As James broke out of the illusion, a cold, sharp annoyance settled over him.
It wasn't the fake-death part of the illusion that got him riled up; while that had certainly pissed off his inner wolf, it wasn't what truly made his blood boil.
James deeply respected his parents. He knew they had given him the absolute best they could, acting as the finest parents they could possibly be in the tragically short amount of time they had to raise him.
Having their memory and his upbringing implicitly disrespected by Raze's cheap mind game made a raw, protective anger flare in his chest.
But before his rage could spiral out of control, a heavy, rhythmic sound echoed through the arena.
Clack.
Clack.
Clack.
The sound of heavy leather boots striking the stone floor reverberated through the quieted coliseum.
Turning his head toward the side gate, James saw him.
Thane walked out onto the sands. His expression was solemn and completely unreadable, carrying the weight of a warrior who had performed this exact ritual a thousand times before.
His massive, towering frame instantly commanded the attention of the entire stadium. The thunderous roar of the crowd dipped, falling into a tense, expectant silence under the sheer, suffocating presence of the pack's second-in-command.
Thane Silverclaw.
He marched directly to the center of the arena, stopping at the exact halfway point between Raze and James. Thane's cold, analytical eyes scanned both fighters before he spoke, his deep voice carrying a natural, booming resonance that effortlessly cut through the lingering murmurs of the crowd.
"The terms of this trial are absolute," Thane announced, his gaze lingering briefly on James before shifting with sharp, unyielding intensity toward Raze. "This is a sanctioned vanguard assessment. No weapons are permitted. No underhanded tricks. This is a contest of physical execution and magical attunement. Under no circumstances is either fighter to attempt a lethal blow."
So that explained why Raze didn't have his sword. James didn't mind; a bare-knuckle brawl suited him just fine.
Though, it did make him wonder—if he ever had the chance to master a weapon of his own, which one would he choose? Probably a spear. They were relatively simple to learn but incredibly versatile, keeping opponents at a distance and offering a distinct tactical advantage over swords.
James noticed that when Thane delivered the final safety condition, his eyes had locked directly onto Raze. Raze's posture had immediately stiffened, his shoulders squaring as if the invisible, heavy pressure of a much stronger soul was actively pressing down on his collarbones.
"Failure to abide by these boundaries will result in immediate, severe disciplinary action—or death,"
Thane continued, his tone flat and leaving absolutely no room for negotiation. "Magic is permitted, but keep your output controlled. We are here to gauge the newcomer's baseline rank, not rebuild the arena structure. The bout will conclude the moment one participant is knocked unconscious, is rendered physically unable to fight, or if the combat escalates beyond acceptable safety parameters."
James noted the distinct lack of a "forfeit" option in the rules. From his brief time spent among the pack, he already knew that werewolves simply weren't built to quit. They would rather have every bone in their body shattered to splinters before uttering a surrender.
Thane stepped back, his sharp eyes locking onto both of them in turn. "And remember this: once you agree to these terms, the consequences of your actions are yours alone to bear. James. Do you agree?"
James took a slow, deep breath, letting his fighting stance settle as he locked his golden-brown eyes onto
his opponent.
"I agree," he said, his voice steady and unwavering.
Thane turned his head. "Raze. Do you agree?"
"I agree," Raze muttered, a thin, eager smirk creeping back onto his lips.
The moment they both confirmed their consent, a strange phenomenon occurred. James's supernatural vision picked up a thin, shimmering layer of blue magic rising from his skin and Raze's body.
The two spiritual currents met in the air above the center ring, weaving together into a brief, glowing knot before dissolving. A binding pact had been formed.
So... that's how a magical contract works, James thought. It made sense why Caius had gone through a similar verbal agreement before asking for his blood earlier in the month.
Once this fight was over, James figured he might finally let Caius run those tests; he was genuinely curious to see just how much potential his hybrid biology truly held.
Thane gave a single, firm nod. "The pact is sealed."
Without another word, the commander walked backward out of the ring, his boots silent against the blood-slicked stone.
