The absolute silence was torn to shreds by an immense, deafening sonic boom. Time started again as if reality had been released by the snap of a whip. The spiritual turtle that Beat had flipped in the frozen void shot perpendicularly back toward its sender at an insane speed.
Desmodus’s sadistic laugh choked instantly in his throat. His red-black eyes widened in pure bewilderment as he saw his own spike-laden projectile ram within a hair’s breadth of his face.
“What the…?!” Desmodus roared, but the rest of his curse was lost in the violence.
The brute hellspawn had to slam on the brakes, his heavy claws cutting deep into the asphalt, causing the surrounding floating crystals to explode with successive flashes due to the brute impact.
Beat landed on his feet with a heavy thud, but the triumph was knocked away instantly. He collapsed to his knees and gasped wildly for air, while an icy sweat broke across his forehead. The cracks and the dry crunching in his bones took their toll immediately. His spiritual pathways were glowing hot, pulsing with a toxic overload that set his entire torso on fire.
Damn it,
Beat squeezed out in an internal monologue, clenching his teeth so hard his jaw muscles trembled.
This new form… manipulating time is tearing my entire physical shell apart. If I force that absolute time-stop one more time, I’ll break permanently. Purely focus and tactics now, Beto. Don’t get over-driven.
He barely had time to straighten his back, for the holographic track drove them mercilessly toward the next boiling point. The race track suddenly plunged downward at a perpendicular, terrifying angle, straight into the flooded, pitch-black water channels of the slums. The quartet plunged into the depths, sending walls of icy water splashing meters high.
This was Shrimpyy’s absolute home turf.
“YEEHA! NOW IT’S MY TIME, LIGHTNING BUDDY!” the hyperactive voice of the demonic crustacean-humanoid echoed through the concrete tunnels.
Due to the extreme hydrodynamic pressure underwater, Shrimpyy’s deep-sea blue armor plates transformed into overheated turbines. The fins on his flanks snapped open with metallic clicks, while his armor began to glow with a neon-blue light that illuminated the pitch-black tunnels. But instead of simply shooting past them, he held his massive claws wide open.
“BOOM BOOM LIKEY LIKEY!” Shrimpyy roared with a maniacal grin.
“Crab, what the hell are you planning?!” Brody shouted over the intercom, but it was already too late.
With a bizarrely coordinated movement, the kinetic slipstream of Shrimpyy’s rear legs grabbed the bikes of Beat and Brody. Instead of blocking them, he projected them forward with insane force, as if they were being shot out of a hydraulic cannon.
Beat turned his head through the brute water masses and looked Shrimpyy straight in his compound eyes. Shrimpyy, grinning widely, brought his massive, heavily armored claw to his forehead and gave Beat a legendary, anarchist salute underwater.
“SECOND IGNITION!!” Shrimpyy roared.
The explosion that followed was completely over-driven. Underwater, the crustacean activated his absolute top gear. The successive kinetic explosions beneath his feet turned into a constant, white-hot stream of pure energy. The water in the entire tunnel began to boil, evaporate, and flash in a psychedelic chaos of cobalt blue and deep-sea green within a fraction of a second.
The tunnel walls vibrated as if they were under a sonic bombardment. The immense pressure launched Beat and Brody like two glowing meteors through the darkest depths of the underground, a visual apocalypse of bubbles, steam, and lightning that caused the walls of the water channels to crack.
The churning, flashing chaos of the underwater explosion swelled into a white light that blinded everything—
And then abruptly switched into a serene, icy, calm silence.
The sound of boiling water and rattling engines gave way in one stroke to the soft, rhythmic breathing of a lone warrior. The scent of sulfur and burnt rubber dissolved into the dry, woody aroma of old cedar and traditional incense.
This was the hidden dojo deep in the region of the Aurelius temple. The walls were built of tight paper sliding doors and massive bamboo poles that completely blocked out the spiritual pressure of the outside world. The little light that entered shone in tight beams onto the perfectly polished wooden floor, where every step left an echo of pure discipline.
In the middle of the tatami mat stood Aurelius. His form was draped in a traditional, snow-white training gi that fell tight over his broad shoulders. His eyes were closed, his breathing so deep and controlled that the smoke from the incense pots in the corners of the room didn’t even move.
A slow, heavy sigh escaped from deep within his chest. “The chaos outside is an illusion,” Aurelius muttered with a voice that sounded like the rolling of distant thunder. “The true battle takes place within.”
The training had been going on for hours, a deadly serious progression of focus, far away from the anarchist chaos of the underground street race. Aurelius held his palms open in front of his chest, while the spiritual energy around him began to condense like an invisible shield.
