Cale reappeared into existence in the middle of the coliseum. He breathed in the arid, hot air, savoring it. This felt right. There was still some lingering pain in his body, but not enough to hamper his movement of mind and body. Aura worked fast.


    “Are you ready for this?” she asked.


    Cale scoffed. “I was born ready— quite literally, actually.”


    Cale found that he did not fear. His heart was pounding steadily, and when he picked up the hoverboard from his back, his hands were dry and steady. He couldn’t help but to grin.


    I can’t believe there are do-overs.


    His baseline was fighting to death for your dear life. That meant adapting a certain style. But this… This was simply a game.


    What do I have to lose? Some pride? Suffer through some pain?


    That was a cheap price to pay for limit testing his ability.


    Fifty feet away stood Zavio. He was bristling. His previously steady arm was shaking now. Gone was the relax poise that Zavio had stood with in their first bout. Now he was taut like a strung bow. Cale watched the tension in his foes'' shoulders. Zavio was on the backfoot before the fight had even started. And the fool didn’t even realize that.


    Cale’s mind was clear. It was a beautiful feeling. He had no fear or hesitation. He had nothing to lose, everything to gain. He smiled to himself and felt the crunch of sand under his feet.


    Cale took a step forward, and immediately Zavio tightened even further. His ornate pistol started whining, but Cale didn’t mind. He just smiled to himself.


    Cale knew by now that his aim at this range was shoddy at best. With Aura’s predictive model, there was no way he was in danger at this range. He would need to play this cool and approach with the right amount of aggression.


    Cale knew Zavio was a deadly marksman—at thirty feet or less. Beyond that? A glorified target shooter.


    No real battlefield instincts. Just a rich boy playing hunter.


    That would be Cale’s advantage.


    Too bad, I’m no prey.


    So he kicked off the ground and sped towards his enemy.


    Zavio reacted immediately by launching a fusillade of golden energy at him. Aura laughed gleefully and red orbs appeared in Cale’s vision. He would just have to avoid the orbs and weave between them. Simple, really. Favio’s weapon kept snapping and the bolts of energy kept piercing the orbs. Cale bobbed and weaved and got closer.


    When he was twenty feet away, Zavio brandished his whip. Cale had expected that so he swerved to the right, dodging a lash, then ducking under an arcing wide shot from the pistol.


    “The whip complicates things,” Aura said. “But I am adding it to the prediction model.”


    Cale nodded. It didn’t take a genius to understand Zavio’s tactics. Pressure with the gun, keep the enemy away with the whip. But Cale had a trump card Zavio didn’t know about. He smirked to himself.


    Are you watching, Ravia? This is why Darius chose me.


    Cale dodged another barrage of bullets and flew higher, ten feet into the air. It seemed to be the natural limit of the hoverboard. Safety regulations be damned, but Cale would have to work with them.


    He circled around over Zavio’s head like a shark on wings. His gameplan was simple here. Flying around on the hoverboard was free real estate. Using the whip and the weapon? That cost mana. Not to mention, the look on Zavio’s red face was priceless.


    Cale circled Zavio from above, twisting the hoverboard with a deftness that sent him soaring in close, then darting out of range whenever the crackling whip lashed up. Aura marked those with a blue glowing streak in his vision. Cale made sure to be high enough that only vertical lashes were possible for Zavio.


    From his perch, Cale could see Zavio’s face twisted in fury, mouth pressed into a bitter line. He was breathing hard through his nose, the whip humming as it gathered electricity at the handle. The crackling energy around it would intensify just before Zavio struck.


    “Keep running, worm!” Zavio bellowed, turning in tight circles to follow Cale’s loops. “The second you get close, I’ll blast you out of the sky.”


    If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.


    “Worm, dog, trash,” Cale called and shook his head in faux regret as he clicked his tongue. “I’ll buy you a dictionary for Christmas.”


    Zavio blinked stupidly, most likely confused at the mention of a happy family holiday. Cale used this moment of confusion to go for the kill. He surged downwards in a twisting spin to gather momentum, the front of the hoverboard aimed at Zavio’s skin.


    But the enemy was ready. Zavio’s eyes glinted with malicious triumph. He abruptly raised his free hand and pressed a blue gemstone on one of his rings. An almost imperceptible pulse emanated from the ring. Cale felt a lurch inside him.


    Then his hoverboard sputtered mid-flight.


    Cale felt the repulsors jerk, as though someone had snatched the board’s mana flow by the throat. The stabilizers flickered and died. He had just enough time to suck in a breath before the entire frame went limp under his feet.


    He crashed hard onto the sand.


    “Oh no,” Zavio said in mock pity. “Looks like someone weak enough to rely on external Integra.”


    Before Cale could even process what  Zavio meant, a flare of pain spiked through Cale’s back and shoulders. Aura yelped in his mind. He tried to scramble to all fours and keep distance, but it was too late. Zavio was already on him, electric whip crackling with a fresh wave of raw power.


    “You dare challenge me, and you are not even Mana Circuitry,” Zavio snarled. “Any half-decent cultivator can dismantle your hoverboard with a basic Anti-Mana pulse. But I bet you didn’t know that.”