As he crossed the perimeter, the shamans seated at the base of the galleries began chanting in a low, synchronized baritone
. A massive, translucent blue barrier of pressurized kinetic energy surged upward from the edge of the pit, sealing James and Raze inside the circular stage like two predators trapped in a cage.
Standing just outside the shimmering barrier, Thane raised a massive, carved horn to his lips. But before he could blow it, the drums began.
THOOM. THOOM.
The steady, primal beat of the war drums echoed through the coliseum, accompanied by the high, haunting wail of bone flutes. The melody was wild, ancient, and deeply rhythmic. It vibrated straight through the stone floor and into James's feet, making his chest thrum.
His blood began to boil. Under the influence of the ritual music, his inner power surged to the surface. Two pairs of elongated canine fangs slid past his lips, his claws extending slightly as his eyes flared.
The ancient rhythm made it incredibly easy to access his wolf side, channeling the raw, dormant power of his beast straight into his muscles.
Then, Thane blew the horn.
The sound was deafening—a long, guttural, metallic wail that shattered the rhythm of the drums and echoed off the ancient canopy of the forest. It was the signal.
The fight had officially begun.
As the wail of the signal horn echoed through the coliseum, Raze's smirk widened. He took a slow, deliberate step forward, his posture completely relaxed.
He didn't bother slipping into a defensive stance, nor did he look like he was preparing to attack.
He simply carried himself with the quiet, effortless grace of an apex predator closing in on cornered prey—and in this arena, James was the prey.
Raze looked at James with eyes filled with profound disappointment. "Honestly, I expected better from Luna's creation."
James gritted his teeth, his inner thoughts turning sour. I'm literally about a month old, the fuck did you expect? But aloud, he just glared.
"For an alpha, you feel incredibly weak," Raze continued, his tone dripping with condescension.
James didn't bother to deny or confirm it. He was actively trying to calculate a way forward, but in every theoretical scenario his brain ran, the exchange ended with his head getting cleanly severed.
"Stop sucking your own dick and let's get this over with."
The insult visibly annoyed Raze, but before James could even register the shift in his opponent's expression, Raze vanished.
He moved at a speed normal human eyes had absolutely no hope of tracking. James barely registered a flickering blur before Raze materialized directly in front of him, a fist already cocked back.
The sheer displacement of air rushed against James's face, and every survival instinct in his body screamed at him to move.
But slipping the punch entirely was out of the question; the transition was too fast. Trusting his reflexes, James snapped his left forearm upward, parrying the incoming strike outward with a sharp, bone-cracking echo.
The instant he felt the blow deflect, James spotted the opening he had created. He launched a lightning-fast counter-punch straight toward Raze's exposed neck, wanting to end the exchange as quickly as possible.
He knew that if Raze got the opportunity to showcase his entire arsenal, he would get completely overwhelmed.
But Raze was no amateur. Instead of pulling back like a normal fighter, he slipped inside the trajectory of the punch, his hand shooting upward to clamp down on James's shoulder in a vice grip.
The hell?
Before James could adapt, Raze pivoted his hips, using James's own momentum to execute a textbook-perfect judo slam.
BAM!
The impact rattled James's teeth, and he felt the vertebrae in his back tingle with a sharp, radiating pain.
Is this guy serious?
James clamped his jaw shut, forcing back the blood that threatened to leak past his lips.
He didn't even have time to groan. Through his blurred vision, he saw Raze's heavy combat boot descending directly toward his face with terrifying velocity.
Roll!
James threw his weight violently to the side.
The solid stone where his head had been a fraction of a second prior shattered into a spiderweb of deep cracks as Raze's heel pulverized the surface.
Flipping forward onto his hands, James used his core strength to launch himself backward, desperately trying to put some distance between them.
If I had been even a millisecond slower, he would have crushed my skull.
Even before his feet touched the ground, the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end.
Nature itself was screaming at him that the danger hadn't passed. He didn't need to see Raze to know the man was already closing the gap; his ears picked up the heavy, rapid footfalls, and his senses caught the scent of ash and ozone.
He heard the distinct contraction of Raze's muscles as the vanguard spun into a devastating roundhouse kick aimed squarely at his midsection, timed perfectly to connect the moment James landed.
