Chapter 30: The Forge Ignites
"Alright, you have thirty minutes to warm up. After that, today's main session begins," Zephyr announced, his voice echoing in the training hall. Then, without another word, he turned and walked out, leaving Satoru alone in the center of a ring of thirty elite cadets, their gazes sharp and unwelcoming.
Satoru understood. This was Zephyr's first lesson for him: establish your place. Earn it.
As soon as the door closed, they moved in.
"Kid," one cadet sneered, stepping forward with a look of open contempt. "What's your connection to Instructor Zephyr? Nepotism doesn't fly here."
"A simple teacher-student relationship," Satoru replied, his voice flat.
The large, muscular cadet who had spoken up earlier—Herac—pushed through the ring. His eyes held less scorn and more hard-edged scrutiny. "Is it true, then? What he said? Are you really stronger than all of us?"
"Of course," Satoru said, meeting his gaze without blinking. "Even if all of you came at me together, you'd still lose."
The statement detonated in the silent hall.
"Arrogant little brat!"
"That's it! I don't care who he knows! Someone hold me back—I'm teaching him a lesson!"
Every one of them was a handpicked elite, proud and tested. They had never been dismissed so utterly.
One cadet, his temper flaring, didn't wait. He lunged, a straightforward punch aimed at Satoru's face.
To Satoru's Six Eyes, the movement was glacial. He tilted his head a fraction, letting the fist whisk past his ear. In the same motion, his own fist, imbued with raw Cursed Energy, drove into the attacker's stomach.
THUD!
The cadet didn't cry out; the air was simply blasted from his lungs. He folded in half and was launched backward, skidding across the polished floor until he slammed into the far wall, sliding down into a groaning heap.
Silence, thicker and colder than before, swallowed the room.
Shock replaced anger on most faces. The fallen cadet was no weakling; he ranked solidly in the middle of their class. And he'd been taken down in one move, so fast many had missed it.
From that single exchange, they knew: Zephyr hadn't been lying. This kid was dangerous. But stronger than all of them combined? That was a different level of arrogance.
"He's not normal! Everyone, together!" someone shouted.
Xenophobia was a natural group instinct, and the Marines were no exception. Satoru was an outsider, an insertion, younger than them all, yet crowned by their revered instructor. The resentment was a palpable force.
Twenty-nine cadets now moved as one, spreading out with practiced coordination, their earlier group training evident. They began a coordinated assault from all angles.
Satoru didn't move from his spot. He simply formed a hand seal.
Cursed Technique Lapse: Blue.
An invisible point of extreme gravitational force manifested in the center of the room. Cadets who were charging suddenly found their trajectories violently altered. They yelped as they were yanked off their feet, pulled into a tangled, struggling knot of limbs in mid-air, crashing into each other with grunts of pain.
"He's a Devil Fruit user!" a cadet still on the periphery shouted, fear edging his voice.
Suddenly, an afterimage—a blur of gold and blue—streaked across Satoru's vision. It was fast. Not technique-fast, but inherently, unnaturally fast. A blonde, blue-eyed cadet materialized directly in front of Satoru, having crossed the distance in an eyeblink.
Ah. A Speed-based Devil Fruit, Satoru noted internally. It reminded him of a hero from another world's stories. The Flash.
"It's Chris!" someone yelled. "He's got him!"
Chris, the top-ranked cadet of their year. A Speed-Speed Fruit user. His potential was monstrous—speed of light, theoretically. But potential and reality were far apart.
Chris's face was a mask of grim focus, his fist already a blur aimed at Satoru's jaw. The watching cadets felt a surge of vindictive hope.
But Satoru's arrogant smirk didn't fade. "You're fast," he said, his voice calm amidst the chaos. "A shame you met me. Against speedsters... I'm a god."
Chris's fist, moving at a velocity that should have been impossible to react to, stopped. It froze in the air, mere centimeters from Satoru's skin. Chris's expression contorted from triumph to bewildered horror. He strained, every muscle in his arm corded, but he couldn't push forward. An irresistible suction pinned his feet to the floor, while an immovable wall guarded his target.
"What's happening? Chris, why'd you stop?!" a cadet cried.
"He didn't stop," Herac said, his voice low with dawning understanding. He was watching Chris's straining body, the tremor in his arm. "The kid's doing something... Chris can't get close."
"You're strong," Satoru conceded, looking at the frozen Chris with an almost academic interest. "You almost managed to get within touching distance."
He raised his own fist, crackling with condensed energy. Chris's eyes widened in panic. He tried to activate his fruit, to move, but the dual forces of attraction and infinity held him utterly trapped.
"But that's all you get to do," Satoru finished. "Having you still standing is... inconvenient for my demonstration."
Black Flash.
The amplified fist connected with Chris's torso. There was a sound like a thunderclap in a box. Chris didn't fly back; for a split second, he seemed to vibrate in place before the concussive force expelled him. He shot across the hall like a cannonball, tumbled end over end, and came to a rest in a limp heap against the wall, joining his first unconscious comrade.
The hall fell into a dead silence, broken only by the groans of the cadets still untangling themselves from the gravitational pile-up. Herac stood firm, his earlier doubt replaced by a grim, respectful assessment. The rest stared at the small, white-haired figure in the center, the reality of Zephyr's proclamation now a chilling, undeniable truth carved into the training hall floor. The forge was lit, and the first piece of metal had just been tempered in fire.
(End of Chapter)
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