each piece with a care that seemed almost incongruous against his sheer size — setting the posts down gently, coiling the rope rather than simply shoving it aside, the movements of a man who clearly took genuine pride in what he'd built with his own hands, however crude it looked from a distance.

He crossed to a small wooden structure at the back of the yard — something that could only be described, generously, as a tree house, though built low and sturdy rather than anywhere near an actual tree — and opened one of its doors. The creature that emerged was roughly the size of a gorilla, walking upright on two thick legs, but with four powerful arms instead of two, each one ending in hands large enough to wrap fully around a human skull.

Dark markings ran along its limbs in patterns that looked, at rest, almost decorative — faint grey-black lines etched into thick hide, dormant and unremarkable, the kind of detail you might miss entirely if you weren't looking for it. Its eyes found Mahkir the moment it stepped clear of the tree house, and held there, unblinking, with none of the casual indifference most opponents seemed to manage around him. Maren straightened, something close to recognition crossing her face.

"That's — he's built like Axel."

"Not quite," Kalsar said, not looking away from the two Kithren sizing each other up.

"Same rough stock, generations back, if the old records mean anything. Whatever he can do, yours can't. And whatever yours does, mine's never learned either." He nodded toward the markings along his Kithren's limbs.

"You'll see the difference soon enough." Ant shrugged off his coat. Mahkir dropped free of it in a single fluid motion, landing lightly and immediately fixing his attention on the four-armed creature across the yard, sizing it up with the same unhurried, assessing calm he brought to everything. Maren moved to the centre of the space without being asked, settling into the role of referee as naturally as if she'd done it a hundred times before.

"Okay," Ant said, crouching briefly beside Mahkir.

"We just need to survive one round. That's it. You're fast — faster than that thing, probably. Keep moving, don't let him land a clean hit, and we win by default." This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

"This will be simple enough," Mahkir said, in the same familiar, unbothered confidence he brought to everything.

"Begin," Maren called. Mahkir didn't wait. He didn't circle, didn't test the distance the way Ant had half expected, half hoped for — he opened immediately with Flame Breath, a full column of fire aimed directly at the four-armed Kithren standing across the yard. Dread spiked through Ant the instant he saw it building. He knew exactly how powerful that flame was, had watched it reduce a Dark Elemental to ash and burn half a laboratory to ruin.

The problem was timing — committing to it this early, against an opponent whose capabilities they knew nothing about, felt like exactly the kind of overconfidence that had gotten Mahkir into trouble before. Kalsar smiled.

"Magic powers," he said, almost approvingly.

"Perfect." His Kithren opened its mouth and breathed in. The flame didn't scatter or dissipate against him. It poured directly into his open mouth, into his body, and as it vanished the dark markings along his limbs ignited — not burned, but lit, sharp red runes flaring to life where a moment ago there had been only decorative shadow. His arms moved.

They moved at a speed that shouldn't have been possible for something that size, flame licking visibly along each strike as the runes fed whatever they'd just consumed back into raw, violent motion.

"Move!" Ant shouted, the word torn out of him before he'd fully processed what he was seeing. Mahkir didn't move. Not the way Ant meant. He didn't have the mana left for a second Flame Breath — that much was obvious even from the sidelines — and instead of retreating he brought his claws up, meeting the first strike head-on rather than dodging it. He deflected it. Ant's breath caught in his chest.

He deflected the second as well, claws catching each blow at an angle that redirected the force rather than absorbing it directly, the impact ringing out sharp and metallic across the yard each time contact was made. For a moment — one brief, hopeful moment — it actually looked like it might work. Like precision alone might be enough to offset everything the four-armed creature had in raw power.

Kalsar's eyebrows rose again, genuine surprise this time, and he dropped his hand in a small, deliberate gesture — a signal, unmistakably, to his own Kithren. The pattern repeated. Two more strikes came, and Mahkir deflected two more, the claws finding the same angle, the same rhythm, the same clean economical redirection that had worked twice already. Ant allowed himself, briefly, to believe they'd found the answer. But this time the four-armed creature didn't stop at two.

All four arms moved at once, a coordinated flurry that outpaced anything Mahkir's claws could possibly redirect in sequence, and two of the four strikes landed cleanly, the sound of impact entirely different from the ringing deflections before it — heavier, wetter, final in a way that made Ant's stomach twist. Somewhere behind Ant's own eyes a number dropped and vanished before he thought to look for it, too busy watching the real thing happen in front of him to care what the screen had to say about it.

Mahkir went flying across the garden. He hit the ground hard, rolled, and for one terrible second didn't move at all. Then, to the visible surprise of everyone watching, he pushed himself back onto his feet. And went straight back on the offensive.

"No — dodge, move, don't engage—" Ant's voice cracked with the effort of trying to redirect something that had already decided its own course. There couldn't have been more than a minute left in the round. Survival was the only requirement. Mahkir didn't seem to care. He threw everything he had into the next exchange — full strength, full commitment, the same reckless certainty that had put a level ten opponent on the ground in the simulation days earlier.

But Kalsar's Kithren was simply too strong, too experienced, too far beyond what raw stats alone could compensate for, and it took only fifteen more seconds before Mahkir was sent flying again, harder this time. Mahkir. HP: 1/30. Ant caught the number without meaning to, and it landed somewhere far worse than the throw itself had. He tried to stand. His legs wouldn't cooperate.

He collapsed back to the ground, small and red and utterly spent, and Ant was moving before he'd consciously decided to, scooping him up carefully, checking for the worst of it with hands that weren't entirely steady. Mahkir's eyes were open, at least — dimmed, exhausted, but open — and Ant felt something loosen fractionally in his chest at that small confirmation.

Kalsar patted his own Kithren on the shoulder, murmured something too quiet to hear, and the creature turned and made its way back toward the tree house without protest, the red glow along its markings already fading back to dormant grey. Then he turned to face Ant properly, all trace of the earlier approval gone from his expression.

"Your Kithren doesn't listen," he said, flat and final.

"He's arrogant. That's not a stat problem. That's not something training fixes in a few weeks, or even a few months. Arrogant is not something I can train out of anyone." Ant felt something sink in his chest, heavier than the disappointment alone accounted for. It wasn't that the accusation was wrong. That was the worst part of it.

He'd watched the whole thing happen in real time, had shouted himself hoarse trying to redirect something that refused to be redirected, and some part of him had known, even mid-fight, exactly what was driving it. Mahkir hadn't lost because he lacked the ability to win.

He'd lost because winning carefully, patiently, by inches, had apparently felt beneath him — and that same pride that had burned half a laboratory to the ground over a simulated defeat had just cost them the one lead they had toward becoming something more than what they currently were. He glanced toward the house, then back at Ant, something almost apologetic in it despite the flatness of his voice.

"You can come in. Use some of my herbs, get him patched up properly before you go anywhere — I'm not sending an injured Kithren back out on the road, whatever else I decide." A pause.

"But then you need to be on your way. Whatever you were hoping I could do for the two of you — I can't. I'm sorry." Behind him, Maren hadn't moved, her earlier eagerness collapsed into something considerably quieter.

Ant stood in the ruined circle of the training yard, Mahkir cradled against his chest, and the only thought he could properly hold onto was that he should have found a way to stop this before it happened — should have known what Mahkir would do the moment pride got involved, should have said something that actually landed instead of shouting into a fight that was never going to listen to him. He didn't have anything ready to say to Kalsar. He was too busy working out what he'd failed to do.