Refusing to take the hit, James thrust both of his palms downward.
The moment the hard shin of Raze's outstretched leg made contact with his hands, James didn't try to block the force.
Instead, he pushed off the surface of Raze's leg with everything he had, converting the kinetic momentum of the kick into a springboard to launch himself backward.
He flipped cleanly through the air, landing on his feet near the shimmering boundary of the barrier.
Jeez, he's relentless.
James stared across the ring.
Throughout the entire exchange—which had lasted five seconds at most—he had only managed to deflect one strike, while Raze had landed multiple heavy blows.
Raze paused, slowly lowering his leg and observing James as if he were nothing more than a mildly persistent insect. "Not bad reflexes for a newborn."
So you admit you're just bullying a pup, James thought irritably.
'I am not fucking you bitch so get off my dick' James thought that, but would never say that out loud, that was just practically inviting to get his ass handed to him.
However, James did notice one crucial detail: He isn't as fast as Luna.
When he had faced Luna, her speed was entirely beyond his comprehension—she had blitzed him effortlessly.
Raze, by contrast, was perhaps only a single tier above his current reaction speed.
The gap was narrow enough that if James could survive the initial five-minute onslaught, he could find a way to turn the tables.
"However... it is not nearly enough," Raze said.
James didn't see the next strike coming, but his body reacted on pure muscle memory.
He parried a devastating straight right with his left hand, his fingers instantly clamping around Raze's wrist in a tight grip to lock the vanguard in place.
With his right hand already lined up with Raze's flank, James channeled his raw physical power and drove a brutal, heavy punch straight into Raze's midsection.
BANG!
The impact resonated through the barrier like a small explosion, kicking up a gust of wind.
Got him!
James's lips twitched into a faint smile.
He had aimed directly for the liver, hoping to disable his opponent's nervous system.
More importantly, he had been trying to leave a trace of his own dark aura inside Raze's core during the impact, planning to detonate the stored energy later for a critical strike.
But to James's absolute horror, Raze's expression didn't even flicker.
He simply smiled. His body remained perfectly stable, entirely unfazed by the blow.
Before James could process the lack of damage, Raze used their locked arms to violently hoist him off his feet.
With the immense, crushing strength of a vanguard elite, he swung James upward, intending to slam him face-first into the stone floor once more.
"Tch." Raze's eyes narrowed in annoyance as his grip suddenly met empty air.
There was no body beneath his hands, and no second impact. Instead, a hollow, fist-shaped crater was left in the dusty floor.
Several feet away, a cloud of absolute darkness coalesced, and James materialized from the shadows, chest heaving as he took in a sharp, ragged breath.
He had escaped the grapple using his shadow pool, but the effort was starting to drain him.
What kind of monster is this guy?
Up in the spectator galleries, the sudden maneuver didn't go unnoticed.
"He's actually doing much better than I anticipated," Mira murmured, leaning over the stone railing, her amber eyes tracking the fighters below.
"His physical adaptation is keeping pace with Raze's base speed."
Caius didn't look up from the ancient text in his lap, though his eyes subtly followed the shifting currents of mana in the pit.
"It appears so. However, James is currently fighting a losing battle of attrition. He does not yet understand the nature of Raze's specific aura."
Back in the pit, James staggered slightly, coughing up a small splash of crimson onto the slick stone. He wiped his chin, a burning sensation beginning to spread outward from his core.
Dammit, James thought, his knuckles trembling. What is his aura made of?
Every single time he had made physical contact with Raze—even when parrying a strike or landing that heavy gut punch—a strange, insidious heat had seeped through his skin.
It felt like liquid fire had been introduced directly into his bloodstream, actively scorching his internal magic pathways and disrupting his concentration.
Raze slowly closed the distance, his hands resting casually at his sides.
"What's the matter, Alpha? Are you done already? Here I thought you were supposed to be our new hope, but you're looking incredibly ordinary."
James's body began to bleed a thick, dark mist of shadows.
He wiped the blood from his lips, his resolve hardening. He couldn't win this fight in his current state, and he certainly couldn't win without unleashing his own aura. He needed more power.
