“Castiana City Guard? You mean one of them?” I pointed to guardsmen standing around.  

“That’s right, Grey. And don’t forget the ma’am.”

“I...” Addressing her correctly was the last thing on my mind right now. “Are you serious?”

Rayden just raised an eyebrow. It wasn’t hard to tell what she wanted me to do.

“Ma’am,” I added, gritting my teeth.

“You heard right, Grey,” she said. “In fancy terms, it’s to show newcomers what they can achieve. Between you and me, it’s supposed to knock them off their perch.”

“Like show me I’m not invincible? I’m well aware of that, ma’am.”

“Are you? Then take this as a little reminder.” She nodded her head at her guardsmen. “Reminder, there is always someone stronger.” 

“I know that too.”

“Let me tell you something,” Rayden said with a slight sigh and looked at the other members of Squad Four. “It’s no secret that I served in the Imperial Army before I came here. Since I was raised in a military family, I joined as soon as I got my class. I’m telling you this because I faced my squadmates like you when I joined my first squad, regardless of my background. It’s not some bullshit that I, or my predecessor, made up. It’s a practice much older than me.”

“That doesn’t mean it can’t change. Ma’am.” I took her pause as a turn for me to speak. 

“Yeah, I got a hell of a beating that time.” She ignored me. “Actually, every time I was transferred. But then when we sat down for a beer, we had something to talk about, and we laughed it off. It brought us together, and I’m not just talking about my squad, but the entire platoon.”

“Didn’t it just bring more grudges? Ma’am.” Being beaten up in front of so many may have been too much for some egos. The humiliation, the ridicule. It didn’t sound appealing to me either.

“Something that can usually be solved with fists or swords later. It’s up to the commanding officer to know when things went too far. Look, Grey, I understand how you feel. You’ve fought a hard fight, sustained injuries, and I’m telling you to take on an even tougher opponent.” 

“Getting beaten up,” I said bitterly. “Ma’am.”

“Depends on how you do.”

“Do I have a choice? Ma’am.”

“Of course,” Rayden nodded, rocking back on her heels with her hands behind her back. “Say the word, and we’ll end it here. Think carefully, though.”

Yeah, there was no doubt what she meant. If I refused, despite the efforts I’d made so far, I’d always be the one who didn’t have the guts to stand up to one of them. Closing my eyes, I sighed. What was one beating to the dozen or so I had taken in the Esulmor woods. Couldn’t be worse. Still...

“I won’t have to face the master guards, will I ma’am?” The laughter that came after that from the onlooking guardsmen made my ears twitch, throwing me off guard. “I’ll do it if I have to, just...”

“Oh, the gal has some balls...” I overheard before I refocused back on Rayden. It wasn’t easy.

“That won’t be necessary, Grey.”

Good to hear. It really was. If it wasn’t them, I still had a chance. A very small, tiny one, but I had a chance.

“Oh, I see.” A smile crossed her face when she saw my reaction. “Fair warning. Don’t look down on them too much.”

That gave me pause. What made her think that? I didn’t believe I’d ever looked down on anyone, at least in terms of combat prowess. After all, I wasn't a saint either.

“So, can I take it you agree to the fight?”

“Yes, ma’am.” The nod I gave her came out more reluctantly than I intended. But could she blame me for not being too enthusiastic about the prospect of a thrashing?

“You heard her,” Rayden said in a voice strong enough to be heard even in the farthest corners. “To make it a bit fair, only melee fighters, swordsmen, spearmen, and such are allowed to challenge her. You know the drill. No mages, archers, and so on.”

And so the fray over who would stand up to me began...or not.

It was beyond me how they chose my challenger amongst themselves. I’d been expecting at least some arguing, if not confrontation. Instead, from the very beginning, I heard only one name from the ranks of the onlooking guardsmen. Clay.

“Go easy on her, Clay.”

“Clay, don’t break her.”

Clay this and that. He almost sounded like the local champion. Honestly, if I were him, I’d be embarrassed. 

Don’t mind me. That’s just my bitter self talking.

I was kind of hoping to face a woman. Not because they were weaker, thinking that would be a mistake. The reason was their weight. They were lighter, usually. There was quite a difference between hitting someone who weighs over a hundred kilos and someone who doesn’t even weigh sixty.

The growl coming from my stomach made me realize how much energy I’d spent fighting Freyde, Meneur, and Harper. Sadly, looking at Rayden’s serious face, I didn’t see any chance of her letting me eat first. It also reminded me of what Deckard had mentioned, that there were skills for increasing the density of the body, basically increasing the weight.

So...my earlier concern and hope about a female opponent? Completely irrelevant.

