The second round of matches was nothing like the first. Only being able to use invasion cut off a huge variety of combat styles and philosophies. Caeden’s normal approach to combat involved as little invasion as possible. In these next two rounds, he would truly be able to test the results of the last two weeks against a wider pool of opponents.

That was proved watching the first few matches. The static back and forth of invasion fell away to pitched battles with a wide variety of strategies. Caeden saw a creature shroud in action with a man that turned into a gigantic beetle with a diamond carapace. He was up against some kind of modifier, it was hard to tell exactly what their domain was, but they seemed to be making the floor sticky to slow the beetle-man's charge.

Every new match brought interesting new shrouds to the table. Most tactics were rudimentary at best, many amounting to charging up an attack and letting loose over and over again. It seems most people were like Caeden’s invasion opponent; they had one or two attacks that they had practiced and no plans for what to do if those didn’t work.

Admittedly, Caeden and the crew were in a similar boat. They each had worked to refine the one or two things they had figured out. The big difference, and the key factor that led to most of the victories they saw, was using those one or two techniques in various ways to deal with different circumstances. Whenever they saw one competitor definitively beat their opponent, instead of fighting until someone’s shroud ran out, it was because they had taken the same attack they had been using the whole match and used it in a new way.

Erik showed that to perfection in his match. Erik’s opponent used a modifier that caused things they touched with their shroud to vibrate. He started by shaking the entire arena, making it almost impossible to remain standing. Caeden was pretty sure that one move used up most of the guy’s shroud, but it was effective. Erik pitched over, falling as the floor was shaken out from beneath him.

He never hit the ground. Instead, Erik used one of his basic techniques and stitched himself to the ceiling, yanking his body away from the ground. The vibrations traveling through the entire room disrupted his shroud and caused the strings of white energy pulling him up to snap. Erik, ever unconcerned, simply did it all over again. He was hovering in midair as his shroud was continually snapped and reapplied.

His opponent tried to take advantage of this. He had kept the area directly around him stable, so he had solid footing. He started throwing haymakers with his fists wrapped in his shroud, which caused visible shockwaves of vibrating air to fly toward Erik’s floating form. In response, Erik used the skill he had picked up on and taken to the most out of everything they learned these last two weeks. The second ability granted by infusion, formshift.

Erik’s body and clothing turned white, appearing to be bundles of string in the shape of a man. His torso bent and deformed, stretching cartoonishly to warp around the shockwaves. It was disturbing to look at, no matter how many times he saw it. Some shrouds were just more capable of formshifting than others, and Erik’s was phenomenal at it. He could deform his body at will into a variety of shapes. It had a high cost, so he couldn’t sustain any significant changes or formshift for long periods, but in a fight with a single enemy and recovery time afterward, it was perfect.

With more shockwaves incoming, Erik needed to move. No amount of formshifting would get him out of the barrage headed his way. So he stitched himself to the wall behind his opponent's back, flinging himself over the man’s head. He released that stitch. Leaving him unbound directly above his enemy, dropping down on top of him. While he was falling, Caeden knew he was enhancing his body, preparing for a melee.

Erik had decided he wanted to pursue hand-to-hand combat instead of taking up some form of weapon training in the future. He had spent his time developing his physical enhancement and formshift with that in mind. It showed in the fistfight that followed Erik’s drop. The shockwave user dodged Erik’s plunging attack, which left the two of them face to face, only a foot apart. This way, Erik was inside the undisturbed zone around the other student.

It was a brutal melee. Erik ducked and weaved all the blows thrown his way, but those hands were still coated in shroud. The shockwaves they put out were much harder to dodge. Erik had enhanced his whole body but dropped the formshift to conserve shroud. Occasionally a part of Erik’s body would return to that white, stringy form during the fight. Caeden assumed he was using formshift to allow the healing properties of his shroud to fix whatever unavoidable damage the shockwaves were doing through his enhanced defenses.

The fight dragged on, with Erik landing punches left and right. His defensive sense must be working overtime because his opponent never landed a direct hit. Any damage he dealt was all down to those vibrations. Less than a minute passed before Erik ended it. He dropped down and swept his opponent’s legs. The man must have been surprised because he didn’t react in time and fell. He collapsed at an awkward angle, slamming his head into the bronze floor. Caeden winced; he had landed right on the temple. The teacher called an end to the fight, as the student had been knocked unconscious. The vibrations shaking the room had died down throughout the brawl, so Erik was free to make his way back to the observation room as two staff members filed into the arena and carried the unconscious student out on a stretcher.

“How was it? Are you still hurt?” Caeden asked the second Erik sat down.

“Eh,” Erik waggled his hand back and forth, “So-so. Those shockwaves sucked. I don’t have a good way to deal with something like that. Enhancing my skin took the edge off, but some of that bled through. I kept getting blown capillaries and damaged blood vessels.” He complained.