    The bright coil lanced forward, snapping around Cale’s ribs. Zavio yanked his whip, tightening the coil. The jolt of electrical mana hit Cale like pure acid poured straight into his bloodstream. His teeth clamped shut to keep from screaming. He sank to his knees and the whip loosened around him. But before he could move, he was lashed, and a searing pain on his shoulder opened. The gash started bleeding profusely and Cale clamped a hand on it. Zavio grinned.


    Another lash. Another. Each strike brought a new wave of agony that stiffened his limbs and threatened to knock him senseless. The simulation might not kill him for real, but it sure as hell made the pain feel real enough.


    Zavio’s grin was positively feral. “You like that? Not so tough now, huh?” He lashed the whip, spinning it in the air before it coiled around Cale’s body, trapping his arms against his sides.


    Cale did his best to stay upright, eyes screwed shut. He would not collapse. The lash tightened around his chest. He could feel his mana sense flaring, a strangled reflex of self-preservation. The whip was pouring raw energy into him with each pulse.


    Raw energy…? This is Mana.


    A slow realization dawned on him. He reached inside, extended his senses into that scorching flow of electricity. It crackled and danced inside him with a clear point, leaving aftershades. Like a pinball made of pain.


    The energy flared inside him like pure fire. It hurt. No, not just hurt. It was agony burning through every nerve in his body. But that fool, Zavio, was content to just keep tormenting him like this.


    Stupid little sadist.


    Cale breathed out, and found a place in his mind, where he could detach from the pain. It was not easy, but this was the same kind of cultivation he had done before. The mana from the murderbots had fought him too. It had also hurt. It had also stormed inside him.


    And he had controlled it.


    Little by little, Cale gathered the lightning energy inside him to swirl around his solar plexus in a roiling heavy cloud, that was not quite gaseous, not quite liquid. He reached deep inside, and the small globules of mana that the stream was made bounced against each other aggressively. Little by little, he calmed them. He breathed with them, attuned them to his will.


    And once Cale had gathered enough, he sent it back at Zavio.


    Zavio was too furious to catch on fast enough. He flicked the handle again, mouth twisted in rage. “Stop squirming you—”


    But the whip fizzled out in a final arc of sparks. The handle glowed a weak blue, sending off a few stray sparks, then it cracked, leaving Zavio gaping in sudden horror.


    Cale still knelt in the sand, breath ragged, body ablaze with leftover electric power. He gathered it. Attuned it to himself. Made it his. In a few more breaths, Cale had conquered it. A savage chill crept over him.


    Zavio staggered back, eyes wild. “W-what did you—”


    Cale stood.


    Zavio threw down a flashbang and raised his pistol, but Cale was ready. In a blur of spent mana he came up to Zavio, grabbed his gunwrist and headbutted the bastard on his nose. It broke under a satisfying crunch. Zavio’s head was knocked back, he groaned and fell on his ass.


    Cale’s teeth clenched. Do I make him pay?


    Zavio had humiliated and tormented him in the first duel. Crushing his skull. His ears still rang with the residual pain. He wondered how long until the nerve pain would heal, or what it would cost him. Cale wanted to pay him back.


    He wanted to. He grimaced and that darkness whispered to him sweet promises of satisfaction.


    No. That is not the kind of person I want to be.


    But there was a difference between being merciful and being soft.


    Cale was not soft. There was no room for it.


    Cale closed his eyes, raised his hand, and the power gathered the palm of his hand. It felt like a million frantic fish were swimming there, the energy bouncing off itself, gathering. It thrummed with raw power.


    Zavio scrambled back, panting. His hands clawed at the sand. He simply couldn’t process it.


    “T-this… this isn’t possible,” he choked out, eyes darting to the fading sparks on his whip.


    Cale stepped closer, his own fingers crackling with white-blue voltage.


    “No,” Zavio whispered. His pupils shrank. “You’re… you’re nothing. You can’t—”


    Cale raised his hand.


    A single white-blue bolt of raw mana roared forward. A fierce gale rippled the sand. It blasted clean through Zavio’s chest, leaving him no time to scream. He simply ceased to be, a burning hole where his heart should’ve been.


    For a long, drawn-out moment, the air was silent except for the dying whir of the broken hoverboard. Zavio’s body collapsed onto the ground, limbs splayed as though he’d been struck by lightning.


    Cale sank to both knees, exhaling until his lungs were empty. No more rage. No more electricity. Just a seeping fatigue and the sweet earned release of victory. He spat out sand and blood from his mouth and watched with great satisfaction as Zavio’s lifeless body started fading out.


    The simulation ended.


    *


    “That little monster…” Ravia said to herself, crossing her arms.


    Darius laughed openly. “I can’t believe this kid pulled another rabbit out of the hat. Body Tempering beating a Mana Circuitry cultivator.”


    “Not entirely unheard of,” Ravia muttered under her breath.


    Darius leaned back on the couch, spreading his arms. “But enough to pique your interest?”


    Ravia turned from the screen to watch Darius like an angry owl. Her heels clicked on the marble floor as she took two steps closer. “Fine. Let’s talk.”