Holden stepped through the door and heard it shut behind him.
BOOM!
The steel cage walls rose about four meters on all sides.
He looked across the ring.
The Gore-Boar looked back.
It was bigger than he had imagined. He'd heard the descriptions, read the entry in the public district library's copy of the Regional Bestiary, rank 1 creature, manageable threat level, standard exam variant. That entry had not mentioned that the thing's shoulders came up to his chest, that its tusks were the length of his forearm.
A hot cloud of breath puffed from its nostrils.
Don't blink. Don't back up, Holden told himself, forcing his muscles to unlock.
A ring official reached through a small sliding window and held out a sword for Holden to use. Holden took it, swung it once to feel the weight, and turned back to the boar.
BOOM.
It charged like a cannonball. It's hooves hit the ground hard and fast. A blast of air hit Holden right before the boar did.
Holden jumped left.
But his back foot slipped and almost got hit by the tusk. He stood up quickly and turned around. At the other end of the ring, the boar was getting ready to attack again.
"Did you see that?" Cormac's voice rang out from the stands, dripping with amusement. "He almost tripped over his own feet! What a joke."
Just survive ten minutes, Holden said to himself.
But his eyes caught the faint blue glow at the edge of his vision.
[Multiplier: 10x]
If one pushup gave me the strength of ten...
He gripped the sword tighter and dropped into the guard stance of the Iron-Cleaver Sword Art, the one he'd pieced together from a discarded drawing in the trash.
Block. Step. Counter.
Clang.
The impact was jarring. The boar's tusk hit the blade so hard his teeth rattled, but his stance held.
Then, the System kicked in. It was like a switch flipped in his nervous system. The hesitation vanished. His tendons and joints suddenly understood the angle of the parry on a cellular level, as if he'd executed it flawlessly a dozen times in a row.
The boar recoiled and charged again.
Clang.
This time, Holden's block was fluid. His feet shifted perfectly, absorbing the beast's kinetic energy without a single wasted movement. He wasn't thinking about the form anymore; his body just knew it.
He felt himself getting stronger, faster and more precise every second.
The boar attacked again.
He dodged the attack easily. He brought his sword down to guide the boar away from him. The boar slammed into the side of the cage with a huge bang.
He shifted his grip and took a new stance.
Something was different now. He could feel it in his body as he watched the boar come at him. Moving didn't feel hard anymore. It felt easy and simple. Everything finally felt right.
Thud thud thud thud.
The boar attacked, aiming its tusks to catch him while he moved. Holden had been watching it so closely that he knew about its habits.
He realized that on the third rush, the boar always put all its weight on the right.
The third time the boar ran at him, it moved a little slower on one side. He waited while the boar got closer and closer. He had only a moment to act. Instead of jumping away, he stepped right toward the beast. He moved smoothly past the sharp tusk and swung his sword upward in a powerful, flawless motion.
Whoosh.
The boar's body fell to the ground and slid to a halt. Dead.
The arena went completely silent. The mocking laughter stopped. Cormac's voice vanished as if someone had cut his throat.
Holden stood over the massive corpse, his chest rising and falling evenly. A sharp buzzer sounded from above the cage, making him flinch.
Up in the stands, the bald examiner leaned over the railing, her eyes narrowed into slits. She looked down at the dead boar, then up at Holden.
"Time," she called out, her voice cutting through the silence. "Forty-seven seconds." She paused, her expression completely unreadable.
"Candidate Holden Voss. Primary objective bypassed. Exceeds parameters." She snapped her clipboard shut. "Pass."
After a moment, Holden noticed he wasn't tired. His breathing was normal. He didn't feel like someone who had just fought a giant beast.
Then a chime rang in his mind.
Ding!
[Kill Confirmed.]
[Kill Points Awarded: +10 KP.]
[Total KP: 10.]
Above the boar's body, a golden light appeared out of nowhere. It formed into a small bronze chest, floating just above the floor.
Nobody outside the cage reacted to it. No one in the crowd was pointing or acting surprised.
Only Holden could see it.
He stood there with his sword and looked at the bronze box floating over the dead boar.
He crouched down slowly in front of it, one hand still loosely gripping the sword, and reached out toward the latch.