The blistering heat of the Southern District didn't come in waves; it was a constant, heavy blanket that pressed against the skin. Max, Malina, Edy, and Eren stood in the courtyard, squinting against the glare of the white sun.
Commander Zog, now sporting a fresh set of bandages and leaning heavily on a cane, gestured toward the far end of the training grounds.
"Fresh meat," Zog grunted. "Meet the reason why the Southern District has a sixty percent dropout rate."
From the shadows of a sandstone archway emerged a man who looked entirely out of place in a military base. He was tall, lithe, and irritatingly handsome. He looked to be in his early thirties, with slicked-back raven hair, high cheekbones, and eyes the color of polished obsidian. He wore a pristine, white tactical shirt that somehow remained spotless despite the swirling dust.
"This," Zog introduced, "is Instructor Jod."
Jod didn't salute. He didn't yell. He simply walked over to them, his movements fluid and silent, like a predatory cat. He stopped in front of the group, his gaze lingering on each of them for a fraction of a second.
"So," Jod said, his voice smooth and melodious, a stark contrast to Zog's gravelly roar. "These are the survivors of the North. A runner, a reader, a brick... and the sponge."
He stopped in front of Max. He smiled, but it didn't reach his eyes. "You look fragile, Maxwell."
"I survived a Class 7," Max said, trying to sound braver than he felt.
"You survived because you lost control," Jod corrected softly. "A nuclear bomb also destroys its target, but we don't call it a soldier. We call it a disaster."
Jod turned his back on them. "Go to your quarters. Sleep. Eat. Say goodbye to the concept of comfort. Tomorrow, we begin the process of breaking you. Hopefully, we can put the pieces back together in the right order."
Week 1: The Furnace
The training didn't start with powers. It started with pain.
Jod woke them up at 04:00 AM not with a whistle, but by tossing a flashbang grenade into their hallway. By 04:05 AM, they were running.
The Southern Training Centre was built on a unique geological formation known as the "Glass Dunes." The heat was so intense during the day that parts of the sand had fused into jagged, slippery glass shards.
"Run," Jod commanded, hovering behind them on a gravity-skiff, sipping iced coffee. "If you stop, the sand burns through your boots. If you fall, the glass cuts your skin."
For seven days, they did nothing but physical conditioning designed to push the human body past the point of collapse. They ran with weighted vests. They climbed obsidian cliffs with no ropes. They sparred in a specialized room where the gravity was turned up to 1.5x Earth's norm.
Max struggled. His body hadn't adapted to the fluids as well as the others. Malina, fueled by the Red Fluid (Titan), didn't even sweat. She carried boulders twice her size up the hills without breaking her stride. Eren used his speed to cheat the gravity, vibrating his muscles to keep blood flowing.
But Max lagged behind. Every night, he collapsed onto his bunk, his muscles screaming, too tired to even dream.
"Why isn't he teaching us to fight?" Edy groaned on the fifth night, icing his bruised ribs. "I'm a Psion. I should be moving things with my mind, not doing burpees until I puke."
"He's stripping us down," Malina said, staring at the ceiling. Her voice was becoming different—colder, more analytical. "He needs to know our biological limits before he adds the supernatural variables. It's efficient."
Week 2: Awakening the Sparks
On the eighth day, Jod finally allowed them to use their powers.
He separated them into different sectors of the facility.
Eren (The Speedster):
Jod put Eren in "The Cage"—a room filled with hundreds of automated laser turrets.
"Speed is useless without processing power," Jod explained. "You run fast, but you think slow. If you run into a wall at Mach 1, you die just as fast as anyone else."
He turned the turrets on.
For the first three days, Eren was covered in burn marks. But slowly, he adapted. He learned to accelerate his perception of time. By the end of the week, Eren wasn't just running; he was practically teleporting, weaving through laser grids with a grin on his face.
Edy (The Psion):
Jod took Edy to the "Echo Chamber," a soundproof room.
"Your mind is a radio," Jod whispered. "But you have no dial. You hear everything. To be a Psion is to filter."
Jod subjected Edy to a barrage of psychic noise—recordings of screaming Guuts, high-frequency whines, and conflicting mathematical equations. Edy had to solve puzzles while his brain was being assaulted.
It broke him twice. He was found crying in the corner, clutching his head. But Jod was relentless. "Build the wall, Edy. Or go mad."
Eventually, Edy learned to create the "Green Wall." A mental barrier that blocked out the noise. When he emerged, his eyes were sharper, less erratic.
Malina (The Titan):
Malina was Jod's masterpiece.
He took her to the "Junkyard," a massive pile of reinforced steel debris from destroyed tanks and mechs.
"You are strong," Jod told her. "But you are crude. You punch like a drunk in a bar."
He drew a small chalk circle on a tank's armor plating. "Don't crush the tank. Crush the molecular bond at this specific point."
Malina failed for days, crumpling entire sheets of metal. But her hyper-intelligence allowed her to calculate the stress points.
By the end of the week, she didn't need to punch. She could tap a tank with one finger, and the entire structure would shatter like glass. She had mastered "Force Concentration."
She moved with a terrifying economy of motion. No wasted energy. Just pure, calculated destruction.
Week 3 & 4: The Void Paradox
Then, there was Max.
