Bond Master

Calcified Strikes (2)

He dug deeper into the metal chest, tossing aside a standard short sword and a trident before his fingers brushed against a pair of heavy, iron-studded spiked gauntlets. The knuckles were reinforced with thick, calcified ridges that perfectly mimicked the spinal plating of his bound beast.

Ren pulled them out, sliding his hands into the stiff leather interior. They were slightly oversized for his lean, foundry-rationed frame, but after pulling the heavy iron buckles tight across his forearms, they locked securely into place.

He returned to the circular crosshair of the Testing Area, dropped his center of gravity into a low foundry stance, and focused the gray soul-force straight into the spiked iron knuckles. Rend, he internalized, this time imagining the sudden, explosive snap of a hound's jaws rather than a sweeping blade.

The skill responded to the shift in form instantly. Instead of a single, sweeping horizontal arc of resin-thick energy, the calcified grey power split along his knuckles, erupting into four distinct, linear spikes of dense, armor-piercing kinetic force that hummed with a low, vibrating frequency.

Ren drove a straight, compact jab directly into the center of the copper crosshair. The drag coefficient changed entirely; because a straight punch relied on linear momentum rather than a rotational arc, the execution speed was blindingly fast. The four localized bone spikes perforated the air, blasting into the copper alloy with a rapid, machine-like concussive impact that rattled the rivets of the bulkhead.

It lacked the wide horizontal clearance of the knife s***h, but its concentrated, forward-facing penetration was terrifying. Against a heavily armored target or an opponent hiding behind a magical barrier, these compact, rapid-fire piercing spikes would act like an industrial pneumatic drill, hammering a single weak point until the structure suffered total structural collapse.

He attempted to throw a follow-up hook, but the sudden, massive consumption of internal energy hit him like a physical blow. A wave of profound, suffocating fatigue crashed down upon his upper body. His shoulder blades throbbed with a burning ache, his biceps cramped violently, and his lungs sucked in the air of the cabin in ragged, desperate gasps.

Ren stumbled backward, his knees buckling slightly as he collapsed onto the edge of the mattress, resting his heavy, iron-clad hands on his thighs while sweat dripped steadily from his chin onto the floorboards. The physical toll of channeling raw beast-force through a human nervous system was staggering. His childhood in the Soot stone salvage yards had granted him decent functional strength for lifting scrap iron, but his cardiovascular endurance and soul-force stamina were completely unconditioned for the prolonged, high-intensity output of mystical vanguard warfare. If he didn't embark on a ruthless physical conditioning regimen the moment he passed the academy gates, he would burn through his entire energy reserve within the first thirty seconds of a real engagement.

As he sat there, deeply massaging his trembling, cramped forearms to restore circulation, the low, metallic hum of the transport train began to change. Through the thick steel floorboards, Ren heard the faint, muffled thuds of doors sliding open down the corridor, followed by the disoriented groans, sharp gasps, and panicked shouts of the other initiates finally awakening from their prolonged, serum-induced comas.

Ren Barrett wiped the sweat from his eyes, a grim, cool smile cutting across his soot-stained features through the dark.

The head start had been officially locked in. While the children of the upper districts were only just beginning to rub the sleep from their eyes and fumble with the cartoonish pages of their elementary guidebooks, the kid from the foundries had already broken his weapons in, categorized his status, modified his combat geometry, and discovered the exact limits of his own body. Let them wake up. The race for survival had officially begun, and the Bond Master had already claimed the inside track.

The questionnaire also featured a secondary section detailing individual physiological alterations: Note any persistent cranial pressure, memory displacement, localized cellular decay, or irregular physical enhancements.

Ren stood up, performing a brief series of internal assessments. He extended his arms, rotated his torso, and bent to touch the metal floorboards. The feedback from his bound Shackle-Hound pup hadn't granted him the fluid flexibility of a wind-element caster, but his structural frame felt completely transformed. His skeleton felt heavier, denser, and more anchored to the ground; his joint stability had tightened significantly, and his skin possessed a strange, subtle resilience, as if his baseline tissue density had been reinforced to endure heavy concussive impacts.

He had become a physical anvil.

Yet, when he looked at the form, he deliberately checked the box marked None. If his physical durability and skeletal mass expanded during future conditioning trials, he could easily attribute it to the academy’s high-nutrient rations or standard martial weight training. He recalled a state-wide broadcast he had watched in the Soot stone communal hall—a high-tier capital idol mage who possessed mind-boggling fire-casting attributes but had notoriously fractured her own wrist merely by stumbling over a decorative stage cable during a press event.

That ridiculous incident was definitive proof that the Divine Serum’s mutation logic did not upgrade the human frame uniformly. It frequently crammed god-like mystical output into fragile, unchanged human vessels. By keeping his physical upgrades hidden, Ren secured a silent, defensive ace in the hole.

He carefully folded the parchment, slid it into the provided lead-lined military envelope, and placed it inside the pneumatic drop tray beside the compartment door. The container hissed instantly, sucking the document up into the train’s central tracking car. His baseline registry was set.

However, the lingering adrenaline from the strike refused to dissipate, and Ren found himself staring back at the weapon drawer with a calculating expression. A single-edged knife was a functional medium, but it didn't truly synchronize with the predatory, multipronged nature of the Volden Shackle-Hound. The three long claw marks running the length of his arm implied a different geometric execution.

He explicitly detailed the severe movement restriction and high drag coefficient, intentionally painting his skill as a powerful but highly clumsy utility asset to lower the guard of anyone reviewing his papers.