The guild's training yard was not a yard.
It was a stadium. A full, proper, stone-and-timber arena built behind the guild headquarters — tiered seating rising on three sides, a sand-floored fighting stage in the centre, and a shaded gazebo on the fourth side with cushioned chairs and what appeared to be very expensive refreshments.
The gazebo's occupants made Yuki stop walking.
They were dressed the way people dressed when they wanted you to know they were important. Fine fabrics, subtle embroidery, the kind of jewellery that whispered wealth rather than screaming it. An older man sat at the centre — greying hair, strong jaw, a bearing that radiated authority the way the sun radiated heat. Beside him, a woman of similar age with sharp, intelligent eyes. Next to her were two younger kids - likely the prince and princess. Guards flanked them — not ordinary soldiers, but elite fighters whose mana signatures pulsed with contained power.
That's either the royal family or I've completely misread this situation.
The stands held more people than he'd expected. Official types — military officers, guild administrators, academy robes. The two Platinum adventurers he'd seen at the guild were seated near the front. Several other high-ranked fighters filled the remaining seats.
This wasn't a routine assessment. This was a showing.
Yuki felt a thought form that he immediately recognised as inappropriate: I wonder if there's a pretty princess up there somewhere —
SMACK.
Lira's palm connected with the back of his skull.
He turned. "What was that for?"
"You were thinking something rude just now. Weren't you?"
"I was absolutely not—"
"Your face does this thing when you're being stupid. I've learned to read it."
He denied everything. She didn't believe him. Kana giggled from Lira's other side. Hana, perched in Yuki's arms, was watching the stadium with her usual quiet assessment.
He set Hana down beside Lira in the stands, gave Kana a look that said behave, and walked down to the fighting stage.
Lord Wayne stood at the stage's edge with a speaking horn.
"Today's assessment is for the adventurer registered as Yuki — Gold rank, Millhaven transfer. The assessment will consist of combat demonstrations to evaluate fighting capability."
Demonstrations. Plural.
"First match — Yuki versus Captain Aldric Venn of the Confederation Fourth Infantry."
A man stepped onto the stage from the opposite side. Professional soldier. Plate armour, longsword, shield. Good build. Clean equipment. The bearing of someone who'd earned his rank through years of service.
Waita minute, this is a match? I thought I would just show everyone a few spells. How do I defeat him without killing or permanently maiming him?
His mana signature was moderate. A reinforced body, combat training, but nowhere near the Platinums in the stands.
"Fighters — begin."
The captain charged. Textbook assault — shield forward, sword cocked for an overhead strike, closing distance fast.
Yuki cast his mental enhancement. The world stretched.
The captain moved in slow motion. Each footstep landed with glacial deliberation. The sword rose centimetre by centimetre. Dust drifted from his boots like snow.
Yuki looked up at the stands.
Kana was on her feet, both fists raised, shouting something he couldn't hear at normal speed. Hana was clutching Lira's arm, black ears flat. And Lira — Lira's face was tight with worry. Genuine worry. Hands gripping the railing.
She's scared for me.
His chest warmed. He had people cheering for him. People worried about him. That was new. That was something he'd never had before — not in his old world, not in the months alone.
He looked back at the captain. Still approaching. Still in slow motion. The sword was nearly at its apex.
Okay. Gentle. Controlled. Incapacitate, don't kill.
He was worried. Genuinely worried. His baseline strength could shatter stone. His reinforced strength could crater the earth. Hitting a normal human without killing them required the precision of a surgeon operating with a sledgehammer.
He walked forward. Casually. Met the captain mid-charge. Set his feet. Delivered a single, open-palmed strike to the centre of the breastplate.
He released the mental enhancement.
From the audience's perspective, it looked like this: the captain charged at full speed. There was a sound like a thunderclap. The captain launched backward — not stumbling, not staggering, launched — clearing the full length of the stage and slamming into the arena wall hard enough to dent the stone.
He didn't get up.
Yuki stared at the crumpled form. The dented wall. The captain's breastplate was caved inward — buckled steel pressing against his ribs.
Too much. Way too much.
He sprinted across the stage, skidding to his knees beside the captain. The man's mana signature was flickering — ribs cracked, internal bleeding, organs bruised. His breathing was shallow and wet.
Yuki poured healing magic in. Aggressive, fast — regeneration-level work. He pulled the dented breastplate off, feeling the metal resist and then give way. Underneath, the captain's chest was purple and caved. He rebuilt the ribcage, sealed the internal bleeding, repaired the lung that had started to collapse.
The captain gasped. Colour returned. His breathing steadied.
He would have died. If I hadn't healed him immediately, he would have died from one palm strike.
