Ant looked at Mahkir, sitting calm at the centre of the arena, utterly certain of the outcome. He was alert and ready.
He watched the numbers scrolling across Maren's console, the gap between her predictions and whatever Mahkir was actually proving himself capable of widening with every fight, and a quiet warmth spread through him that he didn't have an immediate name for, though he hadn't done any of this himself. The satisfaction of watching something he was bonded to, something that had chosen him for reasons he still didn't understand, simply keep exceeding whatever anyone in the room expected of him.
Maren had gone very quiet, her fingers hovering over the controls without pressing anything, her attention entirely fixed on the readout in front of her. Whatever she was seeing in the numbers, it had already stripped away whatever composure the earlier fights had left intact.
"Level four," Ant said again, when she didn't immediately move.
She blinked, shook herself, and reached for the controls. The display folded and reformed, something larger this time, four-legged, a heavy ridge of bone running down its spine. It didn't rush. It clearly didn't feel that it needed to.
The exchange lasted nearly twenty seconds. Longer than any before it, the rendered Mahkir working harder for every opening, the crested construct proving considerably more resistant to the quick, decisive strikes that had ended everything up to this point. It absorbed a strike that would have ended the earlier fights outright, barely staggering, and came back with a counter that forced the render into a genuine retreat, the first backward step Ant had seen from him all afternoon. When it finally went down, the margin felt narrower than the numbers alone suggested. Uncomfortably close.
It saw the feint, the real Mahkir said, and there was an edge in his voice that hadn't been there for the first three fights. That shouldn't have happened at this level.
Ant relayed it. Maren didn't answer, not even a murmur to herself this time. She reset the console faster than before, no lingering over the numbers the way she had after the first fight. "His endurance is probably his weak point," she added, almost to herself, still working it out as she went, "if this fight's telling me anything real. No number to check that against yet, not until the chip actually gives us one."
"Level five."
The construct this time carried scales rather than fur, low and coiled, striking with a speed that made the rendered Mahkir actually stumble mid-dodge, the first genuine mistake of the entire sequence, corrected within a heartbeat but visible all the same, a graze he was still favouring a full minute later. The two traded blows properly now, real exchanges rather than one-sided dismantling, the fight running past thirty seconds before ending, the killing blow landing with none of the earlier economy. More effort than elegance.
Maren froze, hand stopped halfway back toward the console, waiting before she'd let it move any further.
She did her best to gather herself, her emotions plainly on display now for the first time all afternoon. Her eyes moved from the screens to Mahkir and back again, searching for some pattern she might have missed. She checked the information one more time. She trusted data over her own instincts, and right now the data was telling her something impossible.
"He beat a level five with no hesitation, and he didn't even look like he'd given everything yet, and I predicted five as his ceiling, that was supposed to be it, that was supposed to be the wall!" Her voice had lost its earlier composure entirely, higher and faster than anything she'd let herself say all afternoon.
It was no wall at all, Mahkir said, tail lashing once, sharp and irritated. It was barely an inconvenience. Tell her to stop being so impressed by so little.
"He says it wasn't difficult," Ant said, keeping the second half to himself.
Tell her, Mahkir pressed, before Ant could move on.
I heard you the first time.
Then say it properly, instead of softening it for her benefit.
"Level six," Maren said, and her hands were no longer entirely steady on the controls.
I can hear what you're leaving out, Mahkir added, dry, before the fight had even properly begun.
Good.
Level six took longer still, the construct armoured but hitting hard rather than holding back, trading blows instead of waiting them out. His speed kept him ahead of most of it, but the strikes that did land hurt more than a hit that size normally would, nothing underneath to soften them. Level seven came next without pause, Maren barely giving herself time to reset before pushing forward. This one hit harder still, raw power behind every strike rather than any particular skill, and this fight ran past two minutes, longer than every previous one combined, the rendered Mahkir rarely where the strikes actually landed but paying for it fully on the few that did. Claw strikes alone weren't closing it fast enough, and partway through, the rendered Mahkir broke and unleashed Flame Breath, a column of fire that staggered the construct badly but didn't finish it, both combatants trading real damage before the render finally closed the distance for good, a strike that landed only after absorbing three of its own. The rendered fur stayed singed along one side where something had connected hard enough to leave a mark that hadn't faded by the time the construct dissolved.
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"Holy shit," Maren said, quietly, mostly to herself.
She said nothing else after that. Her hands stayed on the controls but her mouth had gone quiet, her eyes fixed on the readout, the professional distance gone from her face entirely. Ant watched her stop taking notes entirely, the pen she'd been holding forgotten on the console.
Level eight, Mahkir said, before Ant could suggest it, frustration unmistakable in the words now.
