Had I perhaps overestimated Novak and his pnning skills? The Master hadn't said a word about my upcoming shift in the block!

  Okay, that's not entirely fair. I should've remembered it myself. Why would he care about a shift? It was me who needed to avoid messing up things with Liang Shi and the guys. Already halfway to the Armour Hall on the metro, I texted Vacv, telling him I wouldn't be staying in the Garden. He replied that he was pnning to settle things down before the lunch anyway.

  The Armour Hall was almost as noisy as st time – more first-years in armour now, eager to try it out. The queue to the ptforms stretched again, though not as badly. There were seven people ahead of me – mostly second- and third-period cadets – so it moved quickly.

  When my turn came, I stepped onto the ptform. The maniputors sprang to life as if sensing me. Massive cmps locked around my legs, arms, and torso, leaving no room to move. I didn’t try to resist – I surrendered fully to the machine.

  Clicks, metallic grinding, and the soft hum of mechanisms filled the space around me. Armour segments flickered at the edge of my vision — bck-and-yellow, matte ptes etched with fine formation patterns that caught the light. The maniputors joined them with jeweller-like precision, and I felt the undery pressing gently against my jumpsuit. Torso—arms—legs—and the helmet.

  But this time, the sharp, unpleasant jolt — usually caused by the hypersensitivity formation — didn’t follow once the ptform let me go.

  I took a step to the side, checking whether everything was working properly. I didn’t activate the formation — I figured An had done his job, but I’d test it ter. "Not here. With that hyper-sensitivity mode and all the noise around, you could go deaf."

  I gnced around. A few ptforms down, deeper into the corridor, stood two figures in bck-and-white armour. Adam and Lina were pretending they weren’t waiting for me, chatting about something supposedly interesting.

  I went ahead, letting them py their roles however they liked. On the way down into the metro, we kept our distance. But on the ptform, the pair came closer so we’d end up in the same carriage. There were more people than usual on the ptform, too. Almost everyone was in armour. Still, I managed to find a seat in the carriage — Vacv’s students weren’t so lucky and had to stand. Not that it hurt their cover. They kept talking as if I wasn’t even there. And so it stayed, all the way to the Garden.

  This time, they took the lead, but I caught up with them near the airlocks.

  “Excuse me!”

  Adam gnced at me through his raised visor, as if to say, What the hell, man? We're not supposed to talk!

  "Sorry again, but I have a feeling you’re not here to pick flowers, are you?" I asked.

  "Well, we’re not freshers, are we?" Lina teased me.

  "Exactly why I thought so!" I assured her. "In that case, would you mind taking a patch near mine? I’m working on refining my qi perception. Fist Qi, specifically."

  Adam and Lina exchanged a gnce. I’d just handed them a convenient excuse to stick close by.

  "I think we can arrange that, if Albert finds us something nearby," Lina said.

  "Albert?"

  "The thinhorn."

  "I usually speak to Diego."

  "Usually? How long have you been coming here for it to become usual?" she teased again.

  "A few days," I admitted, and was about to expin further, but Adam cut me off.

  "I’ve sorted it," he said. "Albert’s got plots for us nearby. Let’s go."

  We had to walk a bit farther than I was used to. Diego usually gave me tasks closer to the station, but Adam’s thinhorn had stuck us all the way at the arse of the Garden. There were trees here! If you could call these stunted, twisted trunks trees. None of them stood taller than me, but at the base, they were as thick as my shoulders. Short, gnarled branches held a few fleshy leaves and fruits – somewhere between overgrown cherries and underdeveloped apples. Flowers grew between the trunks. I had no idea what they were called. All I can say is they had an absurd number of needle-like petals, and they were all blindingly yellow.

  Albert 008 was already waiting for us. He looked a bit older, had slightly lighter skin than Diego, sharp grey eyes, ash-blond hair, and more curved horns. He was also at the fourth stage. Fist – 211, lifespan – 75/203. This grandpa was a beast!

  Around him, a dozen drones hovered over the flowers, already at work. Two baskets were already full. Albert gave me a once-over, clearly unimpressed, but handed over drone control and left without a word.

  I hurried to take the first basket, and Lina couldn’t help but joke.

  "Not sure you’ll have much time for Qi perception," she said, then leapt into the air, soaring a good five metres over the trees and nding on the nearest raised ptform. I doubted I could manage that, even with the reduced gravity here.

  Adam copied her move just as energetically, though far less gracefully. He nded on the same ptform and immediately took position behind her.

  I had to miss the start of their training — bloody drones were already lining up with full baskets. The work went quickly, and there wasn’t much time left for watching. A shame, really — there was a lot to see. Even without perception.

  Adam and Lina danced across the narrow ptform, moving one behind the other, unleashing a barrage of strikes in the same direction without ever getting in each other’s way. Their movements were precise, fast, synchronised — almost eerily so.

  Lina led, unching long chains of rapid punches, sending dozens of golden fist projections pouring forward in an endless stream of qi. Adam supported her with fewer, sharper strikes — sudden, surgical bursts of his own technique. His lone fist would hide within hers until it detonated. On the surface, the projection barely looked different — just a touch brighter, like gold mixed with silver — but when it exploded, it EXPLODED. The force of it echoed in my bones, even with my formation turned off.

  But Lina’s technique… I couldn’t sense it at all.

  Pity there was no enlightenment for me this time, though it was still a learning experience. The two of them combined speed and power beautifully — and then they switched. Now Adam went full machine-gun: bam-bam-bam, bam-bam-bam! It was a different technique, not Lina’s. And the girl took position behind him, unching massive fists from over his shoulder — ones that changed trajectory mid-flight.

