Yani crosses toward a tall, broad-shouldered guy whose hair looks like it’s been styled by a black hole. Larson. The kind of student who walks like he already has a statue built in his honor. He grips her hand with practiced charm, a shark in uniform. Yani just smiles pleasantly, like she’s debating whether to suplex him or lecture him on etiquette.

  By now, the rest of the initiates have taken notice. Conversations drop off. Duels are abandoned. Even the Sergeant—the human equivalent of a bulldozer with opinions—wanders over to the sidelines, lighting a cigarette and grinning like someone just handed him a front-row ticket to a street fight.

  “What’s the deal with him?” Aster asks, eyes narrowing.

  “Larson,” Lena says. “Definitely this year’s top twenty. Lightning typing. Big ego. Bigger weapon collection. But Yani’s ranked higher.”

  Aster blinks. “She’s ranked higher than him?”

  Lena grins. “Just watch.”

  Larson stands tall across from her, the air around him already thick with static. Every flicker of movement across his body leaves ghost trails of crackling electricity. It isn’t posturing; it’s pressure—raw, cultivated, and deadly.

  Then twin axes suddenly flare into his hands.

  Most definitely above F grade, twin-bladed, inscribed with scriptwork so tight it looks like aether lace. They crackle with pent-up aggression, lightning dancing across the hafts, humming with pressure. The ground beneath him hisses from the charge.

  Yani just smiles, ties her braids back, and lets her body dissolve into a silhouette of shifting light—before exploding outward into her spirit Artefact.

  The Walking Fortress.

  The ground groans beneath the sudden weight of it. Towering four meters tall, its jagged, gorilla-like form shimmers with patches of flickering elemental hues. Rock shoulders. Fire vents. Water channels. Wind-laced joints. And somewhere, deep inside that moving mountain, is the same soft-spoken girl who once laughed at Aster because he didn’t understand reincarnation.

  "Spirit typing’s weak, huh?" Lena mutters, clearly enjoying the look on Aster’s face.

  Aster isn’t sure what he expected when Yani stepped into the dueling circle—but it sure as hell isn’t the petite girl he casually spoke to about dorm food turning into a walking natural disaster.

  Across the arena, Larson adjusts his grip on his axes. He has the kind of face that says “I practice smiling in mirrors but it never looks right,” and the way he walks is pure confidence—loose, casual, like a man who knows the weight of his own reputation. But even he seems nervous across from the walking fortress of hell.

  The Sergeant drops the flag.

  And things become biblical.

  Larson is first. His thunder axes shoot forward with speed that shouldn’t belong to something so heavy, lightning arcing off the blades like they’re desperate to carve through stone. He moves like water running downhill—fluid, inevitable, gaining speed with every step. Each swing sends bolts through the earth, detonating the ground in staggered blasts. Yani raises an arm and catches the first strike on her forearm. Sparks spray. The second slams into her hip—but her armor absorbs it, discharging the lightning into embedded blue runes that ground the charge with a hiss.

  Larson doesn’t pause. He spins low, slicing at her knee joints, then vaults into a double overhead cross-slash that claps thunder into the clouds themselves. The impact carves a trench in the ground behind Yani—but she doesn’t move.

  She doesn’t have to.

  Her arms drop to her sides, and the Fortress begins to march.

  Each footstep is a tectonic insult. The earth shivers. Pillars fracture. Students instinctively step back.

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  Larson launches himself into a reverse corkscrew—lightning trailing like twin comet tails—and comes down with a howl. But Yani leans in, takes the blow on her shoulder, and twists. Her gauntlet catches Larson mid-air, and before he can react, she hurls him across the battlefield like a human-shaped javelin. He hits the stone wall with a thunderous crunch, rebounds mid-spin, and lands, sliding back with twin blades dragging sparks.

  The crowd roars. Even the Sergeant tilts his head in appreciation.

  Then the real fight begins.

  Larson surges forward, his twin axes splitting into mirrored copies—four, now six, now eight illusions. A ring of thunder blooms around him as he shoots through the air, his real body lost among flickering phantoms. Yani doesn’t flinch. The Fortress raises both arms and slams them together with a seismic boom, releasing a ring of compressed wind that blasts the illusions apart like dandelion seeds.

  The real Larson dives in beneath it.

