The horn echoed off the arena walls, and the sound folded back on itself. It was denser than the training yard, the enclosed space turning a single blast into a pressure wave that I felt in my chest.
We quickly moved to set up on the platform as a group. If this were Mech combat, the clear sightlines given as we moved would've put us in a disparaging spot. But thankfully, this was pure hand-to-hand.
The Barracks 9 squad broke from their gate in a standard spread — two forward, two flanking, two centre. The lead fighter was a tall kid with a tanking deviation, his guard high and steady.
They hit the first partial wall and hesitated, allowing us to reach the platform before them.
"Two forward, splitting left. Right flanker — depression," Ren called from our platform, the words clipped to fragments, as Jin moved in a blur, gravel spraying behind her boots. The right flanker turned toward the sound, and she tagged him from an angle his rotation guard never covered. She pressed for a few moments, striking him several more times before he fell.
First elimination.
[XP GAINED: 18]
A collective breath echoed from the stands, an intake of breath from over two hundred people.
Hsu worked the western section while Sato pinned a regrouping fighter. But the tall kid and his partner were smart. They'd identified the platform and were moving toward it. They didn't rush and covered the movement with a screening element of two other kids, all covering each other. The opponents shifted their guard towards the lead's transition gap as they pushed across the terrain; our window of opportunity to exploit it was rapidly closing.
"They're paired," Tomás said. "Trained together. The partner compensates in real time."
I rushed to meet them at the ramp base, towards a small break that Ren had managed to identify. The tall kid stepped forward to meet me, likely to distract and allow for the remaining team to gain the high ground. He came at me with Rotation Two, feet set steady, and shoulders squared.
The blows weren't anything special, slow, but they hit hard. Clear weight vibrated through my guard with every strike. Though it took me only a few moments to find his rhythm. I slipped through his guard after throwing a feint and hooked his leg, throwing him off balance. I prepped myself to shoulder-check him off the side of the platform, but his partner had finally arrived.
He was exactly where the counter left me exposed. A clean tag to my ribs that sent me to the edge of the platform. I lowered my centre of gravity and pushed myself from the precipice.
I can't just assault from the front.
I quickly scanned as I moved forward; Jin and Hsu were harassing two stragglers who hadn't made it to the platform, while Ren dictated the best places to apply pressure. Tomás was nowhere in sight. Sato was rushing to meet me and assist with the front two.
Divide and conquer.
I manoeuvred myself so I could face the partner solely. Each time they shifted their positions, I mirrored, keeping only one in front of me at all times. The restricted space disrupted their formation, as I made sure they couldn't stand side by side. Keeping up the momentum, I jabbed out towards the kid's abdomen, quickly shifting the trajectory of my blows as I rained down on him.
He was following a typical defensive rotation. I could tell that his Hand-To-Hand combat skill was rather high, and I estimated the sequence of blows that would find an opening in his guard.
Strike high, low, high again, feint the third jab and solid right into his liver.
I mapped out the sequence in real time as the final blow struck his side, causing him to heave over. Taking advantage of the reprieve, I lashed out with a low kick to the kid's knee, and it buckled under pressure. Before his teammate could make up for the mistake I shoved, hard, knocking the kid off the platform, where he fell two meters with a loud crunch.
Sato can deal with him. Only the leader is left on the platform.
I reset my stance and faced off against the brown-haired kid, who was at least a foot taller than me. Before I lunged out, I caught Tomás in my periphery. He was working his way up and around the platform, hoping to climb up and pincer. It was a manoeuvre we had practised for.
So I played my part and grabbed the leader's attention, engaging in his defensive dance. I stalled him out, blocked and weaved his blows, the movements coming easy to me as his stats weren't enough to bridge the gap of my predictive fighting.
It took around twenty seconds for Tomás to move into position behind the leader, and when he did, I moved onto the offensive. I stepped into the boy's guard and began working him down; his deviation allowed sustained hits and boosted his overall stamina. I could have beaten him myself, but this was faster, more efficient.
Tomás lashed out at the kid's legs from behind, causing him to stumble. I pressed hard at that moment and performed a flurry of blows into the kid. Ending with a strong uppercut that clipped him directly on his chin, his eyes went glassy, and he fell.
Tomás and I shared a glance as I looked around at the arena. Sato finished off the kid who had fallen from the platform and moved to assist Jin and Hsu, who had already taken down the moving element. Ren was engaged with Park, assisting. It didn't take long for us to break down the remaining foes once their plans had fallen apart.
"Elimination — Squad Tiernan takes the match."
[XP GAINED: 105]
"Two minutes forty-three seconds," Tomás said.
"Not a bad showing for the first fight," I remarked.
We filed into the staging area. The adrenaline was still high — Hsu recounting the platform fight to Sato, Park sketching adjustments on his datapad.
I stepped apart and pulled up the interface.
[XP: 684 / 750]
The Exhibition combat was generating more strife per minute than weeks of training. Underneath the combat XP, a smaller tick — XP I couldn't attribute to any specific exchange. The stands. The Tiernans. The ambient weight of being watched. The system counted everything.
I glanced at the observation deck.
David's posture hadn't changed — legs crossed, datapad untouched. Michael had leaned forward, the grin sharpened. The unknown woman sat motionless, hands folded.
