Lunch with Zhang was more therapy than meal. She arrived in high spirits, cracked jokes, teased me about my talent for attracting psychopaths, and acted like the whole Tao incident was amusing. But now and then, something would hit her. Especially whenever Soro’s name slipped out by accident. As if she didn’t mourn enough. As if I didn’t care that Soro was gone.

  She darkened instantly and dropped out of the conversation for a few minutes. As if we had no right to sit over a pte of fried meat and sad, talking about essence and silly nonsense, because Soro wasn’t here anymore.

  I caught her in the tiniest shifts of expression, in the pauses between words. One second, she was ughing at my cooking skills, the next, her gaze turned sharp and cold, like I’d said something offensive.

  She was at the eye of her own emotional cyclone, cut off from the rest of the world. She was clearly grieving Soro in her own way, didn’t want to show it, but was hurt that the cyclone seemed to touch only her. I didn’t know how to respond, so I just stuck to the previous topic.

  We counted the old ampoules and agreed on a new exchange. Then we parted ways.

  I didn’t miss Soro. Couldn’t. She simply vanished from my life before she even had the chance to become part of it. Besides, my head was already full of other things.

  After lunch, I returned to the Armour Hall. There was barely a queue. The assembly machine gripped me with its maniputors, applied the armour segments, locked and twisted the csps, and released me.

  From the Armour Hall, I went straight to the training hall where Master Walker taught.

  The hall was massive. Not just rge, excessive. A stark contrast to Rene’s small, cosy hall. If that pce resembled a basement boxing club, this one was more like a corporate techno-dojo: dark grey walls, yellow pine emblems on the panels, yellow grid lines on the floor marking clear zones, square lights high above in the ceiling.

  Minimal decoration, mostly training weapons on racks and a few tall, spiky pnts in pots. Everything else served a purpose, like a high-tech industrial workshop, only cleaner and quieter. Almost sterile.

  But there were far more armoured cadets here than in Rene’s hall. Then again, Rene didn’t run sparring matches. Here, cadets were crossing bdes. I couldn’t yet tell if they were using techniques or just raw steel.

  The swords were incredibly varied. Short curved bdes, broad Chinese dao, two-handed gross messers, European falchion swords, heavy sabres, and katanas of every possible shape and colour. But they all shared one feature: every bde was curved. Not a single straight one in use, except for the weapons on the racks.

  The atmosphere in the hall was sharp, like shattered ice. Not as saturated as in the Bde Garden, and the Bde Qi wasn’t as clearly expressed, but there was a strong sense of danger, dulled only slightly by the armour. It felt safer inside the suit, though the shivers still ran down my spine.

  Right… so how was I supposed to spot the instructors? Maybe someone in a brown jumpsuit?

  I started looking around and immediately noticed a small counter that resembled a reception desk, though it was further inside rather than by the entrance. From there, one had a view over most of the hall. A girl standing behind it picked up a tablet and headed in my direction. Yellow jumpsuit, no armour, no weapons, and wearing that fake official smile, like a shopping mall manager who’s seen 300 customers an hour and has just one goal: hit top sales this month.

  “Can I help you?” she asked, fshing bright teeth.

  “I’m here on an exchange from Bck Lotus,” I said. “Recommended by Master Mendoza from the Hall of Diplomacy. Thirty hours of training should already be paid for.”

  The girl checked the records.

  “Sullivan, Jake?” she asked, more out of politeness than necessity, she could’ve just scanned me via interface.

  I nodded.

  “All right,” she said. “Which bde do you prefer?”

  “I don’t pn on using a sword,” I replied. “Just discs. Basic telekinesis, familiarisation with the discs themselves.”

  She started tapping and scrolling.

  “Beginner level?”

  “Zero Bde,” I said honestly, then added, “Root – 22, no experience.”

  A polite nod, a hollow smile, and a bit more scrolling.

  “There are three trainers who match your request.” She swiped across the screen. “Third Stage, mid-phase – Tian Cao. Third Stage, te – Rene Owen. And Stage Two, te – Oliver Eriksen.”

  I flinched slightly at Rene’s name, something inside twitched. But that trainer wasn’t avaible.

  “Only Eriksen is free right now,” the administrator added. “Cao and Owen are running sparring sessions. Their queue is two to four hours long. Eriksen can take you immediately.”

  “Will I be able to switch instructors ter?” I asked. Second Stage didn’t sound too impressive, but then again, Kate had become my mentor at that very stage, and that had worked out for the best.

  “Yes.” She didn’t even blink. “One session is two hours. After that, you can either continue or switch to another instructor, assuming they’re avaible, of course. Changes must be requested at least 24 hours in advance.”

  I thought about it for exactly as long as it took to exhale.

  “All right. I’ll start with Eriksen.”

  “Follow me, please.”

  I followed her. As we crossed the hall, I felt its size not with my eyes, but with my body. The space wasn’t for show, it was for speed. The nes between training zones were wide enough for someone to swing a sword in a full arc without hitting anyone. The floor was marked in bright yellow: square sectors for individual bde work, long rectangles for tandem combos, entire nes for dashing techniques, and circur ptforms for duels.

  In one section, cadets in jumpsuits were practising a cssical kendo style, only instead of wooden swords, they used pstic replicas of real weapons. They cut through the air with focus and precision, as if every movement had to fall on a specific trajectory at a specific point in space — or death. The air vibrated from the strikes, the Bde sliced through it like it was something tangible.

