Chapter 22: You Are a Coward
A heavy silence descended. The mist coiled around their feet. Leo looked at Kaede, then at the still, silent form of Kairo. He was the prince, the leader by default. He had to take command.
"Alright," Leo said, his voice low but firm, trying to project a confidence he didn't feel. "A frontal assault is suicide. We need a plan. Kaede, your Bark-Skin allows you to withstand a blow. I will engage her directly. My Titan's Grasp should be able to slow her, even for a moment. When I do, you will charge from the right flank. Your objective is the bells. Don't fight her, just get the bells."
Kaede nodded, her jaw tight. It was a simple, direct plan, an honorable strategy. Her eyes flashed with grim determination.
Leo then turned to Kairo. "Lord Kairo, your abilities are... unknown to us. But you are agile. While she is focused on me and my sister, you will circle around to her left. A three-pronged attack. It's our only chance. Can you do that?"
Kairo gave a slight, almost imperceptible nod. But in the cold, silent world of his mind, the Founder's Codex was already running the numbers.
Analysis: Flawed strategy. Opponent is an Aether Master. Her reaction time and combat speed will exceed our own by a factor of ten. A simple pincer attack assumes she can only focus on one target at a time. This is a fatal assumption. Probability of success: 0.03%.
He wouldn't tell them. They wouldn't listen. Leo's honor and Kaede's rage made them blind to the power gap. They needed to see it. They needed to feel it. This first attempt was not about winning. It was about gathering data. His role was not to succeed in their flawed plan, but to record every detail of its failure.
"Ready?" Leo asked, his hand resting on the ground.
"Ready," Kaede gritted out.
Kairo simply tensed, his body a coiled spring.
"Now!" Leo roared.
The prince slammed his palm onto the damp earth. "Titan's Grasp!" A wave of verdant green Aether shot from his hand, and the ground around Kasumi erupted. Thick, vine-like roots, hard as ironwood, burst from the mud, snaking towards her legs and torso, seeking to bind her.
Simultaneously, Kaede exploded into motion. "HAAAA!" she screamed, her battle cry a raw burst of fury. Her skin took on a tough, bark-like texture, and she charged from the right, a veritable battering ram aimed at Kasumi's flank.
Leo's attack was powerful, the roots moving with blinding speed. For any normal Conduit, it would have been a fight-ending entrapment.
Kasumi didn't even look down.
With a sigh of pure, unfiltered boredom, she extended her hand. A blade of shimmering, blood-red Aether, perfectly formed and lethally sharp, materialized in her grip. It was the signature ability of her house: Aether Armory.
Snikt. Snikt. Snikt.
In a series of movements so fast they were a blur, she severed every single one of Leo's grasping roots without taking a single step. The attack was dismantled in less than a second.
Leo's eyes widened in shock. His most powerful binding technique, neutralized with the casual indifference of someone swatting flies.
In that moment of shock, Kaede closed the distance. She powered through the last few feet, her hand outstretched, fingers clawing for the tinkling bells. She was reckless, but she was fast.
Kasumi turned, her movements liquid and certain. She didn't counter with a grand display of power. It was simpler. More insulting. As Kaede's hand was about to close around the prize, Kasumi simply stuck out her foot.
Kaede, moving at a full charge, tripped.
She went flying past Kasumi, a wild cry of frustration escaping her lips as she tumbled head over heels into the cold, unforgiving mud.
It was over in three seconds.
The prince and princess of the Jukai, two of the most celebrated prodigies of their generation, had been utterly and humiliatingly defeated without their opponent taking a single step from her starting position.
Silence descended once more, broken only by Kaede's furious gasp as she pushed herself out of the mud, her face a mask of disbelief and rage. Leo was frozen, staring at his severed roots, his confidence shattered.
And now, Kasumi's cold, crimson eyes turned. They scanned the training field, past the defeated Jukai siblings, and finally settled on the figure who was just now jogging slowly into range.
Kairo.
He had not rushed. He had not charged. He had moved at a steady, unhurried pace, his Aether-Sense an invisible, expanding web, recording every detail of the disastrous assault. He had measured the speed of her blade. He had cataloged the Aether cost of her manifestation. He had noted her perfect balance, the way she shifted her weight a micro-second before she acted.
