I picked them up, giving them a quick twirl. They felt almost weightless in my hands. I loved playing high-mobility rogues in every RPG I ever touched, and with my anomalous Dexterity stat sitting at a massive 15, being able to throw, slash, and retrieve my blades on the fly was an absolute no-brainer.
I walked over to a stationary wooden dummy and gave the blades a few experimental swings. They sliced through the air with a satisfying whir, though my form was terrible. I felt less like a deadly assassin and more like a kid flailing around with a pair of very large scissors.
Adda walked back over, took one look at my choice of weapons, and simply shrugged.
"Speed over power. Not a bad choice for a glass cannon," she noted. She led me to the center of the room, stepping onto the raised sparring stage. "Alright. I'm going to simulate a weak opponent. I just want you to practice activating your skills on command."
She pointed to a smaller, enclosed circle to the side. "The fluffball goes over there. Separate targets."
Adda raised her hand and snapped her thick fingers.
A pulse of emerald-green mana washed over the stage. Instantly, the light coalesced into two trembling, gelatinous blobs of translucent green energy. Slimes. The ultimate, undisputed kings of the Level 1 starter zone. They began to slowly, aimlessly slide around in a small circle.
"There you go," Adda said, stepping off the stage. "Activating your abilities should be instinctual. You don't need to shout the names, kid. Just close your eyes, find the spark inside your chest, and focus."
I took a deep breath. I gripped the hilts of my wire daggers, closed my eyes, and listened to the hum of the System running through my veins.
She was right. It wasn't like pressing a button on a controller. It was right there—a deep, dormant well of energy sitting just beneath my ribs, like a muscle I had always known how to use but had somehow forgotten. I reached out with my mind and mentally pulled the trigger.
"Voltaic Step," I mumbled.
CRACK.
Sapphire lightning exploded from my skin. A violently bright blue aura surged through my nervous system, and the entire world instantly shifted.
The low hum of the gymnasium stretched out into a deep, distorted bass drop. The air around me felt suddenly thick, like I was moving underwater, but my own body felt impossibly light.
I stepped forward. I didn't just walk; I glided. I closed the distance to the mana-slime in a fraction of a second and lashed out with the daggers. The strike felt incredibly heavy, a massive transfer of kinetic energy driven by raw, supernatural momentum as the blades bit into the target.
I glanced over my shoulder, completely disoriented by the sensory overload.
Adda was standing by the edge of the stage, but she was trapped in slow motion, her eyes only just beginning to widen in surprise. I looked over at the smaller ring. Snow was mid-pounce, suspended in the air like a photograph. An icy, ethereal blue frost was creeping out from her paws, spreading across the stone floor toward her slime target... but it was crawling forward by mere millimeters.
Everything was out of sync. I wasn't just moving fast. I was moving faster than the world.
I pivoted on my heel, bringing my second dagger around to finish the job.
But right as I swung, the sapphire lightning vanished.
[ SYSTEM PING: VOLTAIC STEP - COOLDOWN ACTIVE ]
The world snapped back to normal speed like a taut rubber band snapping against my skull. The sudden, violent return of regular gravity, friction, and momentum threw my balance completely off. I stumbled forward, my arms windmilling wildly as I barely caught myself from face-planting onto the hard stone stage.
"Whoa there, steady," Adda's voice boomed, the ambient noise of the gymnasium rushing back into my ears.
She walked up to the edge of the stage, crossing her massive arms with an impressed smirk. "Not bad, kid. You moved so fast you left blurry blue afterimages behind you. And because of that sheer velocity, your physical strike hit a hell of a lot harder than your actual Strength stat should allow. Momentum equals damage. You turned yourself into a human bullet."
Before I could celebrate the fact that I hadn't broken my own wrists, a sharp, crystalline shatter echoed loudly across the room.
Adda and I both looked over at the smaller sparring ring.
Snow was sitting primly on her haunches, meticulously licking her front paw. In front of her, the green mana-slime had been frozen completely solid into a jagged block of glowing blue ice, which was now lying on the stone floor in a dozen shattered, glittering pieces.