And beside her, in a seat I hadn't registered before—
Kael.
Instructor Kael. In the Tiernan section. In the sponsor section. With my family's delegation. Seated between the unknown woman and the young man as though he'd always been there.
My stomach dropped. My breath came wrong for two counts before I caught it.
Kael. Boot on my chest in week one. Six months of silence. Assigned to our barracks by someone, placed there by someone, and now sitting with four Tiernans at an F-Grade exhibition he had no institutional reason to be with.
Unless the institution is the Tiernans themselves.
"Analysis." The word came out steady.
"Our terrain advantage is time-limited," Tomás said. "Barracks 3 watched us. They'll adapt. The platform is compromised."
"So we let them have it," I said. "Invert. Abandon the platform. Set up in the depression."
"The depression gives me less acceleration distance," Jin said.
"But more angles. Four blind approaches. You don't need distance if they can't see you coming."
She processed and nodded.
[Fight two.]
The Barracks 3 squad entered with purpose. Their leader—a D-Grade girl with close-cropped hair and calm eyes—directed her team with hand signals. Three fighters broke toward the platform.
They reached it in forty seconds and found it empty.
She recovered fast, pulling the platform team back to regroup within seconds.
"She's not rotation-dependent," Tomás murmured. "Watch her feet."
"North — two fighters," Ren called from ground level, his voice stripped to essentials without the platform's elevation. "Leader west. One escort."
"The escort's interesting," Tomás added, conversational even now. "He's the one who put down that Barracks 2 kid in their first match. Hits harder than his frame suggests."
"Jin — north. Sato — follow." I called.
Jin burst through the wall gap. The first Barracks 3 turned, got his guard up, absorbing the initial strike. Jin found a second angle in the half-second his recovery took, her body flowing through the restricted space without a single wasted motion. Each transition stripped to its essential purpose, each strike arriving from exactly the angle that mattered.
I filed what I'd seen in a category I didn't have a name for. Kept fighting.
Sato caught the second north fighter from the opposite side. The kid fought back — three genuine exchanges before Sato's strikes found their marks. These weren't Barracks 9; they won their fight and every elimination cost effort.
The squad leader reached the depression with her escort. Hsu engaged the leader in the western approach, trading strikes in restricted space. The escort — the hard hitter Ren had flagged — flanked left.
"Marcus — escort flanking," Ren called.
I intercepted at the rim. The escort was strong; his strikes carried the weight Ren had warned about. The first exchange drove me back a step and kicked dust into my mouth, the gritty, mineral taste of the arena.
Two exchanges. On the second, I came at him formless and watched his guard search for the pattern. His eyes moved left-right-left, tracking feints that weren't there. The uncertainty froze his counter for a half-second.
Just enough.
I slammed a palm into his nose and threw a haymaker into his temple while he was dazed. He fell down like a sack of potatoes, throwing up dust and gravel into the air.
[XP GAINED: 46]
Then the squad leader. She'd pushed Hsu back to the depression's centre. I came from the eastern approach.
She read me. Countered clean. Read the second approach. Countered again.
On the third, I feinted what she'd identified and went somewhere her counter didn't cover.
She went down and looked up from the gravel.
"What system skill is that?"
"It's not a system skill."
A shout from the western side. The squad leader's last fighter caught Sato with a committed combination — heavy, accurate. Sato went to a knee and put his hand up.
That's our first elimination.
Park's voice from behind a partial wall, precise even under pressure: "Two remaining — south corridor, four metres apart, the lead one favouring his right side."
Jin and Hsu finished it. Sixty seconds of coordinated violence in the restricted western approach.
"Elimination — Squad Tiernan takes the match."
[XP GAINED: 154]
Overheard from the nearest stand section as we walked toward staging:
"—terrain specialists—" "—that F-Grade, the Tiernan kid—" "—never seen that style—"
The staging area was quieter the second time. The adrenaline curdled into something heavier — fatigue and focus. Sato met us outside the arena with his arm held gingerly, a medic applying something to his ribs that smelled like antiseptic and ozone.
"Cracked?" Tomás asked.
"Bruised," Sato said. "I'll live. She hit like a freight train."
"He," Park corrected. "The last fighter. Not the leader."
"Whatever. It hurt."
I sat on the staging bench. Drank water. Let the squad settle.
[XP: 154/800]
[LEVEL: 16]
[STAT POINTS AVAILABLE: 4]
I smiled. I hadn't had a free stat point to distribute in a while. I placed it into agility. The other three points I sank evenly across, strength, agility and vitality.
The bracket has been updated.
PHASE ONE — ROUND THREE
SQUAD TIERNAN vs SQUAD OSEI
I scanned the bracket for the upset.
Squad Miller — ELIMINATED, Round Two.
Miller was in the stands. Sitting alone. Briggs was beside him but not close.
Osei was across the arena. Watching us, calm and comprehensive. His network arranged around him — fourteen people who hadn't needed to shout a single command during their matches.
"Well," Tomás said, closing his notebook. "That's not ideal."
We had a terrain strategy they'd watched us execute twice. Whatever Osei had learned in the last hour was already integrated into his network's tactical framework.
"Round three," Jin said.
Nobody added anything.