His muscles surged, expanding beneath his skin as his fangs grew sharper and his raw power output began to spike.
The steady, thunderous beat of the war drums, combined with the lethal pressure of the arena, pushed his hybrid biology to its absolute limit.
James kept his guard high, his chest heaving as he drew in ragged, heavy breaths.
His lips were slick with a fresh layer of crimson, but his stance remained unbroken.
He didn't care that every single blow he parried from Raze felt like trying to block a stream of flowing magma.
James paused, his mind working rapidly behind his golden-brown eyes.
Oh... so that's his trait. He remembered Caius explaining the concept of unique traits within a werewolf's aura.
While they hadn't gone incredibly deep into the theory, Caius had mentioned that a warrior's elemental affinity and core personality often fused to give their aura a highly specific, passive property.
Going by that logic, Talia was breezy and free-spirited, giving her aura a sharp, wind-like quality that could slice through defenses.
Mira was fierce, hot-tempered, and constantly on the move, resulting in a classic burning trait.
Raze, with his absolutely miserable personality, sat firmly on the destructive end of the spectrum. His trait wasn't just heat—it was magma.
Every time James blocked a strike, or narrowly avoided having his head taken clean off his shoulders, he had to actively fight against the lingering, molten energy clinging to his skin.
My aura can somewhat negate it, he realized. It wasn't a perfect shield, but his dark energy was at least absorbing enough of the heat to keep his flesh from melting off the bone.
Before he could strategize further, Raze closed the distance.
A heavy knee drove straight into James's midsection, followed immediately by a fluid, spinning heel kick that connected hard with his jaw.
The sheer kinetic force sent James skidding backward across the blood-slicked stone.
Damn, that hurts. His vision swam with static, and warm blood began to leak from his nose. His bones felt like absolute mush.
The moment his backward momentum stalled, James dropped to his knees. He gasped for air, his hands clutching his stomach as he retched onto the dirt.
It hurts... it hurts so fucking bad. Raze's magma aura was actively wrecking his insides.
The foreign energy was burning him from the inside out, scorching his stomach, his intestines, and his liver.
If he let this heat linger, his internal organs would be permanently charred before the match even finished.
Come on... heal faster! He focused his mind entirely on his core, trying to force his Alpha regeneration to knit the tissue back together. But it was a losing battle.
Trying to heal while Raze's molten energy was still actively burning inside him was like washing your hands with soap only to dry them in dirt. He needed a different approach.
Reaching deep into his mana pool, James called upon his primary darkness element. Instead of projecting it outward, he routed the shadow magic internally, coating his damaged organs in a thin, protective layer of absolute blackness.
The vacuum property of his darkness worked wonders, actively suffocating the heat and pulling the invasive magma aura out of his system.
Raze stopped a few feet away, looking down at the blood spatters on the floor with a slow, arrogant smirk. "What's the matter, pup? Did you find something pretty on the ground?"
James gritted his teeth. Feeling his internal organs finally stabilizing and healing, he glared up at the vanguard. He was rapidly growing tired of being toyed with.
Slowly, James stood back up, wiping the trail of blood from his lips.
This time, he didn't keep his magic contained. His dark aura surged outward, wrapping tightly around his limbs.
The shadows condensed heavily over his fists and shins to reinforce his strikes, while simultaneously forming thick, protective guards over his neck, joints, and midsection to absorb any incoming impacts.
"Nah," James muttered, his voice cold. "I was just wondering how the fuck your punches are so weak.
For someone who claims to be the only one fit for Luna, you seriously lack power."
An abrupt, stunned silence fell over the coliseum. Even the steady rhythm of the war drums seemed to falter as the spectators stared down at the pit.
"Does he actually want to die?" someone muttered from the upper galleries.
"Damn, the kid has guts! I like him!" another warrior roared.
"Selene is going to have a long week putting his skeleton back together! Bahaha!"
James ignored the crowd's reaction, his golden-brown eyes locked entirely on Raze. The vanguard's smirk had vanished, replaced by an expression of pure, unadulterated bloodlust.
