Mira repeated herself, her voice firm and unwavering. "I want to spar with you, Jelo."

Jelo was taken aback, his eyes widening slightly. He didn't want to spar with Mira. Not now. Not after everything that had just happened. The idea of fighting her—even in a controlled practice setting—made him deeply uncomfortable. He'd already hurt her once today, thrown her across the room during his evolution. The memory of her body hitting the wall still made him feel sick with guilt.

He began scrambling for excuses, his words coming out quickly. "Mira, my system just evolved. I haven't really understood my powers yet. I don't have proper control over everything. It would be a messy fight since I haven't coordinated myself properly, and I haven't even unlocked any real skills from the system shop. Everything is still so new and—"

"None of that matters," Mira interrupted, cutting through his excuses with blunt determination. "I just want to see how strong I am relative to you. That's all. We should spar."

Jelo tried to protest again, his voice weaker this time. "But I could accidentally hurt you again. What if I lose control like before? What if—"

"You won't," Mira said firmly. "You're in control now. The evolution is complete. And even if something does happen, I'm tough enough to handle it. I need to know where I stand, Jelo. I need to know if I'm even close to your level anymore, or if the gap has become too wide."

There was something in her tone that Jelo couldn't quite identify. Worry? Insecurity? Determination? Maybe all three at once. She wasn't asking anymore. She was telling him this was going to happen whether he liked it or not.

When Jelo realized that Mira was dead set on sparring with him and wasn't going to take no for an answer, he sighed heavily, his shoulders sagging in resignation. "Fine," he said quietly. "We'll spar."

Mira's expression brightened slightly, though her determination didn't waver.

"But," Jelo added quickly, gesturing around the cramped bunker, "we can't fight down here in the lab. It's too cramped and way too dangerous. There are chemicals, equipment, the unconscious scientist, dead monsters—everything could explode or catch fire if we're not careful."

Mira nodded, already moving toward the ladder. "Agreed. We'll go upstairs, above the bunker. There's more space up there, and it's safer."

Jelo sighed again, louder this time, but followed her. "Okay. Let's get this over with."

They both climbed the ladder leading out of the bunker, Mira ascending first with practiced ease, followed by Jelo who moved more slowly, his exhaustion still weighing on him despite the adrenaline that had kept him going during the fights below.

As Jelo poked his head above the trapdoor and back into the space upstairs, he was immediately hit by relatively fresh air. It wasn't clean air—the Arena Nexus wasn't exactly known for its pristine atmosphere—but compared to the stale, recycled air of the underground bunker mixed with the smell of blood, burned metal, and dead monsters, it felt like a gift from heaven.

He took a deep breath, filling his lungs, and felt some of the tension in his body ease slightly. The relief was immediate and profound. When he'd been trapped in the bunker, he hadn't known how long it would be before he'd be able to escape and head back out into open space again—or if he'd be able to escape at all. For all he knew, the scientist could have killed him, or the monsters could have torn him apart, or the evolution could have gone wrong and left him as something broken and mindless.

Jelo realized with some surprise that he was genuinely grateful to have left the bunker alive. The gratitude caught him off guard because it felt strange to be thankful for something so mundane. In a way, going from one room to another room was mundane, wasn't it? Even if you counted the fact that one of the rooms was an underground bunker and the other was above ground, it was still just… moving between spaces. People did that every day without thinking about it.

But then Jelo realized that his gratitude wasn't really about the rooms themselves. It was about still being alive. About having escaped being captured, experimented on, killed, or worse. About having survived yet another situation that should have ended him. The bunker had been a trap, a death sentence, and somehow he'd fought his way out of it. That was worth being grateful for, mundane or not.

"Jelo!" Mira's voice cut through his thoughts sharply. She was already fully outside, standing several meters away from the trapdoor, her hands on her hips and an impatient expression on her face. "Climb out already and stop delaying the inevitable. You agreed to this, remember?"

Her words snapped Jelo back to reality. Right. The spar. The thing he'd just agreed to even though every fiber of his being didn't want to do it.

He climbed out of the bunker fully, pulling himself up and out of the opening before turning to close the trapdoor behind him. The metal door shut with a heavy thud, sealing away the carnage below. Jelo made a mental note to figure out what to do about the unconscious scientist and the dead monsters later. For now, they had more immediate concerns.

He and Mira were now standing and facing each other in the open space above the bunker. The area was relatively clear—some scattered debris, a few broken Dabba corpses in the distance, but nothing that would interfere with a fight. The lighting was dim, as it always was in the Arena Nexus, casting long shadows across the ground.

Jelo tried one more time, his voice carrying a note of desperation. "Mira, we really don't have to do this. We can just—"

"We have to," Mira interrupted firmly. "And I want to. Stop trying to talk your way out of it."

Jelo sighed deeply, the sound heavy with resignation and exhaustion. He could see in her eyes that there was no changing her mind. She needed this for some reason—needed to test herself against him, needed to see where she stood in comparison to his newly evolved power. He didn't fully understand why it mattered so much to her, but he wasn't going to win this argument.

"Fine," he muttered, taking up a fighting stance. His body shifted automatically into a defensive posture, feet spread shoulder-width apart, knees slightly bent, hands raised but not clenched into fists. He looked ready but reluctant, like a soldier being forced into a battle he didn't want to fight.

Mira's expression hardened with focus. She didn't waste any time with words or warnings.

She moved first.

Her body shimmered for just a fraction of a second, and then suddenly there were two of her. Mira and a single clone, standing side by side, perfectly identical down to the smallest detail. Her replication ability had always been impressive, and she'd clearly been practicing because the clone materialized almost instantly with no visible delay.

The two Miras rushed Jelo from opposite angles, their movements perfectly synchronized. One came from his left, the other from his right, both moving with speed and precision. Their footwork was flawless, their timing impeccable. The pressure was immediate and overwhelming, designed to force Jelo into making a mistake or leaving an opening.

But Jelo didn't counterattack.

He relied purely on instinct and movement, his body reacting without conscious thought. His body was already fast enough to narrowly avoid most of the strikes coming his way. When the real Mira threw a punch at his face, he ducked under it smoothly. When the clone aimed a kick at his ribs, he twisted his torso just enough to let it pass harmlessly by.

When attacks came too close for simple dodging, when both Miras coordinated their strikes to cut off his escape routes, Jelo used Wing Burst. His body vanished in a short burst of speed, disappearing from between them and reappearing several meters away in the blink of an eye. Then he did it again when they closed the distance, and again when they tried to pin him against a wall of debris.

He was clearly focused on defense rather than victory, moving like someone who was trying not to hurt his opponent rather than trying to win. Every dodge was calculated to create distance. Every Wing Burst was aimed at retreat rather than repositioning for a counterattack. He wasn't fighting to beat Mira. He was fighting to not fight her.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

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