Chương 29: The Fragile Target

The atmosphere inside Beacon Academy's grand combat arena was thick with the familiar hum of high-tech defense systems and the soft, rhythmic hum of the overhead projector arrays. Sunbeams sliced through the vaulted, reinforced glass windows, illuminating the vast circular stage of polished obsidian. At the absolute center of this grand stage stood Saitama. His posture was spectacularly terrible. He stood slouched, his shoulders rounded, and his red-gloved hands hanging limply at his sides.

His face had completely collapsed into his iconic, egg-like state of total boredom, two dots for eyes, a single curved line for a mouth. To him, the grand arena of Beacon was rapidly becoming a place of supreme, mind-numbing monotony. Being a "Tactical Kinetic Evaluator" had sounded fancy when Glynda Goodwitch first pitched it, but in practice, it just meant standing perfectly still while teenagers threw colorful explosions and oversized weapons at his face. He hadn't even been allowed to dodge, let alone hit back.

The heavy double doors of the arena hissed open, and a massive wave of students began to pour into the spectator stands and onto the lower staging areas. Team RWBY, Team JNPR, Team CRDL, and a massive contingent of first-year students filed in, their boots clicking and clanking against the metallic floor. Immediately, a chorus of heavy sighs and disgruntled murmurs rippled through the crowd of younger students.

"Oh, great. Another session of throwing ourselves against a brick wall," Marcus groaned, his shoulders slumped as he lazily carried his weapon over his shoulder. He looked at the bald hero in the center of the stage and sighed deeply.

"No offense to the 'Hero of Vale,' but this is getting seriously depressing. We used our absolute strongest coordinated combination strike last week, literally everything we had, and we couldn't even force him to slide back a millimeter. Why are we doing this over and over? It feels like we're trying to punch the sky and hoping it bruises."

"Marcus is right, this is completely pointless!" Chloe chimed in, crossing her arms defensively, her twin dust-daggers clinking together. She stared up at the arena ceiling, her face twisted in a mixture of awe and sheer exhaustion.

"What is the tactical benefit of this? In a real fight against Grimm or rogue Huntsmen, our opponents actually react! They dodge, they parry, they feel pain! Standing here and unloading our entire arsenals into a guy who looks like he's trying to remember if he left his stove on... it's not training. It's just a really loud demolition derby where we're the ones getting wrecked by the rebound!" Cardin Winchester stepped forward, leaning his massive mace against his leg as he let out a harsh, mocking laugh.

"Tch, look at him. He's practically asleep standing up. I don't care how tough his skin is. Hitting a guy who doesn't even bother to look at you isn't combat practice. It's just target practice on a yellow dummy. If the academy wants us to learn how to fight real threats, they should give us something we can actually affect. This is just a waste of our Aura."

"Quiet down, everyone!" Headmistress Glynda Goodwitch's voice cut through the complaints like a finely honed blade. She stepped onto the edge of the obsidian platform, her riding crop tucked neatly under her arm, her green eyes scanning the crowd of students with an unyielding, authoritative gaze.

"If you are quite finished lamenting the difficulty of your curriculum, I suggest you pay close attention. Today, the parameters of your training have been fundamentally restructured." Glynda turned, walking briskly toward Saitama. In her hands, she held a surprisingly simple, almost comical object: a helmet crudely fashioned from thin, brittle birch wood. It looked like something a child would carve for a school play, complete with uneven edges and a slightly crooked visor.

With a completely serious expression, Glynda reached up and placed the fragile wooden helmet directly onto Saitama's bald head. The contrast between the brilliant yellow suit, the majestic white cape, and the cheap, slightly oversized wooden bucket on his head was instantly absurd. Saitama didn't even blink. he just let his head tilt slightly to the side as the helmet settled over his eyes.

"Starting today, your objective is no longer to bypass Saitama's physical defense or force him to take a step back," Glynda announced, gesturing toward the wooden helmet.

"Your sole, singular goal for this session is to land an attack on this wooden helmet. If you can leave so much as a single, microscopic scratch, or a tiny, visible crack on this brittle surface, the entire class passes this evaluation with top marks. As you can see, the wood is exceptionally fragile. A simple strike from a training sword or a single, low-caliber Dust round is more than enough to shatter it entirely." A sudden, collective gasp of relief swept through the student body.

"Wait... really?" Toby stammered, his eyes lighting up as he clutched his weapon tightly.

"Just a scratch? On that wood? It looks like it would break if a strong breeze hit it! Even if he tries to block with his hands, all we need is a tiny stray spark or a single piece of shrapnel to nick it! We can totally do this! This is a cakewalk!"

"Yeah, this is incredibly easy!" Cardin laughed, hoisting his mace onto his shoulder with a confident smirk.

"He can't protect his head and his entire body at the same time if we attack from all sides. One lucky swing from my mace, and that wooden bucket is going to turn into sawdust!"

"Do not celebrate just yet, Mr. Winchester," Glynda interrupted, her voice dropping into a cool, calculating tone as a sharp, knowing glint flashed behind her glasses.

"Because there is a catch. In previous sessions, Mr. Saitama was strictly ordered to act as a stationary target." The students wondered on what would be the difference now.

"Today, those restrictions are completely lifted," Glynda continued.

"Saitama is authorized to move. He is permitted to use his physical speed to evade, dodge, and maneuver around any and all of your attacks. He will not strike back, but he will do everything in his power to keep that helmet completely pristine." The collective joy in the arena vanished in an instant, replaced by a heavy, suffocating silence. The students stared at Saitama, then at Glynda, their faces turning pale.

"Wait... he can move?" Jaune Arc whispered, his hand trembling slightly on the hilt of his sword. He looked at Weiss and Yang, his blue eyes wide with a sudden, overwhelming dread.

"Professor, you can't be serious! We've seen how fast he is when he wants to be! If he's allowed to dodge, we're not just trying to hit a brick wall anymore. We're trying to catch a ghost!"

"In addition," Glynda continued, completely ignoring the rising panic, "there is an alternative win condition. Saitama's movement is strictly confined to the borders of this circular obsidian arena. If you can force him to step outside the boundary lines, even if it is only the slightest fraction of his boot crossing the white marker, you will achieve an automatic victory. Use your environments, coordinate your patterns, and find a way to corner him."

Saitama reached up, tilting the wooden helmet back slightly so his flat, oval eyes could peer out at the students. A sudden, massive sigh of relief escaped his lips.

"Man... thank goodness. I was honestly about to die of boredom. Standing still while you guys throw loud sparkly things at me was giving me a headache. At least now I can stretch my legs a bit. Just try not to hit the cabbage in my grocery bag over there on the bench, okay?"

"Don't worry, Saitama! We're not going to make it easy for you!" Ruby Rose shouted, stepping to the front of the group with a bright, determined grin. She slammed the butt of Crescent Rose against the metallic floor, her silver eyes burning with a fierce, competitive spark.

"Come on, guys! We can do this! We've trained for this, and we have the numbers! If we work together, we can create a completely inescapable grid! JNPR, CRDL, first-years, let's show him what Beacon can really do when we coordinate!"

"She's right!" Pyrrha Nikos agreed, stepping up beside Ruby as she drew her Milo and Akouo, her expression incredibly focused.

"He has to stay within the white lines. If we divide the arena into sectors and attack in overlapping waves, we can limit his options. No matter how fast he is, he cannot occupy two spaces at once. We must be precise, and we must trust each other's timing!"

"Yeah! Let's break some wood and push him out!" Nora Valkyrie cheered, slamming the head of her hammer into her palm with a loud, static-filled crackle.

"I'll take the left flank! If he tries to dodge in my direction, I'll give him a giant pink swing he can't ignore!"

"We will follow your lead, Ruby," Lie Ren said calmly, his fingers wrapping firmly around the grips of StormFlower as he fell into a low, balanced stance.

"Let's keep our movements fluid and watch his center of gravity." Glynda Goodwitch walked backward, stepping off the obsidian platform and raising her riding crop high into the air. The giant holographic countdown timer above the arena began to tick down in bright red numbers. 3... 2... 1...

"Begin!" Glynda barked, dropping her arm.

"Now! Cover the flanks!" Ruby commanded, her voice echoing across the chamber as she burst into a blur of red rose petals, using her Semblance to spearhead the charge. Instantly, the arena erupted into a chaotic, dazzling symphony of violence. Cardin and Team CRDL led the frontline assault, roaring as they swung their heavy weapons in wide, sweeping arcs designed to trap Saitama against the left boundary line.

Cardin's mace came down with a thunderous boom, striking the obsidian floor exactly where Saitama had been standing a microsecond before. Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more. But Saitama wasn't there. With a soft, almost imperceptible whoosh, Saitama simply leaned his torso back at a casual forty-five-degree angle. Cardin's mace missed the wooden helmet by a fraction of an inch, the wind from the swing merely rustling Saitama's white cape.

Before Cardin could even register the miss, Saitama was gone again, his body blurring into a series of casual, swaying steps that looked more like a stroll through a park than a high-stakes combat trial.

"He's over there! Shoot him!" Russell Thrush screamed, firing a rapid barrage of daggers from his bracers. The projectiles flew through the air in a perfect, fan-shaped spread. Saitama didn't even run. He simply tilted his head to the left, then to the right, his neck moving with a bizarre, fluid elasticity. The daggers whistled past his wooden helmet, missing the brittle birch by mere millimeters.

"My turn!" Yang Xiao Long roared, jumping high into the air as her Ember Celica fired off a series of explosive, kinetic rounds to propel her forward. She unleashed a blinding flurry of straight punches and hooks, her fists moving so fast they created a wall of golden light.

"Just a scratch! That's all I need!" Saitama, wearing the ridiculous wooden bucket, simply kept his hands behind his back. He began to bob and weave in a perfect, rhythmic circle. To the onlookers, it looked as though Yang's fists were passing directly through his head. In reality, Saitama was shifting his skull backward and forward at speeds that completely defied the laws of physics, his face remaining a flat, bored oval as Yang's knuckles brushed the air microscopic distances away from the wood.

"He's too fast! We need to lock him down!" Weiss Schnee shouted, slamming her Myrtenaster into the ground. A massive, intricate white glyph appeared directly beneath Saitama's boots, instantly summoning a thick pillar of solid ice designed to freeze him in place. Saitama looked down at the ice grabbing his ankles.

"Oh, neat. Cold." Before the ice could even fully solidify, Saitama simply took a step. The sheer physical momentum of his casual stride shattered the ice into a million harmless sparkling dust particles. At that exact moment, Blake Belladonna dropped from the ceiling, her Gambol Shroud swinging in its ribbon form, the blade slicing downward in a silent, deadly arc aimed directly at the top of the wooden helmet. Saitama didn't even look up. He merely took a single, tiny step to the right.

Blake's blade sliced cleanly through his afterimage, her boots hitting the obsidian floor as Saitama casually stood two feet away, hands still resting comfortably in his pockets.

"No way!" Blake gasped, her amber eyes widening in sheer disbelief as she quickly jumped back to avoid a potential counter-movement.

"I didn't even see him shift!"

"Keep the pressure on! Don't let him rest!" Jaune yelled, sprinting forward alongside Pyrrha. Jaune swung his Crocea Mors in a wide, tactical diagonal block, attempting to force Saitama toward the white boundary line while Pyrrha lunged with her spear, aiming a highly precise thrust at the side of the helmet. Saitama began to walk backward, his movements a bizarre, choppy blur that made him look like a lagging holographic projection.

Pyrrha's spear thrust forward three times in a fraction of a second, each strike aimed perfectly at the wooden visor. Yet, with three tiny, microscopic tilts of his head, Saitama let the spear tip slide harmlessly past the wood.

"You're almost at the edge, Saitama!" Nora screamed, appearing from behind Jaune with her hammer fully charged with pink electricity. She swung Magnhild downward with all her might, aiming to slam the ground right in front of his feet to blow him backward out of the arena.

"Hammer... down!" The explosion of electricity and kinetic force was deafening, shattering the obsidian floor in a brilliant display of pink light. The shockwave rippled outward, obscuring the edge of the arena in a thick cloud of dust and smoke.

"Did we do it?!" Toby yelled, squinting through the haze.

"Did we push him out?!" As the dust cleared, the students gasped. Saitama was standing exactly one millimeter away from the white boundary line. He was balanced perfectly on the very tiptoe of his left boot, his body tilted horizontally over the edge of the arena at an impossible angle, completely defying gravity. The wooden helmet was still sitting securely on his head, without a single speck of dust or a scratch on its surface.

"Whoa, that was close," Saitama said, his voice completely calm as he casually snapped his body back to an upright position with a quick, springy motion.

"Almost lost my balance there. Good job, hammer girl."

"This is ridiculous!" Marcus screamed, throwing his hands in the air in utter frustration.

"He's not even trying! He's literally wearing a bucket and dodging us like we're moving in slow motion! Are we sure he's not a hologram?!"

"Don't give up!" Ruby yelled, her voice straining as she fired a high-impact sniper round from Crescent Rose to propel herself forward in a massive, spinning red hurricane.

"Everyone! All together! Attack the center! Don't leave him any room to slide through!" For the next five minutes, the arena became a chaotic storm of absolute, unrestricted combat. Teams RWBY, JNPR, CRDL, and dozens of first-year students coordinated a massive, continuous assault. Weapons clashed, Dust rounds exploded, glyphs flashed, and the air was filled with the constant, deafening roar of battle. Yet, in the center of the tempest, Saitama remained entirely untouched.

He moved with a speed that transcended the concept of physical motion. To the exhausted eyes of the students, it didn't look like he was running or jumping. It looked like there were suddenly twenty identical bald men wearing wooden buckets scattered across the arena, each one casually dodging an attack before vanishing into thin air. He was a force of nature, a localized hurricane of pure, untouchable velocity.

He slipped between sword swings, stepped over low sweeps, and leaned around bullets with an ease that made the entire concept of their combat training feel like a comically slow-motion puppet show. Finally, the loud, grating buzzer echoed through the arena, signaling the end of the trial.

"Time up!" Glynda's voice rang out, clear and firm. Instantly, the onslaught stopped. Across the shattered, smoke-stained obsidian floor, dozens of students collapsed. Cardin and his team lay flat on their backs, groaning loudly as their weapons rolled away. Nora was sprawled out over her hammer, her chest heaving violently, while Ren sat cross-legged, desperately trying to catch his breath. Yang was leaning against a pillar, her forehead pressed against the cool stone, her hair completely disheveled.

Weiss sat on her knees, using her rapier to support her weight, her breathing shallow and ragged. Ruby stood a few feet away, her hands resting on her knees, her red cloak covered in dust. Her silver eyes were wide, staring at the center of the arena where Saitama stood. He hadn't moved an inch from his starting position since the buzzer sounded. He casually reached up, taking the crude wooden helmet off his head and inspecting it in the bright light. The birch wood was completely, pristine white.

There was no scratch. There was no crack. There wasn't even a single speck of dirt or carbon scoring on its surface. It looked exactly as it had when Glynda first placed it on his head. Saitama let out a small, satisfied sigh, scratching the back of his neck.

"Man, that was a pretty good workout. I actually felt a little breeze from some of those swings. Thanks, guys."

"A... a workout?" Jaune groaned from the floor, his face buried in his hands.

"We literally gave everything we had... and he calls it a breeze..."

"It's... it's not fair," Weiss panted, her voice trembling with a mixture of awe and sheer exhaustion as she looked over at Ruby.

"Ruby... you're the fastest person I know. Your Semblance lets you turn into a literal burst of speed. But this... this wasn't even speed. It felt like we were trying to capture the wind itself. No... it was like trying to catch a beam of light with our bare hands."

"Yeah," Ruby agreed, her voice quiet but filled with a profound, lingering wonder as she stared at the plain, smiling face of the hero.

"When I use my speed, I can feel the air resisting me. But Saitama... when he moves, it's like the world just... gets out of his way. It's like he's already at the finish line before he even decides to take a step. We never stood a chance." Glynda Goodwitch walked back onto the stage, her scroll in hand as she reviewed the high-speed camera metrics. Her green eyes were wide with a quiet, deeply unsettled intensity as she stared at the data streams.

