The silence that followed Kevin's provocations was denser than the very concrete of the arena. John remained motionless; the blood trickling from his brow now traced a crimson line that crossed his neck and vanished beneath the collar of his uniform. However, something had shifted drastically. The rigid military posture—the "war dog" that Smith had mocked so relentlessly just minutes before—seemed to have dissolved into the shadows of the amphitheater.
John relaxed his shoulders. His feet, previously planted in a heavy and stable infantry base, now barely seemed to touch the ground. He leaned his body slightly forward, but in a way that made his silhouette appear to float; his hands swayed in an irregular rhythm that did not follow the cadence of his breath. It was a state of absolute relaxation amidst the chaos—a calm that preceded not a storm, but an eclipse.
"Oh?" Smith leaned forward in his armchair, his eyes gleaming like those of a nocturnal predator. "What is this? Has the soldier decided to abandon the field manual? He seems... less solid. Almost like a smudge in my vision! Kevin, dear, do be careful! Your dance partner seems to have traded the waltz for something far more sinister."
Kevin felt a chill that didn't come from the dampness of the room. He lunged forward, testing this new John with a quick horizontal slash, seeking to rip open the soldier's abdomen. In his previous style, John would have blocked with the spine of his knife or parried with brute force. This time, he simply wasn't there. With a movement reminiscent of a shadow sliding under a door, John flowed to the opposite side of the strike. It wasn't a reactive dodge; it was as if he had foreseen the blade's trajectory before Kevin had even decided to attack.
In the bleachers, Alex's eyes widened. He stood up, his hands gripping the metal railing so hard his knuckles turned white. The sound of metal groaning under his pressure was the only noise coming from his group for several long seconds.
"That movement..." Alex whispered, his voice choked with technical surprise.
"What is it, Alex?" Yuki asked, without taking her eyes off the arena, but noting the tension in her leader. "He changed. He seems... faster?"
"It's not just speed, Yuki. It's the absence of intent," Alex explained, his mind racing as he tried to process what he was seeing. "Look at John's eyes. He's no longer focused on Kevin; he's focused on the space Kevin is about to occupy. It's a combat style based on a principle of absolute flow. He's eliminated all unnecessary muscle tension. His body is reacting to his opponent's nerve impulses before the movement even materializes."
Alex paused, swallowing hard. "It's a prototype. A form of fighting that ignores defense to focus on physical premonition. If John has truly mastered the fundamentals of this, he's no longer just fighting... he's become a perfect reflection of the enemy. But it's dangerous. If you become the reflection, where does your own will end? He's entering a state where pain and fear are processed only as data, not as feelings."
In the arena, Kevin, irritated by the failure of his first strike, unleashed a sequence of five rapid cuts with the Karambit. He was a blur of acrobatic motion, but John seemed to be a step ahead in every fraction of a second. The soldier no longer used his knife for conventional blocking; he used small taps with the back of his free hand to redirect Kevin's wrist, keeping his own blade hidden, pressed against his forearm, ready for a strike that never seemed to come.
"Look at that!" Smith's voice echoed, now joined by a short, genuine laugh. "The Artist is losing his patience! Your brushstrokes are getting erratic, Kevin! And John... ah, John, you've become an abstract painting. I can barely see where you end and the darkness of the arena begins! It's marvelous! It's performance art in its bloodiest form!"
Kevin felt cold sweat run down his back. He attempted a hook cut aimed at John's hip—a low, treacherous move. Mid-motion, John vanished from his lower line of sight. In one fluid, continuous motion, the soldier spun behind Kevin's back. There was no sound of footsteps. No unnecessary impact. Only the sound of the fabric of Kevin's white t-shirt being torn.
Kevin leaped away, feeling a sudden sting on his back. A thin, surgical, and precise cut marked his skin. It wasn't deep enough to kill, but it was a clear warning. John was no longer trying to crush him with military force; he was dismantling Kevin, piece by piece, nerve by nerve.
