Vaeliyan loaded into the sim, the world blooming into existence around him without warning. The air was sterile and cold, carrying the faint metallic tang of manufactured death. White floor panels stretched out into nothingness, stretching in every direction like an unmarked graveyard, waiting to become whatever battlefield command chose. The silence was so absolute it felt artificial, like the sim itself was holding its breath for him.

He turned his head, and paused.

A single cadet stood to his right. Same height. Same age. Same bearing. The only difference was the armor: old-model Legion plating, polished like a ceremonial blade. Its style was ancient compared to his own segmented exosuit, and yet it carried a similar weight, as though it remembered every life taken in it. The plating was etched with faded engravings, half-buried in the wear of time, marks left by a Legion era that had passed into myth. The figure turned slowly toward him and removed their helmet.

Barcus.

His face was clean, sharp, and strangely quiet. He had the kind of stillness that made silence seem like it belonged to him, as if even sound hesitated around him. His eyes held no spark of arrogance, no threat, just... calm. The sort of calm that made predators uneasy. There was no tension in his shoulders, no stiffness in his jaw, only the fluid readiness of someone who had killed so often it no longer registered as an event. He looked at Vaeliyan as if he were reading the cover of a book he had already memorized, unblinking and patient.

"Hello," Barcus said softly, voice carrying without effort. "I suppose you're the new contestant? Don't try to keep up with me. It only makes those who fail feel worse about themselves." He set the helmet under his arm with precise care; every motion as measured as a blade stroke. "Good luck."

Vaeliyan gave a single slow nod, the segmented black-and-gold plates of his insectoid armor catching the sterile light. "I don't have time to bother watching you." His voice was even, detached, as if this were just another step in a long series of inevitabilities.

Barcus inclined his head politely, not offended, not even interested, and turned away with the same steady pace he had spoken with. He didn't look like he was preparing to fight at all. He looked like he was going for a walk. That quiet confidence was more unsettling than arrogance could ever be.

The ground beneath them fractured like shattering glass, and the world flooded into place. The white void collapsed into a vast steel killing floor under a burning sky the color of molten copper. The air grew thick with digital heat as alarms wailed in the distance. Panels locked into place like the snapping of jaws, and the distant thunder of machinery echoed as the first wave spawned at the far edge: a hundred enemies charging as one, silent, armed, and perfectly synchronized, their footfalls hammering the metal floor in unison. The sound struck like a single colossal heartbeat.

Bastard blurred past Vaeliyan, a black streak of muscle and fury, hitting them like a silent avalanche. Claws ripped bodies open. Silver eyes burned through the carnage with surgical focus. Black scales rippled across his body as he moved, catching the dim orange light as he struck and vanished and struck again. Lightning crackled from his claws, arcs of raw force dismembering soldiers in sprays of vaporized metal and meat. His movements left scars in the air, places where sound lagged behind his speed. Every sweep of his claws scattered molten fragments across the floor, sparks rolling like embers caught in a storm. The floor was already slick with broken armor and twitching limbs before the wave had even reached the halfway mark.

Vaeliyan stayed where he was, arms folded behind his back, still as carved stone. The simulated wind stirred the segmented plates of his armor like tensioned cables ready to snap. His presence was silent but oppressive, like a dam holding back an ocean. He watched Bastard rip the first wave apart as if studying the wind. There was no flicker of anticipation in his stance, no visible interest, just cold patience. He was not conserving energy. He was letting the field saturate.

Barcus walked forward with the same still precision he had spoken with. His daggers slid from their sheaths and began to orbit lazily around him, spinning like patient hunting birds. There was no wasted movement, no show of aggression. He simply advanced, and things began to die. His blades cut with such surgical neatness they barely disturbed the air, bodies collapsing without a sound. For a moment, he and Bastard were the only things moving. Bastard carved through the wave in streaks of black and silver. Barcus glided behind, daggers carving arcs so clean they left afterimages, corpses falling in perfect silence as if they had always meant to be dead.

The trial had begun, and the world was already struggling to contain them.

Bastard tore into the second wave before it had even fully formed, black scales blurring as he slammed into the enemy line like living artillery. Claws hooked through armored torsos and ripped them in half. Silver eyes cut through the chaos with cold surgical clarity, tracking each moving target with unerring precision. Lightning burst from his throat in a crackling roar, arcing across clustered ranks and reducing half of them to twitching, molten wreckage. As each enemy dissolved into static mid-fall, the next took its place, the field constantly stitching itself back together around him, rebuilding as quickly as he could destroy. The air seemed to warp with his passage, the heat and static trailing him like contrails from a comet.