The serene silence in the dojo did not remain unbroken. While Aurelius stood there motionless, palms open before his chest, the peace was brutally disturbed by the heavy footsteps of the three students flanking him. They stood in a semi-circle around Aurelius, their gazes icy and cutting. There was no room for politeness on this tatami mat. This was the absolute smithy of discipline.
Kaelid was the first to take a step forward. His unorthodox, razor-sharp stance betrayed the exile from the east, while the scars from the hot iron pulled at his neck as he clenched his jaw. The spiritual energy around Kaelid began to vibrate as thin and sharp as razor blades, visibly distorting the air around his shoulders.
“Look at him standing there,” Kaelid’s voice sliced through the room, cold and full of disdain.
He made a lightning-fast lunge and stopped his outstretched fingers a millimeter before Aurelius’s left temple, the pure air pressure blowing Aurelius’s hair backward.
“Your feet are positioned as if you’re walking on eggshells, Aurelius! You’re leaking spiritual energy out the sides before you’ve even thrown a fist! Your channels are wide open like an unprotected gate. If I thrust toward your vitals now, you’d be dead before you could blink. Close those gaps in your defense, idiot! Stop trying to oversee the whole world and focus your spiritual flow exclusively on the absolute center of your torso. You’re wasting your power through your fear!”
Before Aurelius could process the criticism, the massive giant Boran stepped forward. His gigantic shadow fell over the young warrior like a shroud. With every step he took, the dojo’s wooden planks vibrated and a heavy, red-colored aura struck out from his body like a heatwave, pushing Aurelius’s own spiritual energy away with brute force.
The pure, destructive bloodlust from the Red Valley vibrated in his deep bass voice, yet it was terrifyingly controlled.
“Your breathing is a disgrace to this temple!” Boran roared, standing right in front of Aurelius’s face and simply tearing the excess energy out of Aurelius’s aura with his sheer presence. “You’re panting like a struck dog afraid of the slaughter! Do you think that spiritual pressure around you is impressive? It’s nothing! It’s a pathetic excuse for a shield! You hold your breath the moment the pressure increases, causing your blood to stagnate. Lock that anger and fear in your belly, swallow it, and press it toward your foundation with a deep, controlled breath. As long as your lungs tremble like that, you’ll break before the enemy even touches you. Lock that focus into your core, dammit, or go cry somewhere else!”
Zephra moved with the noiseless, deadly grace of a gladiator. His royal yet icy gaze bored deep into Aurelius’s eyes. As he spoke, the air condensed around them, causing an icy blue glow to creep across the tatami mat and Aurelius’s breath to immediately become visible as white vapor. There was not a shred of compassion in his words, only the hard reality of the arena.
“You’re weak,” Zephra said in a whisper that hit harder than Boran’s shout.
He placed his hand gently on Aurelius’s chest, after which a sudden, fierce shockwave of spiritual energy caused Aurelius to stagger two steps backward, as if his entire inside were being frozen.
“Not because your body can’t do it, but because you are mentally still in the slaughterhouse. You look around as if you’re asking for permission to survive. Nobody is going to give you that permission. You’re too slow to harden your spiritual shield because you doubt. Stop hoping for mercy. The moment the impact comes, you shouldn’t passively hold up your spiritual energy, but actively bash against it. You’re too soft for this field. Harden your mind, turn that doubt into a cold instinct, or you’ll end up as the maggots’ entertainment.”
The words sounded like pure humiliation, a brute verbal drubbing that attempted to break Aurelius’s ego one piece at a time. But beneath the hard, aggressive tone and the suffocating escalation of their combined auras lay the absolute blueprint of their own survival techniques. They weren’t berating him to destroy him; they were screaming the exact corrections he needed to not die.
The suffocating pressure of the three combined auras hung like lead in the dojo. Aurelius stood staggering on his legs, his breathing heavy and irregular. But instead of breaking under the brute verbal assault, something deep within him began to shift. The words of the three students echoed in his head, stripped of their anger and disdain, until only pure, raw data remained.
Focus your spiritual flow on the absolute center of your torso,
Kaelid’s voice repeated in his mind.
Press it toward your foundation with a deep, controlled breath,
Boran’s bass voice added.
Don’t hold up passively, but actively bash against it,
Zephra closed the circle.
Aurelius swallowed the bitter taste of humiliation. A sharp realization cut through his doubt.
They aren’t trying to break me,
he thought, focusing his gaze on the tatami mat.
This is how they survived themselves. Those bastards are just giving me the exact key.
An icy calm descended over his consciousness.
Fine. Then I’ll show them I can listen.
“I understand,” Aurelius whispered, his trembling knees suddenly locking like vises.
