Day five belonged to Kiba.
He met me at dawn in a clearing different from Akeno's scorched battlefield. This one was grass and packed earth, training dummies lined against the tree line like soldiers awaiting execution. Wooden swords hung from a rack near the center.
"No magic today," Kiba said. He tossed me a practice blade. "Just steel. Or in this case, oak."
I caught it, tested the weight. "You know I don't have a sword-type Sacred Gear."
"I do." His smile was polite, perfect, utterly controlled. "That's not what we're training."
The first hour taught me humility.
Kiba's Sword Birth was uncopyable. Sacred Gears couldn't be absorbed, the Fragment had confirmed that during my earliest experiments. But his technique wasn't supernatural. Every motion was earned through years of practice, refined through countless battles.
I couldn't copy that either. Not directly.
What I could do was learn.
"Your footwork is inconsistent." Kiba demonstrated, sliding forward in a motion so smooth it seemed to ignore friction. "You favor your right leg. Opponents will notice."
I adjusted. Wrong.
"Again," he said.
I adjusted again. Still wrong.
"You're thinking too much." He circled me, correcting my stance with light touches. "Your body knows what to do. Your mind is interrupting."
"My mind is the only reason I'm alive."
"In combat, yes. In swordsmanship, it can be a handicap." He stepped back, assumed his stance. "Again. Don't think. React."
We drilled. Footwork, blade angles, the precise timing of a parry. Kiba was patient but demanding. He never raised his voice, never showed frustration, but he also never let a mistake slide uncorrected.
By the time the sun climbed fully above the trees, my arms burned and my feet ached from adjusting my weight a hundred times.
"Better," Kiba acknowledged. "Your fundamentals are improving."
"That's not exactly a ringing endorsement."
"Ringing endorsements are for people who've earned them." His smile took the edge off. "You're getting there."
The morning stretched into repetition.
Reading opponents was harder than it sounded. Kiba explained it as a combination of pattern recognition and instinct, watching the shoulders, the hips, the subtle shifts that telegraphed an attack before it launched.
"Riser's peerage includes several sword users," he said, demonstrating a defensive stance. "Karlamine in particular is formidable. If you can read her attacks, you can survive long enough to counter."
"And if I can't?"
"Then you lose." No sugar coating. "Rating Games are won by survivors, not heroes."
I filed that away. Practicality over glory. It matched everything I'd learned about devil society.
We sparred lightly, Kiba holding back enough that I could actually defend. His blade moved like water, flowing, adapting, never committed to one angle when another presented itself.
I blocked. Parried. Tried to read his shoulders like he'd taught me.
He tagged my ribs anyway. Then my shoulder. Then my hip.
"You're improving," he said.
"Doesn't feel like it."
"That's how you know it's working." He lowered his blade. "Break. Fifteen minutes."
We sat on the grass, drinking from water bottles Kiba had brought. The morning sun filtered through the canopy, casting dappled shadows across the training ground.
"Can I ask you something personal?" I said.
Kiba's expression didn't change, but something shifted behind his eyes. A wall going up.
"You may ask."
"Your past. Before Rias found you." I kept my voice neutral. "I've heard fragments, rumors, pieces of conversation. But I don't know the truth."
"The truth." He looked at his hand, and I noticed for the first time a scar there. Cross-shaped, old, poorly healed. "The truth is complicated."
"Most truths are."
Kiba was quiet for a long moment. When he spoke again, his voice had dropped, stripped of its polished formality.
"I survived something I shouldn't have."
I waited. Pushing felt wrong. This was his story to tell or withhold.
"There was a project," he continued, still staring at the scar. "The Holy Sword Project. The Church... they wanted to create artificial wielders. People who could use Excalibur and its fragments."
Holy swords. Excalibur. The names carried weight even I could feel.
"The experiments required subjects." His hand closed into a fist, hiding the scar. "Children. Orphans, mostly. People who wouldn't be missed."
My stomach tightened. I could see where this was going.
"Everyone else died." The words came flat, emptied of emotion. "The experiments failed. The subjects were disposed of. I was the only one who escaped."
"How?"
"A friend." For just a moment, something cracked in his perfect composure. "He gave me his life so I could run. I made it out of the facility, collapsed in the snow, and waited to die." He met my eyes. "Rias found me instead."
I thought about what that meant. A dying child in the snow, rescued by a devil princess who saw value where others saw only failure.
"She gave you a second chance."
"She gave me everything." His voice steadied, the mask sliding back into place. "A family. A purpose. A reason to keep living when I wanted nothing more than to stop." He paused. "Sometimes I still dream of them. The ones I couldn't save. The faces of children I couldn't protect."
The Fragment stirred.
