Ten minutes passed exactly.

Jelo stood up from the bench at the edge of the training grounds, rolled his shoulder once, and looked across the field.

Atlas was still sitting. Leaning back on both hands, legs stretched out, watching the sky with the particular relaxed expression of someone who had just been through something and was taking the recovery seriously.

Mira had her blades sheathed. Standing still. Eyes closed. Breathing even.

“You’re actually going,” Atlas said. Not a question.

“Yeah.”

“Right now.”

“Right now.”

Atlas looked at him for a moment. Then nodded slowly.

“Ken’s probably at the east block,” he said. “That’s where he trains alone.”

Jelo turned and walked.

⸻

The east block was quieter than the main grounds.

Less traffic. Less noise. The kind of space that attracted fighters who didn’t want an audience — who trained for understanding rather than performance. The morning light hit it at a different angle here, longer shadows across the ground, the air still carrying the cool edge that the main grounds had already lost.

Ken was there.

Standing in the center of the space, arms loose at his sides, shadow coat partially active — not fully deployed, just present across his shoulders and upper arms. He was running through something slow and deliberate. Not drills exactly. More like calibration. Reading how the shadow responded to different levels of intent, different degrees of activation.

He noticed Jelo before Jelo spoke.

Turned unhurriedly.

“Jelo.”

“Ken.”

A pause.

Ken looked him over once — not sizing him up aggressively, just reading. His eyes were calm and attentive in the way they always were.

“You fought Mira and Atlas this morning,” he said.

“Yeah.”

“Both at once?”

“Yeah.”

Ken was quiet for a moment.

Then — “How did that go?”

Jelo looked at him evenly.

“I won.”

Another pause. Shorter.

“And now you’re here,” Ken said.

“And now I’m here.”

Ken looked at the space around them briefly. The open ground. The long shadows. The quiet. Then back at Jelo.

“You want a fight.”

“I want to know where I stand before the tournament,” Jelo said. “You’re the right person to find that out against.”

Ken considered that.

Not long.

“Alright,” he said.

He let the shadow coat dissolve fully — the darkness receding from his shoulders and arms until it was gone. Then he looked at Jelo.

“Where?”

“Main training grounds,” Jelo said. “Where I fought them this morning.”

Ken nodded once.

No further questions.

He fell into step beside Jelo and they walked back together through the corridor between blocks — two fighters moving through the quiet of the early morning without hurrying, without talking, the understanding of what was about to happen sitting between them without needing to be stated again.

⸻

Atlas saw them coming from across the field.

He was still on the bench — or had been. He sat up straighter when he recognized Ken walking beside Jelo, his expression shifting from relaxed to interested in the space of one second.

“Oh,” he said.

Mira opened her eyes.

She looked at Ken. Then at Jelo. Then at the field between them — the broken terrain, the scorch marks, the evidence of the morning’s earlier work.

“Here?” she asked.

“Here,” Jelo said.

Atlas stood up fully. The tiredness in his posture from earlier had mostly gone — replaced by the particular attentiveness he got when something worth watching was about to happen. He moved back toward the edge of the field without being asked, giving them room.

Mira stepped back alongside him.

Neither of them spoke.

⸻

Ken looked at the field.

The raised earth sections Atlas had built and Jelo’s surge had partially collapsed. The scorch lines across the ground. The uneven terrain left over from the exchange.

“You did that?” he asked.

“The surge,” Jelo said. “Atlas built the terrain.”

Ken looked at the largest scorch mark — the one where the earth had collapsed entirely under the directed output.

“I saw the fight against Joan,” he said quietly. “I wondered what it felt like from the other side.”

“You’re about to find out,” Jelo said.

Ken looked at him.

Something in his expression shifted — not concern, not hesitation. Focus sharpening to a finer point.

“Not if I don’t let you use it,” he said.

He stepped forward onto the field.

Jelo stepped forward to meet him.

⸻

The shadow coat rose fully.