The third wave came hard on the heels of the second, heavier and faster, but Bastard was already in motion. He darted between them like a blade given thought, carving limbs, spines, faces, leaving only bursts of pixelated residue before they blinked away. Every motion was clean, efficient, predatory. The field rang with the sound of rending flesh and snapping bone, punctuated by the deep thrum of Bastard's paws hammering the floor. Sparks trailed off his claws as he skidded through the ranks, pivoting midair to sever three necks in a single blur before touching the ground again. Every kill left a lingering crackle of ozone, the air distorted where he had been just moments before.

By the fifth wave, the battlefield was reforming itself almost continuously, enemies dissolving to static as new ones spawned from the air. Bastard moved like he was dancing through ghosts, silver eyes flashing as he struck and vanished and struck again, slipping through their lines like he was part of the code itself. He twisted through collapsing formations, vaulted over collapsing ranks, and drove claws through spines before the sim could fully finish rendering them. Each time the enemies regrouped, he broke them apart again with sheer speed and fury. The sim could barely spawn fast enough to keep up. The air shimmered around him, heat rising from the friction of his movement, leaving ghostly contrails behind every swipe. The ground beneath him fractured from the force of his landings, instantly repairing itself in glimmering flashes.

Vaeliyan remained still, arms folded, watching. The segmented plates of his armor shifted faintly with the simulated wind. He didn't move, didn't tense, didn't speak. He simply let the pressure build. The air around him was getting heavier with every passing second, subtle distortions rippling outward from where he stood. He was saturating the field without lifting a hand. Even the enemy combatants that spawned closest to him seemed to hesitate a fraction before charging, as if something deep in the sim's code understood and feared him.

By the eighth wave, the air crackled with Bastard's exertion. The black-scaled beast vaulted through dissolving ranks, claws wreathed in electricity, and when the tenth wave finally broke across the field like a collapsing wall, Bastard stopped pretending to be quiet. He opened his jaws and roared lightning into their ranks, a white-hot blast that erased the front line entirely, scattering them into flickering fragments before they could hit the ground. The shockwave flattened the surviving enemies, scattering them into static fragments before they could recover. The floor itself quaked under the discharge, panels cracking and reforming beneath him. The whole world flickered for a heartbeat, the sim visibly lagging as if unsure it could contain him.

Something tugged faintly at Vaeliyan's leg.

He looked down.

Styll.

She was crouched beside him, fur slicked against her frame, eyes bright and unblinking. She tilted her head, waiting. He gave her a single nod.

She went.

Styll bounded into the chaos, impossibly light, bouncing off Bastard's shoulders as he swept through the flickering ranks. She slashed at ankles and throats, small claws opening arteries before they even knew she was there. Every leap carried her higher than it should have, her half-incorporeal form letting her drift just long enough to redirect midair. She landed on Bastard's back, sprang again, and tore out the arteries of a soldier's neck as she passed overhead. The target dissolved to static before their body could hit the ground. She pivoted midair, kicked off a dissolving shoulder, and dove headlong into the next group, slicing through their legs in a blur of silver. Her claws drew lines of static behind them, as if the sim itself couldn't quite decide where she was.

Bastard roared lightning again, the blast rolling across the reforming floor, while Styll danced through the gaps he left, her strikes sharp, surgical, merciless. She used his momentum like a springboard, rebounding off his shoulders, his haunches, even his sweeping tail as if they were just another part of the terrain. Bastard tore the field apart in great arcs of annihilation while Styll threaded through the carnage, the two of them working in perfect unspoken synchrony. For the first time, the enemies didn't just look like they were losing. They looked like they were breaking.

Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

The battlefield belonged to them, and the sim struggled to pretend otherwise.

Vaeliyan stood perfectly still, arms folded, Bastard and Styll dismantling wave after wave around him, but his visor fed him everything. Every angle, every motion, every twitch of Barcus's fingers, the faint shifts of his weight, the microsecond lags in each movement. His entire field of view was stitched with data, a quiet lattice of outlines, predictions, kill-paths. He didn't even blink.

He didn't so much as tilt his head, but he saw it all.

Barcus hadn't stayed quiet. While Vaeliyan pretended not to notice, Barcus had been carving through enemies with a kind of detached elegance that felt almost ceremonial. His twin daggers wheeled through the air around him like tame predators, slicing throats and piercing skulls without hesitation, catching and rebounding midflight with flawless rhythm. They never touched his hands. They didn't need to. Each cut was precise, minimal, almost too clean. The enemies simply came apart around him like they had chosen to die, dissolving into static before their limbs could even hit the ground.