[Guardsman: lvl 123]

Seeing his level made me feel a little at ease. From what I’d seen in the barracks and in the city since I arrived, level 120 plus were the weakest guards. It seemed like after their evolution, they went through some kind of leveling boom that brought them to this level. Likewise, I hadn’t seen many with levels above 130, but quite a lot around one fifty. And that was it. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t think of anyone with a level approaching two hundred. So that brought up the question, where the hell did master guards come from? 

I had no idea, and this wasn’t the time to bring it up, either.

“Grey, right?” asked the guardsman in a sonorous voice.

Since he towered over me by more than a head and a half, I had to lean my head back a bit to look up. “That’s right. Clay, I guess?”

“On the first name basis, from the get-go?” he said, giving me a wink.

Okay, I’d never been good at the whole flirting thing, and even the flimsy skills I had were more than rusty now. So, I didn’t wink back or giggle at his remark. I wouldn’t have done it anyway. He wasn’t my type, even though he didn’t seem that much older than me. Sadly, I didn’t come up with a witty comeback either.

“Don’t like it? Then tell me your last name.”

He smiled. “Beat me, and I’ll tell you.”

Couldn’t he take the hint? Damn, I really was rusty. “I was going to do that, anyway.”

“Ha...someone’s confident. Are you sure you can do that?”

“I won’t know until I try, Clay.”

“If you think I’m going to make this easy for you just because you’re cute, you’re wrong.”

I had to check my domain and make sure my mutations hadn’t miraculously disappeared. Yet, they were all where they were supposed to be. Even my ankle-length mane still weighed down my head and sucked my mana.

Cute, huh? My ferret was cute. The neighbor’s kittens were cute as hell. The word made me feel like a pet. And I was tired of being someone’s pet, a toy they could do whatever they wanted with.

It didn’t piss me off, though. It was nice that someone thought I was...I would prefer pretty, beautiful, or even handsome. 

Either way, what was in store for me was not something I would describe in these words. A fight was a dirty, noisy, smelly, bloody, and disgusting business. 

“If you do that, if you go easy on me, you...” I didn’t get a chance to say that the guardsman would regret it as Deckard decided to ruin my badass moment. 

“How about spicing it up a bit? Make sure you take this more seriously.”

“Sir?” asked the guardsman, like me, unsure of where he was going with it.

“Whoever beats the other gets this spatial tool from me.” He showed us a metal bracelet. It appeared golden in the sunlight. Not the metal I believed it was actually made of. If I had to bet, it would be on bronze. But what the hell was he doing?

“What’s that look for, girl. The storage is not large, only two cubic meters, but much better than what you have. And you, if you don’t find it useful, why not sell it. I don’t remember how much I paid for it, but it was a few golds.”

“Are you serious, sir?”

He gave him a nod. “Absolutely, man. I want to see a fight, not some half-assed play.”

“She is your apprentice, I...”

“Don’t worry. If you beat her, no hard feelings,” Deckard said, deliberately loud enough for everyone to hear, easing the guardsman’s fears of retribution later.

“But why?” A question that was on the tip of my tongue. Only Clay asked it first.

Deckard grinned. “Believe it or not, when she’s cornered, it brings out the best in her.”

“I did my best!”

“I’ve seen you do better,” he argued back.

That gave me pause. Was he talking about the [Beast]? Cause he forbade me to use poison and my beast presence. There wasn’t a single skill I was aware of that I didn’t use to its full potential, except for the [Beast]. 

Okay, that was a bit of an overstatement. I didn’t need to use [Indomitable Will] to calm my mind at all in the last few fights, and [Master’s Lover] was as useless as ever. Nor did I take full advantage of [Never-Dying], but dying here wasn’t in my plans.

So beastification was the only thing I could think of. In my entire fight with Squad Four, I didn’t go all the way with it. Was that his reason? Or was it my mentioning that I could go deeper with it?

“Give it your best. Both of you!” Deckard said his part and, with far fewer steps than should have been possible, returned to the edge of the training ground.

“Traiana’s tits! I should have been there...”

“...an easy few coins!”

Regret and envy for Clay echoed from the ranks of the onlooking city guards. Like me, the guardsman tried to ignore it as best he could.

“Is he always like that?”

“Doing what he wants? Pretty much.” I said, hesitating. “May I ask a question?”

“Shoot.”

“Your combat style...do you use fire or heat?”

He grinned. “I see what you’re doing, but no.”

The moment he said it, I let my long mane go. Like before, it crumbled to dust. Only this time, it wasn’t blown away by the wind but fell slowly to the ground. Seriously, you can’t imagine how much that hair weighed and how much tension had been released from my neck. It was such a relief.

“Pretty neat tricks. Anything else?” he asked. “Fair warning, Grey. Whatever preparation you need to do, do it now. There will be no breaks until one of us quits.”

Yeah, I understood that. There’s no stopping in real fights, either. So I checked the description of the [Beast], especially the line about the 22% into constitution and strength if I went through full beastification. It was enough to keep me in the fight a little longer and give me a little more speed.

