Lazar Kiyokazu POV -
A brief silence fell over us the instant Kieran's hand rose into the icy air.
A few recruits in the crowd turned to look at him as he stood beside Luiz. Most could barely stay on their feet, desperately avoiding Darius's gaze just to conserve what little energy they had left after breakfast. Volunteering here, on an empty stomach, was as good as suicide.
My eyes stayed locked on Kieran's raised hand while my mind shot back to the brief exchange he'd had with Viktor by the boulder earlier.
„What did Viktor say to him?" I thought, glancing ahead, straight at Viktor.
Viktor stood in the front row, watching him. That familiar smile of his, proud and faintly amused, played at his lips as he looked at Kieran. He wasn't surprised in the slightest. If anything, he looked like he'd expected exactly this.
"Is this guy serious?" Tavon whispered, leaning toward my shoulder. "Did the cold get to his brain or?"
"Kieran..." I murmured, taking half a step toward him. "What are you doing?"
He didn't turn, and his hand didn't waver for a second. "Proving something," he answered quietly, his tone flat and without a trace of hesitation, his eyes fixed on Darius.
"Volunteers, step forward!" Darius's voice rang out across the dirt field, cutting through my thoughts.
Ren, Viktor, Kaien, Kieran, and a handful of others stepped out and lined up, while the rest of us drew back slightly to make room.
"Alright, soldiers," Darius began, looking over the volunteers. "Now that we've split you off, does anyone want to go first, or should I choose the order myself?"
"I'll go first," Kaien spoke up, his eyes fixed on Darius.
"I'd like to be first," Ren added beside him, and Darius paused, considering for a moment.
"Alright," he nodded. "I've decided. Ren, you go first."
"What?!" Kaien protested loudly, teeth clenched. "But I was the one who volunteered to go first!"
"And who do you think you are to decide who goes first here, Senzaki?" Darius cut him off, his eyes narrowing slightly. "I'm the one who decides who goes first and who goes last. Is that clear?"
Kaien ground his teeth, his clenched fists trembling at his sides. That arrogant, proud bearing of his twisted for a moment into raw fury, clearly unused to hearing the word no.
"Is that clear?" Darius repeated.
Under the weight of Darius's cold stare, Kaien finally stepped back, his burning eyes locked on Ren even as the other cadet walked past him.
"I'll take that as a yes. Now, to your positions!" Darius's voice echoed out.
Ren stepped up to the start of the right lane. His posture was perfectly calm, his head still, and as I watched him, he looked like he wasn't thinking about anything at all. As if he weren't standing in the freezing wind on an empty stomach, but somewhere else entirely, in a world none of us could see. It was strange trying to describe it.
"Go!"
At Darius's signal, Ren shot forward. His movements along the first stretch were fluid, without a single wasted step. The first obstacles, low hurdles, low-crawl trenches, earthen pillars, and the rest I'd struggled through with so much difficulty yesterday, he cleared with an ease that looked almost like routine to him.
But at the top of the curve waited a new obstacle, an A-frame ramp, steep, built of packed earth, and coated in a thin, treacherous layer of ice formed from the snow that had gathered there.
"Watch him..." Luiz whispered beside me, his eyes locked on him.
Ren climbed the ramp without losing his momentum, but right at the top his foot slipped slightly on the ice. A ripple of tension passed through all of us watching, and everyone expected him to fall and have to start over. But instead, somehow, he kept his balance, caught the top edge of the ramp, and vaulted down the other side in one fluid motion, continuing toward the final stretch.
He cleared the second half of the obstacles as if they were nothing. Neither the walls, nor the crawling, nor the earthen pillars he had to circle slowed him down in the slightest. He just kept running, and in a record time reached the end of the left lane, barely even winded.
"One minute, forty-eight seconds," Elias said, walking up to us and writing it in his notebook. As he said it, a smile had clearly formed on his face, and his voice had gone, I don't know how else to put it, softer than usual.
Darius looked at Ren and stroked his beard several times, and between that thick beard and his fingers, I could clearly see the proud smile he was trying to hide. It was the same smile Elias had worn while announcing Ren's result, except Elias hadn't even tried to hide his.
