The scoreboard churned like weather. Names climbed, fell, vanished, all with seconds difference. Somewhere up in the stands the host kept yelling, the crowd kept laughing, and in the lanes below the laughter started to curdle.
Two candidates cut across Raizen's lane, eyes on him, not the Class 2 prying open a door behind them. Another pair broke from a fight, angled toward a rival with a fat number on the board. Nobody said it out loud, but it was there in how they moved - take a head off the leaderboard and everyone else climbs.
The host caught the change and grinned anyway. "Awww, sportsmanship is… optional. Friendly reminder - points for Nyxes, not for kneecapping your neighbor. Unless your neighbor is a Nyx. Which… Uh… I guess it does happen? Rarely?" The joke didn't land everywhere. Steel rang against steel in a corner where two contenders decided the quickest way up was to cut the rung someone else was standing on.
Feris picked her target. She came in like a dare, mace on her shoulder. The Luminite inside the head burned bright, leaving a smear of bright pink in the air with each swing. She wasn't quiet about it. She didn't pretend this was tactical. She wanted the best fight, so she chose the best name she could reach.
Raizen saw her at the edge of his next step. He didn't slow. He didn't posture. He let the first swing show him the arc - too wide by a finger, hips ahead of shoulders, right foot light. It would crack a skull if it met one. He never intended to let it. Then she grinned and took a second swing, lower. He slid inside the circle, past the sweet spot, into empty space. Left hand caught her wrist. He turned, set her weight on the wrong foot, and the lock happened like breath - shoulder spun, wrist pinned, body folded. She gasped, not sure of what happened. Two fingers tapped a nerve point under the angle of her jaw, clean and quick. The suit lights along her spine flashed once, twice. Knees went soft. He lowered her to the floor instead of dropping her. The mace clanged out a last insult and rolled to a stop.
Her suit tightened, hazed red, then went still. A hatch that hadn't existed opened, a stretcher slid, and she was gone. Out, not broken.
Nobody nearby moved for a second.
The host forgot to crack wise. "...And that is a clinic. Clean hold. Clean tap. Rules don't forbid it, and his conscience didn't either. Folks, this is a Nyx exam. Maybe don't audition for a civil war."
You could feel the refocus. The candidates who'd been hunting names put their eyes back on the shadows that grew teeth when you let them. A Class 2 made a grab for the ankle of one of the would-be saboteurs and learned regret at high speed.
Raizen didn't watch Feris go. He picked up the next line, stepped into it, and cut a Class 2 out of the doorway it had been trying to turn into a jaw. The board flashed - tiny numbers for assists, larger ones for clean kills. He let it do its job.
The arena exhaled.
A siren purred low, almost polite. In the center of the bowl, a circle of panels irised open and a lift rose from black to light. Behind a mesh of blue field, shapes moved. Tall. Thin. Wrong.
The host took a breath and sold the moment. "Ladies and gentlemen and candidates stubborn enough to try - escalation phase. Class 3 releases incoming. New puppies, new teeth. Remember your exits. Remember your pride. Try not to confuse them."
The field dropped.
They came out like problems somebody had drawn with a ruler and a bad mood. Still humanoid, but the proportions weren't fair anymore. One had arms that hit the ground at the knee. One had legs a step too long, joints bending the wrong way, feet like blades built to climb walls. Another's left forearm sharpened, smooth as polished stone and just as unforgiving.
They didn't think. They couldn't. They didn't need to.
Candidates remembered the points and reformed in small tides. The first Class 3 turned the floor into a problem. A blade arm hammered down, lifted tiles, broke lines. Raizen cut into its reach and took the joint when it overcommitted. The weapon arm tried a swing, tried to cut his shadow. His foot found a better angle. The blade took air. His took tendon. It fell. He finished it with a short, ugly stroke that didn't ask for applause.
The host swallowed a chuckle and went loud with approval instead. "Welcome to Class 3! Longer, bigger, stronger, somehow? Worse."
In the elevated area, a Nyx dropped onto a bridge and made the bridge bow. Two candidates tried to meet it square and got pushed back like furniture on a smooth floor. Keahi hit the thing at the hip with a flat of blade that looked like a line of sunrise. The edge bit, stuck, bit again. She didn't try for fancy. She cut the leg until the math made sense, then finished the rest on the ground. The board paid her and she didn't look up to see.
Up on a higher line, Arashi's pistols stitched the air so precisely even the drones stopped trying to guess. He took joints when joints showed, eyes when eyes showed. He had an uncanny smile that seemed to say "Finally, some toys I can play with!" One tried to close in the distance, throwing reach and speed into one nasty equation. He dropped to a knee, one luminite-powered round erased its ankle, the second pulled the rest of the future out of it. He stood and moved like it hadn't been a conversation really worth staying for.
Esen laughed and punched a shockwave that knocked a set of Class 2s into a Class 3 The Class 3 decided physics had become rude. The crowd roared so hard someone's soda sloshed over and a vendor pretended to cry while selling more.
Raizen stayed where his feet had decided to matter. He took two Class 3s in a narrow hallway - bad lighting, better news for him. The long arms didn't have room. He did. Cut at the elbow, then at the throat, made sure the floor learned a new shape that wouldn't trip anyone else. Another came on a low bridge, legs like knives. He dropped low, let it overstep, hamstring cut, then a clean finish. He never chased hands that wanted to spin. He made them still, then spoke.
The suit lights on his spine stayed blue, then green, then blue. Cool, firm, useful.
