An older man. His age somewhat ambiguous but he has the demeanor of an elder. The wrinkles give some of his experience away but guessing his age is still difficult. It has to be taken into consideration that Sorp and the guys are rather young, so even someone in their late twenties can be considered an older man.

The man had initially been fiddling with some tool. This is a B.F.M. tool, whatever he was doing, it was cloaked by something that looked like murky glass. It looks like an old jar with mysterious liquid. The jar floats in the air, swirling slowly.

The jar began losing momentum, the swivel nearly came to a stop before it resumes again. The man’s expression is hard to gauge but he is clearly interested in what Sorp had just done.

Looking at Sorp and the guys, you can compare them to those on the stage fighting a rather lackluster fight. A fight that is somehow inexplicably filled with tension.

Any new arrival can’t tell much of a difference between people down here but anyone risen in the ranks understands with a glance that Sorp, Kom and Jarem are new here.

This is because the identification badge they received among other things. This badge marks two things, one a number.

The number tells you how high a rank they are. This is in reference to how high they need to be to qualify for the last test, to be qualified to leave the Pebble in the river.

Pebble in the river being the island, where the city Perpetuity, the camps and the final refuge of human civilization recides. As far as anyone knows at least. This has been mentioned before.

The second attribute for this badge is its color. And this color is affected by how deep into the caverns they have gone. It is not publicly known why the badge changes, but it is rumored to be connected to pressure or more likely a B.F.M. related power that becomes stronger, the deeper you delve.

Having the number zero on a white badge points towards a complete beginner. They have finished no contracts, not even trivial ones. The color is white, meaning they haven’t even entered the caves as it's not even smudged in color, but a pristine white.

The man didn’t stare, he only gave Sorp a lengthy glance. His thoughts mainly on his crafting procedure. Any medicine, poison or potion crafter can tell he is still in the preparatory stage.

What is significant about this, is that these are not virtual materials. They are of course virtual in the sense that this is a virtual world, but within the world they can be considered a real thing.

Assuming he isn’t using low tier materials and has some degree of success in crafting, these materials should be practically priceless. Meaning they won’t be for sale and can only be looked for and not bought.

Any failure at this stage runs the risk of literally turning the materials into something worthless. He can be said to be gambling with a fortune.

It is reasonable to assume that this person is a virtual human. But he is as much a part of this world as the guys are. His decision making process might be predictable to a degree, but so is a humans.

“Why are they just slapping each other like that?”

It is Kom that felt the need to talk. This is to be expected of Kom. Jarem and Sorp are satisfied with just watching the hypnotic performance.

“They are using the Brute Force Method energy to attack and defend. They are training.”

They had already said this before but it was worth mentioning again, it really didn’t seem like traditional training or sparring. It appeared to be something like Tai chi or similar activities.

The person speaking was the man previously observing the trio. The guys however didn’t respond and only nodded, even Sorp.

“The reason they are moving so slowly is because the energy can have negative effects of the body.”

At this point the guys realized that a fourth person was speaking to them and their couldn’t help but look over.

“In an emergency, channeling energy in a flash is required, but to do it continuously will begin to cause internal injuries.”

“Who is this?”

“How would I know?”

“I’m not asking you! I’m just talking out loud.”

With the calm expression the man turned away from the match and to his jar, ignoring the guys as if he had never addressed them.

The jar slowly came to a stop before dematerializing into his inventory. He had been successful. To him, it was an expected outcome.

“It is better to rely on items to conduct your energy, yet without tempering the body, one may find themself receiving grave injuries when subjected to a burst of hostile energies.”

He didn’t mention B.F.M. energies as most prefered the vaguer terms like energy, inner strength, power and other variations that become interchangeable with B.F.M. energy.

“The benefits to this training doesn’t end at a more resilient body, however.”

At this point the man ceased talking and got into a more comfortable position and continued watching the tension filled sparring. Electing not to continue speaking.

“However? However what?”

Kom really couldn’t read the atmosphere the man was trying to conjure, however the man was also pleased with Kom’s eagre response.

“However.”

For the first time the man made eye contact with the guys, not forgetting to pause for dramatic effect. Nothing if not a seasoned story teller.

“Moving the energies within your own bodies is far slower and more difficult than doing so with an item designed to use it.”

He clearly wasn’t finished speaking but he paused. After a sudden outburst, one of the fighters recoiled backwards in defeat.

“Using a tool isn’t a passive activity where you only pour your energy into it. Bursts of energy are far more destructive.”

Sorp listened to the man, from his expression you’d think he was thoroughly enjoying himself. And he was, his smile is as bright as could be.

“The faster you can channel the energy through an item, the faster you can perform powerful actions. Attacking faster and with greater momentum.”

This is indeed a method of using B.F.M. energy. Fast but powerful bursts of energy at ideal times to minimize waste. It’s not necessarily more powerful however.

It is also possible to figuratively dump B.F.M. energy without reservation until one runs dry. Such tactics cannot be ruled out, though intuition should tell you that if it fails to produce positive results, the outcome will be dire as one would be out of energy.

“What those two were doing appeared slow, yet energy moved at pivotal moments at lightning speeds.”

Unwilling to think about things any longer Sorp moved with steady steps towards the sparring platform. His hands gave of a tremor with every step, signaling the B.F.M. energy surging through his hands.

“Kid, that isn’t smart.”