"Trauma is a powerful motivator. His desire for revenge against the Church could be leveraged..."
I shut it out. Hard. Not every piece of information was meant to be used. Some things were just... pain. Shared because sharing made it lighter.
"I'm sorry," I said. "For what you went through. For what you lost."
Kiba studied me for a long moment. "You're not going to ask about the details? The project? What they did to us?"
"Would knowing help either of us?"
"...No." Something flickered in his expression, surprise, maybe. Or appreciation. "It wouldn't."
We sat in silence after that. Not uncomfortable. Just... present.
The afternoon session was different.
Kiba pushed harder, and I pushed back. The morning's drills had lodged something in my muscle memory, patterns I didn't remember learning, instincts that felt borrowed.
My footwork smoothed out. Slides became glides. When I parried, my blade was already moving toward the counter.
"Good," Kiba said, actually sounding impressed. "Very good."
I didn't know where it was coming from. My body moved in ways that felt practiced, refined, as if I'd spent years with a sword instead of weeks.
"Efficiency: Improved." The Fragment's tone was clinical. "Host is adapting well to combat instruction."
That wasn't it. This wasn't adaptation. This was...
I didn't finish the thought. Didn't want to examine it too closely.
We drilled until the sun started its descent, and by then I was moving like a different person. The clumsy American who couldn't hold a blade had been replaced by someone who understood angles, who felt timing instead of calculating it.
Kiba noticed. I could tell by the way he watched me during our final exercises, not as a teacher observing a student, but as a warrior assessing a potential equal.
"One more match," he said. "Full speed. Don't hold back."
I nodded.
We squared off. Wooden blades raised. Eyes locked.
Kiba moved first, a lightning-fast thrust that should have caught me center mass.
I pivoted. My body slid left without thought, weight shifting exactly the way he'd demonstrated this morning. The blade passed inches from my chest.
Counter. Slash toward his exposed side.
He parried, but barely. I saw surprise flash across his face before his composure returned.
We exchanged a dozen blows in as many seconds. He was still faster, still more skilled, but the gap had narrowed dramatically. My blade found angles I hadn't known existed. My feet moved in patterns that felt like second nature.
His patterns. His footwork. Absorbed without conscious effort.
I pressed an opening. Thrust toward his shoulder.
He deflected at the last instant, my blade grazing his uniform.
Close. So close.
We separated, both breathing hard. The clearing had gone quiet, the evening insects silent in the aftermath of our clash.
"You learn fast," Kiba said slowly. "Too fast, maybe."
"Good teacher."
"I'm serious." He lowered his blade but didn't relax. "I've trained with devils, angels, fallen angels, warriors from every faction. None of them picked up technique like that. Not in a single day."
I kept my expression neutral. "I'm motivated."
"Motivation doesn't explain..." He stopped. Considered. When he spoke again, his voice was quieter. "When you move now, you move like me. Exactly like me. The same weight distribution. The same blade angles. Even the same tells I had to spend years eliminating."
The Fragment was quiet. For once, it had nothing to say.
"I'm observant," I managed. "You said it yourself. Pattern recognition."
"Pattern recognition lets you predict movement. It doesn't let you copy it." His eyes searched mine. "What are you, Ryder? Really?"
I thought about lying. Considered a dozen deflections, a hundred half-truths.
But Kiba had shared his trauma with me. His dead friends. His nightmares.
"I don't know yet," I said honestly. "I'm still figuring it out."
He held my gaze for a long moment. Then nodded slowly.
"Whatever your secret is," Kiba said quietly, "I hope it's worth the cost."
He walked away before I could respond. The evening shadows swallowed him, leaving me alone in the clearing with a wooden sword and too many questions.
The Fragment broke its silence.
"The knight carries a sword of vengeance. One day, that will matter."
One day.
I was getting tired of prophecies.
I made my way back to the compound as darkness settled over the mountain. Five days left until the Rating Game. Five days to close a gap that felt more like a chasm.
But the training was working. I could feel it, not just in my power level, but in my understanding. Akeno had taught me about lightning and duality. Kiba had taught me about steel and survival. Each lesson layered on the previous, building something I couldn't quite name.
The Fragment calculated what I'd gained: experience, technique, combat intuition. It didn't calculate what I'd absorbed from the people themselves.
Kiba's precision. Akeno's acceptance of darkness. Koneko's quiet strength.
Pieces of them, becoming pieces of me.
My footwork on the path back was different. Smoother. Balanced in a way that felt borrowed rather than learned.
I didn't mention it. Neither did the Fragment.
Some changes, I was learning, happened whether you noticed them or not.
Five days. Power Level: 65. Still not enough.
But closer. Always closer.