Class 3s changed the air. The crowd's pitch shifted. The jokes didn't die, but they got smarter. The host sounded like he'd felt his heart agree to work harder.
"We've moved from cardio to calculus. Please show your work."
Two candidates who hadn't gotten the memo about not fighting each other decided to try a quick elbow in an alley. The alley answered with a Class 3 that did not care about ego. Raizen watched them make the wrong decision, weighed time, and let the lesson teach for one beat longer than comfort. He moved when it turned to survival, took the arm off, shoved one kid into the grown-up choice of running, and made the other one remember to breathe before his suit decided to lock and pull him to safety
"Assist double again," the host said, like a teacher who pretends not to be proud. "You're killing me, kid. In a good way. The medical paperwork will be light. The emotional paperwork, however…"
The floor shifted under his boots, different than before. Not a tilt - a ripple. New panels opening, old ones closing. The arena didn't want anyone to get comfortable. Good. He didn't trust comfort.
The board did what it liked. Esen hopped up fast, then slowed when a Class 3 decided it wanted to learn how air punched with extra luminite aroma tasted. Keahi climbed and stayed. Arashi yo-yoed - bursts of math that paid out, then patience. Raizen's line ticked up, down, up. He saw it hit fifth with no friction. Fourth, briefly. He didn't go looking for first. First would arrive if the work asked it to. 2 more names were climbing on the board: Lynea and Ichiro. They were nowhere to be seen though. The host made short comments, half in awe, half his voice trembling.
Another Class 3, this one with both forearms honed, came low and fast. Its feet skittered on metal like claws on a pan. It used the tilt to make itself a question. Raizen answered by giving it less room to be clever. Stepped inside the cut, let the edge skiff his sleeve and not his skin, and took the shoulder clean. The arm came off like a bad idea finally giving up. It tried to bite with the other. He took that too. It sagged. He let it, then ended it.
A kid in a new suit froze when he saw the face up close - the not-face. Raizen put a palm against his shoulder, pushed him one step sideways where his feet could learn, then left him to it. No time to teach more than direction. The kid understood enough to stay moving.
Near the center, a noise built like a slow horn. The lift opened again, let out five more Class 3s with different wrongness, and shut. The swarm spread. Numbers started thinning in the steady, honest way that happens when people meet a pressure they haven't learned to love yet.
The host kept a line running, humor a bridge he refused to stop repairing. "If you can hear my voice, congratulations – you're still "alive". If you can't hear my voice, please stop pretending you can. If you're a Nyx, you're doing great. Please fail."
Raizen hit a stretch of market stalls arranged to be mean - low roofs, sharp angles, gaps where you wanted grip and found smoothness. The arena itself was like a futuristic neighborhood brought to ruin, across dozens of fights.
He remembered the Rust Room for a breath - ropes, beams, Kori's hand on a chain, Mina's numbers calling him a liar when he tried to pretend he wasn't tired. Memory didn't slow his feet. Memory exhaled and made space.
Across a lane, two heavy arcs broke the air again. Keahi was a problem for anything slow. Arashi's answer to speed was to remove the joints speed uses. Esen's answer was to pick whole sections of trouble up and throw them into each other until the floor asked for a break.
Someone in the stands started a chant for Esen. It spread, then broke into three different chants, then came back to one when he got knocked by a Class 3 off a bridge and into a sign that hadn't been meant for catching. The sign learned a lesson in structural engineering and willpower. He wasn't disqualified, his suit blinking yellow. But the answer was… Less enjoyable. I mean who would want to see a Nyx get smashed through 3 walls from the same shockwave? I know you do!
Raizen's name didn't become a chant. It didn't have the syllables for it. It became a low hum in the bowl - recognition without fuss. The host leaned into it. "Our unknown with the blade and the manners is back in the top five"
The numbers dipped again. Forty-something left. Then high thirties. A set of suits locked and dragged their owners out. Some stayed and learned to work in pairs without the dignity of admitting it.
Numbers ticked. Sweat stung Raizen's eyes. The suit stayed cool enough to feel like someone else was thinking about his skin for him. He didn't let that make him lazy. Hikari was still on the leaderboard, with numbers still going up, so he wasn't concerned.
The board flashed again. Raizen's line climbed – from fourth, third, second - then settled to third when Esen punched another small storm and the laws of physics really needed to say "yes".
Nyxes thinned in numbers. You could hear it in the sound they didn't make anymore. The arena felt bigger in their absence. The hum of the stands came back up. The announcer's voice got brighter again, the way light does after a cloud moves.
Another siren purred. The lift in the center rose. Blue field shimmered. Empty cages stared back.
The host laughed once, short. "Well. Administrative note - we're out of Class 3s. Efficient work, Neoshima. You cleaned your plate."
The scoreboard still held too many names.
"Headcount - eighty down to… somewhere in the thirties. That's… mm. That's a lot of courage in one bowl, and not enough room."
The crowd shifted - excitement laced with the kind of curiosity that gets you in trouble.
Raizen rolled his shoulders, checked a nick on his wrap, and let his weight settle. He didn't need the host to tell him what the math wanted next. He could feel the pressure of it in the way the arena waited.
The voice in the sky worked to keep it a show. "Please hold for… creative solutions. Do not cuddle your nearest rival. Do not propose to a Nyx. I've been asked to say that twice. Do not propose to a Nyx."
Raizen smiled. He kept his blade where it could answer a question fast, eyes on the lanes that still had shadows in them.
"Too many, huh?"
The bowl held its breath. The exam did too.
Something had to give.