"You're getting slower, Kevin," John's voice was now a low whisper, devoid of any emotion. There was no anger, no evident adrenaline. There was only the coldness of an executioner. "In the dark, the beauty of your technique is useless. You are fighting what you see, but I am no longer here to be seen."
Kevin roared, a mixture of frustration and pain, and went on a total offensive. He began using the arena walls, rebounding off the concrete to gain aerial angles of attack. The Karambit shone like a silver claw under the fluorescent lights. In one of these leaps, he managed to graze John's shoulder. The cut was superficial, but blood spurted, staining the soldier's uniform.
John didn't flinch. He didn't even look at the wound. The moment Kevin landed, John was already there, delivering an elbow strike that shattered the boy's rhythm. Kevin retreated, but John pursued him, staying only inches away, as if glued to his shadow.
Smith stood up, walking along the edge of the bleachers with the poise of a tightrope walker. His white suit seemed to catch every remaining particle of light in the room.
"Do you see this?" Smith shouted to the other groups. "This is what happens when the need to survive outweighs the need to be human! John has abandoned his infantry training to embrace the void. Kevin, on the other hand, is trying to turn his agony into a final spectacle. Tell me, spectators, which of you would have the courage to look into John's eyes right now? Those are not the eyes of a man. They are the eyes of an abyss looking back at you!"
Down below, Kevin was exhausted. His right arm was trembling and his breath was a constant wheeze. He realized that his Karambit, despite being lethal, could not find a solid target. John moved as if he were made of smoke.
In a moment of desperation, Kevin attempted a forbidden technique from his own school: he flipped the Karambit from one hand to the other behind his back—a deadly juggling move intended to confuse the opponent. The second the weapon changed hands, he delivered an upward cut aimed at John's jaw.
John, however, did not follow the weapon. He followed Kevin's shoulder. Before the blade could rise, John intercepted the movement with an open-palm strike to Kevin's chest, stopping his momentum and sending the air escaping from his lungs in a choked sound.
Kevin fell to his knees, coughing, but still clutching the weapon. He looked up at John and, for the first time, saw the vacuity in the soldier's eyes.
"You... you're not a soldier," Kevin spat, blood staining his teeth. "You're just another tool of his, aren't you? You're using this style to erase me... but I'm not a drawing you can just rub out with that shadow of yours!"
John did not answer with words. He simply adjusted his grip on the knife, tip pointed down, in an executioner's angle. The silence in the arena became so heavy that the sound of the apple Alex had bitten into minutes before would have sounded like thunder.
"The prototype is reaching its saturation point," Alex commented, his tone dropping to a note of real concern. "If he continues to force this state, his nervous system will begin to collapse. It's too much sensory information for a human being to process without protection. John is burning himself up from the inside to maintain this shadow form."
Kevin, seeing a flicker in John's gaze—perhaps a millisecond of fatigue—gathered his last strength. He didn't attack with the knife. He dove for John's legs, attempting a wrestling takedown to bring the fight to the ground, where the shadow's agility would be negated by the weight of their bodies.
John staggered. For the first time in his "Shadow" phase, he was touched in a clumsy, brutal way. The fight stopped being a dance and became a tangle of limbs and snarls in the sand.
"Oh!" Smith exclaimed, slapping his chest. "Sublime style meets the mud! What a delicious twist! The shadow is being dragged down to the earth! Kevin, show us how an artist behaves in a street fight! John, show us if a shadow can bleed in the dust!"
They rolled across the arena, blades scratching the floor and creating sparks. Kevin tried to use the hilt of the Karambit to choke John, while the soldier used his fingers to seek pressure points on the boy's neck. The fight was far from over. Every inch of skin was now covered in a mixture of sweat, dirt, and blood.
John managed to free one arm and delivered a series of short, brutal punches to Kevin's ribs. The sound of grinding bones echoed, but Kevin, instead of letting go, tightened his grip even further, laughing through crimson-stained teeth.
"I'm... taking you with me... into the dark..." Kevin hissed into John's ear.
The fight continued, an endless cycle of technique against desperation, under the watchful, sadistic gaze of Smith and the fearful analysis of Alex.