The training hall was a cathedral of disciplined violence. Its floors consisted of reinforced hardwood planks laid over ancient stone, a specialized construction designed to absorb the bone-jarring impact of a fall while maintaining the unforgiving consistency required for elite footwork.

As Rex stepped onto the surface, his mind immediately processed the data. The Martial Arts Mastery system flickered across his vision in ghostly amber text, automatically cataloging the floor’s coefficient of friction, its elasticity, and its structural integrity.

The system began the silent process of calibrating his subconscious stance, adjusting the micro movements of his ankles and knees to match the specific give of the wood.

Twelve fighters stood in a loose, predatory formation. These were not mere soldiers; they were Aurelia’s elite, the scalpel she used when the hammer proved too blunt.

They had been mid-session when Rex arrived, their bodies already slick with sweat, their breathing synchronized. Their eyes fell on him not with hostility, but with the cold, clinical assessment of wolves sizing up a new predator that had wandered into their territory.

It was a professional scrutiny, weighing his center of gravity, his shoulder tension, and the way his weight distributed across his soles.

To the side, Aurelia stood with a composed authority. Behind her, Diana, Iris, and Elaris formed a silent phalanx of observers.

Aurelia didn’t look like a commander preparing for war; she looked like an architect watching a test subject enter a stress chamber.

Rex took his position in the dead center of the hall. The silence was absolute, broken only by the faint creak of wood beneath his boots.

He looked at the twelve, meeting each of their stares with a calm that bordered on the unsettling.

"Full contact," Aurelia’s voice cut through the stillness like a blade. "Standard martial disciplines only."

"No working magic... No system abilities... and no magical enhancement." Aurelia raised his fist. "I want it to be only purely physical brute force that only relies on your martial arts!"

Rex met her gaze. "Agreed."

"One more condition," Aurelia added, her eyes narrowing slightly. "If you break them or if you incapacitate them to the point where they cannot walk out of this hall under their own power, I will consider that a failure of your judgment rather than a testament to your capability."

"I want to see your skill, Rex..."

"I do not want to spend my afternoon cleaning blood off the floorboards and filling out infirmary reports."

Rex considered the request. His inner monologue ran through the tactical implications: ’Twelve opponents. High-tier conditioning. Limited to raw physicality.’

’The margin for error is razor thin...’

’One miscalculated strike could shatter a clavicle or rupture an organ.’

"That is a reasonable condition," Rex said aloud, his voice steady and devoid of arrogance. "I have no interest in maiming people who are simply performing their duties."

"Good," Aurelia said, stepping back to give them space. "Then begin whenever you are ready."

"My unit does not wait for a formal signal because they move when they see an opening."

Rex braced himself. His muscles coiled.

The system’s calibration finished, locking his body into a state of perfect readiness. The twelve fighters shifted simultaneously in a single, fluid movement of leather and sinew.

The air in the room suddenly felt heavier, charged with the kinetic potential of twelve bodies about to explode into motion. The assessment was over.

The hunt had begun.

Aurelia watched Rex settle into his stance, and for a moment, the composed commander flickered. A dark, almost imperceptible hunger stirred beneath her professional exterior.

Her initial condition, the warning about restraint, felt suddenly hollow, like a leash she had placed on a predator she secretly wanted to see unleashed.

’No,’ she thought, her fingers curling slightly at her sides. ’Not restraint... Not today...’

She had seen the footage of Rex’s confrontation with the dragon. She had seen how he moved, not like a man fighting for survival, but like a force of nature correcting an error in reality.

She had seen the way bones had shattered under his grip and how blood had sprayed like crimson rain. The memory of that raw, unfiltered violence burned in her mind, and she found herself craving to see it directed at her own elite.

She wanted to see if her best could withstand the sheer, crushing inevitability of his strength.

Leaning slightly toward Elaris, who stood just behind her, Aurelia spoke in a voice so low it barely carried past their immediate circle. "Mother."

Elaris shifted her attention instantly, her eyes bright with alertness. "Yes, my dear Aurelia?"

