The forest had that specific density of places where silence is not the absence of sound but the presence of something listening.
Yūta and Kaito walked along one of the paths in the central sector, their vials glowing faintly in their pockets — twenty-four points accumulated between weak remnants and one medium they had found near the river — talking with the ease of two people who have spent two days together doing the same thing and no longer need a preamble.
"The flow still cuts out when you take a hard impact," said Kaito, ducking under a low branch without stopping walking. "Not always, but when you're not expecting it."
"I noticed," said Yūta. "In the third session of the second day. You hit me in the side and the mana was gone before I could hold onto it."
"That improves with practice. The body learns not to release the flow by reflex."
"How long does it take?"
"Depends—"
Kaito did not finish the sentence.
Not because he had changed his mind about what he was going to say — but because something had changed in the air of the path ahead of them with the specificity of something that had not been there a second ago and now was.
Yūta felt the movement before he saw it — a disturbance in the space between two trees, like air displaced in a way that did not correspond to the wind.
Kaito's hand arrived first.
The strike he threw was neither calculated nor softened — it was direct, with the full speed of someone who has read the situation from the moment it began and already knows how it ends. It connected against something solid that stopped the impact with a right forearm, and the sound of the clash resonated amongst the trees with more force than the size of the exchange suggested.
Harada Jin landed two steps back.
"Harada," said Kaito.
Yūta looked at the young man standing in front of them with the expression of someone who is not disappointed but recalibrating.
"I don't remember him," said Yūta.
"Harada Jin," said Kaito. "Second year. His ability is short-range teleportation — he can move instantaneously over short distances, a few metres at most. He can't do it continuously because each jump consumes mana."
"That's why I didn't see him coming," said Yūta.
"That's why," confirmed Kaito.
Harada looked at both of them with something that was not exactly impatience, but was not the calm of someone with all the time in the world either. Then he looked over his own shoulder.
Tsukino Hina appeared along the side path with her axe in hand and an expression that assessed the situation in under two seconds.
"Idiot," she said to Jin.
Jin paid her no attention. He kept looking at Kaito with something that was definitely enthusiasm, even if he was trying not to show it fully.
"Finally," said Jin. "We get to fight each other."
Kaito laughed — short, genuine — and turned to Yūta.
"You handle Tsukino," he said.
"Right," said Yūta.
And the two of them went off along the side path before Tsukino could say anything about it.
Tsukino watched them go. Then she looked at Yūta. Then she shouted towards where Jin was no longer:
"Are you seriously leaving me on my own against Amane?"
From somewhere amongst the trees came a response that was essentially the sound of someone completely focused on something else and with no intention of coming back.
Tsukino exhaled sharply.
Then she took out her axe and looked at Yūta with the direct assessment of someone who has decided that if she has to do this she is going to do it properly.
"You'd be better off surrendering and giving me the vial," she said. "You can't even use mana for more than five seconds."
Yūta laughed.
"You're wrong about that," he said.
Tsukino looked at him.
"Don't talk nonsense."
"I've been training for two days with Kaito," said Yūta, taking out the dagger. "I can use the mana now. For longer."
Tsukino looked at him for one more second. Then she decided the only way to know if it was true was to find out for herself.
She drew her axe and charged.
The fight between the two did not have the elegance of encounters between great hunters — it did not have it and made no pretence of having it. It was fast and direct and with the visible errors of people who are still learning how their own body works under pressure.
Tsukino attacked with the axe in short, precise arcs — not the large version, not yet, just the small blade she had used from the beginning and which she handled with the ease of something practised over years. Yūta responded with the dagger, blocking what he could and dodging what he could not block, moving with his weight distributed in the way Kaito had corrected forty times over four days.
"I'll admit you've improved," said Tsukino, without dropping the pace. "But you're still not that good."
"I was training with Kaito," said Yūta, dodging a diagonal cut. "Two days. In the time chamber."
"The time chamber?"
"Yes."
"It's a place where time runs differently. For us it was two days training, for you it was four."
"Like Dragon Ball?" asked Tsukino.
"That's exactly what I said to Kaito," replied Yūta.
Tsukino processed that without stopping her attacks.
"So that's four days of training."
"Exactly."
"Which explains," said Tsukino, blocking a strike from Yūta with the axe handle, "why your movements are no longer a complete catastrophe."
"Thank you," said Yūta. "That's the best compliment you've given me."
"It wasn't a compliment."
"I'm taking it as one."
Tsukino exhaled and changed the angle of attack — from below instead of the side, forcing Yūta to shift his weight from his right foot to his left to compensate. Yūta did it. Not perfectly, but he did it.
Tsukino noticed.
"Good," she said, and there was something in her voice that was not exactly approval, but came close.
In the monitoring room, Kagami was watching the screen where Yūta and Tsukino exchanged strikes amongst the trees with the specific attention of someone who knows what they are looking at.
"He's improved," he said.
"Amane?" said Kato.
"His movements aren't as basic. He reads the situation better. When Tsukino changed the angle he compensated without thinking about it."
Kato nodded with the expression of someone who wants to take credit but knows it is not entirely his.
"It seems Kaito trained him well over those two days," he said.
"Four," said Yuna, without looking up from the screen. "They were in the time chamber. Outside it was two days, inside it was four."
Kato opened his mouth. He closed it.
"I'd forgotten about that room," he said.
"That's normal," said Kagami. "You forget everything."
Yuna laughed.
In the forest, Yūta put the dagger away.
Tsukino looked at him.
