Chapter 21
“Again.” Sebastian demanded as he caught me in an aggressive reversal for the fourth time this afternoon. I lifted myself to my feet on tired muscles, and I gripped my baton firmly while in a fighting stance. “Stop letting up so soon. Attack me as if you’re legitimately trying to kill me.”
“Sir, yes sir.” I said on instinct, while I once again looked for some hint of a flaw in his guard. His stance looked completely unaggressive—maybe even casual. He stood solidly upright, his fighting staff by his side, held loosely in his hand.
His unprepared exterior was a farce, and I’d seen him fight enough times now to know this. This seemingly stiff stance allowed him to pivot and move in any direction with momentum and power at a moment’s notice, and it used the most abrupt direction changes I’d ever tried to follow.
Though he had no issue following me. At least once a week, sometimes more, he’d pull me aside for one-on-one training, and the extra attention was a combination of helpful, confusing, and physically brutal.
But today, he seemed to be taking a lifetime of frustration out on my face, and I did not appreciate it.
I readied my staff, and I charged forward, knowing this dance wouldn’t begin until I asked for his hand.
He blocked, I countered, striking again on the same spot, hoping to catch him out as he moved to block what would otherwise be a different and more predictable move, Sebastian’s instincts and reflexes were lightning embodied, and a single flick of his wrist was enough to deflect me again.
We clashed our soft-energy training weapons over and over and over.
I dodged his swipe, only to feel my toe unexpectedly hit the edge of the mat, as he’d backed me all the way into a corner without me realizing it.
I lost my footing and fell backwards, landing on my ass in the artificial grass.
“Am I too much for you, Snow?” He looked down on me, unusually harsh and condescending after being so friendly just the other day. He was always a difficult opponent, but there was a vague tinge of restrained anger in his blows that was hard to ignore.
“No, sir. I want to keep training with you, sir.” I got to my feet and bowed slightly, hoping I wasn’t about to lose all of the respect I’d thought I’d earned. Assuming the idea that I’d earned any at all wasn’t a delusion.
He stared me down for several seconds, before he deactivated his training baton, retracting the weapon back into its sphere, and turned to the other mats.
“4212, 3765, and 2167.” He called out the numbers, and each man associated with those ranks paused their matches to give Sebastian their full attention.
Their actual names were Rashid, Andrew, and Dmitri, respectively, but it was safe to assume that our names didn’t mean much to him.
He never used my number when calling on me though.
I sometimes wondered if he even knew my ranking.
Or if he’d even noticed how much I’d improved my rank after the last evaluation.
Though it probably didn’t matter whether I was ranked 1001 or ranked 4500 if I hadn’t made it into a Shinka yet.
At this point, my baby steps only impressed myself.
The three men approached Sebastian and stood rigidly at attention. Our leader looked at them, then back at me. He held my gaze while he spoke to the men in front of him.
“The three of you versus Snow. I want to see how well you can act as a group in a combat situation,” he tipped his chin to me, “and I want to see how well you can handle juggling multiple opponents at once.”
Three on one though? Shit, I must have really pissed him off. “W-what, but I—”
“Both skillsets are integral to success on the battlefield. All weapons are permitted.” He interrupted me before I could protest. If I was struggling to take down him alone, what made him think fighting off three opponents who were all physically stronger than me was reasonable?
Sebastian stepped off the mat, while the three other men took his place. None of them looked as alarmed as I was by the prospect.
Of course they weren’t. What did three men who towered over me in height and musculature have to worry about when standing across from a little girl wearing a hologram?
“The victor will be allotted an extra ration at all meals for the rest of the week.” Sebastian added. Because beating me really needed additional incentives.
I could barely stomach the rations they already gave me, but my opponents all looked disturbingly motivated.
Knowing all three of them would now be out for blood meant I was going to be fighting for my life here.
Was making me the one against a group supposed to be a reward for my battle prowess or a punishment for my inferiority? It was impossible to say.
