There were three of them left standing when Kosei stopped counting on the others.
Then two.
Then one.
"MANGŪSU YOU COWARD! YOU ABSOLUTE COWARD!" he screamed between dodges, not caring anymore who heard. His Martial Heart had been burning for so long the orange glow had started to dim at the edges. His legs moved on pure reflex now, the blood vessel control that had saved him a dozen times tonight running almost automatically, his conscious mind too tired to direct it properly.
The beast swung.
Kosei went left.
BOOOM
The fist cratered the stone where he'd been and the shockwave hit him anyway, rattling his teeth, briefly lifting his feet off the ground. He landed in a stumble and immediately pushed forward. The beast's recovery time after a full commit was approximately one and a half breaths. he'd measured it through repetition and near-death. He drove both palms into its wrist with everything his Martial Heart had left.
The beast was barely harmed.
But barely was more than nothing.
He'd figured that out around the time the others stopped getting back up. Fighting it as a group had actually made them worse. Too many bodies telegraphing too many intentions allowed the beast to use its instincts to break through multiple attacks and respond. But now, fighting alone, with no formation to maintain and no one else's movement to account for, he could focus entirely on the beast's movements and better predict its attacks.
The beast swung again, low this time, sweeping horizontal.
Kosei planted one foot and went vertical. A straight upward launch, blood pressure spiking through his legs in a single controlled burst, carrying him just above the sweep's arc. The tail of air pressure from the swing still caught him and spun him sideways but he corrected mid-air, landed clean, was already moving before his feet touched stone.
Left shoulder drops before the right hook. Right foot drags before the tail sweep. Chest expands before the mouth blast.
He'd mapped it. All of it. The tells were there if you survived long enough to read them, and he had survived long enough.
"YOU SENT NINE OF US DOWN HERE AND YOU WON'T EVEN STAND UP!" he screamed at the balcony.
Mangūsu didn't respond as he seemed deep in thought.
Kosei ducked under a downward slam and drove an blood-boosted elbow into the beast's knuckle as it passed, targeting the joint, the one spot where scale didn't fully compensate for structural vulnerability. The beast's hand twitched.
Kosei noticed the half-second of pain on the beast's expression.
The beast wound up for another swing and Kosei read the shoulder drop immediately, already committing left—
He was gone before the fist arrived.
He didn't stop there. He pushed back in immediately, closing the distance before the beast could reset, targeting the same knuckle joint with a concentrated blood pressure burst through his fingertip. A needle of force, precise and deliberate, aimed at the one structural weakness he'd found through repetition.
BAM
The beast's hand spasmed.
There.
It roared and swung wildly with the other arm. Kosei slid under it, felt the wind pressure tear at his hair, came up underneath the beast's chin line—the one angle its eyes couldn't track naturally—and launched a rapid sequence into the wrist, the elbow joint, the wrist again.
Three hits. Clean. Each one targeted.
BAM BAM BAM
The arm pulled back.
It flinched!
He barely processed that before the tail came. He'd been so focused on the arms he almost missed it. Still, he caught the drag of the right foot a half second before impact and threw himself flat against the arena floor, the tail passing close enough overhead that he felt the displaced air press him down.
He was back on his feet before it finished the sweep, unnaturally standing up using only his ankles and blood pressure.
Something was happening to him and he didn't have the spare attention to examine it. His body was moving differently than it had an hour ago. The predictions weren't conscious anymore—they were arriving ahead of thought, his feet responding to information his brain hadn't finished processing yet. Each near-death had carved something into him, some understanding of weight and timing and intent that no training hall had ever produced.
His instinct was improving... no, his mind was improving.
The beast swung again.
Kosei wasn't there.
He was already at the elbow, already striking, already gone before the beast could retaliate.
His mastery of his blood vessels allowed him to gain insane bursts of speed, making him dodge strikes at near-impossible angles as he compress the vessels non-essential for dodging, and forcing the pressure entirely onto the blood vessels needed for dodging.
He was doing it. Somehow, inexplicably, he was actually doing it! Holding the line against something that had easily defeated nine Martial Seniors in minutes. His Martial Heart was screaming. His vision had narrowed to a tunnel of movement and prediction and survival. But he was standing.
He was standing strong.
"THAT'S RIGHT!" he screamed, at nobody, at Mangūsu, at the beast, at all of it.
"COME ON THEN!"
BADUMP
He was real close to an epiphany.
His heart could feel it.
One moment that could change his life forever.
BADUMP
The beast wound up for another swing and Kosei read the shoulder drop immediately, already committing left—
HERE IT IS!! MY MOMENT!!
...?
But the attack didn't come.
Still, he'd already moved. He stumbled, caught himself, spun around with his guard up.
The Great Ape stood still.
Its fist hung half-raised, frozen in the air. The red fury in its eyes had somehow mellowed as it... blinked.
It stared at its own hand, the very hand Kosei had been targeting. It stared at the knuckle joint, turned it slowly, opening and closing the fingers with the careful movements.
SIZZLE
The wound started sizzling. Slowly, the wound regenerated as the muscles and fur covered it once more.
It was as if the wound never existed.
Kosei didn't move.
His breathing was the loudest thing in the arena.
The beast lowered the hand. Its gaze traveled outward from there. It swept across the ruined arena floor, the craters and embedded stone, the injured Martial Seniors scattered at the walls. It looked at all of it slowly, like it was suddenly understanding.. like it was awake?
Then it looked at Kosei.
The red was still there. But there was something eerie about it.
Something that shouldn't have been possible for such a beast.
A gaze of Intelligence.
Kosei's Martial Heart sputtered. He forced it steady through sheer will, sweat running freely down his face, every muscle fiber he owned screaming for him to run.
He didn't run.
He was too close to a breakthrough to run.
The beast's chest expanded slowly, fully—and then it opened its mouth.
ROOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAR
The deep echoed voice went through stone and through Kosei's chest. His mask cracked under pressure, and It left him cold and shivering.
The red eyes then settled on him and didn't leave.
The beast moved.
But it wasn't the same as before. It didn't rampage toward him. It simply stepped forward, one enormous foot placed at front, and raised both arms with closed fists.
T-That's... a Fighting Stance?
Another wave of fear swept past the young Martial Senior.
Kosei's instincts screamed at him to run away.
But his newfound confidence in his mind wanted to do the opposite.
With intelligence or no intelligence, it's still the same beast.
It might be his only chance in becoming a Martial Master.
He would win.
.
.
.
.
A/N:
Feeling much better, so chap today and tomorrow!