It came up across Ken’s frame completely — covering his shoulders, his arms, his chest, the darkness settling against him like a second layer of everything. Dense and structured. More present than Jelo had seen it in the tournament fight. He was starting at a higher output than he had against Zarek.

He was taking this seriously from the first second.

Good.

Jelo’s enhanced vision read the signature — deep, layered, the shadow essence distributed evenly across Ken’s whole frame. Not concentrated anywhere specifically. Covering everything at moderate density rather than hardening one section at maximum.

Conserving.

Keeping options open.

Smart opening.

⸻

No signal.

Ken moved.

The shadow extended from his right arm in a fast sweeping projection — wide and flat, aimed at Jelo’s leading side. Not a committed strike. A test. Reading reaction speed before committing to anything heavier.

Jelo sidestepped — Wing Burst, minimal range — and the projection passed him.

Ken retracted it instantly and came forward with the coat hardened along his forearm — a direct strike, the shadow adding density to the impact.

Jelo activated Skilled Guard and caught it.

The force drove through the hardened surface. Real weight. More than the tournament fight had suggested from a distance.

He held his ground.

One foot sliding back half a step before the guard absorbed the remainder.

He reset.

Ken was already reading his response — cataloguing what he’d just learned.

⸻

“You’re heavier than you look,” Jelo said.

Ken’s expression didn’t change exactly. But something acknowledged it.

“The coat multiplies impact,” he said. “The denser it is, the more it adds.”

“How dense can you make it?”

“Depends on how much I’m willing to spend.”

Jelo nodded once.

Then moved.

Dragon Claw — fast, aimed at Ken’s leading shoulder. The energy projection extended outward clean and sharp.

Ken raised a shadow wall — flat, thick, materializing between them in under a second. The Dragon Claw struck it and the wall absorbed the impact — fractured slightly at the surface but held. Ken dissolved it before it could be struck again and used the moment of Jelo’s extended arm to close distance.

Both coat-hardened strikes came together — one high, one low, designed to split Jelo’s guard across two lines.

He took the high strike on Skilled Guard.

The low one caught him across the ribs.

He felt it.

Stepped back. Reset. Breathed once.

“Good,” he said quietly.

Ken looked at him.

“You’re not bothered.”

“Getting hit teaches me something,” Jelo said. “I’d rather know than not know.”

Ken was quiet for a moment.

“You think the same way in a real fight?”

“I try to.”

From the edge of the field Atlas let out a low breath.

“He took that clean,” he murmured.

Mira said nothing. Her eyes stayed on Jelo’s ribs — checking. Then moved back to Ken.

⸻

They went again.

Jelo changed his approach — stopped going for direct Dragon Claw and started using Wing Burst to break Ken’s positioning instead. Short bursts, irregular timing, forcing Ken to keep adjusting the coat’s distribution rather than letting it settle into one optimized configuration.

Ken adapted.

He stopped committing the coat to a single focus and started keeping it distributed — less dense overall but covering more surface. Harder to find a gap in. The trade-off was that individual strikes carried less added weight.

Jelo felt the difference immediately.

The next strike that landed — caught on Skilled Guard — was noticeably lighter than the earlier ones.

He pressed.

Dragon Claw twice in quick succession — rapid, aimed at the same section of Ken’s guard to force the coat to absorb repeatedly in one spot.

The coat held.

But it flickered on the second hit.

Ken stepped back.

First time he’d given ground voluntarily.

Jelo filed it.

⸻

They broke apart naturally.

Both breathing harder. The exchange had been longer than either of them had shown on the outside.

Ken looked across the space between them.

“That surge you used against Joan,” he said. “You’re not using it.”

“Not yet.”

“Why?”

Jelo looked at him evenly.

“Because I don’t need it yet,” he said. “And I want to know what you look like before I use it.”

Ken held his gaze for a moment.

Then nodded once.

“Fair.”

He reset his stance. Shadow coat settling back into full distribution.

“Then let’s keep going,” he said.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep