Chapter 542: The Seventy Percent Solution

The medical bay smelled like antiseptic and regret.

My ribs had their own heartbeat now, a dull throb that pulsed somewhere between "freshly tenderized steak" and "got hit by a truck driven by a very angry woman with crimson hair." Emi’s hands pressed against my torso, her healing aura washing over me in warm green waves that felt like sinking into a hot bath after getting your ass kicked in the rain. Which, metaphorically speaking, was exactly what had just happened.

"Three fractures partially healed, one reopened from the Julian fight, and your shoulder was six millimeters away from full dislocation." Emi’s sapphire eyes burned with the specific intensity of a medical professional who had watched her patient do something monumentally stupid on live television. Her antenna strands bobbed as she spoke, catching the fluorescent light. "You absorbed a direct lightning construct to the solar plexus."

"In my defense, it worked."

"In your defense, you’re an idiot."

I loved when Emi got mean. It happened so rarely that each instance felt like witnessing a solar eclipse. A solar eclipse that could heal your bones and then lecture you about calcium supplements while doing it.

The green light pulsed brighter. Something clicked in my chest, not painful exactly, more like a joint popping back into alignment after being wrong for so long you forgot what right felt like. The Cryo-Lich Ring’s damage from Reyna’s final assault faded from my nervous system in stages. Emi frowned, pushed deeper, and the last of the acute damage dissolved into manageable soreness.

"Done." She pulled her hands back and wiped them on her pants. "You’re at maybe seventy percent. That’s the best I can do without another four hours and a nap."

"Seventy is plenty."

"Seventy is not plenty. Seventy is what happens when you fight three separate opponents in one day and absorb enough electricity to power the eastern seaboard."

I stood. The room tilted for half a second before stabilizing. My body felt heavy in that specific way that meant I’d burned through reserves I didn’t know I had, but nothing screamed or popped when I rolled my shoulders. The regenerator brace hummed contentedly beneath my shirt, doing its quiet mechanical work.

"I need to be on that platform in forty-five minutes."

Emi opened her mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.

"Promise me you’ll dodge at least some of the attacks this time."

"I promise I’ll dodge the ones that don’t make me stronger."

She punched my arm. It actually hurt, which was either a sign that Emi had been working out or that my body was running on fumes and spite. Probably both.

I kissed her forehead because she’d earned it and because watching her blush still gave me a dopamine hit that no gacha pull could replicate. She made that little sound, the one she only made when I caught her off guard, a tiny inhale that ended somewhere between surprise and satisfaction.

"Go win," she whispered.

I left the medical bay and turned the corner into the corridor that connected to the competitor’s staging area. Isabelle leaned against the far wall with her arms folded across her chest and her spear propped beside her like a sentry. Her wine-red hair caught the overhead lights, and her posture conveyed the specific brand of regal impatience that only people born to ridiculous wealth could pull off naturally. She wore her combat gear like it was a ballgown, every buckle and strap in its proper place, every seam aligned with geometric perfection.

"Your ribs?" she asked, without looking up from whatever invisible point on the opposite wall held her attention.

"Functional."

"Functional is not the same as healed."

"Functional is the same as good enough."

Isabelle’s red eyes slid toward me. "We’re about to fight your girlfriend and your... other situation."

"Other situation" was the politest way anyone had ever described Skylar.

"I’m aware."

"And you’re prepared to fight them seriously."

"Isabelle, I just broke Julian Valerius’s hand in front of the entire country and then convinced Reyna Cabana to yield through a combination of environmental destruction and hitting her really hard with a baseball bat. I am prepared to fight literally anyone who stands between me and this tournament win."

A pause.

"Even Kuzmina?"

The question hung in the corridor like smoke from one of Braxton’s cigarettes. Because that was the real issue, wasn’t it. Not whether I could beat Natalia in combat. The math said yes. My hidden stats sat at 6,250 across the board, my Kinetic Absorption stacked temporary buffs that pushed me into territory most A-Ranks couldn’t touch, and I had abilities she didn’t know about. Steel Body alone could tank anything she threw at me for ten critical seconds.

The question was whether I would.

"She’d kill me herself if I went easy on her," I said. And meant it.

Isabelle made that sound again, the one that lived in the ambiguous space between approval and pity. She picked up her spear and fell into step beside me as we walked toward the staging area.

The room was louder than I expected. Not with voices, but with energy. The kind of electric tension that filled a space when everyone in it knew violence was about to happen and they were either going to participate in it or watch it very closely.

Natalia and Skylar stood near the far bench.

Natalia wore her purple combat suit like war paint. Her hair was down, the white streaks from our Covenant bond catching light in a way that made them look almost alive, pulsing faintly at the temples where her power pooled thickest. The Cryo-Lich Ring glowed steady blue on her finger. Cel’s custom gloves covered her hands, the reinforced material designed to channel cold fifteen percent faster than bare skin. She looked like winter itself had decided to enter the tournament and brought a bad attitude.

Skylar leaned against the wall beside her in head-to-toe matte black. Her indigo and pink hair fell in a deliberately messy cascade that screamed "I woke up like this" while clearly having been styled with surgical care. Her trench knives sat in their thigh sheaths, the non-reflective carbon fiber blades invisible unless you knew where to look. She had her headphones around her neck, not on her ears, which meant she was paying attention and wanted everyone to know it.

My two queens. About to try to rip my face off in front of twenty thousand screaming people.