Without a word, Raze lunged forward. He abandoned all standard combat forms, throwing himself into a brutal, wild charge meant to completely crush James's bones.
He spread his massive arms wide, attempting to trap James in a suffocating bear hug.
Anticipating the grapple, James dropped his center of gravity, ducking directly beneath Raze's reach and slipping past his flank.
The moment James cleared the hold, Raze pivoted on his heel, unleashing a low, sweeping kick to take James's legs out.
James leaped over the sweeping leg, executing a clean backflip through the air to regain his footing.
He knew that letting Raze establish a solid grip meant instant defeat. His only option was to parry, redirect, and stay moving.
Every strike Raze threw was met with a deflecting block or a quick slip.
Tanking the hits directly wasn't an option; even with the darkness absorbing the brunt of the heat, James's palms were still blistering from the contact.
Raze suddenly brought both of his hands down in a devastating, double-handed hammer strike aimed directly at James's collarbone.
It was an overkill blow. James crossed his forearms, catching the descending wrists mid-air, and violently shoved Raze's arms upward.
In the same fluid motion, James summoned a localized sphere of darkness directly behind Raze's wrists, utilizing the gravitational vacuum of the magic to trap the vanguard's arms in place for a crucial three seconds.
With Raze's midsection completely exposed, James didn't hesitate.
Cocking his right fist back, he poured every ounce of his physical strength and dark aura into a single, devastating punch.
BOOM!
The impact echoed like a thunderclap, followed by a sickening, deep crunch that reverberated through the barrier. Raze's eyes widened in genuine shock.
He had been forced to redirect seventy-five percent of his active aura to his chest to keep the blow from shattering his ribs, but the force still rattled him.
Before Raze could recover, James slapped him across the face four times in rapid, blinding succession—crack, crack, crack, crack—before pivoting hard and delivering a powerful spinning heel kick directly to Raze's ribs, sending the elite skidding several feet across the arena floor.
Raze's boots carved shallow grooves into the solid stone before he came to a halt.
He straightened his posture, his regeneration already working to knit the minor bruising on his chest.
"You will have to try harder than that if you want to def—"
He stopped mid-sentence.
A single, dark droplet of blood fell from his lower lip, splattering against the grey stone.
Raze raised a finger to his mouth, wiped the crimson, and stared at it before slowly licking his finger clean.
It was his blood. The newborn had actually managed to break his guard and draw blood.
Up in the high-tier spectator stalls, the elite Ironfang squad watched the exchange with varying degrees of amusement.
Kael, the hot-headed vanguard, leaned forward against the stone railing with a wide grin.
"Oh? Well, look at that. The rookie actually drew blood." It was far beyond what he had expected; in his opinion, James should have been incapacitated ten times over by now.
Lyra Thornclaw leaned back in her seat, crossing her legs with a dismissive sigh.
"Let Raze have his fun. He's just playing with his food." She had seen this play out many times before.
Raze enjoyed breaking his opponents, and more importantly, his unique biology made him exponentially stronger the more damage he sustained. He was a barbarian through and through.
A sudden crackle of blue lightning flared near her side. Toren Stormclaw, a white-haired young warrior with glowing blue eyes, was watching the pit with childlike glee.
"Man, that looks like so much fun! I want a turn." He turned to the rest of the group, grinning. "You think Raze will let me jump in and have some fun with the kid?"
"Doubtful," Lyra replied dryly. "He's made it very clear that the pup is his prey."
"Aw, come on, why do you guys get to have all the fun?"
"Don't be ridiculous, Toren," Varric Stonehide interrupted, his deep voice cutting through the banter. The towering warrior who had previously broken up James and Raizen's scuffle stared down at the pit with a stoic expression.
"This fight is entirely one-sided. The pup is simply stalling the inevitable."
To the veteran squad, the outcome was obvious.
No one actually expected James to win a fight against an elite vanguard with over a century of combat experience, especially since James still didn't understand how to fully counter Raze's passive magma traits.
Kael shrugged nonchalantly, keeping his eyes on the match.