He was still ten paces away when she looked at him. He stopped, his face a mask of childish fear, his body held in a defensive crouch. A perfect imitation of a boy who had just seen his powerful allies crushed and was too terrified to continue.
Kasumi stared at him. Then she looked at the defeated royals. She let out a soft, contemptuous scoff.
"Is this the Prodigy Team?" she asked, her voice laced with a derision that was sharper than any blade. "The pride of the Great Houses?"
She pointed a single, armored finger at Leo. "You. Your tactics are textbook, predictable, and utterly useless against any opponent with a modicum of experience. You announced your strongest attack and expected it to work."
Her gaze shifted to the mud-caked, trembling form of Kaede. "And you. You fight with your temper, not your mind. You are a charging boar, easily sidestepped and left to tire yourself out in the mud. Your power is wasted on your recklessness."
Finally, her crimson eyes, cold as winter, locked onto Kairo.
"And you," she said, her voice dropping to a low, dangerous whisper. "The Miracle Prodigy. The boy who broke the Heartstone."
She took a slow, deliberate step towards him.
"You are the worst of them all. You are a coward."
The word hung in the damp, misty air, more brutal than any physical blow.
Leo, his confidence still reeling, looked up in protest. "Instructor, that's not fair! He was following my plan!"
Kaede, pushing herself to her feet with mud-stained hands, actually scowled in Kairo's defense. "As much as I dislike him, he did what he was told. The plan was ours. The failure was ours." For a Jukai, admitting failure was difficult; sharing blame for it was an act of honor.
Kasumi ignored them completely. Her entire focus was on Kairo, her crimson eyes like chips of ruby, sharp and analytical.
"A coward," she repeated, her voice soft but venomous. "You watched. You saw their plan was amateurish. You felt the gap in our power. You knew they would fail before they even began."
Kairo maintained his frightened Gaze, his small body trembling slightly. But inside, his mind was a whirlwind of cold analysis. She saw it. She didn't just see my actions; she saw my inaction. She reads intent.
"You let them charge forward," Kasumi continued, taking another slow step, "to see how I would react. You used your 'allies' as probes, sacrificing them to gather data on your opponent. You didn't participate. You observed. A commander sending his soldiers to die to test the enemy's defenses. It is a sound strategy."
Her lips twisted into a cruel smirk. "But you are not a commander. And they are not your soldiers. You are a team. You hung back, feigned fear, and prepared to do nothing. That is not strategy. It is cowardice."
Every word was a perfectly aimed dart, designed to strip away his defenses. She was deconstructing his actions with terrifying precision.
Kairo knew he could not remain silent. The "frightened child" act had been seen through. He needed a new mask. He slowly straightened up, letting the feigned tremor in his hands subside. He lifted his head, his blind eyes meeting her gaze.
"You are mistaken, Instructor," Kairo said, his voice quiet, calm, and utterly devoid of the childish fear from moments before.
Leo and Kaede stared, shocked by the sudden change in his demeanor.
"Oh?" Kasumi's eyebrow arched, a flicker of genuine interest in her eyes. "Enlighten me."
"A strategy that has a zero percent chance of success is not a strategy," Kairo stated simply. "It is a suicide pact. Their plan was based on the flawed assumption that you would be overwhelmed by a simultaneous, two-pronged assault."
"And what was your strategy, then?" she challenged. "To run?"
"My strategy," Kairo said, "was to observe our first failure. To calculate your speed, your Aether consumption, your reaction time. To learn the rhythm of your movements. Data is a weapon. The first assault failed, but it was not a waste. It provided the information needed for the second assault to succeed."
Kaede's eyes widened. She looked at Kairo, then back at Kasumi, the pieces clicking into place in her mind. He had used them. He had used their charge, their failure, as a tool. The thought was both infuriating and undeniably brilliant.
Leo looked troubled. "You knew we would fail? Why didn't you say something?"
"Because you wouldn't have listened," Kairo replied without looking at him. "Your pride would not have allowed you to believe me. You had to see it. You had to feel the difference between a talented initiate and a true Master. Now you have. That data is more valuable than any failed plan."
