Combat Praxis was usually a spectacle of vibrant magic and flashy swordplay. The heirs of great houses loved to show off their bloodline techniques, turning the massive arena floor into a fireworks display of elemental energy.

Today, however, General Kael was in a foul mood, which meant he was stripping away the flash.

"Structure!" Kael roared, pacing the sidelines, his golden lion eyes sweeping critically over the sweating first-years. "Magic is a crutch for the weak-spined! If your foundation crumbles the moment something heavy hits you, then you are just expensive meat waiting to be tenderized in a dungeon!"

He slapped a thick hand against the control panel on the arena wall. In the center of the sand-covered floor, a heavy runic circle glowed to life, barely five feet across.

"The drill is Impact Displacement," Kael barked. "You stand in the circle. A Class-4 Kinetic Golem will attempt to remove you from the circle. You will not destroy the golem. You will not fly away. You will hold the ground."

The first few attempts were embarrassing. Jax, the arrogant Fire-mage, tried to blast the golem backward with a torrent of flames. The golem, heavily warded against heat, walked through the fire and backhanded Jax twenty feet across the arena. Anastasia did better, using ice to slick the ground, but when it finally connected, her physical stance was too high. She buckled, her shield shattering, and she was shoved unceremoniously out of the ring.

Student after student stepped up. They used Skills. They used mana reinforcement. But the golem was a simple, brutal engine of forward momentum. Eventually, the kinetic force overwhelmed their magically enhanced frames and they broke.

"Pathetic," Kael growled, spitting on the sand. "You fight like glass cannons. One solid hit and you shatter."

He scrolled down the class roster on his tablet. His finger paused. He looked up, his eyes narrowing as he scanned the group.

"SA-1. Vane. Front and center."

A ripple of murmurs went through the class. The rat. The scavenger. Vane stepped out of the crowd. He was not wearing training armor, just his slightly-too-large Academy uniform jacket.

He walked to the weapons rack and bypassed the swords, reaching for a standard-issue training spear. It was cheap ash wood with a blunted steel tip. Vane hefted it. It felt awful. Compared to Senna's star-metal, this felt like a dry twig. It was light and poorly balanced.

He walked to the rune circle. His gait was slow and heavy, each step planting flat-footed on the sand. He stepped into the ring and dropped his hips.

He didn't just stand there. He initiated the Spiral Circulation.

Vane forced his mana to vortex through his marrow, into his hands, and finally into the dry wood of the spear. The high-pitched Hum rose from the weapon. To the other students, it looked like he was just holding a stick. To Vane, the spear was now encased in a spinning mana-sleeve that was actively stripping the air away from the shaft.

"Begin," Kael grunted.

The Class-4 golem lumbered forward. It gathered speed, a tonne of dead weight turning into a battering ram. It swung a massive stone fist aimed dead center at Vane's chest.

Vane didn't move. He used the Argent Horizon to anchor himself. As the fist connected, he didn't rely on the wood's strength. He used the Cyclic Resonance of his mana to catch the impact.

CREAAK.

The wood groaned, bending into a terrifying arc. Vane's boots plowed deep furrows in the sand. But the spear didn't snap because the spiraling mana was distributing the kinetic energy along the entire length of the weapon and down into Vane's heels. He was funneling a mountain's worth of force into the sub-flooring.

The golem recoiled, its momentum redirected into the ground. The snickering in the stands died instantly. Vane let out a short, sharp breath, his mana vortex tightening.

Kael's eyebrows shot up. He tapped the console again. "Increase output. Forty percent."

The golem reset, its runes glowing brighter. It charged again, faster, swinging a two-handed overhead smash. Vane knew the ash spear would fail if he tried to catch this head-on.

As the stone fists came down, Vane shifted. He executed the Lunar Deflection.

He rotated the spear in a high-speed figure-eight. The Frictionless Sleeve made the surface of the wooden shaft "slippery" in a way that defied nature. The stone fists didn't smash the wood; they skidded off the rotating mana-envelope.

But the weight was still too much. The wood began to splinter under the sheer proximity of the force. Vane reached into the cold pit in his chest.

'Don't break.'

He pumped a tiny, concentrated pulse of Silver Mana into the point of impact.

Authority: Silver Fang (Partial Coating).

For a fraction of a second, the wood flashed with a dull, matte silver sheen. The property of the spear changed. It was no longer a defensive tool; it was the Absolute Edge.

CRUNCH.

The golem's stone fists hit the silver-coated wood. The Silver Fang didn't use force to stop the golem. It imposed a reality where the stone wrists were already severed. The stone crumbled on contact, the structural integrity of the golem's arms vanishing as the Silver Mana ignored their durability as much as possible.

The massive fists slid harmlessly off the silver-coated shaft, deflected into the sand with a heavy thud.

Vane gasped, his vision graying out at the edges. The stamina drain of the Authority hit him like a physical hammer. The Silver Mana vanished, leaving the wood looking mundane again.

But he held the stance. He was still in the circle. The golem stumbled back, missing a chunk of its stone wrist.

"Enough," Kael barked. The golem powered down.

The silence in the arena was absolute. They had seen the wood bend. They had seen him sweat. But they hadn't seen the Silver Mana—it was too fast. They just saw a Rank 3 Commoner with trash-tier gear stop a charging siege engine.

Vane stood up straight, using the spear to steady his trembling legs. Kael walked across the sand, stopping a few feet from him. The massive lion-man looked at the deep furrows in the sand, then at the bent spear, and finally at the gouge in the golem's wrist.

He did not offer praise.

"You finally stopped fighting like a man begging to survive," Kael rumbled. He looked Vane dead in the eye. "Now you are fighting like something that expects the world to move first."

Kael turned his back. "Next victim! Step up!"

Vane slowly walked out of the circle, dragging the borrowed spear. He felt the eyes of the entire class on his back. They weren't looking at a rat anymore. They were looking at a problem they didn't know how to solve.

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