The next bout ended quickly.
One of the fighters overcommitted, a mechanical brace along his leg extending a fraction too far on the follow-through. The other saw it, adjusted, and drove a reinforced strike into the exposed joint. The brace buckled with a sharp crack and the fight ended there, not with spectacle but with failure. No one reacted beyond what was necessary. The body was moved. The space reset.
Lucien watched the reset more than the fight itself. The timing. The way the staff moved in without hesitation, clearing the ring and preparing it again as if interruption had already been accounted for. Even here, where things looked less controlled, the structure held underneath.
"Next."
The word cut through the noise without needing to be loud.
Lucien stepped forward when it was his turn. No announcement, no introduction beyond a glance at the list in front of the clerk. A number was given instead of a name.
It suited him fine.
His opponent was broad, augmented along the forearms and collarbone in a way that pushed his weight forward. A pressure fighter. Built to close distance and make it uncomfortable once he had.
Lucien let him close.
The first exchange established the shape of things. The augmentation added force that the man's natural size wouldn't have generated, the kind that made blocking a worse option than not being there. Lucien took the measure of it on the first contact, felt it in his forearm, and didn't do that again.
He opened the Haki carefully, not gripping it, letting it settle at a level he could hold through the full bout without it costing him focus elsewhere. The man's intentions arrived a half-beat before his body committed to them, the forward lean that preceded each drive, the subtle shift in weight that telegraphed the direction.
Lucien used it. Stepped inside the third drive completely, inside the range where the augmented forearms couldn't generate anything useful, and hit him twice in the floating ribs before he could adjust.
The man adjusted anyway. Quicker than the augmentation should have allowed.
Lucien stepped back and reset. The Haki had given him the drive but not the recovery speed. He revised the read, stopped anticipating the drives and started watching the shoulders instead, the small rotation that came a fraction before the arms committed.
There. Consistent. Every time.
He waited for it again. Let the man close, absorbed a glancing strike across the shoulder that he hadn't fully cleared, and used the contact to read the rotation as it came. He dropped his weight, let the follow-up pass over him, and drove his elbow hard into the joint where the forearm augmentation met natural bone. Not the reinforced part. The join between them.
The man's arm buckled outward at the wrong angle.
He didn't go down immediately. He pulled back, reassessing, the damaged arm held slightly away from his body. His weight shifted to compensate. Lucien read the new centre of gravity before the man had finished finding it himself, stepped inside the guard on the left where the damaged arm couldn't reach, and hit him once across the jaw with everything behind it.
He went down.
Lucien straightened. His shoulder where the glancing strike had landed was already tightening. He stood in the centre of the ring for a moment before stepping out, running back through the exchange the way he always did after something worth learning from. What the augmentation had done to the man's weight distribution. Where the Haki had been clean. Where it had needed correcting mid-read.
He stepped out and found a stretch of wall and leaned against it.
In the small windowless room, the smaller scientist set his pen down and looked at what he had written.
First engagement. Observation Haki active throughout. Adapted mid-exchange without visible hesitation. Finished cleanly. No unnecessary movement.
He underlined the last line.
Then he picked up the Den Den Mushi and dialled.
"Bout one complete," he said, when the line opened. "Results as projected. Adjust the next variable."
A pause.
"Understood," he said, and closed the line.
He turned to a fresh page and began writing again.
Lucien stayed where he was.
He didn't look at the clerk. Didn't look at the others waiting. Just the ring.
The next opponent was smaller. That stood out first. Less mass, less visible augmentation. Nothing obvious along the arms or shoulders, no reinforced plates or extended joints. If anything, he looked lighter than most of the ones that had stepped in before him.
Which meant something else was doing the work.
Lucien watched the man move before his name was called. The way his steps didn't quite settle fully, weight shifting just a fraction too clean between them. Not wasted motion. Not rushed either.
Balanced. Precise. The kind of precise that didn't come from training alone.
Different from the last one.
"Next."
Lucien stepped forward again, the movement familiar now. Same ring. Same space. Nothing changed on the surface.
Across from him, the man didn't move immediately. His stance stayed neutral, eyes steady, like he wasn't interested in closing distance at all. Like closing distance was something he had already decided wasn't necessary.
Lucien didn't draw his sword.
Not yet.
The signal came.
Lucien moved first. Closed half the distance fast, testing, watching for the tell that would give him the shape of whatever this was.
The man didn't react to the movement. He reacted to the intention behind it.
A fraction before Lucien's foot had fully committed, the man was already adjusting, already repositioning, already somewhere slightly different from where he had been. Not dodging. Not reading body language. Something that sat underneath body language entirely.
Lucien pulled up short.
The ring noise continued around them. Nobody else had noticed.
He looked at the man across the space between them and felt something that didn't happen often enough to have a comfortable name. The Haki he had opened carefully at the start of the bout, steady and level, was meeting something on the other side that recognised it.
Not a fighter who had been augmented.
A fighter who had been trained the same way he had.
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Remember 1 Chapter For Every 50 Power Stones.