"That's a new record, Darius."
"Is it?"
"Yes," Elias answered, flipping the page. "Yesterday he managed it in two minutes, one second."
"Hahaha," Darius laughed. Then he looked at the rest of us standing to the side, watching Ren. "I hope this young man will be an example to all of you. Because these are the kinds of results I want to see from every one of you soldiers!"
We all fell silent at that, every eye fixed on Ren as he walked back to our group and took his place beside us, not looking at anyone but Darius and Elias, who stood ahead of us.
"Look at him, strutting around..."
"A favorite, no wonder."
"Me, follow his example? I'd rather die."
"He's probably some noble who wormed his way in."
"Yeah, yeah, that's gotta be it."
Plenty of murmurs went around against Ren. But no matter how much they whispered, none of those voices had the courage to say it any louder, whether from a lack of nerve or fear of what would happen if they did. But the results he'd put up were right there in front of all of us, impossible to deny.
Tavon, Luiz, and I held our tongues, me especially, since I had no interest in being on bad terms with Ren. Or should I say, on bad terms with anyone here. Not that Tavon didn't side with the others at times and throw in a comment or two, but after Luiz and I shut him up, he stopped. Who knew, if Darius praised him this much, there was probably something to him. And neither I nor Luiz wanted to test what that something was.
"Next!"
While we were still thinking that over, watching Ren brush the snow off his clothes, Darius's voice rang out, and Kaien stepped up to the start of the right lane before Darius had even called the next volunteer's name. But just as he planted his feet, Darius raised a hand and pointed in another direction.
"Kieran. You're next."
Kaien froze. His face went pale in an instant, then flushed red with pure shock and anger.
"What?!" The word tore out of him, his voice shaking. "I'm standing right here! I run next!" he snapped at Darius, his tone louder than it should have been.
"I already warned you once, Senzaki." Darius's voice dropped to a dangerously low register as he fixed Kaien with a heavy stare, his eyes beginning to glow faintly yellow, almost gold. "This isn't the capital, and your surname means absolutely nothing to me. Step back and wait your turn, or you'll regret it badly."
Kaien looked ready to explode, but under Darius's authority he barely held himself in check. Elias raised his right hand into the air and pointed it toward him.
„I've seen this before," the thought crossed my mind as I watched Elias and remembered something. The first time he'd walked into the room, Elias had raised his hand like that, and what followed was that sickening pressure those two guys hadn't been able to withstand, the one that got them expelled.
Kaien's eyes flicked past Darius, held on Elias for a few seconds, then dropped to the ground, and he stepped back to the side, again.
Kieran walked past him without a word, and the two of them held eye contact for less than a second.
"Let's go, Grumpy, show them how it's done!" Tavon shouted, and everyone who wasn't a volunteer, Kieran included, turned to look at him. Their faces practically read, „Are you out of your mind?"
Kieran looked flustered, and his cheeks even seemed faintly red, or at least that's how it looked to me, though it was probably just the cold and the wind. Then his gaze shifted to Viktor on his left, and from there he fixed it on the lane and didn't look away again.
"Hahah," Viktor laughed, then gave a single nod.
"Go!" Darius signaled, and Kieran burst into a sprint.
He came off the line explosively, and the first obstacles in his path were the low hurdles and crawl trenches. His movements were quick, and it took him only a dozen seconds or so to clear them. It wasn't as fast or as precise as what Ren had done, but his style was similar enough as he worked through them.
"I didn't know Grumpy was this flexible," Tavon remarked, watching him crawl through the snow.
"Yeah," I answered. But he'd always been ready for anything, though. Even when he and Viktor had gone at it back in the dorm, he hadn't fallen behind. If anything, I would say he even had an advantage over him.
The more obstacles he cleared, the more he slowed, and it looked like he might stop at any moment. Even so, he kept moving, kept clearing them, and soon reached a familiar obstacle: the A-frame ramp, the same one Ren had crossed with so little trouble.