  His axes strike the Fortress’ ribs in a blur of chained blows—each one cutting deeper, faster, smarter. His form is perfect. Lightning enhances every movement, every parry and riposte. He is a cultivator born of the storm, honed through scripture and tempered by combat. His Will burns through the arena like a cyclone.

  But the Fortress doesn’t bend. It doesn’t break.

  Yani pivots—faster than something that size should ever move—and backhands him with a flaming fist that explodes on impact. Larson’s body cartwheels mid-air, flames licking across his skin before his Aether shield douses them. He lands hard, axes raised, breath ragged.

  Larson shouts, his aura pulsing to a climax. The sky answers. A pillar of lightning spears down into his blades, overcharging them until they scream. He vanishes in a burst of movement, faster than sound. Eight strikes land in the blink of an eye—head, chest, knee, elbow, shoulder, back, thigh, neck. Every joint targeted.

  The Fortress crumbles.

  Stone shatters. Plates fly. A section of the armor peels away in a spray of dust and debris. She staggers—one knee buckling, one leg refusing to answer. For half a heartbeat, Larson seems to have her. The storm has won.

  Then she moves.

  Yani crouches low, the remaining armor folding inward, veins of molten Aether flaring through the cracks as it reforms around her into the equivalent of the Indiana Jones boulder scene.

  She launches forward like a kinetic missile made of goddamn geological hate.

  The air cracks. The ground convulses. She becomes pure kinetic intent—stone compressed into motion, the geological embodiment of “no, you don’t.”

  Larson’s grin evaporates. He barely gets his axes up, crossing them before his chest. His Aether shield blooms like a barrier of glass lightning—enough to take the hit, but not enough to make him feel safe about it. The impact sends a concussive tremor through the arena floor, flinging chunks of rubble like shrapnel.

  They collide again. And again.

  Larson tries countering, redirecting, sliding sideways with flickering afterimages, his shield fracturing line by line. Every blow from Yani feels like tectonic vengeance made personal—measured, precise, inevitable. His lightning cracks; her charge answers. Each dodge turns into a stumble, each block leaves a scar of static across his barrier.

  Then, just before another dodge, he slips.

  Just a heel skimming loose gravel. Just enough. He brings his shield up out of instinct, and that’s when Yani changes the rules.

  Aether surges through her body in spirals. Wheels of fire spin to life along her arms and legs, igniting like overclocked engines. The air bends around her, pressure howling. She isn’t chasing him anymore—she is coming down at him like a meteor, gravity weaponized.

  Aster feels it before it hits.

  That stomach-drop of pure inevitability.

  Yani hits him like a runaway train.

  The explosion that follows doesn’t sound real. It’s too big. Too final. Like God punching a thundercloud. Aster flinches as the blast slams into the arena barriers—massive runes flickering to life to contain the devastation. The shockwave sends loose papers, bags, and half a lunchbox sailing into the upper seats. Fire curls into lightning which dances into vapor. The arena dims from the sheer energy release.

  Dust. Smoke. Static in the air.

  Larson? Gone.

  Except—not gone.

  There he is. Standing beside the Sergeant, intact.

  Rewound.

  He stands still, staring ahead. Breathing shallow. Face pale. The exact expression Aster remembers having the first time he got his atoms reassembled from wall-splatter.

  Aster exhales slowly. “That’s the face of a man who’s seen the light and realized it had a backlog of souls to process.”

  The Sergeant claps him on the back. “That, Initiates, is what being part of the top twenty looks like. You all saw it. Fury. Technique. Courage bordering on suicide. You want to be cultivators? You want to survive? Then you better be ready to give that much.”

  Aster looks back at Larson.

  Larson meets his gaze.

  And in that one, dazed, haunted stare is a shared understanding.

  Brothers.

  Not in blood. Not in arms.

  Brothers in Being Exploded So Hard You Came Back Wrong.

  Yani waves at the crowd. Some students cheer. Some sit in stunned silence. Aster just leans back, heart still hammering.

  Spirit typing, huh?

  “Okay,” he mutters. “I might’ve been a dumbass.”

  "Yup," Lena says sweetly. "But at least now you’re an informed dumbass."

  Aster can live with that. Probably. Assuming no one aims a fortress at his head anytime soon.