"It's not exactly a massacre, though. If the kid had been given a few more months to let his core mature, this might have been a completely different story. Unfortunately, he got Raze today."
Meanwhile, Malkor, the squad's quiet strategist, watched the fight through a completely different lens. While Raze was dominating physically, James was adapting at an absurd rate.
At the start of the match, James had no counter to the magma trait; now, he was successfully using dark vacuum barriers to neutralize the heat.
At first, he couldn't even track Raze's speed; now, he was actively landing clean combinations.
"Raze needs to end this quickly," Malkor said, his tone entirely flat.
Kael tilted his head back, curious. "Why the rush, Malkor? It's not like the kid actually has a path to victory here."
"There's no way," Toren laughed. "Apart from the captains and Luna, literally nobody can take Raze down in a straight one-on-one."
Malkor didn't reply. He simply kept his eyes fixed on the pit, his instincts telling him that the hybrid's rapidly evolving magic signature was becoming highly unpredictable.
"Speaking of which, where is Raze's rebound anyway?" Kael asked lazily.
"That is no way to speak about Selka," Lyra snapped, her eyes narrowing in defense of her friend.
Kael simply smirked. "I didn't say her name, Lyra. You simply assumed it."
Back in the pit, Raze slowly wiped the remaining blood from his lip, his golden eyes locking onto James with a dangerous, predatory focus.
"You are definitely stronger than you look."
"So I've been told," James replied, keeping his guard steady.
Raze's muscles suddenly expanded, his chest broadening as dark fur began to coat his shoulders.
His teeth elongated into razor-sharp fangs, and two pointed wolf ears shifted into place. He had entered his hybrid form, and his raw physical power output instantly tripled.
"Let me show you the true depth of the gap between us," Raze growled.
The air around him warped from the sheer, radiating heat.
Thick plumes of gray smoke began to rise from his skin as his veins literally began to glow like molten lava.
He looked less like a werewolf and more like an active, walking volcano.
In a fraction of a second, Raze closed the distance.
His movement was a complete blur. James, forced to rely entirely on his spatial awareness and instinct, poured his remaining dark magic into his forearms, bracing himself for the impact.
Raze unleashed a blinding barrage of punches. James slipped the first three, the intense heat of the passing fists blistering his cheeks. He crossed his arms to block the fourth—
"You are far too predictable," Raze sneered.
Before James could redirect the momentum, Raze's clawed hands clamped down around James's braced wrists in a vice-like grip.
The absolute, volcanic heat of Raze's palms began to sear his flesh, but James didn't even have time to register the pain.
With a brutal, effortless twist of his upper body, Raze snapped his wrists outward.
CRACK.
With a sickening, echoing pop, both of James's forearms shattered like dry twigs.
His blood didn't even have the chance to spill.
The instant it emerged, it was instantly cauterized by the intense heat. His bones jutted grotesquely through the broken flesh.
"Argh!" James hissed, his vision turning white from the sudden, blinding agony.
Without missing a beat, Raze grabbed James by the broken forearms, using the bones protruding from them as makeshift handles.
Then he drove them forward.
The shattered bones that had once been inside James's forearms were now buried through his face, piercing straight through and jutting out the back of his skull.
Before James could even process the pain—
Raze's heavy fist crashed squarely into his jaw.
The impact nearly dislocated it.
Raze stepped inside his guard, reaching up to grab the back of James's head, intending to slam his skull directly into the stone floor with enough force to crack it wide open.
Flicker.
At the absolute last microsecond, James dissolved into a cloud of pure shadow mist, materializing ten feet away near the edge of the barrier.
He collapsed to his knees, immediately reaching up and ripping his own bones out of his face.
From his perspective, everything was darkness.
He was temporarily blind.
That shit hurt.
It hurt like a motherfucker.
A/N 4.6k words, next chapter should be around 2 to 3 k words, it also long, I am trying to show Raze dominance while at the same time showing James adapativeness.
This chapter was also maybe a quiz, since some element which were mentioned earlier are being used here during a fight.
How well did i DO?
Vote with powerstone{Webonove}
Vote{Watpad}
Like {Scribble hub}