  I still couldn’t feel her qi, and now I’d lost my sense of Adam’s as well.

  The sensation of the Fist Qi only returned once they switched roles again.

  Nearly two hours!

  Nearly two bloody hours they danced on that cursed ptform while I gathered bloody flowers. I was knackered, to be honest. Lost two drones to qi detonations, though Albert was kind enough to send repcements.

  After two hours, the pair finally wrapped up.

  "I'm spent!" Lina decred, jumping down from the ptform.

  Adam shifted stance and performed something that looked suspiciously like a bulshido kata... Then, from his fist, something like a silver meteor tore through the air and hit with such force, even my little toes felt the Fist Qi.

  "Show-off!" Lina teased, and he ran through the kata two more times.

  This time, I ignored the baskets and watched carefully. On the third go, I spotted it — the meteor was a fist projection. As it left the fist, the projection shrank in a blink — condensing into a point of light before it exploded.

  The technique’s range was nothing special, but when it blew — it blew hard.

  After the third boom, Adam hopped down from the ptform as well.

  "Hope that was useful to you," he said. "We're done for today."

  "A-ahm..." Not guarding me anymore? "Thanks," I said. "That first technique — the one you started with. What was it called? If you don’t mind sharing, that is."

  "Fist of the Silver Eye."

  "Fist... of the Eye?" Thank gods my visor was down — I even held back a facepalm. No harm done to his pride, hopefully.

  "It's a historical name. I'm sure it sounded much cooler in the original nguage."

  "Right!" I agreed quickly. "Well, it looked cool. And it’s the only technique today where I actually felt the Fist. Aside from that 'meteor' thing you did at the end."

  "Hey!" Lina huffed. "What about my Ogre Fist?"

  "Sadly, my sensitivity wasn’t high enough."

  "Pf!" Lina crossed her arms in mock offence.

  "She’s trolling you," Adam said. "The strength of the Ogre Fist is that it has versions for every spiritual root. Air, stone, fire… ogres of all kinds. Anyway — see you." He gave a brief nod while Lina, keeping a straight face, sent me a message.

  Incoming message: L. S. Kawesh

  Subject: All clear

  Content: No need to worry. Nothing’s threatening you in the near future.

  Would’ve loved a few more details! But I still hadn’t learned how to type in the interface without fingers, so I just gave a small nod.

  The pair left the Garden, and I kept gathering baskets of flowers — until I was absolutely done. Lunch had already ended — the guys had messaged me, but I’d turned them down — and there was no end in sight to the work. The flowers beneath the trees stretched on endlessly, with no neat division into beds or rows. So I messaged Albert, and he said I could stop whenever I wanted.

  I wanted to stop immediately.

  They paid me — four full points! Turns out the Garden could be a decent way to earn! Still don’t get why it’s such an unpopur work spot.

  The Armour Hall greeted me with its familiar mechanical hum and a short queue — moving faster than in the morning. Most cadets had already finished their tasks, eaten, and weren’t in any rush to get back to work.

  The cafeteria was quiet — though busier than the st time I’d been te for lunch. This time, I got something more sci-fi and less cultivator-core: a protein block with a hint of grass, vegetable-fvoured paste, and a thick pureed soup. None of it looked particurly appetising, but the soup was surprisingly decent. Had a proper taste to it. Or maybe it was just because I didn’t need to recover from a formation this time?

  Shame my roommates had already eaten — I could’ve used a bit of chatter.

  Sadly, they weren’t in the room either. Happily, neither was Bao Feng.

  I threw myself onto my bed, stretched my arms behind my head and just y there for a few minutes, soaking in the silence. But my brain wouldn’t settle. Those techniques kept swirling in my mind. And now, strangely enough, it wasn’t the Eye Fist I was most curious about — it was the Ogre Fist.

  I opened the tablet and navigated to the library.

  Ogre Fist, also known as Oni-Ken.

  Only one technique popped up under that name — but it had the full colour gradient, from grey to red (at least for the first stage). The upgrade went up to stage V, though from there it got messy, with added root variations and a steep jump in complexity. From its simple first-stage foundation, the technique branched out like a bloody tangled tree.

  By the second stage, there were already seven variations! Over thirty, if you counted the avaible colour grades.

  I decided to go through the Wood and Air branches, since the school could provide those essences, and both techniques had a red-grade version. The strike itself looked roughly the same as Lina’s technique, with some visual differences. The Fist of the Wooden Ogre had a greenish hue, while the Air Ogre’s Fist was nearly transparent.

  In the training video, you could see how the Wooden Ogre’s Fist, upon detonating on impact, made the green Wood qi seep into the target — like roots burrowing into the ground. I hadn’t thought Wood qi could be useful in vacuum, but this looked painful. Maybe I was wrong.

  The Air Ogre’s Fist probably wasn’t great for vacuum combat. From what I understood, the focus was on a stronger detonation and a knockback effect. Though the projection itself also seemed to carry sharper angles mid-flight.

  I still had a rubbish understanding of all this. I needed an expert opinion.

  Time to write to my mentor!

  I opened the messaging interface, paused to think about what to write...

  A warning beep and the fshing red of the minimap snapped me out of it.

  Oh, hell — 14:52! My shift had started twenty minutes ago.

  I bolted to the locker for my gauntlets and mace. The mace went between my teeth, and I dashed into the corridor, pulling the gauntlets on as I ran. The red marker was just a few metres past the door.

  What I saw made me drop the mace.

  "You’ve got to be fucking kidding me!"

  In the corridor, face to face, stood an angry Tariq, his mates… and Bao. Tariq was clutching his ribs.