"Getting up close and personal is a barbaric chore fit only for dogs and peasants," Snow projected into our minds, her tone dripping with aristocratic disdain. "The sheer dampness of that creature was offensive. Bear-woman. Summon another. I must find a way to execute them from a respectable distance."
Adda just threw her head back and laughed, snapping her thick fingers to spawn a fresh, wiggling green slime in the center of Snow's ring.
Snow immediately went back to work. She stood up, her two starlight tails swishing in concentration. Her silver eyes glowed as she tried to project her [Ethereal Frost-Weave] outward without touching the target. It wasn't quite working yet—the cold air puffed out in a weak, sparkly blue mist that merely frosted the slime's outer layer rather than freezing it solid—but the tactical idea was clearly there. She was already trying to force her innate abilities to evolve into ranged artillery.
"Show-off," I muttered fondly.
I turned back to my own target. The deep, kinetic gash I had left in the slime with my wire daggers was already beginning to bubble and reform. Slimes were basically made of magical jello; purely physical damage wasn't going to keep it down for long.
I tightened my grip on the hilts of my daggers, looking down at the matte-black metal and the runic spools of wire attached to the pommels. It hit me suddenly—metal wire was the perfect conductive conduit.
It was time to see what my massive Energy pool could actually do. I closed my eyes, found that sparking, volatile well of mana sitting just beneath my ribs, and pulled the second trigger.
"Jolt Burst," I said.
I felt the pull this time—a sharp, sudden drain from that massive pool of Energy sitting in my chest. Sapphire electricity flared down my arms, bypassing my muscles and flooding directly into the matte-black hilts of the daggers.
The dark steel blades instantly took on a faint, deadly blue glow. A quiet, high-frequency hum filled the air around me, vibrating all the way up to my teeth. I glanced down at the pommels and noticed the ultra-fine metal wire actually shifting and trembling inside its runic spools, reacting magnetically to the sudden surge of raw voltage.
"Interesting," I murmured, turning the humming blades over in my hands.
"Fancy lights, kid!" Adda shouted from the edge of the stage, her booming voice cutting through the electric hum. "But let's see what it can actually do!"
I tightened my grip and charged forward. Without the time-dilating effects of Voltaic Step, I was locked back into normal speed, but with a Dexterity of 15, my "normal" was still a hell of a lot faster than an average human.
I closed the distance to the reforming green slime in three quick strides and brought both glowing blades down in a sweeping, horizontal cross-slash.
The moment the electrically charged steel made physical contact with the gelatinous mana-blob, there was a sharp, blinding CRACK.
The slime didn't just get cut. It went poof.
The entire creature instantly vaporized in a violent burst of expanding white smoke. I coughed, stumbling backward and waving my hand in front of my face to clear the thick, acrid cloud. The air heavily tasted of sharp ozone and... bizarrely enough, burnt hair.
There was absolutely nothing left of the slime except a faint scorch mark on the stone stage.
"Well, I'll be damned," Adda laughed, stepping up onto the stage and waving away the lingering smoke with her massive hand. "That's a hell of a lot of output for a Level 5. You completely bypassed its physical resistance and just flash-fried its core."
From the adjacent ring, Snow let out a delicate sneeze as the ozone drifted over to her.
"A rather loud and messy execution," my cat critiqued telepathically, still trying to coax a ranged frost attack out of her paws. "But highly effective. I approve. You may continue to be the primary distraction."
I looked down at the wire daggers in my hands. The blue glow had faded, but the metal was still warm to the touch. The system had classified me as a glass cannon, and it wasn't lying. I couldn't take a hit, but if I managed to close the distance, my electrical damage was devastating.
Adda walked over and clapped me on the shoulder, thankfully holding back her superhuman strength this time.
"Alright, Stargazer. You've got the speed, and you've definitely got the firepower," she grinned, her dark eyes flashing with excitement. "But a real fight isn't against a brainless puddle of mana. Are you ready to see what those daggers can do against something that actually fights back?"