"What are you doing?"
"I'm going to use everything," said Yūta.
Tsukino looked at him for one more second. Then she put the small axe away too — not because she thought she needed to, but if Yūta was going to show her something worth seeing, she wanted to see it without the advantage of a weapon.
"Go on then," she said.
Yūta's mana appeared in both hands this time — that purple that he still found interesting to look at, more stable than the first time in the garden, more consistent than the five seconds in the temple. Thirty seconds. That was the limit now, under real combat conditions where concentration was divided between the flow and the movements.
Thirty seconds were not many.
But they were enough for something.
Tsukino activated hers too — orange, the same colour as always, with that constant intensity of someone who has been managing it for years and no longer needs to think about the flow because the flow is automatic.
She charged.
The first exchange was pure impact — Yūta absorbed Tsukino's strike on his left forearm with the mana cushioning part of the force, and responded with the right directly to her side. Tsukino turned with the blow to reduce the impact and counterattacked with her elbow.
Yūta dodged it by centimetres.
"Not bad," said Tsukino.
"Is that a compliment too?"
"Also not."
They continued. Yūta counted internally without being fully conscious of it — a way of knowing how much he had left without losing focus on the fight. Ten seconds. Fifteen. The mana was still there, more faint than at the start, but present.
Twenty.
Tsukino pressed him — two strikes in succession to the torso, one to the shoulder — and Yūta absorbed the first two and dodged the third, responding with a short combination that Tsukino blocked without difficulty but which made her step back one pace.
Twenty-five.
"It's going to run out," said Tsukino, who could feel when someone's mana was starting to lose consistency.
"Yes," said Yūta.
Thirty.
The mana went out.
Yūta kept moving — without the mana, with what he had, which was enough not to be completely exposed in the second the flow disappeared. Tsukino read it and charged with more force, and what followed was more disorderly and more physical and more exhausting than anything they had done before.
When the two of them finally stopped — not because anyone had won but because both of them needed a second to remember how their legs worked — they were facing each other amongst the trees with laboured breathing and arms that were protesting in different ways depending on where they had taken more strikes.
Yūta rested his hands on his knees.
Tsukino ran a hand through her hair.
Neither said anything for a moment.
"We pick it up again in a bit," said Tsukino at last, in the tone of someone who is not surrendering but pausing.
"Yes," said Yūta.
In the north sector of the forest, where the trees were taller and the clearings wider, the fight between Kaito and Harada Jin was a completely different thing.
Harada teleported first — disappearing from where he had been standing and reappearing to Kaito's right before the air had finished filling the space he had left. The strike he launched from there arrived with the full speed of the repositioning behind it.
Kaito blocked it.
Extreme physical enhancement: Concentrates all his mana in the body with no special element — only pure strength and speed taken to the limit. No striking visual effects, no projectiles, no elements. Just a body that moves and strikes beyond what anything should be capable of. It is harder to anticipate precisely because there are no advance signals of what is coming.
There was no signal of when Kaito was going to move. No flash of colour, no visible change in posture. Only the movement, when it came, with a speed and force that did not correspond to the body producing them.
Harada teleported again — this time behind, using a tree as a visual reference for the jump — and attacked from there.
Kaito was no longer where he had been.
Kaito's strike came from an angle Harada had not calculated because there was no signal to calculate, and the impact on his shoulder sent him to the right with enough force for the recovery to take a second and a half.
A second and a half was a great deal.
Harada teleported before Kaito arrived, using the forest — the trees, the branches, the angles — as cover, appearing in spots where Kaito's line of sight was blocked by the vegetation. It was the most intelligent tactic available to someone whose ability depended on surprise — if Kaito could not see where the next jump was coming from, he could not anticipate it.
It worked partially.
Kaito did not anticipate with his eyes but with his body — the air disturbance left by each teleportation arrived before the strike did, and that fraction of a second was enough for someone with the amplified reflexes of physical enhancement to respond.
Not always. Not perfectly. But enough.
The exchange that followed went back and forth without a clear winner — Harada struck from a different angle each time, Kaito responded with a force that made every block Harada threw cost more than the previous one. The weak remnants that had been in the area began to move towards other sectors of the forest, moving away from the noise and the mana pressure of the two of them.
In the monitoring room, Tatsu watched that screen with something that in another context would have been enthusiasm, but in Tatsu manifested as more concentrated attention than usual.
"They're extraordinary," he said. "The second-year students. Harada's speed and Mura's enhancement — it's a completely different kind of confrontation from the first-years'."
"They're my students," said Yuna, with something in her voice that was between professional pride and genuine affection.
Kato clicked his tongue and looked away.
Yuna noticed.
"Does it bother you?" she said, with a smile that made no effort to conceal that she was enjoying this. "That mine are like this?"
"Give mine time," said Kato, raising a hand without moving his arm from where it rested on the chair. "You'll see."
"Kato," said Kana, without taking her eyes off the screens. "You seem to have a great deal of confidence in your students."
"A great deal," said Kato.
"Then perhaps you should spend more time with them."
Kato opened his mouth.
"He doesn't because he can't be bothered," said Kagami, from the chair at the back.
"Whose side are you on?" said Kato.
Kagami did not respond.
Yuna laughed at Kato.
In the forest, amongst the trees of the north sector, Kaito and Harada Jin were still facing each other — with no clear winner, no visible pause, both their movements still clean and fast, though Harada's mana was beginning to show the cost of the accumulated jumps.
Neither stopped.
Neither yielded.