Rama didn't wait for the second wave to close the distance. He moved to meet it, drawing on reserves of speed and strength that had sat mostly unused since Tirtayasa, the System's numbers translating into motion that no one in this world could fully track with the naked eye.
He took the first three cold ones down in the space of a few heartbeats, each strike placed with the same lethal economy he'd learned across seven years of training in a world these people would never believe existed. Even so, the numbers told against them. Nine attackers where five had come before, closing from both sides of a formation built to hold a single front rather than absorb a pincer, and for a handful of brutal seconds the clearing became pure chaos, soldiers screaming orders and warnings in equal measure, Surya's careful formation bending without quite breaking under the pressure.