Stepping onto the sparring platform Sorp began by watching his hands. Everytime they trembled slightly he was sending tiny amount of B.F.M. energy. The quantity so small that his energy pool barely dipped.

“You two!”

“Huh?”

“What?”

“Get your friend down from there! It’s good to be enthusiastic but stepping onto the platform can be considered a challenge!”

“And?”

“What’s going on with this old man?”

“You know how old people are.”

Uncharastically, the previously stern and mystifying old man nearly lost his composure, only by pure strength of will did he manage to let out a gust of air out his nose. He swung his right hand to his body and walked away as if casting them aside.

“Who is this guy?”

“Never seen him before, he’s a giant.”

Of course Sorp is tall, a giant to some, but still within the range of human reasoning.

“His badge is white. A newbie?”

“Why is he on the sparring platform?”

The reason this platform was used for sparring is that it recorded the matches. Everything is recorded in Perpetuity but these are recordings for the fighters. They could see what kind of damage they were doing and compare results to older matches.

Many factions have such equipment and they are usually regarded with some respect. Most do not enter the stage without at least one person having a contract that require them to take an evaluation.

It is not unheard of that people randomly take the stage to evaluated themselves but it isn’t common. If the fighter is not a veteran or well known, it can be seen as a sign of disrespect to randomly step on the stage.

“What the- Your right! It’s a total newbie. This dumb f-”

“What are you doing idiot!”

“He wants a fight, I’ll give it to him.”

Not everyone cares about unwritten rules. Those that did care about the rules would be more likely to rush up and try for some type of justice. What occurred however, is people wanting to stamp out a newbie were faster.

“If Oftert goes up he’ll probably kill him.”

“Someone should stop him before he hurts that newbie.”

No one takes Sorp’s large stature into consideration. This isn’t unusual as it is rarely the more physically adept that excels in these sparring arenas. Especially not people that haven’t trained their bodies to handle bursts of B.F.M. energy.

“Someone get an instructor.”

“Commander phallen is over there already.”

“Huh?”

“He’s been there the entire time.”

“Now that I think about it, there aren’t any rules about stepping onto the sparring arena.”

There are not many people around the arena but the commotion managed to draw in more people and soon there are ten some people from the faction watching. These are not really members but apprentices, potential members. It can be considered an oddity that a revered person with the status of a commander is out here lounging around.

“It’s too late to back down now.”

Watching the malicious smile, Sorp felt a surge of delight. He usually liked seeing a kind of despair in the people he fought. But his favorite was turning a smile into a cry for help. It was less a cry for help to Sorp and more a sound of absolute victory.

“I’ll follow your lead.”

“You’ll follow my lead?”

Seeing Sorp never stopped smiling and instead seemed to be very comfortable on stage, Oftert felt a strange anger bubble up. He didn’t know why but he felt a strange type of humiliation. He was doubting himself for a moment before remembering that this was a complete newbie.

“Alright. Fine. Fine! I’ll start!”

As he spoke, his voice got louder. Despite his boiling over anger, Oftert didn’t strike out in fury and in a very traditional manor opened his palm. His open hand slowly made its way towards Sorp.

“Be careful with your timing.”

Acting like a good instructor, Oftert felt it would be even more enjoyable to keep up a veil of a teacher. He of course isn’t a teacher, but has no shortage of role models. Perhaps due to his own inadequacies he has experienced plenty of defeats in these B.F.M. surge duels.

“That guy looks a bit cocky.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen somebody look so confident fighting Sorp.”

“Well there was that one guy.”

“It doesn't count if they are so drugged they can’t even feel their bones break.”

“When your right, your right.”

Kom and Jarem were not being too loud but they weren’t quiet. Their chatter earned some despising looks. Many speculated the results of this fight but none of them considered Sorp doing anything but be defeated.

When Sorp’s and Oftert’s hands collided a small thunder sound echoed out and Sorp’s hand shot backwards, the rebound nearly tearing his shoulder out its socket.

“Whew. This doesn’t look good.”

“This might be the first time Sorp loses.”

Unlike Kom and Jarem, the rest of the crowd was shocked. Sorp definitely lost in that engagement, but not in the way they expected. The most shocked was Oftert. He had intentionally moved a tad faster at the end.

It has to be known that they moved this slowly because it’s training their B.F.M. control and not how fast they can strike. However Sorp is anything but unexperienced in fighting.

Rubbing his shoulder and opening and closing his right hand, Sorp couldn’t help but be a bit shocked. The pain was very real, almost too much.

Everything from the top of his finger to his shoulder blades felt a strange new pain. It was like a dull numbing feeling of pins and needles. Except it wasn´t numb and instead genuinely painful.

Seeing he couldn’t really move his hand, Sorp indicated he’d use his left hand and began counter attacking. Like before, his hand moved at a snail like pace towards Ofterts. Ofterts had no other option but meet the strike.

“Something’s wrong.”

“What do you mean?”

“Look at Sorp’s face.”

“Oh!”

They didn't need say more. Sorp wasn't smiling his usual smile. His eyes were unusually focused, it is taking everything he has to overpower the shooting pain that seems to only be growing.

“He’s not bad, but this is just reckless.”

Out of the few people talking, the old man interjected once again, his nonchalant expression went unseen as people didn’t even give him a glance. This made his anger flare up again, he swished his long armed sleeve and huffed out copious amount of air.