I know if I was in anyone else’s position, I would learn as much as I could about my opponent. In the weeks between the end of my first fight and the start of the second, I was doing just that. The only thing I learned was that my opponent was just as dumb as the one before. He probably thought it was just a fluke that I won my first match, and he was too good to have that happen to him.

I thought that people would be smarter about how easily the tide can change in battle. That they would use different skills or tactics to ensure success. We were in a military camp that was run primarily by military members, and we would have classes on the stuff all the time. However, the use of tactics and intelligence didn’t seem to be the case, at least with concern to me.

I went to the arena to watch my opponent’s as he practiced. I wanted to learn all his skills, moves, and any tells that he might have, which would give me an advantage on the day we fought. When it was my turn to train, he didn’t even stay to watch. It wasn’t as if I was going to show him anything he could use against me, but he didn’t know that. A smart person would have stayed and tried and get a basic understanding of their opponent’s capabilities, but he failed to do that.

My opponent for the next fight was on the same squad as Jace, the de facto cadet leader of the Welders, squad leader for Team One and a huge prick. But, when I was told about the match, he didn’t have enough of a reputation for me to recall who he was. When I asked Sarah, she didn’t know either, it was Kimmy, a younger Carpenter who was great with manipulating the vegetable, who spoke up from the other side of the table. She pointed over to him while he was sitting at the same table as Jace.

“He’s an asshole,” she said.

Apparently, his reputation was good enough for her to know who he was. I questioned her about it, but she didn’t really say much more, just that he just was. Something definitely didn’t seem right, because we were supposed to have minimal contact with the Welders. I knew not all of them are jerks, but for her to sound so sure of how he was didn’t sit right with me. It seemed that Sarah felt the same way too because as Kimmy went back to her food, Sarah continued to look at her. Whatever it was, Sarah would take care of it, and so I didn’t have to worry.

Kenneth was tall for his age, I think he was about sixteen. He was slender, but we all were in the camp. Even with the kids who were in the elite Team One, food wasn’t something that was splurged on. From his time training, I could tell he was definitely better than the kid I fought the first time, but he would have to be if he was in Jace’s group. However, even with the better form of his movements and being faster and stronger than my last opponent, the tactics I saw him use were exactly the same.

He would run over to the pile of random pieces of metal, make armor out of it and then fabricate a lance or sword. If I hadn’t seen every single Welder do the same exact thing, I would think that he was trying to do what I did and show off a whole bunch of moves that I didn’t plan on using.

Whether he had that plan or not, he went through the motion of applying the armor, making a lance, and then practicing various swings and thrusts with the weapon. He was quicker at manipulating the metal at other kids, but he wasn’t any better at making it useful. Even without using my power, I could see major weak points in his armor. It wasn’t really any fault of his own, well mostly not his own. His flaws were the same as every other person I watched. I could actually give them some pointers, but that would be helping the competition.

When I decided that I was going to sign up for the arena, I looked through a couple of books on medieval armor at the library. If one Welder bothered to look at it, they could see where they made mistakes. His armor didn’t even cover his neck, and I could see his pale white skin clearly in the cracks visible all over. Whoever was the first to try it was most likely just thinking about maneuverability. His lance would make the fight a little more complicated than the last, perhaps not more difficult, but definitely different. It was really his speed that would force me to change tactics with him, he was significantly quicker at forming the metal than my opponent in the first fight and that was really what would make the fight more difficult.

Not for the first time, I thought about how odd it was that I went from fighting the lowest ranking metal type to a match with one of the members in the elite group. Kenneth did a bunch of thrusts with his lance, and I have to admit that it was pretty impressive if I was on a horse. I didn’t know what he was thinking. Did he think I was just going to stand there and let him hit me? He had to have some other trick up his sleeve, I didn’t do that in the first fight and there was no way he would expect that in the second. However, I did second guess my deduction, or his intelligence, when his final thrust was pointed in my direction and he took his mask off to stare at me menacingly.

It really just looked like he had to poop. I stared at him, my face blank, then he stormed out of the arena. I figured he was going to stick around and watch what I did so he could find out my skills, but after he left, he didn’t come back. I move my own pile of practice material into the arena to use and I build it next to the mass of metal. The metal never gets moved because I am the only Carpenter who trains here.

Even though Kenneth never came back to watch me train, I decided to go through the motions anyway, just in case someone else was watching. I had about an hour and although everything I was showing was fake, I don’t want it to look like I was displaying everything. I decided to warm up first. I started with some light calisthenics to get my blood flowing and I moved into some pre-stretching. I always liked to limber up a little before I did anything strenuous. This is what the sergeants taught us anyway and it worked for me. After I was warmed up and stretched, I did some push-ups, crunches and squats. I didn’t really care for exercise before I signed up for the arena, but now I really liked it since there was a functional reason for it.

I took my time to walk over to the pile of wood. I still don’t see any signs of Kenneth, but there were a few cadets in the gym. Most of them where there before I started, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t give Kenneth any information on me. I grabbed a few pieces of wood and started fusing them together. I did it slowly so no one really knew my actual speed. I made it into a staff like I did last time and practiced swinging it around a bit. Even if the training was for show, I still liked being able to use it properly.

After I was done with the staff, I practiced doing a few more simple things with the wood. I broke it apart, reshaped it into a few different things, but all just for show. Finally, I made it seems like I was exhausted from altering the wood so many times. I took extra-long to do the last few shapes and paused to dramatically breathe hard. This way I seemed like I didn’t have a lot of stamina and they really do believe it was a fluke that I won. I dragged my feet and make it look like I was struggling to hold up all the pieces of wood as I put them away. Then, I walked off slowly out of the gym. My performance should have fooled anyone watching and I hoped the information would make it back to Kenneth so he underestimated me.

As I was stretching and letting my body cool down, I focused on my plan, my goals and how I would win my next fight.