The Ultimate Regressor System

"You’re joking, right?" Lucas said, staring at the flame flickering along Eleanor’s blade with open alarm.

"I’m not."

"Elle. You just watched me disarm myself with a stick made of wood and no edge whatsoever. Now you want to spar with you while you use your actual ability?"

"That’s exactly why." Eleanor rolled her shoulders, settling deeper into her stance. "You learn fastest under real pressure. You proved that in your fight against Ryker. I’m just recreating the conditions."

"The conditions involved me nearly dying multiple times."

"I’ll go easy." She grinned, entirely unconvincing. "Mostly."

"That is not reassuring."

"It’s not supposed to be." She gestured him forward with two fingers, blade held loose and ready. "Come on. Worst case, you get a few new bruises to match the old ones."

Just as Lucas was about to accept his fate, his system bloomed in front of him.

[Ding!]

[Reverence Detected]

[Current Recognition: 148 Witnesses.]

Lucas blinked at the sudden spike in the notification. "What—"

"Hey!" Mark’s voice came across the training yard as he jogged towards them looking entirely too pleased with himself. "There he is. The man, the myth, the guy who single handedly took down a hypnotic cult leader."

"What did you do, Mark?" Lucas said flatly, already dreading the answer.

"I told people," Mark shrugged. "You’re kind of a big deal now. I counted at least a dozen people asking for details before I even finished my second retelling."

Then he scratched his head. "Too bad I don’t remember everything..."

Lucas facepalmed, about to say something back when Eleanor struck.

The flat side of her blade caught him across the ribs before he’d even formed a sentence, sending him stumbling sideways with a startled yelp, and Mark burst into immediate, delighted laughter.

"Rule one," Eleanor announced, already resettling back into her stance, "never take your eyes off your opponent to complain about something else."

Eleanor threw an actual blade towards him.

Lucas scrambled up, catching it. "That’s not fair—"

"Combat isn’t fair." She pressed forward, blade sweeping low, and Lucas barely got his sword up in time, the impact vibrating straight up through his arms. "Neither is Mark’s mouth, apparently, so consider this a two-for-one lesson."

"I stand by everything I said!" Mark called from the sidelines, grinning.

Eleanor’s next strike caught Lucas’s blade at an angle that twisted it clean out of his grip, sending it skittering across the dirt, and she followed up with a gentle but undeniable tap of her own blade against his chest.

"Dead," she said.

"I hate this," Lucas said, retrieving his sword with as much dignity as he could manage, which, as you may have guessed, was not much.

"You’re doing great," Mark called, unhelpfully. "Really embracing the whole ’i suck at sword play’"

"Fuck you, Mark."

Eleanor attacked again mid sentence, and this time Lucas actually managed to block, though the force of it sent him staggering backward a few steps before he regained his footing.

She pressed the advantage instantly, blade flashing in a quick combination that he barely tracked, let alone countered, and within seconds found himself flat on his back in the dirt, her blade resting light against his throat.

"Dead again," she said, though something in her voice had shifted slightly. It was now less teasing and more focused.

"How are you even THIS good," Lucas groaned, staring up at the darkening sky.

"Four years of actual training, plus several weeks of fighting for my life. Turns out that’s a decent combination."

Lucas groaned. Right after his humiliation back in college, he quit the class entirely. He had missed the chance to learn even the basics of using a sword.

She offered him a hand up, and he took it, groaning as his bruised body protested the movement.

They reset, and this time, something in Lucas’s stance had changed. Though it was subtle, it was real, his weight settled lower, his grip loosening exactly the way she’d corrected earlier and when she struck again, he didn’t just block on instinct; he angled the sword, redirecting the force of her blade wide and giving space between both of them.

Eleanor’s eyebrows rose slightly. "Better."

"Don’t sound so surprised."

"I’m always surprised. You never cease to amaze me," she said, and Lucas could tell that there was genuine approval beneath the teasing this time.

She pressed again, faster now as she began testing him properly, and Lucas found himself reacting better than he did moments ago. Although it was not technique exactly, nothing close to her honed precision, but a kind of adaptive movement that let him read the shape of her attacks mere moments before they landed.

Though he still lost the exchange, blade knocked wide again as her own was resting against his shoulder in another clean, decisive kill.