By the fourth wave, he had changed, but he had not stopped using the daggers.

They spun around him like orbiting stars as he stepped into the enemy ranks, fists and feet joining the dance. One dagger slashed a soldier's tendons as Barcus drove his elbow into another's skull, cracking it like glass. The second dagger flashed past his ribs to open a throat as he pivoted into a rising knee that shattered a jaw. Then a third dagger appeared, spinning through the air as though yanked from nothing. And a fourth. And more. They hovered, spun, darted, striking wherever he willed them.

Vaeliyan's visor tracked them all, the air filling with crimson-tinged motion lines. He frowned slightly beneath his helmet. How many daggers can he control at once? Is that his Soul Skill? The thought stayed silent in his mind as he kept his stance perfectly still.

Barcus moved like a leaf on the wind, flowing through them, striking with bone and steel in perfect tandem. His fists broke ribs as his blades opened arteries, his kicks caved in armor as the daggers flickered past to sever spines. It was Fist of the Legion, sharp and brutal and refined to an artform, overlaid with the impossible grace of a duelist, the two styles braided together so perfectly they felt like one. And now those daggers were multiplying, weaving between his strikes like extensions of his mind rather than his body.

Vaeliyan still didn't move. He let the information pass through his mind without acknowledging it. Cool guys didn't watch. He simply stood there like a statue, pretending his 360-degree field of vision wasn't cataloguing every fragment of Barcus's dismantling storm.

By the eighth wave, something had shifted again. Every impact Barcus made left a faint shimmer behind, a subtle afterimage like heat rippling off stone. He was faster now, and heavier somehow. Each punch hit like a small explosion, shockwaves rippling through entire clusters of enemies and scattering them before they dissolved. The daggers danced around him as if tied to his heartbeat, punctuating every motion with a clean, surgical flash. There were six now. Maybe seven. Vaeliyan wasn't sure anymore if he'd seen them all.

And then Vaeliyan saw it.

Thick purple smoke was leaking from the seams of Barcus's helmet, spilling out in slow, steady ribbons. It rolled from the mouth grille in heavy coils, too dense to rise, tumbling down his chest like poisoned fog. Each breath pushed more of it past the faceplate, and it clung to him before falling to the floor in soft curtains, pooling and spreading around his boots like a living shadow. It caught on his legs when he moved, dragging along like ghostly chains before breaking apart in drifting tendrils.

Barcus caught a soldier by the arm, spun, and flung them into another like they were weightless. Purple fog swirled in his wake as the daggers, so many of them now, slashed past to finish the enemies before they even hit the ground. The mist trailed behind him, stirring with each kick, settling in his footprints like the world was trying to hold on to him.

"Oh," Vaeliyan thought, still perfectly still, watching enemies die all around him. "He's doing something too."

Vaeliyan moved.

One heartbeat he was still, the next he was in the chaos.

Bastard split an enemy in half as Styll launched off his back like a slingshot, claws dragging a soldier's throat open in a clean arc of static. Vaeliyan swept in behind them with a single truncheon gripped low, smashing through a soldier's knee and spinning the momentum into a backhanded skull-crack. The impact folded the target like paper before they dissolved, static crackling in the air where they had been. The shockwave from Bastard's landing rolled past him, scattering debris that wasn't real, only for the sim to stitch it back together instantly. Light flickered off Bastard's black scales as he darted forward again, carving through the incoming tide like a storm given form.

Vaeliyan waded forward, each strike heavy and decisive, the truncheon ringing against helmets and collapsing them inward. He flowed through the ranks, using Bastard's shockwaves as cover and Styll's bounding chaos as distraction, breaking anything still standing. His movements were clean, direct, all force and efficiency. When an enemy lunged for his flank, he pivoted on one heel, slammed the truncheon up beneath their chin, and spun it down again to drive them into the floor. They dissolved before their body hit the ground. Another enemy tried to flank from behind, Vaeliyan spun the truncheon like a baton, cracked their jaw sideways, and booted them into Bastard's lightning arc. They vanished mid-scream.

Then he drew his hand lance.

