Chapter 3, Part 2: The Trial of Blades Without Blades
The University was not a single building so much as a stitched quilt of endurance. Where walls had fallen, gardens grew in their bones. Where towers cracked, Drakari stone learned human angles. Wind ran its fingers along Architect glass and made soft music no one had designed.
Kara peeled away at third bell toward the south labs, a map of excitement and terror under her green thread. KrysKo watched her go until the crowd took the straight line of her out of sight. Then he turned at a warden's gesture and followed.
They passed beneath banners dyed in herb and soot. A stone plaque over a low door read: Office of Entry.
Inside, books and ledgers lined the walls. The desk was old oak, scarred by ink and years. Behind it sat a scribe with narrow spectacles and a white beard braided into a rope that rested like another line on his chest. His sash was green, but there was a fighter's posture in him.
The scribe set down his pen only after he finished the line he was writing. "Name," he said without looking up.
"KrysKo."
"No family?"
A fractional pause. "None."
The scribe dipped his quill. "Purpose of study?"
The word caught differently in KrysKo's processors than in his ears. Study. He let the slow part of his mind answer first.
[Query: purpose of entry.] [Operational suggestion: hone skills under legitimate framework; reduce suspicion via institutional alignment.]
He chose truth's edge. "Combat. Strategy. Tactics. The saving kind."
The scribe's quill paused. His eyes lifted. Measuring, not mocking. "You seek to be tested."
"Yes."
The scribe tore a slip from the ledger, sanded the ink, stamped a small bronze seal into the corner. "Master Halvek will see you. If he judges you worth the stone we stand on, you'll have access to the halls you mean to haunt." He gestured. Two wardens unfolded from the shadow with the economy of trained hands. "The yard."
They brought him to a square of stone open to the air. No theater seats. No pomp. Just beams darkened by sweat and years, racks of blunted weapons, chalk lines gone soft beneath countless feet. Students practiced at the edges in small clumps—laughter underlaid by the sound of wood on wood.
At the center stood a man.
Master Halvek was not large so much as arranged for force. Shoulders like a yoke; forearms knotted with old work. His bo staff rested against one shoulder, polished to a deep, unreflective glow. His eyes, when they found KrysKo, were curious the way a blade is curious about a whetstone.
"Candidate," a warden said. "Combat study. Tested at your will."
Halvek's gaze traveled from boots to brow. "You carry no weapon."
"My body is my weapon," KrysKo said.
A breath moved one corner of the master's mouth. "Then we'll see if your body sings louder than mine." He stepped into the chalk square. "Bo staff. Root of Okinawa. Simple. Infinite when patient."
KrysKo slid into ginga. Feet soft. Hips a pendulum. The rhythm climbed into him like a remembered river.
Halvek's brows tipped by a degree. "Capoeira. Few here know its song."
"Then listen," KrysKo said.
A student rang a bell.
Halvek moved first—a fast, straight thrust to the chest, no telegraph.
KrysKo let the ginga carry him left, and the staff hissed by. His heel snapped toward Halvek's ribcage. Crack. Staff met shin. Pain stung. He folded with the energy, spun out, landed light.
"Good," Halvek murmured. He swept low, the staff a level line meant to take both ankles.
KrysKo inverted, palms to stone, legs with the memory of dance. His feet scissored to trap the staff; Halvek turned the pole within his hands and freed it with a half-beat jerk born of practice.
KrysKo landed already moving, rasteira cutting at the master's lead ankle.
Halvek planted the staff, pole-vaulted over the sweep, turned mid-air, and brought the end down toward KrysKo's shoulder like a judge's gavel.
KrysKo rolled; stone cracked where wood struck.
They reset without talk. Dust rose. Students edged closer.
[Scan active.] [Style detected: Bo Staff Mastery.] [Efficiency: 82%. Weakness: right knee favors old injury.]
KrysKo feinted left, spun right, heel arcing toward Halvek's temple. The staff intercepted. The impact shivered from calf to hip. He turned the shiver into motion: meia lua de compasso—his leg tracing a crescent that sought jaw.
Halvek ducked, staff rising to meet the arc. Wood grazed KrysKo's ribs.
"Adaptable," Halvek said, breathing steady. "But rhythm is still rhythm."
KrysKo's feet changed time. The ginga stuttered, broke, reformed on an off-beat that did not announce itself.
Halvek's staff hesitated a fraction—enough. KrysKo stepped inside the line and hammered a kick into the staff with enough force to shunt the master a half-step back.
Halvek planted, weight finding gravel and control like a hawk returning to wrist. His smile sharpened. "Better."
They moved again. Utility and timing. Halvek's staff collapsed space; KrysKo made that line curve.