But it had taken longer this time. Noticeably longer.

’He’s adapting fast,’ Eleanor thought, resetting into stance again, studying him with careful attention. ’Faster than anyone I’ve ever sparred with. After every exchange, he’s already adjusting to what worked against him the last time.’

The realization settled into something like understanding — the same trait she’d watched carry him through fight after impossible fight since the moment they’d reunited, the uncanny ability to read patterns and adjust that had somehow, despite everything, kept him alive through disasters that should have ended him a dozen times over.

’Maybe that’s what the title actually means. Not that he’s terrifying, but he adapts to anything thrown at him making him impossible to predict...’

"You’re doing that thing again," she said, circling him slowly.

Lucas raised an eyebrow, chest heaving. "What thing?"

"The thing where you figure out my patterns faster than you probably should."

"I’m just trying not to die," Lucas said, breathless, though something in the way his eyes tracked her told an entirely different story.

He hadn’t noticed it, he probably wouldn’t. But his brain had become an active engine running through different possibilities at once the moment he found some kind of pattern.

She struck again, faster, harder, testing the limits of whatever adaptive instinct he was drawing on, and this time Lucas actually managed to catch her blade at an angle that briefly locked their weapons together, close enough that she could see the concentration etched hard into his face.

"Getting cocky?" she asked, straining against the lock.

"Getting desperate," he corrected, and shoved hard, breaking the lock and stumbling back a step from the effort of it.

Eleanor pressed forward immediately, blade sweeping in a tight arc aimed at his exposed side and Lucas, who moved more from panicked reflex than actual skill, twisted awkwardly out of the way and swung his own blade wildly in response.

The swing connected.

The flat of his sword caught her across the forearm, light but unmistakable, and Eleanor froze, staring down at the point of contact with genuine surprise.

"Wait," Mark said from the sidelines, sitting up straighter. "Did he actually—"

"That doesn’t count," Eleanor said quickly, though a faint, embarrassed flush had crept up her neck.

"It counted," Mark said, delighted. "I saw it. Full contact. Point Lucas."

"I got distracted," Eleanor said, lowering her blade. "That’s all that happened."

Lucas stared at his own sword like it had personally betrayed him by actually working. "I don’t... I don’t think I did that on purpose."

"You didn’t," Eleanor said, a little too quickly.

"Yeah, no shit genius. I definitely didn’t." He lowered the practice blade, genuine confusion crossing his face. "I panicked and swung. That was me being lucky"

"Exactly. An accident." Eleanor put her blade away, flame extinguishing, and settled down onto the grass with some part of composure. "We should stop for tonight. You’ve had enough humiliation for one evening, and I’ve had enough distraction."

"Wait, so you admit you were distracted."

"I admit nothing."

Mark cackled from the sidelines, clearly filing the entire exchange away for future reference, and Lucas sank down onto the grass beside Eleanor, every muscle in his body protesting the day’s accumulated abuse.

"Same time tomorrow?" he asked, only half joking.

"Don’t push your luck," Eleanor said, though the corner of her mouth had curled into something that looked suspiciously like a smile.

"But yes. And prepare for a longer, harder drill."

Lucas winced, already having nightmares of what she was about to put him through...

Great," he said, flopping backward onto the grass entirely. "No peace for the wicked, huh."

"You’re not wicked," Eleanor said, chuckling. "You’re just tragically bad at sword fighting."

"I got a hit in."

"By accident."

"Still counts."

"Let’s see if you can say that with an opponent more skilled than me."

Lucas gave a pained laugh, then looked at both his hands which he raised into the air.

"Yeah," he said, "fists solos..."

Mark grinned, settling down between them despite. "For what it’s worth, I’m putting that hit in the official record. Historic moment. The day The Terror landed his very first accidental sword strike."

"Ugghhh dude... quit calling me that," Lucas said, causing Eleanor and Mark to laugh.

However, their little moment was cut short by the system notification.

The notification hung there, calm and simple, completely not giving a fuck about whether or not they were tired, and Lucas let out a tired, disbelieving laugh at the sight of it.

[Ding!]

[New Main Objective: Map out the safest route to the next Gateway.]

He scoffed, the exhaustion suddenly clawing at him harder.

"You have got to be kidding me..."