Kieran charged it and planted his foot on the slick surface, and before he could grab the top, his foot slipped out from under him. Unlike Ren, he couldn't recover his balance, and he tumbled down onto the ground.
After getting up, he rubbed his arms, stepped back a few paces, then charged the same obstacle again. This time, the moment his boot touched the steep slope, he jumped and caught the top edge with both hands, then hauled himself over and kept running toward the next obstacle.
The pillars, and the maze of pillars after them, he cleared all of it, but at a much slower pace than Ren. Soon he reached the end of the left lane, where the course finished.
He found himself in front of the A-frame again, and crossed it the same way as before.
„So that's how you get through this one." I thought, watching both his and Ren's movements closely as they worked through the obstacles. I hadn't been able to pick up much from Ren, since he moved too fast for that, but Kieran's run taught me plenty that might help when it was my turn.
He cleared one more obstacle, the three pillars you had to circle around each of, and then two more stood between him and the finish: two earthen walls, nearly two meters high.
Still sprinting, he barely glanced at the first one before leaping and hauling his body over to the other side.
"That's it, Grumpy!" Tavon cheered, and the people around us edged away slightly, probably because of how loudly Tavon was cheering. "Just one more!"
" Where do you switch off..." some guy with spiky brown hair muttered, but Tavon ignored him.
Meanwhile, Kieran was gathering himself for the last wall. Just like before, he took a few steps back, then sprinted at full speed and launched himself over it.
The instant he cleared the final obstacle, he leaned against the earthen wall, breathing hard, steam rising from his mouth with every exhale.
The three of us walked over to support him, but someone else fell into step beside us, entirely uninvited. Viktor.
"Not bad, Rabbit. You entertained me," Viktor said, that easy smile of his in place, offering a hand that Kieran, after a brief hesitation, took and used to pull himself up.
Luiz watched him closely, while I stayed neutral, though I tracked Viktor's every move all the same as him.
"But now I'll show you how it's actually done, so you'd better watch," Viktor added, turning toward the start line with complete confidence.
"Three minutes, twenty-six seconds!" Elias's voice rang out as he wrote down the result. He looked at Kieran and gave a slight nod. "Solid, for someone who went in headfirst, but you've still got plenty of room to improve."
For Kieran, it was a good result. He'd come in over a minute faster than my run yesterday, but next to Ren's 1:48, it felt like an eternity.
"Thank you, sir." Kieran gave his thanks, then came to join us.
Kaien stood off to the side. His eyes drifted from Ren, to Viktor, already taking his position at the start, to the white-haired guy standing calmly nearby, waiting his turn.
"Next! Viktor, to position!" Darius called out.
Kaien looked like he was about to snap, his teeth clearly bared, but then he just stopped. He closed his eyes, drew a deep breath, and his anger vanished in an instant. The same way it had when he'd spoken with Luiz the day before.
Before stepping onto the lane, Viktor glanced at Kieran for maybe less than a second, then began setting his body into position.
He drew his left foot back slightly, set his right foot forward along with his arms, and leaned his body ahead.
"Go!" Darius gave the signal, and Viktor launched forward, leading with his left foot.
Within seconds he'd already cleared the first three obstacles and moved on to the pillar obstacles, where he had to circle each one. As far as I could tell, his method was to use his hands and feet at the same time, whether he was jumping over an obstacle or running alongside it.
Every low hurdle he cleared, his hands touched down on it as he went, over and over. It seemed like a solid strategy, right up until he reached the A-frame and the pillars he had to circle. There, he couldn't use his hands and feet at once, and those obstacles ended up costing him the most time.
After one failed attempt on the A-frame, he did exactly what Kieran had done, which confirmed it was simply the technique for that obstacle. Plant your foot on the ramp, push off hard with that leg, grab the top with your hands, and vault smoothly over.
„Thank you, Kieran," I thought to myself, watching as Viktor cleared the rest of the obstacles. The rest of the course was the same as yesterday's, except today there were no monkey bars, no tunnels. Instead it was a mix of pillars, cubes, and low hurdles, as if the whole thing had been designed purely for running.