Kasumi was silent for a long moment, a new, dangerous light in her eyes. "A cold calculation," she finally said. "Sacrificing your pieces to understand the board. A tactician's mind. But you still haven't explained your 'plan'. What is this second assault?"
Kairo took a small, deliberate breath. "It is simple. The test is not to defeat you. The test is to take a bell." He looked at Leo, then at Kaede. "In a direct confrontation, you are a fortress. We cannot breach your walls. So we should not try."
He then turned his blind gaze back to Kasumi.
"But a fortress has a weakness," Kairo continued. "It cannot be in two places at once."
He didn't explain further. He simply acted. He turned to Leo. "Prince Leo. Your Titan's Grasp. Not on her. On me."
Leo stared at him, baffled. "What?"
"Do it," Kairo commanded, his voice holding an unexpected authority. "Create a cage of roots around me, but leave a single, narrow opening facing her. Now."
Leo, though confused, was still reeling from his earlier failure. He was willing to try anything. He slammed his palm to the ground again. A cage of thick, thorny roots erupted around Kairo, forming a protective sphere, leaving only a small gap at the front.
"Kaede," Kairo's voice called out from within the root-cage. "Your only job is to draw her attention. Do not attack her. Just be a nuisance. Keep her eyes on you."
Kaede, though still furious at being used, was intrigued. This was a real strategy, a plan beyond a simple head-on charge. She nodded, her expression grim.
She took off, running not at Kasumi, but in a wide arc around her, her movements fast and erratic, forcing Kasumi to turn and track her.
"What is this, little snake?" Kasumi murmured, her eyes following Kaede, a flicker of amusement on her face. "A puppet show?"
Then, from the opening in the root-cage, something shot out. It was not a person. It was a stone. A simple, palm-sized stone from the training field. It sailed through the air, thrown with surprising force, aimed directly at Kasumi's face.
Kasumi didn't even flinch. With a contemptuous flick of her wrist, she manifested a tiny buckler of red Aether, slapping the stone out of the air. It was a pathetic, childish attack.
But it was just a distraction.
Because in the exact moment her attention was drawn to the stone, Kairo moved. He did not run out of the cage. He channeled his Aether, focusing the entirety of his small pool into a single application of his Seigan's true power. The power over Force.
He focused on the ground directly beneath the bells at Kasumi's hip. And he pushed.
It was not a visible explosion. It was a silent, focused blast of pure kinetic energy. The mud and grass directly under the bells erupted upwards in a violent, muddy geyser.
The sudden, unexpected blast from below caught Kasumi completely by surprise. The force of the eruption threw the three small brass bells up into the air, their ribbons scattering. They hung there for a split second, suspended in the misty morning air, tinkling musically.
It was the opening. A window of one second.
"Leo!" Kairo's voice commanded from the cage. "Now! The roots!"
Leo reacted instantly. He slammed his hands together, and the cage of roots around Kairo retracted back into the earth with the speed of a striking snake. At the same time, seeing her chance, Kaede abandoned her feint and charged, her eyes locked on the airborne bells.
But they weren't the target.
As the roots vanished, Kairo was already moving. He shot forward, not towards the bells, but directly at Kasumi. He ignored the prize completely. His hand was outstretched, not to grab, but to strike.
Kasumi, her senses momentarily disoriented by the blast from below and the two charging Jukai, saw the true threat at the last second. The small boy, the "coward," was launching a direct assault. Her instincts, honed by a hundred battles, took over. She brought up her arm to block, her Aether flaring to create a defensive gauntlet.
It was exactly what Kairo wanted.
He had never been the target. She had never been the target. The bells had never been the target.
He had created a single moment of absolute chaos. A feint within a feint within a feint. Kaede was the first distraction. The stone was the second. His own charge was the third.
And while every eye, including the instructor's, was focused on the ensuing clash, a single, thin, almost invisible thread of golden Aether, which Kairo had spun out moments before the assault began, snaked through the air, completely unnoticed. It bypassed the fight entirely.
It gently wrapped around the ribbon of a single falling bell, tugged it silently from the air, and pulled it back into the mist before anyone even knew it was gone.