Eriksen gave the rope another sceptical once-over, as if trying to confirm that not a single torn fibre had a clean cut. Then he made up his mind.

  “Don’t be in a rush to continue.”

  “With what?” I asked, holding up my empty hands.

  “Exactly,” Eriksen nodded. “I’ll be right back.”

  And off he went. His path took him all the way to the far end of the hall, through one of many doors. Thanks to the clear floor markings and the open yout, I could follow his figure visually almost the whole way. A few minutes ter, he emerged from the same door with a full armload of grey objects. He lifted them above his head in triumph, but even with my enhanced vision, I couldn’t tell what they were.

  Knives.

  They were knives. At first gnce, they looked like standard hunting knives, but they were grey — a dull, oddly matte grey, like pressed cardboard. The bdes were thick, with an uneven texture, and the hilts were a slightly different shade of the same colour.

  I hadn’t even asked yet, but Eriksen was already expining:

  “Composite cellulose. Same material as the discs in the Bde Garden. Basically — really hard paper.”

  He dumped most of them on the floor, kept one for himself and handed me another. The knife was so light it felt like a toy. I gave it a light squeeze and the bde flexed.

  “Careful! They don’t handle rough treatment well. If you hit the rope without qi, you’ll just bend it. They’re used for advanced training, to refine Bde Qi without relying on the weapon’s strength.”

  “Still, they should work for what we’re doing. If you strike with Fist Qi, this thing will shatter faster than that pstic one you used before. Unfortunately, this batch, ten of them, is all we’ve got right now. But I’ll order a few hundred more before the next session.

  “Exactly what we need, until you learn to extract proper Bde Qi.”

  Eriksen touched the rope lightly with his own knife, the bde bent on contact, but he didn’t break it. Then he channelled a bit of Qi and sshed.

  Same movement, a diagonal cutting gesture.

  The paper bde left a shallow cut. The blue pstic fibres parted about half a fingernail wide, like someone had flicked a razor over them.

  “Your turn,” Eriksen ordered. “And this time, try not to go full berserk. Put less energy into the strike.”

  I took up my stance. Then slowly ran through the motion, lining myself up with the rope.

  Shoulder. Elbow. Wrist. Ssh.

  Then I repeated it, mentally running through the energy component of the attack.

  Core. A bit of qi. Shoulder. Elbow. Forearm. Wrist. Bde. Two points. Ssh!

  Inhale–exhale.

  Ssh!

  This time I drew far less energy. It still flooded my existing channels and dispersed uncontrolbly into my flesh, but I managed to push enough into the bde. Still, I couldn’t form two reference points on the edge or cycle the energy between them.

  So, just as expected, it ended with a fsh of silver and another detonation.

  The explosion was smaller than before, but given the lower material strength, it was still more than enough to obliterate the knife.

  What remained was a smear of pulp across the rope fibres, an empty hand, and a light numbness in my fingers.

  I shook out my hand, and Eriksen noticed.

  “Better already!” he encouraged me, handing over his own knife. “Switch hands. And try using even less qi.”

  I took the second knife more cautiously. Slower stance. Inhale. Exhale. Adjust the grip. And again, the same motion.

  Ssh.

  If the previous detonation had shattered the knife into fine splinters, this time the bde simply cracked and sagged, but stayed together. The hilt mostly remained in my hand, though a long fracture now ran through it. No shrapnel. No dramatic burst. But my fingers and palm still went lightly numb, like I’d just smmed my hand full force against a steel pte.

  “Better! Better!” Eriksen said, sounding an awful lot like Rene in that moment. He used to say everything was fine when what I was doing was complete crap.

  Still, I could see the progress myself. If not with the rope, then at least in reducing the damage I was doing to myself.

  Third knife.

  Fourth.

  Fifth.

  Each sted only a single strike.

  I tried. I adjusted my grip. I pushed less qi. I used almost no qi. Which turned out to be a bad idea. Qi without tight control would slip into the pre-existing channels, and that led to stronger detonations, even with less energy.

  The numbness in my fingers gradually turned into a slow, dull ache. The muscles in my palms and the joints in my fingers throbbed from the minor shockwaves. My shoulders and forearms were swelling with excess qi, forcing me to ‘blow it out,’ flushing even more of it from my reactor.

  My core was draining faster than it had in a long time. The st time I pushed this hard was at the tournament.

  Things started going south around knife number six. The seventh exploded before contact. I changed tactics, trying to approach the output as if it were Wind Qi. But Wind didn’t anchor well in solid material, so the eighth bde simply crumpled on impact with the rope.

  No projection formed at all. And that wasn’t progress, because by knife nine, I was completely out of sync. The flow of qi stopped at my fists.

  There was no projection and no detonation, but I could feel something crawling just beneath the skin of my palms.

  Knife ten was the st one.

  I picked it up like it was a vial of poison.

  “Maybe we should take a break?” Eriksen suggested.

  I didn’t answer. We only had one paper bde left. A break wouldn’t change much.

  I sshed at the rope.

  The bde snagged on the pstic fibres, and tore itself apart.

  I dropped what remained onto the floor and shook out my hands with relief.

  Eriksen examined the rope.