Jod took Max to the deepest level of the facility—Sector Zero. It was a reinforced bunker with walls made of lead and obsidian.
Inside were cages containing live Guuts. Class 2s and 3s that had been captured for research.
"Your power is unique, Max," Jod said, pacing around him. "Your friends generate energy. You consume it. You are a black hole."
Jod opened a cage. A Class 3 Hound snarled and lunged.
"Absorb it," Jod ordered.
Max raised his hand. He remembered the feeling at the Northern District. The cold. The hunger.
He reached for the Void.
Nothing.
The Hound tackled him. Max screamed, kicking the beast away, using standard hand-to-hand combat to keep its jaws off his throat.
"Stop fighting it physically!" Jod yelled, not helping. "Use the Void!"
Max panicked. He felt the fear rising. And with the fear, the Void suddenly snapped open.
"HUNGRY."
A blast of violet energy exploded from Max. It wasn't a precision strike. It was a chaotic shockwave. It disintegrated the Hound instantly, but it also blew the heavy steel door of the cage off its hinges and cracked the observation glass where Jod was standing.
Max fell to his knees, gasping.
Jod walked over, brushing glass dust off his shoulder. He looked disappointed.
"Too much," Jod said. "You used enough energy to level a city block just to kill a dog."
For the next two weeks, this was the cycle.
Max tried to summon a little bit of power. Nothing happened.
Jod pushed him. Max panicked.
Max released everything, nearly destroying the room.
"It's binary," Max confessed one evening, sitting in the mess hall with his head in his hands. "I can't turn it on a little bit. It's either off, or it's the apocalypse. I can't control the flow."
"You're overthinking it," Malina said. She was eating her protein paste with precise, mechanical bites. "It is a simple flow-rate equation. You need to create a valve in your mind."
"It's not math, Malina!" Max snapped. "It's alive! It whispers to me! If I open the door a crack, it kicks the door down!"
Malina looked at him, her blue eyes devoid of sympathy. "Then you are weak. If you cannot control the variable, you are the liability."
The table went silent. Edy and Eren looked at their plates. The bond between them—the friendship that had started in Shop No. 5—was straining under the pressure of the Southern District.
The Month's End Assessment
The final day of the month brought the "Live Fire Exercise."
Jod assembled them in a mock city environment. He stood on a rooftop, holding a detonator.
"I have released a synthetic Class 5 Guut into the maze," Jod announced. "It is faster than Eren. Stronger than Malina. And immune to mind control. You have ten minutes to neutralize it, or I fail the entire squad."
The team moved in.
"Formation Delta!" Malina barked. She was the leader now. There was no question about it.
Eren took point, vibrating through walls to scout. "Contact! Sector 4! It's big!"
Edy stayed back, his eyes glowing green. "I'm jamming its senses! It can't smell us!"
"Max," Malina ordered. "You stay in the rear. Do not engage unless I say so. We cannot risk a friendly fire incident."
Max grit his teeth but nodded. "Copy."
They found the Synthetic Guut in a plaza. It was a massive, mechanical spider-like construct.
Malina charged. She didn't dodge the spider's metal legs; she parried them with her bare hands, shattering the steel on impact. Clang! Crunch!
"Eren, tendons!" she shouted.
Eren blurred past, slicing the hydraulic lines of the spider's legs with a vibro-knife.
"Edy, confuse it!"
Edy projected a mental illusion, making the spider think there were ten Malinas.
The team was a symphony of violence. They were perfect.
Except for Max.
He stood on the sidelines, watching. He felt useless. A spectator in his own war.
Then, the Spider adapted. It vented superheated steam, blinding Malina. It spun violently, knocking Eren into a wall. It raised a sharpened limb to skew Malina while she was blinded.
"Malina!" Max screamed.
He didn't wait for orders. He lunged.
He needed just a little power. Just a shield.
Please, just a little.
He grabbed the spider's leg. The Void answered.
"ALL OF IT."
The violet aura erupted. It swallowed the spider. But it also expanded outward, hitting the building next to them. The structure collapsed. Debris rained down on Edy. The shockwave knocked Malina across the plaza.
When the dust cleared, the Spider was gone—erased completely.
But Edy was buried under rubble, coughing. Malina was limping, her uniform torn not by the enemy, but by Max's blast.
Jod walked into the plaza, clapping slowly.
"Target neutralized," Jod said, stepping over the wreckage.
He looked at Malina, Eren, and Edy. "You three... exceptional work. You adapted. You communicated. You fought like Tier 1 agents."
Then he turned to Max.
Max stood in the center of a crater, smoke rising from his skin. He looked at his friends. Edy was glaring at him. Eren looked scared of him.
"Maxwell," Jod said, his voice cold. "You have raw power that rivals the Commander. But you have the control of a toddler with a handgun."
Jod leaned in close, so only Max could hear.
"Your friends have become warriors. You have become a hazard. If this was a real mission, you would have just killed your team."
Max looked at Malina, hoping for some reassurance.
Malina adjusted her gloves, her face stone cold. "He is right, Max. Your variance is too high. You are dangerous to be around."
She turned and walked away.
Max stood alone in the ruins of the mock city. A month of hell, and he was worse off than when he started. He looked at his hands—the hands that could eat monsters—and for the first time, he hated them.
He hadn't mastered the Void. The Void was mastering him.