[Combat analysis: 44% replication of Bo sequences achieved.] [Advisory: mimicry risks pattern lock; introduce irregularities.]
KrysKo began to echo Halvek. "You copy," Halvek said. "Copy is not creation."
"Creation comes next," KrysKo answered, twisting out of human geometry. The unnatural length of his forearms changing leverage in ways the eye could not anticipate.
The staff caught his calf—barely. Halvek grunted, the first sound that admitted effort.
They circled, drawing a chalkless figure eight.
Halvek altered pattern: false high, true low, butt-end jab to thigh, pivot to throat. KrysKo's chest felt the threat and turned.
[New pattern branch observed.] [Counter suggestion: advance past centerline; remove weapon.]
He could. The math sang the path: slip inside, trap the staff, let a blade bloom—a clean, surgical disarm.
But the vow was a wall.
[VOW CONFLICT] High. Deploying lethal tools violates Myles Charter and University Code. [EFFICIENCY WARNING] Lethal path: 98%. Non-lethal path: 71%.
KrysKo ignored the system's logic, forced motion into the slower, safer rhythm.
He spun out of the efficient strike, let gravity and flow do the talking.
The staff passed his ribs by the width of mercy.
"Hold," Halvek said—not because the fight had ended, but because he wanted to see what kind of man chose imperfection. He swapped ends on the staff and said, "Again."
They collided, and the world narrowed to timing, wood, and choice. KrysKo's shin took a solid crack; he returned it with a heel to the staff that made Halvek's fingers sing. Halvek's vault came an inch too slow; KrysKo's rasteira grazed the ankle.
The bell struck once—an apprentice with good ears sensing the moment a ring should end.
Halvek raised a hand. "Stop."
KrysKo froze mid-motion. He let the moment stretch, then lowered smoothly.
Halvek stood straight. "You could have taken my weapon five times," he said.
"I chose not to," KrysKo replied.
Halvek's eyes sharpened. He nodded once. "That choice is the only weapon that matters here, O'Ruadhraigh." He turned to the warden. "Admission granted. He learns more than we can teach."
At the edge, Aria Senn's chin tucked, a note made for later. Her eyes flicked once to KrysKo, then to the bracers at his wrists.
The scribe from the entry office appeared, waving the stamped slip. "Admission granted. Candidate, present for ledger."
Kara had slipped into the back of the crowd. When the wardens led KrysKo toward the desk, she moved with him.
"Good?" she breathed.
"Admitted," he said.
Her smile came quick and unguarded. "I have orientation," she said. "Mestre Yal. If I faint, catch me."
"I will," he said.
[Quest complete: University Combat Trial.] [Reward: Entry Granted.] [EXP awarded: +450.] [Progression event queued.]
The warm voice that lived in him cleared its throat softly.
You listened before you struck, KrysKo. That is a lesson men forget when they paint their hands for war. You didn't break your promise to the stone. That is another lesson. Keep them both.
The cold system tucked the praise into a column called Behavioral Tags.
Kara caught his sleeve as they passed beneath a fig bough. "Don't disappear," she said.
"I will be where your shadow falls," he said—and only later realized it sounded like a vow.
KrysKo Status Report
KrysKo has reached Level 7! 🎉
Current Stats (Lvl 6 Base):
Strength: 20
Agility: 19
Endurance: 18
Intelligence: 17
Perception: 20
Charisma: 17
Luck: 14
Willpower: 18
Experience: 480 / 400. Level Up Available!
Unspent Attribute Points: 1
Skills: Fluid Form (Capoeira efficiency 100%), Harmonic Pulse (Area disruption / Countermeasure), Scent Profile Editor (Human Baseline v1)
Inventory: Data Shards (53), Corrupted Shard (95), Pustule Node (3), Guardian Core (1), Bronze-grade armor, Healing Vial (1), Bracers (Disguise/Armature Masking)
Level Up & New Quest
Please allocate your 1 Unspent Attribute Point to increase the stat of your choice.
Quest Chain: University Paths (Stage 2/3)
Objective: Attend one University orientation session (Herb Lab or Mestre Yal's). Successfully gather one piece of information relevant to the Lunair or the Echo Vault without breaking the cover provided by the Myles Charter.
Goal: Secure actionable knowledge about KrysKo's past or the University's deep history.
Reward upon Completion:
EXP: +800 EXP
Skill Upgrade: Unlock Deep Scan (Lvl 1) – ability to scan specific objects/areas for hidden data (Architect/Ophilim technology).
Loot: One random high-tier University Consumable.
With KrysKo now at Level 7 and an Attribute Point ready to spend, which stat will you choose to boost him for the new University quest?