The courtyard had been converted into a proper arena overnight. Ranks of benches ringed the training field; proctors and instructors sat like a court above it all, notebooks and watches in hand. A dozen Hell Butterflies zipped overhead, delivering results and official notices to anxious faces.
I stood at the edge of the ring.
Rank 5. The instructors' whispering had pushed me up into the top tier of the year, but I hadn't been in the seat long enough for them to grow comfortable with it. That meant the eyes were sharp. Predatory. Waiting.
The practical rounds weren't friendly. They were designed to sort the able from the ambitious. Students from across the year groups were called to test. I'd been told: win quickly, keep your composure, don't do anything stupid. Those had been the explicit rules. The unspoken one was: don't be seen as a threat until you can manage what follows.
Round one called my name.
"Joro, Katsu — entry match. Masato Hayate."
Masato — fourth year, B-class — swaggered into the ring like he'd already written the match report. He was broad-shouldered, practiced, and convinced. Good qualities for a fighter. Poor for someone about to be made uncomfortable.
We bowed. The proctor raised his hand.
"Begin!"
Masato didn't waste time. He came at me with a heavy, practiced slash meant to break posture. Instead of meeting steel with steel, I let the air fold a little at the edge of perception — nothing overt, just the weight of presence. My A- reiatsu pressed outward, not in a flare but in pressure: the kind that makes shoulders tighten and reaction times fractionally late. Shadows at the ring's edges seemed to pull inward like ink creeping on paper.
His grin faltered.
That was all I needed.
I moved once. The step was small, economy of motion, and my blade slid along his guard as if it had always known the path. Asauchi clattered. Masato stared at the handle on the ground like he'd been robbed of oxygen.
"Winner — Katsu Joro."
Silence; then a ripple of shocked conversation.
More rounds, same result. Speed and brute force. Fancy footwork. A few tries to disorient me with feints. I handled each like a calibration test — step in, take the weak point, step out. No flash, no banked Shikai. Just quiet, surgical margins. Meikōgen did its quiet work in the background: brief milliseconds of visual lag, phantom flickers at the edge of someone's vision, a tug on their balance when they tried to commit. My perception caught micro-changes in breathing and stance, and strength turned them into simple math.
By the semi-finals, there were fewer people in the crowd who still looked comfortable.
They called the next match with a small, formal voice that made the benches lean forward: "Instructor Renshō Takuma will step in as challenger."
Takuma was not a token instructor. He'd trained for decades and carried that training like armor. When he walked, you knew you were in the presence of someone who had broken more cocky students than the Academy had benches.
"Joro," he said once we faced off, voice even. "Don't hold back."
I didn't answer. I wasn't there for his lesson. I was there for the test I'd accepted.
Takuma moved like a metronome — every strike precise, every counter practiced. He pushed; I parried. He increased tempo; I matched timing by sight and by feel. At several points my Zanjutsu grade felt like it would betray me: B+ is decent, but against an instructor it should look thin. So I compensated with every other tool available.
I did not release Kage. I did not call out its name. I had no intent to announce the blade — not here, not with so many eyes.
Instead I let the skills do the work.
Meikōgen's influence crept in: shadow density in the stands and the pillars folded subtly; Takuma's peripheral vision brushed at phantom movements. He blinked once too slowly. I felt the match tilt by a fraction. I felt where the cut would land before he committed, and so I moved to that narrow gap.
A clean feint, a small lateral slide, a whisper of a cut — and his Asauchi spun from his hand.
Clack, then the hush of a hundred people realizing they'd been watching something different.
Time froze in that half-second.
The lead examiner stood and spoke, voice carrying: "With performance like that, you've qualified to pass to the final examination of the Advancement Trial. That will be a one-on-one against an examiner. Win, and you jump years."
I should have felt triumph. I felt the same small pulse I'd felt a dozen times before — the system counting, the opportunities unspooling. Passing this was not about vanity anymore. It was a step into the long game.
The final match would be scheduled after a short recess. My body hummed with the residual pressure, shadows finally settling back to their normal edges as the sun edged higher. Students glanced at me with new suspicion now — not raw hatred, but calculation.
I looked down at my sealed hilt. Kage rested there, patient. I didn't need it yet. Not to win this.
When the proctors called the final round and the examiner stepped onto the platform — a man with decades of battle etched into his face — I bowed.
"Ready?"
"As ready as I'll ever be."
He smiled, not unkindly. "Then show me how far a first-year can climb."
And I stepped into the ring, a hundred eyes on the ink-dark line the shadow left behind me.
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