The first flechette burst punched through a soldier's faceplate before they could even turn. He fired again, a quiet, rapid burst of flechettes slamming through another's chest while clubbing their neighbor's face with the truncheon. Flechette fire and blunt strikes blended together, impact layered into impact in one relentless rhythm. He vaulted over Bastard's shoulder, smashed his truncheon into a skull, evaporating it, and fired past Styll to drop two more in another sharp burst. The shots were soft, more a muted series of thuds than cracks, each burst ripping through targets and leaving nothing but shredded data mist behind. The air shimmered with the faint static haze of respawning enemies even as their predecessors disintegrated.

He holstered the hand lance without looking, shifting without pause.

Both hands took the truncheons.

He went faster.

The dual truncheons blurred, one sweeping low through legs while the other shattered ribcages and helmets. He spun them like weighted extensions of his arms, chaining strikes into rapid arcs that cracked through anything they touched. Every swing left faint afterimages where the sim couldn't quite catch up. Bastard roared lightning beside him, Styll caromed between ankles and throats, and Vaeliyan tore through the centerline like he was cutting the sim itself apart. A soldier tried to retreat; Vaeliyan lunged forward, spun, and smashed both truncheons into their chest so hard the body burst into fragments of static before it even began to fall. Then he whipped them back in opposite arcs, clearing space as Bastard plowed straight through the fractured line and blew it apart.

Then the truncheons locked together with a single sharp snap.

The spike mods rotated, snapping from their recessed housings into straight, needle-like points, and the two truncheons attached end to end. A slender spear now spanned his hands, less than two feet long, needle-thin, the spike tips gleaming under the artificial light. The weapon's balance shifted from heavy clubs to a seamless, whistling line of motion. Vaeliyan's arms flexed once, testing its pull, and then he let it fly, the motion so smooth it was almost silent.

Vaeliyan's grip shifted.

He threw.

The spear blurred through three soldiers in one clean streak, then curved midair like it had changed its mind and ripped back into his hand. He spun it again, hurled it like a silver flash, caught it on the rebound, and launched it again. This time, the air around it distorted, All Around You catching hold mid-flight, bending its path with sudden bursts of pressure. He struck it at impossible angles without touching it, redirecting it with pulses of force from his field. The air rippled around him as he slammed it through torsos, dragged it back, spun and cast it again. Each throw was followed by a whip of motion that tore down anything still standing nearby. The kills came faster now, sharper, cleaner. Styll leapt over his head mid-throw, landing in the wake of his strike to finish what the spear had left breathing. Bastard thundered past on the opposite side, claws scything through half a squad in one continuous blur.

It was like watching Barcus, but close. Tight. Precise. No scattered storm of blades, just one perfect needle carving through everything in reach. Bastard slammed into the flank at the same time, silver eyes flaring, and Vaeliyan wove between his thunderous impacts like the two of them had choreographed this. The ground split and reformed beneath their feet as if the sim itself was scrambling to keep up, fragments of broken tiles vanishing midair as new ones slid seamlessly into place.

And when the next wave began to spawn, Vaeliyan slid the spear halves apart and holstered them at his hips.

He drew Father's Promise.

The hand lance let out a low, controlled burst of flechettes, quiet but absolute, and the front line simply came apart and fell away. A dozen impacts in half a breath, and then nothing remained but drifting static where they had stood. The silence that followed was heavier than the noise had been, as if even the sim didn't want to breathe.

And through it all, Vaeliyan's visor saw everything, including Barcus.

Barcus moved like water given shape, his fists breaking bones while his daggers spiraled around him in orbiting arcs of silver light. But now something else was happening. The thick purple fog that had been leaking from his helmet no longer just pooled around his boots. It surged forward.

Vaeliyan saw it punch its way into a soldier's open mouth, sinking into them like a living thing. The enemy froze mid-strike. Their body trembled. Then their eyes filled with the same swirling purple, clouding over from within as the fog bled out of their tear ducts in thin tendrils.

They inhaled, and exhaled purple.

The fog poured from their mouth in a soft, steady stream as their body straightened, turning with eerie calm toward their former allies. Without a word, they lunged, burying their blade in another soldier's chest. A second soldier staggered, gasped, and the fog rushed into them too, driving down their throat and flooding out their eyes. One by one, more of the enemy ranks began to break, purple fog blooming inside them like rot.

Barcus didn't even look at them. His daggers still wheeled through the air, carving apart the unaffected enemies with perfect precision, but not one blade touched the fog-marked converts. They fought for him now, silent and relentless, purple mist drifting from their mouths as they tore into their own.

Vaeliyan ducked beneath a strike, crushed a soldier's skull with his truncheon, and flicked his gaze back to Barcus. The battlefield around him was folding inward. Not collapsing, joining him.

And the fog kept spreading.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.