But right then, the wolf evaporated.
[ Mountain Land ] fell silent.
Lancet looked over his shoulder and saw Astensia looking down at him with a smile. "That was impressive. You managed to get three of them."
"Thanks," he replied, tasting sand.
Lancet pushed himself up onto his hands and knees. His chest heaved, his torso completely covered in grey dust and sweat, his muscles burning from the sudden burst of exertion.
He spat a mouthful of dirt onto the bedrock, then grabbed the hilt of his sword and forced himself back to his feet, swaying slightly before locking his knees.
He and Astensia locked gazes. "I wanna do it again."
By the mountain face, Thor unfolded her arms, her silver-blue eyes narrowing. That drew her to watch more closely.
Lancet faced the four Mountain Wolves again.
This ti, he did not rush.
He exhaled through his nose gently, tightening his grip on the practice sword. His eyes moved once across the pack, then settled. Lancet started to watch the wolves; their rhythm, their pace, how they moved together.
Before the wolves prowled forward, he sohow could already tell which one was going to leap first.
Lancet took one step forward instead. Then another.
The Mountain Wolves hesitated. That was their mistake. The hesitation ant they had just reacted to his move, so if he attacked right now...
"Arrrgh!" Lancet burst forward.
...they would be the ones on defense.
Astensia barked again, louder this ti. "That’s it! Do not react to their attacks! They should react to yours! Confuse them!"
Lancet attacked the one that he had figured was the lead wolf. It sprang at him, but he countered before the leap fully completed, cutting diagonally into its line.
His footwork was sharp, his body turning just enough to make the beast miss cleanly by a hair. At the sa ti, his sword ca up in a fast, controlled rise.
The blade split the wolf from chest to skull. Digital blue fragnts burst across the air.
But Lancet did not stop to watch it fall.
He was already stepping into the space the wolf had vacated, forcing the next two beasts to adjust around him. Their coordination broke for a fraction of a second, and that fraction was his opening.
"Make them co to you!" Astensia shouted. "Set the pace!"
Lancet did exactly that.
He shifted his weight, then moved suddenly to the left, not in panic but with intent, dragging the pack’s attention with him. The wolves reacted as a unit, turning too sharply, too eagerly.
Then Lancet saw their formation bunch right in front of him.
A funnel.
He’d got them this ti.
The second wolf lunged but Lancet fearlessly dived in. The beast’s jaws closed on empty air as he pivoted inside its attack, his shoulder brushing past its muzzle.
His sword drove forward in a clean thrust straight through its open jaw and up through the skull. The wolf shattered in a burst of blue light.
Two down.
The third wolf ca from the side, trying to exploit the gap the others had left. Lancet saw it coming, but rather than flinching or snapping his head at it—sothing he would have done a week ago—he turned his whole body into a sharp half-circle, forcing the wolf to et his blade on his terms.
The beast’s claws struck first, only to strike air as Lancet slid back by a precise step. He then cut across its front leg, then imdiately followed with a second slash, higher and tighter, catching it across the neck.
It stumbled.
Lancet stepped through the opening and finished it with a brutal downward strike.
Three down.
The last wolf froze.
It seed this was not what the beast had expected. It had expected him to be chasing its movents, reacting to the shadows, reacting to the pack.
Instead, Lancet stood still for half a breath, sword lowered at an angle, eyes calm and focused.
The wolf shifted. He shifted with it.
The beast tested him with a crouch to the right.
Lancet’s blade moved left. He didn’t intend to strike, he was just letting the creature know where the fight would go.
The wolf barked and lunged.
That was what he had been waiting for.
Lancet stepped forward into the attack, closing distance instead of giving it. The wolf tried to correct, but it was too late. He had already broken its timing. Its leap landed short, its body twisting in the air as it tried to recover.
Lancet’s sword swept up from below in a vicious arc. The wolf’s body split apart in a shower of blue polygons.
Silence fell.
Lancet stood in the center of the shattered simulations, chest rising and falling, sword still in hand.
Astensia was smiling from ear-to-ear, Thor was staring.
"You did it. You are mastering crowd control."
Lancet’s lips tightened.
He understood now. Crowd control was not just about surviving four attacks at once.
It was about deciding where the battle was allowed to happen.
He looked at the fading fragnts where the wolves had been, then he slowly parted his lips to speak. "Simulation. Make it five."
The wolves spawned. Lancet fought. He cut down four, but his footwork faltered, and a wolf tore his leg out from under him. Astensia dispatched it. Lancet stood back up, panting harder.
"Again."
Each ti he failed, he redid the session. Each ti he won, he demanded the simulation to add another Mountain Wolf.
This went on until he was now facing a total of 11 Mountain Wolves at once.
Thor watched the grueling, repetitive cycle from her spot against the rock. Her brow was heavily furrowed. Astensia was beside her, watching Lancet grow with a proud feeling in her chest.
"He has no real talent for fighting," Thor observed. "His form is scattered. He relies entirely on raw strength and brute reaction ti. Many would have given up by now. Why does he still continue? Is he not a Summoner? His summons are the ones who will fight for him."
"That’s Lancet for you," Astensia replied, never taking her blue eyes off the dusty, sweating boy as he desperately parried a wolf’s claws.
"He doesn’t treat like any normal summon. He knows I am the sword, but he refuses to just sit back and be the hand that rely points. He’s training because he wants to fight alongside , not just yell orders from a safe distance."
Thor watched Lancet for a while. "But he can never truly fight alongside you, Astensia. You are the Ironwill of Mortality. You will kill thirty demons by the ti he is done killing one."
Astensia turned her head to the Valkyrie. "You can never know," she said softly. "I have seen plenty of people do things that the world deed completely impossible, simply because they had the drive to do it."
She smiled knowingly. "I would know. I’m the one with the iron will."
Out on the plateau, Lancet drove his sword through the final wolf of the eleven-pack. The beast shattered into light.
Lancet rested the tip of his sword on the ground, leaning heavily on the poml. He was drenched in sweat, his chest rising and falling in rapid, exhausted hitches.
He looked over at Astensia and raised a hand, motioning that he was done with the solo drills.
Astensia withdrew her sword. "It’s ti for the two of us to fight a swarm together!" Astensia called out to him. "How about forty Mountain Wolves?"
Lancet spat another glob of dust from his mouth, wiped the sweat from his eyes, and gripped his hilt with both hands. "Sounds good."
Astensia took a step forward to join him, but Thor’s voice stopped her in her tracks.
"Astensia," Thor called out, her tone lacking its usual hostility.. Thor looked at the boy, then at the Knight. "Why does he want to be his Summon, anyway? There were many more powerful Awakeners in our ti. Why ?"
Astensia paused. She looked back at the Valkyrie over her shoulder, her golden braid shifting in the wind. Then she smiled lovingly, as if assuring her of sothing profoundly wonderful.
"He simply wants you, Thor."
With those words hanging in the air, Astensia turned her back and walked towards the center of the mountain ground, taking her place right beside Lancet as the shadows of forty wolves began to lengthen across the bedrock.
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