Yesterday's course had included tunnels and plenty of other things that demanded raw strength, while today's seemed built entirely around legs and running. And this, right after the run we'd already done to get here.
„How sly of them," I thought, watching Darius watch Viktor with a faint smile on his face.
Soon Viktor cleared the walls and reached the end of the left lane.
The instant he finished, he turned to Elias and watched him, waiting for his time.
"Two minutes, thirty-one seconds," Elias announced, then wrote it down in his notebook.
"Not bad, soldier!" Darius called out, and Viktor turned his gaze toward us, looking at Kieran with that same smile on his face.
"Another show-off..." Tavon muttered beside me.
But Kieran, the one Viktor was looking at, wore a completely different expression from the rest of us. He wasn't angry, wasn't surprised, wasn't showing any emotion I could read at all. He just gave a faint smile and looked back. It was a look that carried respect above everything else, and both of them wore it the same way.
"Guys," He called, and we all turned to him, waiting to hear what he'd say.
"I think I just found my first rival," he said, dead serious.
Tavon looked at him like he'd spoken a foreign language, while Luiz and I just traded a quick glance and said nothing. Before anyone could answer, Darius's voice rang across the field again.
"Next! Rylan, to the line!"
The white-haired guy who had jogged past us earlier stepped forward and took his place at the start of the right lane. Unlike Kaien, who had been practically burning with rage, or Viktor, with his ever-present confident smile, Rylan's face was completely calm. He didn't say a word, same as Ren.
"Go!"
Rylan didn't explode off the line the way Kieran had, and he didn't use the aggressive hand-and-foot style Viktor relied on. His movement was... fluid. Every jump, every change of direction around the earthen pillars, looked calculated down to the smallest detail. He didn't even slow down at the A-frame but instead used that momentum, pushed lightly off the ice, and sailed over without a single wasted motion.
"Look at him cut through the turns..." Luiz whispered beside me. "This guy doesn't waste a gram of energy."
He flew over the remaining obstacles and the last two walls with unbelievable ease, then came to a stop at the end of the lane, barely even winded.
"Two minutes, twelve seconds!" Elias announced, writing down the result with a slight raise of his eyebrows.
Viktor's smile vanished for a moment as he looked at Rylan. Rylan had beaten him by a full nineteen seconds. Rylan simply stepped back into the group without seeking anyone's attention, same as Ren, as if he'd just finished an ordinary walk. The only difference was that Ren had been noticeably faster than him.
"As I said," Darius spoke, turning his gaze to the one remaining volunteer who still hadn't given up on going next. "There are those who talk, and those who act. Senzaki. To the line."
Kaien stepped up to the start. Even though he'd tried to steady his breathing and rein in his anger, an enormous tension still radiated off him, ready to snap at any second.
"Go!"
Kaien shot off like a bird. His raw speed on the first stretch was terrifying, faster than both Viktor and Rylan. He cleared the low hurdles with ease and tore through the trench.
But at the A-frame, that same speed turned against him.
He came in too aggressively, planted his foot on the icy patch, and it slid badly out from under him. He didn't fall the way Kieran had, but he had to grab the edge in a frantic lunge just to keep himself from flying backward. He lost his rhythm, burned precious seconds getting over, and pushed on with obvious frustration.
He tore through the rest of the obstacles and walls with that same aggression and finally reached the finish.
"Two minutes, thirty-nine seconds," Elias said, cold and uninterested.
Kaien stood hunched over, slamming his fist into the earthen wall beside him. Slower than Ren. Slower than Rylan. Even slower than Viktor. His pride lay completely crushed in front of all of us.
I looked at Kieran, then Viktor, then finally Rylan. I ran back through their movements, their times, the way each of them had conquered today's obstacles. Kieran's run had shown me how to survive and fight through it. Rylan's had shown me what perfect efficiency looked like. And Ren... Ren had set the bar in an entirely different dimension.
„At least now I know what's waiting for me," I thought, as Darius turned back to the rest of the recruits, still shivering in the icy wind.
"Alright," Darius's voice cut through the silence. "Now that the volunteers are done and have shown us what they've got... let's move on."