(Theme: Eyes of the Forge)
Moonlight bathed the mountainside at 3 AM. Kaito's muscles screamed under the gravity suit's 1,000kg load, sweat dripping onto volcanic rock where it hissed into steam. GRUNT... CRUNCH... echoed in the silence as tendons strained near snapping. No shortcuts. Pain is the price, he thought, tasting copper as blood seeped from his gums.
At dawn's edge, disaster struck. Kaito sat cross-legged before the pulsing True Dragon Core, golden energy flooding his meridians. Too much, too fast. VZZZT---! The core fractured, spewing red sparks. "Too much—!" he gasped. Crimson lightning flared as Akari tackled him sideways. The explosion BOOOOM---! tore a 30-meter crater where he'd sat. "Idiot!" Akari snarled, horns crackling. "Forcing energy ruptures the core! You'd erase a kilometer!"
Kaito lay dazed in the smoldering pit, clothes singed to rags. Akari loomed over him, frost in her voice: "Absorption requires control, not desperation." His hands trembled. "I... didn't know—" For a heartbeat, her eyes flickered with memory—a younger Akari scolded for the same recklessness. "...My fault," she muttered, hauling him up. "Should've warned you."
She led him through moonlit pines, a waterfall's roar swelling ahead. "Where now?" Kaito rasped. Akari didn't glance back. "Where your idiocy won't kill us."
HELL'S FORGE
The Balkan Cascades rose like a blackened jaw—torrents of water crashing into a basin of jagged obsidian, steam geysering from vents. Where lava meets water, Kaito thought, forging stone no blade can pierce.
Akari pointed to three monoliths:
Fist Rock, fractured yet unyielding.
Blade Rock, smoothed by molten veins.
Range Rock, perched over a 200-meter plunge.
"Break the first with fists. Split the second with your dagger," she commanded. Her claw slashed toward the distant stone. "Shatter the third without touching it." She tossed him Combat Dynamics, then SHIIING---! cleaved a boulder with her palm. "Guns? Useless. But this—kills dragons."
Akari's warm-up was annihilation. Crimson energy lashed from her horns as she tore through a grove—CRUNCH-SNAP!—timber collapsing like broken spines. In the distance, purple eyes glinted from shadow.
Kaito attacked Fist Rock. Knuckles split. Blood slicked obsidian. Brute force fails. Leverage... He studied the rock's fractures, mirrored Akari's stance—CRACK! Stone splintered. Akari gave a curt nod. "Hmph. Learning."
Range Rock loomed over the abyss. Kaito clutched a dragonsteel shuriken, the falls' roar vibrating in his ribs. "Channel energy into the throw," Akari warned. "Miss, and you feed the falls." He closed his eyes, syncing breath to the core's rhythm. FWOOM---! Gold light ignited the blade mid-flight.
The monolith EXPLODED into the void.
"Not terrible," Akari conceded. "For a rookie."
Above, the shadowed figure grinned against a pine trunk.
ORION'S NOTE: "Oho~! Someone's taking notes..."
Kaito's hands were raw meat, trembling as he gripped his dagger. How much more? Akari tossed him iron-scented salve. "Heal," she said, moonlight catching her scarred throat. "Tomorrow's worse."
At midnight, the dragon core hummed steadily in his palms—no sparks, no cracks. Only the CRUNCH... of footsteps retreating in the dark.
One month later.
Kaito stood atop Fist Rock's ruins, dawn light carving his silhouette. His new eyes pierced the mist—one pupil human, the other slit-pure dragon-gold. Below:
Fist Rock: Shattered gravel.
Blade Rock: Cleanly split.
Range Rock: Scattered rubble.
Akari surveyed the carnage. "Survived. Barely."
The waterfall thundered. Kaito's heterochromatic gaze—resolve burning like forge-fire—locked on the horizon.
The price paid.
The trial begun.