The eighth fight ran nearly five minutes. This one had no obvious weakness to find, no gap the render could exploit the way it had with every construct before it, just steady competence everywhere. The rendered Mahkir opened with Flame Breath this time, no longer waiting for claws to fail first, and the fire did real work against the construct's hide before the fight dropped into a physical exchange, sides heaving, a scorch mark along one flank where a strike had actually connected, and the victory, when it came, felt earned in a way the earlier ones hadn't.
This is taking too long, the real Mahkir snapped, and this time the frustration landed close enough to Ant that he felt it land. You could help. Instead you stand there watching, like the rest of them.
"I don't know how to help," Ant said, out loud, startled by the sudden edge in it.
Then find out. The words came clipped and hard, nothing like the dry amusement Ant had grown used to over the past few days. What use is a bond if one half of it does nothing but watch?
Ant didn't have an answer for that, wasn't sure there was one that wouldn't make things worse, so he said nothing at all. The tension in the room didn't ease. He understood, distantly, that this wasn't really about him. Mahkir's pride had never once considered the possibility of losing, and every fight that ran longer than the last made that certainty harder to hold onto. Understanding it didn't make it hurt any less.
Mahkir didn't answer further. His attention had already gone back to the display, tail rigid, his whole body coiled tight.
Level nine ran past nine minutes. The construct this time gave up nothing, relentless rather than simply fast, drawing real blood from the rendered Mahkir twice before Flame Breath finally turned the fight, a full column held longer than any previous use, mana clearly being spent without hesitation now, and when it ended, the victory felt earned through survival rather than dominance. Ant found himself gripping the edge of the console without realising he'd moved toward it, his own pulse elevated for reasons that had nothing to do with any physical exertion of his own.
Maren hadn't spoken in several minutes. She simply reset the console, hands moving on instinct now rather than plan.
"Level ten," she said, barely above a whisper.
The construct that formed this time was different from every one before it, larger, denser, its whole bearing suggesting an entirely different category of opponent. A first evolution stage, a different baseline entirely from the earlier levels. It didn't circle. It didn't test. It simply came, fast and overwhelming, and the rendered Mahkir met it with everything he had.
The fight lasted past fifteen minutes.
Ant watched it, throat tight, distantly aware that the whole room had changed around him, Maren no longer taking notes, no longer speaking, her hand pressed flat against the console, keeping her upright. The rendered Mahkir fought with everything the data said he had, claws first, testing, then Flame Breath released early and held longer than in any previous fight, a sustained column that scorched deep into the construct's hide and should have ended it outright against anything the earlier levels had produced. The evolved opponent absorbed it, wounded but nowhere near finished, and came back harder for having survived it. Every skill, every reserve of speed and endurance and mana the simulation could draw from, dodging, striking, absorbing damage that would have ended any of the earlier constructs a dozen times over, and it wasn't enough. The evolved opponent simply had more. More reach, more raw power behind every strike, more capacity to absorb punishment and keep coming, until even fire stopped being a decisive answer.
The construct's final strike landed clean, a heavy blow that sent the rendered Mahkir sprawling across the display space, and before he could recover, a second strike finished what the first had started.
The rendered Mahkir dissolved.
The silence that followed lasted less than a second. It felt considerably longer, no one in the room moving, the fight's ending too sudden for any of them to react to yet.
Then the real Mahkir made a sound Ant had never heard from him before, somewhere between a growl and a snort, outrage at watching something wearing his own face go down.
That was never me, he said with absolute certainty.
Before Ant could ask what he meant, Mahkir was moving, a blur of red launching directly into the display space that had never been built to hold anything physical at all.
"Mahkir, wait!"
He didn't wait. Flame erupted from him mid-air, stronger than Ant had ever seen it, stronger even than the burst that had reduced the Dark Elemental to ash, pure rage behind all of it. His eyes had gone dark red, something Ant had never seen from him before. It caught the dissolving remnants of the defeated render and kept going, past where the boundary of the display should have contained it, spreading into the console banks along the near wall in a rolling wave of heat and light.
Sparks cascaded from a bank of screens, bright and sudden, one after another, as the flame found something to catch on. Something in the equipment shrieked, a high electronic sound that cut off abruptly as a terminal went dark, then another, the twelve screens Ant had counted on arrival collapsing one by one into blank, smoking casings. The bench with its glass apparatus caught next, one of the tubes cracking with a sharp report, whatever liquid had been bubbling inside it hissing violently as it hit open flame.
Maren was already moving, shouting something Ant couldn't process over the sudden roar of the alarm system overhead, a piercing wail that made coherent thought considerably harder to hold onto. The fire kept spreading, hungry and fast, consuming half the room in the space of a few seconds. Ant stood frozen at the edge of it all, watching the small red creature who'd chosen him, who'd burned a Dark Elemental to nothing and dismantled two academy Kithren without effort. He'd never once shown Ant anything that looked like genuine loss of control before this. Now he stood amid the wreckage of the room, breathing hard, eyes still dark red, nowhere near finished being angry.