Chapter 72: Quiet Attrition (Part 2 of 2)

  Laurent tested the far field first.

  The bow there was nothing like the ones he remembered from Earth. Thick-limbed, cut from a single arc of dense wood that had grown under constant essence saturation while it was alive. Dead now—but not brittle. It felt grown for force, not finesse.

  He lifted it and drew. The resistance was heavy by academy standards, but trivial to him. Two hundred kilograms slid back under controlled tension. No protest. No creak. He released. The twang was deep and violent. The arrow missed—only slightly—and struck the stone wall behind the target with a sharp bang. Dust burst outward. The sound echoed hard enough to jolt him.

  Laurent stilled. Strength wasn’t the problem. Precision at range punished timing more than power. Any error, magnified.

  I could learn this, he thought. With perception enhancement and repetition, accuracy would come fast.

  Then the second question arrived, uninvited.

  And if they close the distance? Range demanded space. Time. Control over engagement.

  He set the bow back carefully. Not frustration—assessment.

  He went to the breaker court next. Cael was there. The work was honest. Direct. Commitment rewarded, hesitation punished. Laurent lasted longer than some who had chosen the path early. He endured the impacts, adapted physically, kept his footing.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  But the cost arrived cleanly. Breaker demanded certainty before information. Once momentum was spent, correction came too late.

  He could survive it. He didn’t belong in it.

  Cael clapped him once on the shoulder, grinning. “Thought you might try.” Laurent nodded. Neither treated it as rejection.

  The bulwark square followed. Structure. Endurance. Holding ground so others didn’t have to. Laurent understood the value—and the mismatch—within minutes. His instincts pulled forward, not inward. He disengaged before Mr. Bram corrected him twice. Too passive. Not weak. Just wrong.

  Skirmisher came after. Movement, angles, denial of contact. Laurent performed adequately. Better than expected. And felt constrained. The style asked him to avoid moments he knew he could survive—and possibly resolve. He finished the session without comment and didn’t return.

  Only then did he step into the jack-of-all-trades court. No announcement. No claim. The drills were layered and uneven. Decisions overlapped. Success meant abandoning clean solutions for survivable ones. Laurent failed often at first—but the failures made sense. They were about order, not capacity.

  Mr. Calis corrected rarely.

  “Too early.”

  “Too late.”

  “Right idea. Wrong order.”

  Weeks passed. Laurent’s recovery smoothed. Minor injuries stopped stacking. His load tolerance rose in margins, not leaps. More importantly, his mistakes stopped compounding. He learned what to spend—and what to leave unfinished.

  People stopped watching to see where he would fail. They watched to see what he would give up.

  By the time the posting for Blackrun appeared, Laurent was no longer rotating. Not because the others were wrong—but because this fit. Adaptive didn’t make him stronger. It made him live longer. That was enough.