Just before they were about to begin, a voice echoed from above. "Wait, not now."
Dictor vaulted effortlessly over the iron railing of the balcony, dropping down to the floor with a light thud. He jogged over to Agastya. "I think you should take off your coat, Baker. It's brand new. It would be a shame to ruin your new coat with your blood."
Agastya nodded. He calmly unbuttoned the dark coat, slipped it off his shoulders, and handed it over. Dictor took it, offering a final, entirely unhelpful wink before retreating to watch as a spectator.
Standing in his crisp white shirt, Agastya rolled up his sleeves, exposing his lean, corded forearms. He reached up and slowly cracked his neck; a sharp, popping sound echoed in the massive hall.
He widened his stance, dropping his centre of gravity, and brought his hands up into a flawless, deeply unorthodox martial arts guard. His weight was perfectly distributed, his hands open and relaxed, ready to parry rather than brawl.
Opposite him, Kael methodically unclasped the heavy bronze artifact from his wrist and set it on the floor. He was a lean man, possessing a firm, tightly wound build. With his black-rimmed spectacles, he looked handsome and scholarly, like a man made of deep tactical theory rather than brute violence.
Kael slowly reached up and took off his spectacles. Without them, his dark eyes turned terrifyingly sharp. He looked at Agastya, his gaze immediately catching the subtle perfection of the baker's footwork.
"Shall we begin?" Kael asked quietly. "I see you know a few martial arts, judging by your position."
Agastya didn’t say anything. For now, his only job was to defend. In a life-or-death situation, absolute focus mattered over talking. Banter was a luxury reserved for the person who already knew they could kick your head off in a single move. And right now, despite his newly discovered athletic body, Agastya knew that if he couldn't dodge in time, the man standing across from him was going to beat him to a bloody pulp.
Up on the balcony, Captain Alice Regina raised her hand again. "Begin."
Agastya didn't wait to be attacked. He immediately burst forward, relying on the explosive strength of the baker's legs. One step. Two steps. Three. Four.
Just as Agastya moved into his fifth step, sprinting toward Kael, the world seemed to glitch violently.
Kael wasn't standing meters away anymore. He was already there.
A fist materialised directly in front of Agastya's face. The strike was so impossibly fast that the very air warped and bent around Kael's knuckles, creating a low, whistling shriek of displaced atmospheric pressure.
Agastya's eyes widened to the size of saucers. ‘What the fuck!’
He hadn't even seen the man's legs move. It defied every law of physics and human biology he had ever known. His conscious mind had absolutely no time to process the threat. It was only his hyper-honed, peak assassin instinct that saved his life.
A fraction of a millisecond before the knuckles shattered his skull, Agastya's body forcefully contorted. He wrenched his neck violently to the side, throwing his balance entirely off to evade the direct hit.
The fist blurred past him, missing bone by a millimetre. But the sheer kinetic force radiating from Kael's strike acted like a physical blade. A thin, stinging cut appeared high on Agastya's cheekbone, split open merely by the pressurised air of the near-miss.
Agastya stumbled back, regaining his footing as a small bead of red, warm blood slowly trickled down his cheek. He stared at Kael, his heart hammering against his ribs in genuine, unadulterated shock.
‘What the hell was that?’ he asked himself, the cold reality of the Vanguard finally sinking in. ‘ He didn't even use magic.’
"You dodged that!" Kael exclaimed, glancing over his shoulder. His scholarly demeanour was entirely gone, replaced by a sharp, predatory thrill. "I intended to finish this in a single move. Let's see how long your luck holds."
Kael blurred forward again.
Agastya dashed backwards, his deeply ingrained assassin's instincts taking over. ‘ If you insist on forcing my hand, so be it,’ he thought coldly. He planted his feet, refusing to retreat any further.
They clashed in the dead centre of the training field. Relying on his blinding speed, Kael lunged in and threw another devastating straight right.
Reading the subtle, telegraphic shift in Kael's shoulder, Agastya didn't dodge. "The same trick won't work twice," he muttered, reaching out to catch the Vanguard operative’s fist flush in his palm. The kinetic impact stung his newly forged muscles, but his grip held firm.
Kael's eyes narrowed in genuine surprise, but his momentum seamlessly pivoted. "A good attacker always has a backup attacks," he said, instantly throwing a vicious left hook.
"A good defender anticipates it," Agastya replied evenly, bringing his free hand up to block the second strike before it could connect.
"I said attacks , rookie. Plural." Using Agastya’s own defensive grip for leverage, Kael violently twisted his torso. He launched his body upward, driving a brutal kick directly toward Agastya’s exposed chest.
With only a millisecond to react, Agastya abandoned his grip and threw his weight backwards, rapidly crossing both forearms over his sternum to absorb the heavy blow.
The impact felt like being rammed by a runaway carriage.
‘Argggh’, Agastya grunted in pain as he was launched through the air. He hit the floor hard, skidding backwards before violently digging his boots and hands into the synthetic floor to arrest his momentum. He came to a halt on all fours, his breath hitching.
Across the ground, Kael landed smoothly, lightly dropping one hand to the floor to stabilise his flawless stance.
They locked eyes across the floor, the tense silence of the arena heavy enough to cut with a knife.
Kael didn't rush in this time. Instead, he slowly lowered his hips, dropping his centre of gravity. His hands began to weave through the air in slow, mesmerising, circular patterns. The movement was entirely jointless and fluid. As his speed deceptively increased, the air pressure around his palms visibly warped and distorted, creating a faint, localised hiss.
Up on the observation balcony, the orange-haired woman gripped the iron railing, her eyes widening. "What is he doing? Captain, he can’t use that against a civilian! It'll crush him."
Alice didn't blink; her silver eyes locked entirely on the baker. "After watching him perfectly absorb a Kael strike, do you honestly still believe he is just a random civilian? Look at his footwork. Kael is doing this on purpose. You know how clinical he is; he is forcefully testing the limits of our new asset."
The rest of the team watched in stunted silence. The rookie had blocked, parried, and absorbed hits that would have shattered a normal man's sternum. He was fighting with the ingrained, absolute precision of a veteran killer.
Down on the floor, Agastya recognised Kael's shifting stance immediately. ‘ Is he actually trying to kill me?’ he murmured internally.
Even in the mortal world, untouched by Aether or Yantras, Agastya knew that the absolute zenith of physical martial arts could mimic the supernatural. This was a wind-serpentine technique.
By moving with the unnatural, jointless flexibility of a snake, a master could manipulate the very air currents to mask their strikes. It essentially bites their opponent with pressurised wind before the physical fist even connects.
Agastya’s sharp blue eyes tracked Kael's blurring hands. ‘ They suspect I'm hiding something,’ he concluded coldly. ‘ They are trying to force my hand to see exactly what I am capable of.’
He let out a slow, measured breath. ‘ Fine. If you want to see a monster, I will give you one.’
To Agastya, dealing with apex martial arts was nothing new. His ruthless old master had forced him to learn every conceivable form of mortal combat to absolute, punishing perfection. But Agastya had not simply memorised them.
By the time he was twenty years old, the prodigy assassin had dissected, cannibalised, and fused those techniques together, forging his own terrifying, hyper-lethal martial art. It was a style designed not for sport, but for absolute slaughter.
Agastya completely abandoned his defensive posture. He exhaled sharply, letting his arms drop loose to his sides, and stepped forward to meet the viper.