It has been several days since the trial began.
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Ha Joon and Eun Byol are surviving.
Whatever the jungle provides they are taking.
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I led them to my base.
They took the bait.
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Surprisingly at first they didn't rush it.
They kept their distance.", "Monitored.", "Watched.", "Stayed in the tree line and simply observed.",
They spent that first night in shifts.", "One sleeping.", "One watching.",
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Smart.", "For beginners.",
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Then the paranoia started setting in.
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They believed they were observing me.
In truth I was observing them.
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I watched the cracks form.", "Watched the sleeplessness find their edges.", "Watched the forest start to work on them in ways I didn't have to manufacture.",
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Then I started helping it along.
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Moving around them.", "Letting them hear footsteps.", "Letting them find signs of my presence.", "Never me.", "Just signs.", "Just enough to keep the mind from settling.", "Just enough to prevent the rest they needed.",
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Their mana.", "The dual cultivation had been sustaining what remained of it.", "That surprised me.", "The instinct of it.", "Neither of them planned it.", "Neither of them understood what they were doing when they did it.",
But it kept them alive longer than they should have lasted.
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Now they have completely run out.
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So I began attacking them in earnest.
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Assessment so far.
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Combat abilities.", "First.", "Raw output.", "The ability to produce damage.",
Ha Joon is relatively average for a beginning hunter.", "Neither exceptional nor concerning.", "Room to develop.",
Eun Byol is higher than expected.", "Surprisingly so.",
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Offensive technique.", "Output of attacks.", "Accuracy.", "Timing.", "Fakes.", "Weapons usage.",
Both utterly pathetic.", "Small improvements in timing and synchronization.", "The coordination between them has traces of something real but it is barely formed.",
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Offensive synchronization.", "The ability to trap opponents.", "The ability to land strikes from different angles.",
Ha Joon exceeds here.", "He reads space well.", "He anticipates positioning.", "But it needs significant work before it becomes reliable.",
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Durability.
Both pathetic.", "The only reason they haven't died is because in each encounter I have been sustaining them.", "Small amounts of my mana.", "Enough to keep the body from crossing certain thresholds.", "They don't know this.", "They shouldn't know this.",
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Defensive technique.", "Blocking.", "Parrying.", "Head movement.", "Opponent anticipation.",
Eun Byol has speed.", "Real speed.", "The kind that comes from years of training the body in other ways.", "Dance.", "Repetition.", "Muscle memory built on thousands of hours of movement.",
Ha Joon exceeds her here as well.", "His anticipation is better.", "He reads incoming attacks before they fully form.",
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Defensive distance.", "The ability to avoid being trapped.", "The ability to avoid attacks coming from multiple angles.",
Eun Byol leads here.", "She thinks spatially.", "She finds exits before she needs them.",
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Overall.
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Both of them are useless.
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But the potential is there.
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It exists in both of them.", "Real potential.", "Not the kind you invent to justify the work.", "The kind that sits underneath everything like something waiting to be found.",
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My job is to find it.", "To dig it out.", "To pull it into the light where it can grow.",
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For Lord Ash.
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Chi-Long sat by the fire.
Her eyes locked on something the fire wasn't showing her.
Something further away than the flames.
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Then she started to get up.