Chapter 196: Jelo vs Ken

Tongen stared at Mira, disappointment flickering across his face. Losing her first fight hadn’t shocked him — but it still bothered him. Her ability had potential, real potential, but right now it was underwhelming in a way that went beyond the result itself. Two clones at most, and even that drained her visibly by the end. She’d been working hard, he knew that, but hard work without understanding was just effort pointed in the wrong direction. If she couldn’t push past that limit — couldn’t find a way to hold the clones longer, use them smarter, stop bleeding focus every time the fight got physical — she’d always fall short when it counted. Not because she lacked the ability. Because she hadn’t found the edges of it yet.

He exhaled slowly, the sound quiet enough that no one near him would have caught it.

She doesn’t understand her own power yet.

That meant one thing. He’d have to focus on her personally for a while — not just run her through the standard training and hope she figured it out. She needed specific attention. He’d think about how to approach it later. Right now there were two more fights to get through.

His gaze shifted across the space to Sherlock.

Sherlock met it instantly, that sly smile forming on his face before Tongen had even fully looked at him, like he’d been waiting for the moment. He gave a quick, easy wink — unhurried, unbothered, completely pleased with himself.

Tongen’s expression hardened.

Was he serious about that nonsense? The gown. The actual gown he’d shown up in like he was conducting a lecture in some university hall rather than running a training exercise. The thought alone irritated him in a way that had nothing to do with logic and everything to do with principle. It was the casualness of it. The deliberate, theatrical ease of it. Like Sherlock was reminding him, without saying a word, that he didn’t need to try particularly hard. Tongen filed that away and said nothing, which was the most dangerous thing he knew how to do.

Jelo stood nearby, completely unfazed by all of it. His face was blank, almost detached, the expression of someone whose attention had already moved past the last fight and wasn’t spending any energy on things that didn’t require it. He had won his fight. That was the fact that mattered. Everything else happening around him — Mira’s result, the exchange of looks between the two instructors, the low murmur moving through the room — none of it seemed to register as worth engaging with. He just stood there, still and quiet, already somewhere else in his head.

Atlas, on the other hand, kept glancing at Mira. There was worry in his eyes that he wasn’t quite managing to conceal, the kind that sits in the space between wanting to say something and knowing this isn’t the moment for it. He clenched his fist once at his side — a small, almost involuntary movement — then let it go, fingers spreading back out slowly. There was nothing he could do right now. The fight was over. The result was what it was. He looked at her one more time, then made himself look away.

Mira stood straight. Whatever she was feeling, she wasn’t letting it show in her posture.

Sherlock stepped forward, clapping his hands once, the sound sharp and clean in the open space, enough to pull the room’s attention back to the front without him having to raise his voice.

“Alright,” he said, voice carrying easily across the venue. “Next fight.” He let the pause sit for exactly a beat — the particular kind of pause that belongs to someone who already knows the reaction what he’s about to say is going to get. “Jelo and — Ken.”

Jelo’s eyes shifted. Just slightly, just enough — a fractional change in focus, like something that had been sitting dormant had just registered a signal it recognized. He’d wanted this matchup for a long time. The thought had lived in the back of his mind since well before today, formless at first, then gradually more specific as the weeks had passed and their training sessions had layered detail onto what he understood of Ken’s capabilities. He knew Ken. Or he knew enough of him to know that this would not be simple. What he hadn’t anticipated was how soon it would come. He’d assumed there would be more distance between now and this moment. More time to sit with it.

There wasn’t.

Ken stepped forward without hesitation, calm but focused in the particular way that belonged to him — not the blankness of someone who wasn’t thinking, but the steadiness of someone who’d already done most of their thinking before the moment arrived. He moved to the center of the space and stopped, posture easy, weight balanced.

Jelo moved to meet him.

They stopped a few meters apart, facing each other, and for a moment neither of them spoke or moved. The air between them felt different to the air that had filled the room during the first fight — heavier somehow, more loaded, the particular quality of stillness that settles between two people who know each other well enough that the usual process of reading a stranger doesn’t apply. They weren’t figuring each other out. They were deciding how to begin.

Behind them, Sherlock turned his head toward Tongen one more time, that same composed, confident smile still sitting on his face — the unhurried expression of someone who trusted entirely in what was about to happen. Like he’d already seen the shape of it before it started.

Tongen didn’t return the look.

Sherlock raised his hand.

“Begin.”

The moment his hand dropped —

Jelo vanished.

A sharp burst of force cracked the ground where he’d been standing, a sudden explosive compression that split the floor and sent dust kicking outward in every direction. In the same instant he reappeared directly in front of Ken, the distance between them gone, his fist already mid-swing and driving hard toward the center of Ken’s chest — a strike built for impact, the kind meant to end the read-and-respond phase before it could start.

But Ken didn’t flinch.

Just before the fist landed —

He tilted.

A single, minimal shift of his body — not backward, not sideways, just slightly off the line, a lean so precise it looked almost lazy — and Jelo’s punch grazed past him, the force of it cutting through empty air where Ken’s chest had been a fraction of a second before.

A split second later, Ken countered.

His elbow came around with sharp, controlled precision, driving in toward Jelo’s ribs at an angle that opened up the moment Jelo’s swing pulled him fractionally forward. The timing was exact. Not a reaction — a read. He’d seen the strike coming and had already decided what he was going to do about it before it arrived.

The fight had already escalated.

And this time — neither of them intended to hold back.

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