“Yeah, I saw you formshifting. Taking care of the damage?” Caeden guessed.

“Yup! That was a solid strategy, thanks, Lil,” Erik turned to smile at the girl.

“I’m glad it worked. It's convenient that your shroud has an inherent healing factor.” Lily acknowledged.

“You’re telling me! Man, that hurt!” Erik shook his entire body like a dog shedding water. “I know we talked about it, but just letting myself take a hit because I can heal sucks.”

“Hey, if you can avoid it, by all means.” Caeden spread his hands. “All we meant is that you might be able to get more hits in by letting some attack through. Your recovery is higher than most. You can stand to take a hit more than they can.”

“Yeah, yeah. Doesn’t make it suck less.” Erik sulked.

The next of them to go was Cat. She did not have a good time. Caeden had found out that Cat’s shroud had some unique problems that made actual combat difficult for her. Her domain was Soul, which sounded amazing and powerful, but it was actually such an esoteric concept that Cat had a hard time doing anything with it. Plus, her shroud was essentially unsuited for either aura or infusion. She had difficulty with both. That meant she incurred greater costs when using her shroud for anything other than invasions.

The woman she was fighting must be a creature shroud. She turned her arms into carapace-covered pincers and rushed Cat as soon as the match started. Cat’s only response was to try and invade her opponent before she crossed the arena. Her shroud was a pale white with green flames inside it, forming clouds that looked vaguely human in shape. These human shapes rushed the pincer-woman and tried to reach her. Almost casually, the woman coated those pincers in her own shroud and cut the figures in half.

Cat started making more, but these ones wore spectral armor. With swords and shields made of shroud they charged forward recklessly. When the pincers went to cut them in half, her claws sparked against the spectral warriors’ armor like it was actual metal. It only stopped their demise for a few seconds, but they made the most of it, stabbing swords through the pincers already partway through cutting them in half.

The woman flinched. Those swords were made of shroud, which meant she got a taste of occupation before the specters dissipated. It apparently pissed her off because she used her shroud to extend the edge of her pincers, swiping them into the oncoming wave of ghost men and knocking them all over. None disappeared; the attack had no real penetrating power behind it. It ultimately didn’t matter, as Cat’s opponent took the time they spent getting back to their immaterial feet to close the distance between her and Cat unimpeded. Cat raised her hands before those massive pincers could get around her. She scowled the whole time she did it, but she called surrender.

Back in the observation room, Cat retook her seat with a sigh. “I knew that would happen, but it's still disappointing.”

“You were damn close. The spectral soldiers are working; we just need to refine it some more.” Erik patted her shoulder. “Don’t get so down on yourself.”

“Maybe these sparring matches will spark something for you with your domain,” Caeden added. “You never know. Being in danger is a great way to find new paths to power.”

“My domain sucks,” Cat groused, “What even is a soul? How am I supposed to use that? It’s dumb.”

Caeden shook his head. They had this conversation before. Every time Cat hit a roadblock; she started complaining about her shroud. He was about to say more when his name was called. It looked like his match would immediately follow Cat’s. Running a quick check, he found that he was only three-quarters full on both his shrouds, with a bit more in Physical Enhancement. This was going to be a challenge. He assumed shroud management was part of the challenge for this ranking day.

His enemy was a woman from the Sun Seat group, and she was looking at him like he was the scum of the earth. Unsurprising, considering what Lily had said. He didn’t let it bother him. In fact, he had expected Ander to say unflattering things about him after their duel. He had expected something more along the lines of accusations of cheating, but he wasn’t terribly surprised. Honestly, what Ander had said seemed to fit the man’s whole worldview. It would be interesting to see what he would think whenever Lily got around to beating him senseless.

Letting thoughts about the future fade from his mind, Caeden went through his usual pre-battle observations. This time, he felt an edge to his opponent’s invasion pressure that made him think she was using concealment. He didn’t want to push at it, as he wasn’t sure whether or not that would clue her into the fact she had been found out. Regardless, he could comfortably assume her IP was more than double his shrouds individually. She probably had a healthy lead on him even if he took both his IPs together. Luckily, this wasn’t an invasion battle.

Caeden had adapted his entire fighting style around the absurd amount of power he could exert through Physical Enhancement. He was in for a hard fight, no doubt, but it wouldn’t come down to IP as much as his last one had.

“Ready, begin!” The teacher’s voice rang through the arena.

Caeden immediately used Physical Enhancement, not to his full golden body, but a halfway point Erik called bronze body. His natural skin tone mixed with the gold of his shroud, he grew a foot and a half, and his already impressive musculature increased. He could sustain this level of enhancement for over twenty minutes with the amount of shroud he had left. Then, he tested the Sun student’s IP. Now that the fight had begun, they dropped concealment.