I swallowed thickly, and I took on the most guarded stance I knew how to hold, choosing my battle staff from the range of weapons that the orb could transform into.
Range was my best weapon in a case like this.
Rashid, aka 3765, chose a sword, Andrew, 4212, transformed his orb into a baton like mine, and Dmitri, 2167, split his training orb into a pair of short range daggers.
I’d not fought enough with any of them to know what to expect, and it was going to be a baptism by fire today.
“You may begin.” Sebastian said, punctuated by the way my heart picked up a new and terrified beat.
I had about ten feet between myself and three men, and I needed to memorize as much about them as I could within the time it took for them to cross that amount of space. Three seconds to find a weakness.
I mentally took note of as many small idiosyncrasies as I could.
Rashid on the left, who used a basic sword, had a barely there limp, discernible only by the way he angled his foot when he walked to alleviate a pressure point that wouldn’t bother an uninjured person.
It was more likely an old injury than a current one, with how adeptly he navigated the slight alteration to his step.
On the right, Andrew held his training staff with an unusual overhand grip.
The bruising that followed his entire forearm was definitely recent, and he’d likely chosen a staff hoping he could compensate for his injury using a two handed weapon, primarily falling back on the strength of his fully functioning arm.
And Dmitri in the middle, wielding double daggers, showed no signs of obvious weakness.
No, he twirled the daggers in his hands adeptly, and the light weight of his small blades meant he covered distance faster than the rest of them.
I was clashing and deflecting his barrage of blade strikes a full second and a half before I had to engage the other two.
I leveraged the length of my baton to knock away his daggers, combining footwork and rapid twirling of my staff to create a barrier he couldn’t easily cross.
He was the soldier with the most advanced ranking, and it showed in his footwork.
His hits were hard and constantly experimental, keeping me heavily on my toes to avoid contact.
I let him push me back, retreating with each clash to make distance from the other men who hesitated to get in his way, while also preventing them from circling behind me. The more sweeping my movements, the more difficult it would be for them to find an opening amidst our battle.
Down, left, jump—having two weapons, he was a lot to manage all his own, but my superior leverage with my much larger staff gave me the power I needed to deflect dramatically and with force.
I knocked away his blades, then ducked, and blocked as the other two came into play, and a single sword came down on me from the left.
It was by luck alone that I caught wind of the staff sweeping towards my legs while still mid-parry, and I was able to use that sword as a fulcrum to roll myself back and away from the third man’s striking range.
I took a single count to breathe, before Dmitri had retrieved his daggers, and we were all back in the fray.
The dance was frantic and desperate and overwhelming, and I could barely afford to blink in between ducks and parries and deflections.
I was completely on the defensive, trying so hard to figure out their rhythms before any one of them could land a finishing blow, but simply dodging and blocking wasn’t a sustainable strategy.
I needed to eliminate one of them or at least get them separated.
I blocked another smashing blow from the swordsman, only to have the wind knocked out of me by a baton, and get caught in a headlock by the dual wielder with daggers.
I thought fast, slamming my elbow backwards into Dmitri’s ribs before he could perform the mock kill strike with a blade in my chest, then I stomped on his foot, driving my heel into his dorsum to assure maximum pain.
Dimitri grunted and buckled, the damage enough to break his hold on me, then I ducked under a baton that instead went careening directly into his nose.
An explosion of blood trailed his descent, as he was floored by his own teammate, and I took this brief moment of shock and guilt to thrust the end of my training staff into Andrew’s injured hand.
He buckled immediately, losing his grip on his baton, and stumbling back in pain.
With his weapon on the floor, and no good way to guard against me, I thrust my staff at him again, this time slamming the end of my rod into his solar plexus, once, twice, then three hard and rapid hits.
His eyes bugged before he dropped to the mat, but I didn’t have time to appreciate it before I was ducking another swing of a sword.
Two of the three were down for the count, Dmitri clutching his bloody nose, and Andrew a crumbled and unconscious mess. With only the swordsman left, I now had the advantage of range on my side. I’d take absolutely any hope at this point.