"Stand closer to the perimeter," Aurelia commanded, her words hushed but carrying an edge of something dangerous. "Prepare a high-grade cellular regeneration spell."

"I want you primed for immediate intervention, but do not interfere unless I give the word..."

"We may need to patch up some... structural damage."

Elaris blinked, her gaze flickering toward Rex, then back to Aurelia. She caught the subtle shift in the commander’s demeanor, the way her pupils had dilated slightly, the way her breathing had deepened.

The implications were clear: the gloves were coming off.

"You want me to prepare for serious injury?" Elaris whispered, her voice tinged with apprehension. "But you said--"

"I changed my mind," Aurelia interrupted, her eyes never leaving Rex. "I want to see the true extent of his lethality."

"I want to see what happens when he stops holding back."

"Don’t let me stop you from healing them, Mother... Just make sure they don’t die."

Elaris swallowed hard, her hands already beginning to glow with a faint, warm amber light as she prepared her mana. "Understood."

The shift in atmosphere was instantaneous. The twelve fighters, trained to read their commander’s every microexpression, felt the change like a sudden drop in barometric pressure.

Among them, the reactions split down the middle.

Bobby, a scarred veteran with a reputation for being unbreakable, felt a surge of adrenaline that made his blood sing. A feral grin touched his lips.

He had heard the stories of Rex’s brutality; he wanted to feel that power against his own ribs. He wanted to see if he could survive the impact of a man who fought dragons.

To him, this wasn’t just training; it was a test of his very existence.

But beside him, two younger recruits visibly paled. Their eyes darted to Rex’s hands, hands that had torn through scales thicker than steel, and then to his stance, which seemed to absorb the very light around him.

They remembered the reports from the island assessment as well: the sound of bones snapping like dry kindling, the wet crunch of cartilage being pulverized. Their hearts hammered against their ribs, not with excitement, but with the primal terror of prey realizing the trap has been sprung.

Rex, oblivious to the internal schism of his opponents but hyperaware of the shift in their biometrics through the system, narrowed his eyes. He could see their heart rates spiking and could see the micro tremors in the legs of the nervous recruits.

The tension in the room had gone from controlled to volatile.

The air felt thick, charged with the unspoken permission for violence.

Aurelia’s lips curled into the faintest, most dangerous smile. She had given them the illusion of safety, but she had just privately revoked it.

She wanted to see the carnage. She wanted to see Rex Rexilion break them.

"Begin," Aurelia said, though her voice lacked its earlier caution. It sounded less like a command and more like an invitation to a massacre.

The silence that followed Aurelia’s command was not empty; it was a pressurized chamber, a vacuum waiting to be filled by the first scream.

The twelve elite fighters didn’t move as individuals. They moved as a single organism, a collective consciousness forged through years of shared blood and synchronized training.

Without a word spoken, without so much as a glance exchanged, they communicated through microgestures: the subtle tilt of a chin, the minute shift of a shoulder blade.

They were reading the new reality: the Commander’s unspoken permission for violence had changed the stakes from a test of skill to a test of survival.

The woman at the left edge of the formation, Karys, acted as the unit’s neural center. Her posture was flawless, her stillness absolute; she was the standard against which every other member of the Legion measured their own competence.

With a sharp, almost imperceptible flick of her wrist, she signaled the initiation of their combat geometry.

Then, they spread.

It wasn’t the chaotic rush of a mob or the desperate scramble of frightened men. It was a calculated, mathematical expansion. They flowed outward like spilled mercury, each fighter finding their precise coordinates on the hardwood floor.

The movement was beautiful in its lethal efficiency, each step measured to maintain optimal distance while closing the net around their target.

Rex didn’t blink. His pupils dilated as his martial arts mastery went into overdrive, the system’s amber text flooding his peripheral vision with raw tactical data.

The passive efficiency of the skill allowed him to process their positioning not as twelve separate threats, but as a single, interlocking machine.

’Three seconds,’ his mind noted with cold detachment. ’Pattern identified...’

The architecture of their attack crystallized in his mind: a three-tiered wave system designed to overwhelm and encircle.