The lab, which had once felt like a prison, was now their sanctuary, their base of operations. The heavy packs of supplies were unceremoniously dumped in a corner, a small hoard of wealth in a bankrupt world. While Ben took inventory, his meticulous nature a comfort in the chaos, Elara carefully cleaned the blood and grime from her new sabers using an alcohol wipe from a first-aid kit.
Kai watched her, then looked at his own cavalry sword. "You need to practice," he said, his voice quiet but firm. "The skill gives you the knowledge, but your body still has to learn the movements. You need muscle memory."
Elara looked up, a flicker of uncertainty in her eyes. "Practice? How?"
"You and me," Kai said, gesturing with his saber to an open space between the lab benches. "Right now. No holding back. I need to know you can handle yourself."
A sparring match in the middle of the apocalypse felt absurd, but she understood. She stood, adopting the ready stance the skill book had burned into her mind. Kai mirrored her, his own stance more worn, more practical, honed by real, life-or-death battles.
"Ready?" he asked.
She nodded.
He didn't charge. He simply flowed forward, his blade a blur. Elara reacted on instinct, her shorter blade coming up to parry. The clang of steel echoed in the quiet lab. His strength was greater; the impact jarred her arm, but she held her ground. She tried to counter with her longer blade, but he was already gone, sidestepping, his saber tapping her harmlessly on the ribs.
"You're too stiff," he critiqued, backing away. "You're thinking about the forms. Don't think. Just react. Let the echo guide you."
They went again. This time, she was faster, more fluid. She blocked his first strike, then his second, their blades a sharp, ringing chorus. She saw an opening and lunged, a perfect thrust aimed at his chest.
Kai didn't block it. He simply pivoted, letting her blade slide past his side, and hooked her ankle with his foot. Her forward momentum did the rest. She stumbled, pinwheeling her arms for balance before crashing onto a pile of discarded lab coats. Kai stood over her, the point of his saber resting lightly on her collarbone.
The fight had lasted less than ten seconds.
Elara lay there, panting, a blush of frustration and embarrassment on her cheeks. "I... I thought I had you."
"You did good," Kai said, offering her a hand and pulling her to her feet. "You're fast, and your instincts are there. But you have no experience. You left yourself wide open. In a real fight, you'd be dead."
The blunt assessment hung in the air, but there was no malice in it, only a hard-earned truth. She looked at her sabers, then at him, a new, deeper respect in her eyes.
"So we need more experience," she said.
"Which brings us to our primary logistical problem," Ben interjected, looking up from a notepad where he'd been scribbling calculations. "To manifest the 'Insight' skill, you require three hundred and seventy-five more experience points. Based on our last encounter, Gnawers yield fifty XP per kill. Therefore, our target is eight Gnawers. No more, no less. A targeted, controlled cull."
"We go back to the student union," Kai stated. "It's a known hunting ground."
"A frontal assault on the main staircase is statistically inadvisable," Ben countered. "We were nearly overwhelmed. We require a superior tactical position. A kill box."
He unrolled a floor plan of the student union he'd found stuffed in a desk drawer. "Here," he said, tapping a location on the first floor. "The campus mailroom. It's a long, narrow corridor with a single entrance. We can lure them in and force them into a single-file line. It nullifies their numerical advantage."
"How do we lure them without bringing the whole horde down on us?" Elara asked.
"Misdirection," Ben said, a gleam in his eye. He picked up his satchel and produced a small, simple device he'd fashioned while they were sparring: a glass vial filled with two reactive chemicals, separated by a thin membrane. "I'll create a timed chemical reaction. I'll place this on the second floor, far from the mailroom. It will rupture, creating a loud noise and a foul smell, drawing the bulk of the pack away. You two will be waiting near the mailroom. A few will inevitably investigate the secondary disturbance—us. You draw them into the corridor, and you eliminate the targets."
It was a plan. A dangerous, complicated plan, but a plan nonetheless. It was proactive, intelligent, and it gave them all a role.
Kai looked at the floor plan, then at his sister, who was already practicing her footwork, her expression one of fierce concentration. He looked at Ben, the strategist, the bomb-maker, the intellectual core of their team.
"Okay," Kai said, his voice resonating with a newfound sense of command. "We rest for one more hour. Then we go hunting."