  “No need to look,” I told him. “There’s no cut.”

  “For a first attempt, it’s not bad,” he said, trying to encourage me. “Most beginners take weeks to get this far, and they don’t have to deal with the stuff you’re dealing with. They’ve got no concept of other qi types.”

  “Rex,” I told him. “I’m not switching instructors. But we need to agree on a non-standard schedule.”

  “I’m listening,” Eriksen said readily.

  “I need four half-hour sessions a day,” I stated.

  “Two full-hour sessions,” Eriksen countered. “No other trainer would offer you more.” He paused, then added, “I’ll be surprised if they agree to this at all.”

  I didn’t push my luck. My hands were slowly swelling. The metal of the gauntlets was tightening around them, making it harder and harder to clench my fists. I needed to get out of this armour, and head to the med bay.

  “Then that’ll be hour one,” I said. “Until what time are you working?”

  “I’m here until nine.”

  “Perfect. I’ll message you after the med bay.”

  “You injured?”

  He clearly had only a vague idea about Fist Qi.

  “Not badly, but I’d rather have a doctor take a look. Try to get your hands on more of that junk before evening,” I added, nudging the retively intact hilt of the st paper knife with my foot.

  My hands had started to throb from fluid buildup. Still, it wasn’t bad enough to call for medical evacuation. I made it to the Armour Hall on my own. My fingers could barely bend, and the gauntlet ptes, which had felt like protection a minute ago, now pressed against me like shackles. When the assembly machine unlocked the segments and released my arms, I barely held back a groan of relief.

  It felt better without the armour, but not by much. The swelling wasn’t as bad or as painful as it had been with the shield, but now that the metal wasn’t restricting volume, the skin stretched even more, letting in fresh fluid.

  Next stop: the infirmary.

  As usual, there was a queue at reception. What set this med bay apart from Bck Lotus’s was the number of bloodied injuries.

  I’m not just talking about broken noses, though those were here too. Many cadets had cuts, and blood showed clearly against the yellow fabric of their jumpsuits. But there were plenty of other injuries in the line as well.

  Dislocations, bruises, tendon damage, and fractures. A silent corridor of pale faces pretending they weren’t in pain.

  I checked in with the admin and took a seat. My hands already looked like mitts, but I could still move them.

  A message fshed in front of me:

  Incoming call: S. D. Mendoza

  Accept / Decline

  I immediately remembered the beacon, the one that alerted her to my condition and location.

  I accepted the call.

  “Is it serious?” Mendoza asked. “We agreed you’d report serious injuries.”

  “First attempt at Bde Qi. Kept ending up with Fist Qi instead.”

  “Without armour?!”

  “With armour,” I said. “Too many attempts — shockwaves bruised my palms. I need to drain the swelling.”

  “I see… After that, please come to me immediately.”

  “Of course, Master.”

  Fifteen minutes ter I was called in.

  The doctor was businesslike and detached from the patient, like most here. A brief examination, then two quick jabs with a contactless injector in each hand, and a chemical chill began spreading under the skin.

  He handed me a tiny tube of ointment and instructions:

  “Apply now, before sleep, and in the morning. Don’t use Qi for at least six hours.”

  Six hours put me past Eriksen’s working time. The second session of the day was gone. I called the instructor and tried to move it to tomorrow. No luck.

  So we agreed to meet the next morning. If the injuries repeated, I’d have time to recover.

  Before the call even ended, I was already on the metro, sitting in the carriage, opening the tube and slowly rubbing the ointment into my palms.

  Smell: eucalyptus and metal. The pain was almost gone already, the injections had kicked in, but my fingers still moved stiffly.

  The ointment cleared the swelling quickly, but the excess fluid didn’t disperse through the body; it relocated directly to my bdder.

  Unfortunately, I realised this too te, when I was already heading up to Mendoza’s apartment.

  And there were no toilets on the way. And to make it worse, she’d already prepared tea — exactly the type.

  “This drink helps with swelling. Don’t worry, it’s gentle and won’t interfere with the medication.”

  The tea smelled pleasantly of raspberries. Only I strongly suspected it drained fluid in the exact same way.

  Trying to sound like an adult, and feeling like a schoolboy, I asked if I could use the bathroom to get rid of the excess.

  Thankfully, Mendoza didn’t mock me. She just pointed me towards it. Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling that this minor request had slightly lowered my value in her eyes.

  When I returned, Mendoza was already seated, thoughtfully sipping boiling water from her cup.

  I tried a sip myself, but the tea was too hot, so I blew on it and waited for her to expin why she’d called me.

  “We’ve received word from your teacher,” she said.

  Which meant the demon had started speaking.

  Mendoza tried to maintain a stern expression, but the topic reminded her of her dead disciple, and that was, at the very least, unpleasant.

  “It was a family thing. Many demons had begun ignoring the families of their vessels and simply stopped communicating with them.

  “Such a simple, obvious thing…” She shook her head.

  “But now we know.”

  “They’ve already taken measures, boy. We’ve had two suicides in the st few days.”

  “Only two?”

  “I suspect the rest of the demons pyed their roles more diligently.”

  MaksymPachesiuk