Yuki stood up. The arena was silent.
He turned to Wayne. His voice was flat and cold in a way it hadn't been since the bandits.
"I do not appreciate being made a spectacle for you and your noble friends. This soldier nearly died. I do not want unnecessary deaths on my conscience." He held Wayne's gaze. "So let's wrap this up. Okay, Wayne?"
Lord Wayne stood at the stage's edge with his mouth open and no words coming out.
In the gazebo, the older man — the one who radiated authority — leaned toward the elite guard captain at his side.
"Could you follow that?" the king asked quietly.
The captain — a veteran of thirty years, one of the most powerful fighters in the Confederation — watched the boy on the stage heal a dying man with casual precision. His hand rested on his sword hilt. It was trembling slightly.
"No, Your Majesty. He moved at speeds I couldn't track." A pause. "If he were an enemy, I would be dead before I drew my blade."
The king's face was damp with sweat. He was halfway to standing — about to descend, to apologise, to begin the kind of careful diplomatic engagement you used with someone who could accidentally kill your soldiers with a pat on the chest.
A voice cut through the silence.
"I'd like to go next."
The Platinum mage stood up from her seat in the stands. The woman with the staff and the crystal — the one Yuki had analysed at the guild. Pitch-black hair, light blue eyes, pale skin. She moved with the fluid confidence of someone who'd been the most powerful person in every room she'd entered for the last decade.
She was, Yuki noticed with unfortunate clarity, extremely beautiful. A completely different aesthetic than Lira — where Lira was warm tones and sharp features, this woman was ice and moonlight and the kind of bone structure that artists spent careers trying to capture.
He may have looked a fraction too long.
In the stands, Lira's hand moved to her quiver.
Yuki felt the spike of hostility through the necklace's mana link and whipped his head toward the stands. "I wasn't — I didn't—"
"FOCUS," Lira called down. Her voice could have frozen the arena.
He focused. Aggressively.
The Platinum swordsman — the lean man with the greatsword — rose beside his partner. Both of them stepped down to the stage.
Yuki looked at them. Looked at Wayne, who still hadn't closed his mouth. Looked back at the Platinums.
"If we're doing this — I'll fight both of you. At the same time."
The mage raised an eyebrow. The swordsman tilted his head.
"Both," Yuki repeated. "I already went too hard against one person. Two Platinums will give me a better sense of calibration."
They exchanged a glance. The swordsman shrugged. The mage smiled — not warmly. The smile of someone who'd just been handed exactly what she wanted.
"Agreed," she said.
They squared off. Yuki at one end of the stage. The Platinum duo at the other.
The mage began immediately — hands moving in precise patterns, mana flowing from her in controlled streams. Enhancement spells. Buff after buff layered onto the swordsman — speed, strength, reinforcement, sensory amplification. Her control was beautiful. Every spell was efficient, refined, the product of decades of formal training.
The swordsman drew his greatsword. The runic inscriptions along the flat lit up as the enhancements hit. His mana signature swelled — three hundred Vals boosted to something approaching five hundred. His body tightened. His eyes sharpened.
He moved.
Fast.
Genuinely fast. Enhanced by his partner's magic, the swordsman crossed the stage in a blur that would have killed most Gold-ranked fighters before they registered the movement. The greatsword came in at a diagonal — a clean, practiced strike delivered at speeds that bent the air.
Yuki cast his mental enhancement. The world slowed.
Even in slow motion, the swordsman was quick. Not Yuki-level — not even close — but faster than anything he'd faced from this world's fighters. The enhancements were excellent. The teamwork was polished to a mirror shine.
Impressive. Genuinely impressive.
He pulled ironwood daggers from dimensional storage — the training set he'd made for Kana and Hana. Fifteen of them, formed into orbit around his body in a loose constellation.
The swordsman's strike arrived. A dagger intercepted it — catching the greatsword's edge, deflecting it sideways with a sharp crack of ironwood on enchanted steel. Two more daggers came in from flanking angles, forcing the swordsman to disengage and parry.
The swordsman adapted instantly. He read the dagger pattern, identified the attack rhythm, and began countering — parrying with the flat of his blade, ducking, weaving through the orbiting weapons with the instincts of a veteran fighter.
He's good. Really good. The mage's enhancements make him better, but the foundation is all skill.
Yuki pressed. More daggers joined the assault — coming from multiple angles, varying speed and timing, testing the swordsman's limits. The man held. Barely. Each parry was tighter, each dodge narrower, but he held.
Which meant the mage was unoccupied.
Yuki had expected her to stay back. Support role. Buffer and healer, maintaining her partner's enhancements while he fought.
She didn't stay back. She smiled — that wicked, sharp smile — and cast.