Erik had been correct. They were around Lily’s level, as insane as that was. His enemy was around 2,100 IP, far outstripping him. She had spread her hands out, palms down, and water was cascading out of them. He wasn't sure what her shroud was. It was an object type, but it probably wasn't just Water. Caeden had learned that many object shrouds had a lot of overlap in their domains. What her domain was specifically would be helpful, but ultimately it was unimportant.

Wanting to begin the battle before his opponent could finish whatever she was setting up, Caeden rushed her. Along the way, he quickly created two thorns and set them to hover over his shoulders for later. Right now, they were just passively gaining him Sharp. Caeden had spent much of the two weeks on increasing the speed at which he could make thorns, over being able to make more. He could hold three easily, but it strained his attention in an active combat situation.

Seeing his approach, the woman stopped covering the floor with water, having already covered a good ten-foot circle around herself. Caeden wasn’t sure that was her intended limit or he had actually cut her off, but he was hoping it was the former. When he was about to step into the water, she thrust her hand out toward him, and a pillar of water shot toward his head. There was enough force behind it to do some real damage to a normal person. For Caeden, it probably wouldn’t have been that dangerous.

Wary of a trick, Caeden shot out a thorn into the pillar, the rapidly spinning petals whining away as they ground together. It impacted and began to sythe through the water, killing much of its momentum before it reached him. Still unwilling to get hit by a blatant attack, Caeden ducked the remains of the pillar. His enhanced reflexes managed it easily. Pulling back his thorn, Caeden continued with his duck into a side step and went around the geyser to continue his beeline for the girl.

As he approached, now stepping in the water, more geysers rose up around him like he was in a liquid minefield. This was where Caeden’s second aura sense came in. He had discovered a substantial gift for prediction, using his aura to feel his opponent's intent to figure out where they would attack before they did it. The concept shared some overlap with Erik’s favorite, defensive sense. The main difference was defensive sense focused on constantly monitoring the world around you to feel an attack's approach, whereas predictive sense was about focusing on an individual to read their intent and discover where they would attack before it happened.

Using this ability in combination with his enhanced reflexes, Caeden was stepping around attacks before they happened. He was sure it must have been surreal for the Sun student to watch, seeing their attacks come out right after he had already moved. Giving up on the geysers, the girl threw her hands in the air, causing a massive wall of water to blast up between them.

Caeden didn’t think his thorns would cut through this, so he improvised. All his practice had gone to attaining this partially enhanced form and improving his thorns. Now, he dismissed the thorns and released his control over Physical Enhancement, immediately growing to his full nine-foot golden body. He wrapped his entire left hand and forearm in overlapping lines of Sharp and started spinning them. It was an improved, worse version of his thorns, without any of the elegance or efficiency they brought.

When his arm was covered in a mass of rapidly rotating and shifting red lines, he slammed his fist into the wall of water, causing an explosive feedback as the contact interrupted the flow. His attack seemed to interrupt the shroud structure the woman was using to prop up the wall, and it collapsed. He was now only a few feet from his opponent with nothing between them. One long stride carried him to her, and he swung his Sharp-coated hand for her head, halting the attack an inch from hitting her. Buzzing red energy coursed through the air centimeters from her skin, moving so fast it disturbed the air.

“Surrender.” Caeden's voice was a menacing baritone in his golden body.

She thrust her hands in the air, letting go of her shroud. “I surrender, I surrender!”

Caeden dropped his manifestations, returning to his normal self. He felt an urge to comfort the girl; she looked terrified. But he realized that wasn’t on the table, considering what she had likely been told about him. Instead, he just silently walked away, heading up the stairs.

“Well done. Nice improv at the end.” Lily commended.

Caeden nodded in agreement. “It occurred to me in the moment. Definitely something worth investing more time into.”

A few matches passed as the four of them went back and forth discussing their own spars and the ones happening in front of them. Finally, it rolled around to Lily’s turn, with her being one of the last few to go. Her sparring partner, this time, was one of the unaffiliated students, who was looking extremely nervous. Considering the power Lily had shown in the previous round; it wasn’t surprising.

That fear proved well-founded, as their match was over in under a minute. The man surrounded himself in a shell of some material Caeden couldn’t identify that held a beige color, making it look like some kind of shiny stone. Lily Created a lance of super-dense super-hard ice and pierced right through it, making sure to avoid hitting the hapless man as it went through. He gave up immediately.

Lily walked back to their seats, a proud smile on her face. “That went well.”

“Yup. You even managed to keep your actual combat strategy a secret. That’s helpful.” Caeden agreed. "It’s not over, though. I have a feeling the next round is going to go differently.”

“Why’s that?” Erik asked.

“Because we’re up against a bunch of rich kids.”