  In another zone, they were working with training dummies: segmented, armoured mannequins equipped with weight and pressure sensors. Cadets unleashed sequences of strikes, blocks, and cuts upon them. Sometimes they froze mid-motion, scrolling or tapping something in the air. I remembered my own sessions in the hologram. Looked like the dummies provided feedback straight to their interfaces. From their side, it was probably a lot more colourful.

  Every cadet was giving their all. No shouting, aside from the rare outburst. No bravado, no clowning around. The entire approach to training here was strictly practical and businesslike.

  We passed a rge circur ptform where two senior cadets in armour were cshing at full speed: fast, low lunges, cuts to the legs, sharp shifts of the torso, stepping out of attack lines, and bde work up close, when the sword was already touching the armour but hadn’t yet pierced it. I couldn’t tell whether they were using techniques or it was just pure steel, pushed to its limit.

  The ptform bordered a wall with heavy doors leading to an adjoining hall. At first gnce, it looked like a firing range — long nes, separated with walls, some mechanisms, but almost no targets on the far end. Holographic targets, maybe?

  This was the disc-throwing hall. Every type of disc imaginable was dispyed in pstic training form on the walls fnking the entrance.

  If bullets and spikes flew retively straight, discs veered off course far more often, hence the walls between throwing nes. The discs would ricochet off the sides but wouldn’t fly into another ne or interfere with someone else’s training.

  The cadet closest to the door was working with a rge chakram — a massive ring the size of a kid’s bicycle wheel. He clearly couldn’t control its flight. Wind-up, throw, and within ten metres it smmed into the left wall and ricocheted off the right.

  The next cadet was working with smaller discs, more like heavy steel tokens. They flew faster, sharper, and surprisingly quiet. Just a short whistle before impact. They arced along the ne, came close to the walls but didn’t touch them, and embedded themselves into soft, composite ball-like targets.

  I had the urge to stop and ask what technique that was. It reminded me of a very long-range and stretched Hook.

  The next cadet we passed managed to ricochet his disc in such a way that it flew back down the corridor we were walking through. He apologised, but luckily, everyone here was armoured, and the disc turned out to be pstic.

  The administrator led me almost to the far end of the hall, stopping at the second-to-st ne.

  “Eriksen,” she addressed the cadet who was practising throws with rather odd-looking chakrams. These weren’t symmetrical discs. The hole was off-centre, heavily shifted to one side, where the bde narrowed to half its width compared to the opposite edge. His yellow-green armour was worn from repeated impacts, though they looked more like training scuffs than battle damage.

  “New student,” she introduced me. “Jake Sullivan. Discs, basic telekinesis. He’s yours for the next two hours. Please arrange a regur training schedule going forward. Thirty hours have already been paid.”

  Eriksen just nodded, and the administrator moved on to others.

  “Thanks for the trust,” Eriksen said, almost bowing. “Not many people pick a second-stage instructor,” he admitted. “But I’ll be moving up to third soon!”

  I shrugged.

  “I just need the basics. That’s enough. Just set up my telekinesis properly. I’m not here to swing a sword.”

  Eriksen gave me a long look, eyes briefly lingering on the Lotus emblem.

  “What’s your core?”

  “Fist.”

  “Fist? Interesting… Right. Have you made any choices yet? Technique, discs?”

  “Double Cycle. Though you’ve got a chance to influence that.”

  “Double Cycle…” Eriksen looked around sharply. “Solid technique, but it’s not suited to this hall. Lanes are too narrow. And it’s definitely not beginner level. Let’s start with these…” He walked over to the rack of training discs and grabbed a whole stack, each about the size of a teacup saucer.

  “Give me trainer access,” he said. And I followed his instructions.

  The ne we occupied lit up with holographic range markers, and a rge target appeared at the far end.

  Eriksen dragged it closer to the ten-metre mark. Seemed he had no faith in me whatsoever. He offloaded the discs onto a shelf set into the wall, kept one for himself, and took up a stance. No grand philosophy, just a straight demonstration.

  “Watch closely. It’s simple.” He pinched the disc between his index finger and thumb. “First — Bde Qi. Two points. Not the full circumference. Just two. Here and here,” he said, pointing to spots about forty-five degrees off from the axis. “They have to be equally spaced. You can adjust the bance a bit, but whatever you do, don’t make one of the points sit under your thumb. You’ll slice the damn thing clean off with a real disc.”

  I nodded and made a mental note.

  He pulled his hand back, gave a short swing.

  “Wind-up, throw!”

  The disc flew straight, as if it were gliding along rails. Not a single wobble. It struck dead centre on the holographic target. There was something in the motion, like a perfectly executed straight punch: sharp, clean, effortless.

  “What should you feel?” Eriksen continued. “Those two points, the ones you charged, chasing each other. That’s it. For now, no telekinesis. No steering. Don’t even think about where it’s going. You’re just pushing its rotation forward until it hits a wall or the floor.”

  He handed me the next disc.

  I took it.

  “One problem,” I said. “I’ve never isoted pure Bde Qi before.”

  Eriksen nodded like he’d just walked into a wall that shouldn’t have been there.

  “Rookie mistake. Then we step back,” he said firmly. “To a regur bde. Doesn’t matter if you don’t pn to swing one in combat. We don’t extract first Bde Qi using discs, unless we’ve got spare fingers to lose.”

  “Even in armour, with pstic discs?”

  “Even then. Let’s go pick you a bde, unless you’ve changed your mind about developing Bde.”

  “I haven’t.”

  MaksymPachesiuk