There was actually nothing to hesitate over, not anymore. This guardsman wasn’t someone I wanted to impress or talk to. 

“Just one thing. Don’t freak out.” I said, taking a deep breath and surrendering to the beast. The change wasn’t immediate, but it wasn’t slow either. The way my skin was being covered in fur, my fangs lengthening, left Clay staring open-mouthed. Then he burst out laughing. “That’s great, fucking great. Embarrassing for them...should have fought your mates with everything you got.”

“You know shit!” That was what I wanted to tell him, that he didn’t know shit about why I didn’t do it. Yet what escaped my throat was just a growl, which he didn’t understand.

“Perfect, you’ve turned into a beast.” A spear appeared in his hand, and leather armor replaced his uniform. Now I wanted that bigger spatial tool all the more. Not having to change clothes was a dream. But thinking back, I hadn’t been wearing that much lately.

The spear wasn’t something I was happy to see, though. No doubt it gave him a longer reach than Freyde had with his sword. The question was how limited he was with it at close range.

“Glaive, interesting,” Deckard’s voice echoed in my head. “Don’t think of it as a spear. It’s more of a sword with a longer range than anything else.“

I needed all the advice I could get, so I appreciated him giving me that bit. At the same time, it gave me pause since it didn’t go with the go-by-the-guts philosophy he and Rayden had argued about before.

With the question on the tip of my tongue, I hesitated, unsure if I wanted to know. “Do I have a chance?”

“Some...smaller now that he’s motivated.”

My ears twitched as I gritted my teeth so hard you could hear it. If he expected gratitude, he should have given it more thought. Wasn’t gonna get it from me. However, the spatial tool was good motivation. I gave him that. It was worth giving the win at least a shot.

The guardsman took one step to the left, his gaze fixed on me, and I mirrored his movement. When I fought Freyde, I went on the offensive as soon as possible, not now. Clay gave me the feeling that this tactic wouldn’t work on him. He wouldn’t let me surprise him or put him on the defensive. This time, even my instincts agreed with me. Odd, I knew.

He grinned, and his glaive so far pointed at the ground, shifted. Movement so fast I barely noticed it with my naked eye.

“Not bad,” the guardsman said when I narrowly avoided his attack. If it hadn’t been for my perception and speed, I’d be bleeding now.

Ignoring the cheering city guards, Clay’s snide remarks, and his confident tone, I kept moving, not staying in one place. How did it go? Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee? Whatever! ‘Soar like a bird and pounce like a beast’ was more fitting for me. Nah, I’d have to work on that.

However, the moment I dodged his next attack, I pounced.

With all my strength, propelled forward by the flap of my wings, I was on him in the blink of an eye. Since he was wearing the same standard gear as Squad Four, I knew its weaknesses. So, seeing his weapon as the biggest threat, I went for his arms.

Clay kept his cool and twirled the glaive in his hands like a majorette to block my attack. A pretty neat move, but my fingers would disagree. At the last moment, I retracted my claws and clenched them into a fist before I punched the pole of his glaive instead of the hand I was aiming for. Unfortunately, the glaive didn’t break, luckily my fingers didn't either.

A bit surprisingly, it made the guardsman stagger and take a step back.

“Traina’s tits, that packed a punch.”

I growled back, making my disagreement with him clear.

“Ah, you can’t talk in that form, huh?”

Well, Clay wasn’t stupid. Thumbs up.

He raised an eyebrow. “Is that a yes?” A nod to that.

Back at what I deemed a sufficient distance for me to react in time and allow me to attack swiftly, I observed him. He had a strange tic turning the glaive in his hand back and forth. Otherwise, I found no fault in his movements. 

Doing the same, he watched me like a hawk, and for a moment, we ended up circling each other, looking for a chance to attack. 

He found it first or just took a risk.

It was only a moment before the attack that the glaive stilled in his hands. A little hint to his intention but ample warning, allowing me to avoid his weapon swing by a wider margin than before. Dodging his attacks by the hair’s breadth was too nerve-wracking for my taste.

That had not prevented me from repeating myself. Seeing a chance in his attack for me, I moved. The guardsmen shifted his weight only a heartbeat later, lunging upward chop at me with the metal butt of his weapon.

It stopped me dead in my tracks, forcing me to roll aside. A mistake I regretted immediately. In roll, I was limited in my movements. What was worse, it gave him the space for another strike. I had no choice but to jump back.

At that moment, a growl almost escaped my throat. Not an issue in normal circumstances. Now, given my frustration and the severity of the situation, I was sure it would carry some of the beast presence. The guardsman didn’t give me another chance to attack and pressed me hard into defense instead. I was dancing to his beat, well aware I needed to step out of his lead. And if I didn’t want to end up bleeding and defeated on the ground, I had to do it fast.