The sensors hadn't even been able to register Saitama's acceleration curve. His velocity was a vertical line that completely broke the academy's tracking algorithms.

"An... intriguing performance, students," Glynda managed to say, her voice regaining its professional composure, though her hand gripped her riding crop a little tighter.

"Though you failed to scratch the target or force Saitama out of bounds, your spatial awareness and rapid coordination showed significant improvement under extreme pressure. Class dismissed. Go to the infirmary to rest your Auras." The students slowly dragged themselves up and began to shuffle out of the arena. As everyone began to filter out of the grand double doors of the arena, Team RWBY and Team JNPR walked in a loose, exhausted cluster, their armor clinking softly with each tired step.

Yang groaned loudly, throwing her head back as she rotated her shoulders, her mechanical joint clicking in protest.

"Ugh, my arms feel like solid lead. I threw at least three hundred punches in there, and I swear every single one of them just hit empty air. It's like trying to fight a hologram that occasionally sighs at you."

"At least you didn't try to freeze him," Weiss muttered, leaning heavily against Blake's shoulder as they walked. She gingerly massaged her wrist, her face pale from Aura exhaustion.

"My glyphs didn't even register a physical presence before they shattered. It's humiliating. I'm just glad the rest of the school wasn't here to watch us fail quite so spectacularly."

"Well, not everyone was here," Blake pointed out, her cat ears twitching slightly beneath her black ribbon as she adjusted her sheath.

"Team CFVY is away with their mission. They missed the whole thing." Ruby let out a dramatic, exaggerated sigh, dragging the butt of Crescent Rose along the metallic floor with a low, metallic whine.

"Oh, man, it is such a shame they missed this! I wanted to see Coco's face when Glynda put that silly little wooden bucket on Saitama's head. Can you imagine the look on her face? She would've had so many things to say about his fashion choices today!"

"Coco probably would have tried to shoot the helmet right off his head with Gianduja," Jaune said, giving a tired, lopsided grin as he adjusted his shield strap.

"But honestly, it's probably a good thing they missed it. If Coco spent thirty seconds trying to track Saitama's speed with a minigun, she would have ended up stripping the gears on her weapon from sheer frustration. We'd be the ones carrying her heavy gear back to the dorms."

"Oh, but think of the potential!" Nora chimed in, suddenly bursting with a brief flash of her usual manic energy as she hopped backward in front of the group, swinging her arms wildly.

"Velvet could have used her camera to copy Saitama's super-speed! We could have had a bunny-eared blur running around the arena, dodging everything! It would have been the ultimate showdown! A battle of the blurs!"

"I highly doubt Velvet's camera could replicate whatever it is Saitama does, Nora," Ren said gently, placing a steady hand on Nora's shoulder to stop her from accidentally tripping over a discarded training weapon.

"His physical capabilities don't rely on Aura or a Semblance, which means there is no spiritual construct for her weapon to copy. Besides, they have a very difficult and dangerous mission ahead of them in the outer territories. They need to focus entirely on the threat at hand." Pyrrha nodded in agreement, her green eyes reflecting a mixture of exhaustion and deep respect as she looked back one last time toward the center of the arena.

"Ren is right. While it would have been fascinating to see how Yatsuhashi's broad sweeps or Fox's close-range style adjusted to Saitama's evasion, Team CFVY's duty to the kingdom takes priority. We will just have to tell them all about the wooden helmet when they finally return."

"Yeah," Ruby smiled, her spirit bouncing back as she adjusted her red cloak.

"And by the time they get back, maybe we'll actually be fast enough to put a tiny scratch on it!"

"Keep dreaming, Rubes," Yang laughed, slinging a heavy, tired arm over her sister's shoulder.

"But first, let's get some lunch. I think I burned about ten thousand calories just trying to punch the wind." Meanwhile, Saitama walked over to the bench, carefully picking up his brown paper bag of groceries. He looked inside, poking a head of fresh cabbage with his red glove to make sure it was still crisp.

"Nice," Saitama muttered to himself, a genuine, content smile appearing on his face.

"No bruises on the cabbage. Today is definitely a success."