Chapter 217: Atlas Training Camp [II]

It was Kalon’s round first.

The veteran waiting for him inside was called Derren Holt. Atlas listed him as a twelve-year professional fighter with thirty-eight professional wins, nine losses, and a long stretch of mid-to-upper card appearances under the organisation.

He had fought through two generation shifts in the national scene, held a stable sponsorship line for six years, and was regularly used in internal camps because he did not get impressed easily.

He was not a headline monster, but he was exactly the kind of fighter readiness tests were built around: experienced, hard to rattle, and good enough to punish anyone still thinking in academy patterns.

His main affinity was earth, with a secondary lean into reinforcement techniques that made his body harder.

Holt rolled his shoulders once as Kalon stepped in.

"Don’t freeze up, kid. I know I won’t."

The barrier sealed. A staff official raised one hand outside the cage, then cut it down.

The fight started slow.

Holt came forward behind a tight guard and tested Kalon with basic pressure. Jabs and low kicks. Short advances meant to check his distance and reaction speed.

Kalon answered the same way, keeping his hands up and moving with martial arts only.

It became obvious quickly that Holt was better at this part.

The veteran’s punches were heavier. His stance adjustments were sharper. When Kalon tried to step outside an exchange, Holt cut the angle off and forced him back toward the centre.

A body shot slipped through Kalon’s guard and made his breath hitch. Another kick landed hard against his outer thigh.

Neither did much damage, but they connected.

Holt followed with a short clinch against the barrier and made Kalon work just to reclaim space. None of it was flashy. It was the controlled pressure of a man who had done this to talented newcomers before.

The observation glass side of the hall went quiet. People were starting to wonder whether this Kalon guy was over hyped.

Kai watched from outside with his arms folded, expression unreadable.

Holt pressed harder.

He trapped Kalon near the cage wall for a moment and dragged him through a short clinch sequence that ended with Kalon’s back hitting the barrier.

The veteran was not rushing a finish. He was measuring him. Showing the whole camp that experience and fundamentals mattered more than anything else. That interview clips and tournament footage did not automatically translate into professional readiness.

From the outside, it looked like the exact kind of exchange Atlas staff wanted to see before they trusted a newcomer with a serious public booking.

Kalon slipped out, reset, and kept his hands up.

He was clearly the less skilled one in pure hand-to-hand.

Holt seemed to decide that was enough baseline information.

His next step was different.

His Earth affinity flared under his skin, and a reinforced impact skill wrapped around his right arm as he drove a straight punch toward Kalon’s guard.

It was the kind of blow meant to break a newcomer down.

Kalon answered with Solar Throne.

One white-gold sun formed at his shoulder and met the punch head-on.

The detonation was short, as he made sure to severely limit the skill upon explosion. Luckily, his own skill could not damage himself.

Holt’s reinforced strike never landed cleanly. Fire and light exploded against his arm and upper chest, blasting him backward across the cage floor hard enough to make the barrier lights flash on contact.

Before the veteran could recover his footing, Kalon launched a second sun into the space under his legs and forced him off-balance again.

The hall reacted at once.

Holt tried to raise an earth wall.

Kalon erased the centre of it with a compressed third sun and walked through the opening.

He did not drag the exchange out. A tight solar spear crafted from one of the sun’s formed in his hand and slammed into Holt’s guard with enough force to drive the veteran to one knee.

Death-prevention flared across Holt’s torso and locked the damage before it could become anything worse, but the result was already obvious.

The readiness test had turned into a domination, and Kalon was the one dominating.

Holt stayed down on one knee, breathing hard, one arm hanging lower than the other, residual light still burning faintly across the cracked earth under him.

Kalon stood over him with the remaining suns fading out around his shoulders, expression calm, body barely marked from the earlier martial arts exchanges.

For a second nobody outside the cage spoke.

Then the noise came.

"What was that?"

"He only started using skills after Holt did—"

"That wasn’t normal fire."

"Light and fire together? Is that even a thing? Fucking hell..."

A veteran near the observation line muttered something under his breath and shook his head.

One of the staff officials had stopped writing mid-note.

Across the hall, newcomers who had been waiting for their own turns stared at the cage like any doubts in their heads has just been removed.

A few of them looked from Holt’s damaged stance to Kalon and then quietly recalculated what they thought about the Moniqart fight.

Kai’s eyes were sharp now, locked on Kalon with a faint smile on his face.

Someone in the back said what half the room was already thinking.

"If he can do that to Holt that cleanly... maybe he is ready for the ten dragons."

Another voice answered, lower.

"Holt isn’t Moniqart."

"No. But he is a seasoned veteran."

A third fighter near the board kept his voice down, but not enough.

"Atlas wouldn’t put him on that card if he didn’t trust him. That’s the point. Maybe he really can take a Dragon."

Inside the cage, the official called the exchange.

Holt was done, and Kalon was marked as ready without any question.

The barrier unlocked.

Medical staff moved in to check the veteran while Kalon stepped out of the cage to a wall of stares.

Nobody tried to clap. It was not that kind of room. They just watched him, reassessing everything they thought they knew about the Moniqart booking and the boy who had walked into camp with half the yard already talking about him.

After everyone recovered, it was time to move on.

A name went up on the side board for the next fight.

"Kai Renn. You’re up."