With a slow, coordinated movement, Aurelius brought his hands together. He tucked his chin and sucked the icy, condensed air of the dojo deep into his lungs. He didn’t hold the breath, but sent the oxygen with a conscious pressure toward his core.
The wide-open spiritual channels, which had been leaking in all directions just a moment ago, snapped shut ruthlessly with the sound of snapping sparks. His energy no longer flowed outward, but imploded toward the absolute center of his torso.
The sudden silence in his aura was terrifying. Kaelid narrowed his eyes. Boran held his breath.
Now,
Aurelius thought.
Instead of attacking directly, he activated Aethergard. The sword at his side didn’t ignite with a normal flare, but reacted to the compressed energy in his core. Aurelius’s entire body began to glow, a blinding white light that seemed to break deep from his pores. It was as if a miniature sun were being born in the dojo.
With a loud crack that sliced through the wooden walls, he flashed the entire room. An immense shockwave effect of pure white light exploded from his center.
“What the—” Kaelid slapped his arm over his face.
“Damn it!” Boran roared, pressing his gigantic palms over his eyes to keep the burning light out. For a moment, everyone in the dojo was completely blind.
In that fraction of a second that visual control was lost, Aurelius put the lessons into practice. He didn’t keep the exploded energy outside his body, but rammed the spiritual flow with a brute mental stroke directly into the active shield of his Aethergard.
The glowing energy and the defensive barrier fused. Where the shield was normally a passive wall, it now pulsed with an aggressive, vibrating density that caused the surrounding air to crackle with static electricity.
When the bright light faded and the three students regained their sight with watering eyes, they stood frozen in their tracks.
Aurelius was still there, but his stance was unrecognizable. The eggshells were gone. His feet were anchored deep into the wood. He held his sword diagonally in front of him, surrounded by a barrier so thick and compact that the contours of his own body behind it distorted, like a mirage in a burning desert. Not a gram of energy leaked away anymore. Everything was locked, hardened, and ready for impact.
It remained deathly silent for three seconds. The three students looked at him, saw the transformation, and suddenly the tension broke.
Boran was the first to burst into a booming laugh that shook the dojo. “Hahaha! Look at that little one go! Puppies grow up fast, don’t they?!”
Kaelid pulled a wide, hungry grin, his teeth shining in the glow of Aurelius’s sword. “He gets it. The idiot actually listened.”
Zephra didn’t speak, but his icy gaze turned into a hunter’s grin as he dropped straight into a starting crouch. “Show us what that foundation is worth, Photo!”
Without further warning, they clashed upon him simultaneously.
The floorboards split under the brute force of their launch. Kaelid was the first. He flew forward like a bolt, his fingers stretched into a razor-sharp spiritual awl, aimed at the few remaining openings.
“Too slow!” Aurelius shot back.
Instead of moving along passively, he actively rammed his Aethergard-fused shield forward, straight into the attack.
Clang! The collision sounded like metal on metal. Kaelid’s spiritual awl shattered into thousands of blue sparks against the rock-hard, vibrating barrier of Aurelius. The air pressure released sliced deep grooves into the tatami mats around them.
Before Kaelid could recover, the massive shadow of Boran fell from above. The giant leaped into the air and brought a heavy, red-aura-laden fist-hammer down, straight toward Aurelius’s head.
“CATCH THIS IF YOU CAN!!” the giant roared.
Aurelius didn’t hold his breath. He audibly pressed the air out of his lungs, dropped even deeper through his back leg, and lifted his glowing sword horizontally to absorb the blow.
The impact was gigantic. The wooden planks beneath Aurelius’s feet cracked and bowed, but his core held steady. The red bloodlust of Boran’s fist hammered against the white glow of the fused Aethergard, sending a circular shockwave across the floor that kicked up dust in the furthest corners of the dojo.
Aurelius didn’t even stagger. He absorbed the blow into his foundation and pushed the gigantic fist away with a powerful hip movement. “Come on!”
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Zephra already approaching, silent as a snake over ice. Zephra launched a series of lightning-fast, blue spiritual kicks that aimed like whip-snaps at Aurelius’s flanks.
“And how about your sides?” Zephra hissed.
Aurelius countered with a fluid rotation. He didn’t just let his fused shield serve as a wall, but used its vibrating energy to deflect Zephra’s kicks sideways. Each time a kick hit the barrier, the active counter-pressure caused Zephra’s momentum to be disturbed, with the blue glow evaporating with hissing sounds against Aurelius’s white heat.
The three students didn’t regroup, but continued to circle him at a murderous pace, a constant stream of strikes, jabs, and spiritual discharges. But the center of the dojo was no longer the domain of Aurelius’s fear. It had become the anchor point of an unshakeable fortress.