Chapter 71: Whether You Like It or Not!
Bruce, seeing that his soft method hadn’t moved the broken Ozai, switched.
The easy smile vanished like a candle snuffed; the air around him tightened, sharpened. He spoke with a new weight, his voice low and serious, the kind of serious that made the edges of the cave feel colder.
"Pick your sword, pick your sword, Ozai."
He didn’t shout. He didn’t need to. The command landed like a verdict.
"Pick your sword and fight me like I killed your entire family. Use everything you’ve got."
Ozai’s jaw worked. His eyes darted to the twin silver blades lying at Bruce’s feet, dulled, spent of their earlier blaze, and for a moment they looked foreign, stripped of their purpose. The sight of them so close to Bruce’s boot did something to him; the last spark of his bravado guttered and died.
Bruce watched him with a thin, contemptuous smile. "Pathetic," he scoffed, the word small but razor-sharp. "I expected more from a young master of the mighty Thorne family."
With a casual flick of his foot Bruce kicked the swords forward. They skittered across the stone with a bright, metallic screech and thudded to a stop at Ozai’s feet.
Ozai trembled. The motion wasn’t just in his hands, it ran up his arms, took his shoulders, set his whole body shaking. He crouched slowly, the movement mechanical, like a puppet finally tugged by its strings. His fingers hovered over the hilts, then closed, then faltered. He never let his gaze leave Bruce’s face; it was a stare born of equal parts defiance and dread.
Everything about this Ozai was diminished from the man who’d swaggered before Bruce first tested him. Gone was the quickness of the old confidence, the insolence of a noble used to getting his way.
Now there was suspicion in his eyes, distrust that ran deep; how could it not, after being the subject of Bruce’s casual experiments? The memory of being cut open, probed, healed and used like a lab rat was a live thing under his skin.
The healing made it worse; each painless recovery was a promise of more tests, more pain, repeated until he broke. He felt small, caged, as if the cave walls were tightening in on him. The thought of Bruce’s hands, calm, clinical, precise, doing that to him again and again filled him with a thin, aching despair.
He picked up the sword at last and rose, but his limbs still shook like a man waking from a fever dream. The tremor annoyed Bruce; it was written plainly across his face.
"Where’s the rage?" Bruce’s voice was calm, almost conversational, but coated in an accusation that left no room for excuses. "I said attack me like I slaughtered your mother, your father, your siblings. Infact, attack me like I destroyed the entire Thorne family right in front of your eyes."
He leaned forward a fraction, the predatory smile returning, colder this time. "Don’t bring shame to the noble name of your family by being a wimp. Attack me with hatred for taking Sophie away from you. Attack me like I took and destroyed everything that mattered to you."
Ozai ground his teeth. He tried, with all the effort of a drowning man learning to breathe, to summon the images Bruce demanded. He forced the faces of his parents, the banners of the Thorne household, Sophie’s laughing silhouette into his head and tried to set them aflame.
He wanted to let the fear go and surge forward, he wanted to be the lion Bruce was baiting him to be, but the fear had teeth of its own. It held him back.
"Don’t you want to kill me, Ozai?" Bruce pressed, voice turning sharper. "Weren’t you so filled with motivation? What will your family think when every Adventurer’s trial gets clipped and the whole world sees you getting your ass handed to you by me?"
The words struck him like cold water. Bale had warned them: the trial would be recorded, clipped, circulated that they should be of best behaviour.
Every recruit knew that. Ozai felt a hot panic tighten in his chest at the image of hundreds of eyes, amused or disgusted, replaying this very moment. His pride, the fragile, noble façade propped up by his family’s name, threatened to splinter.
A new realization sank into him like a stone: yes, he liked Sophie. Yes, he wanted her. But every step he’d taken, every plan, every show of bravado, every bit of support from the Adventurer’s Guild, had been backed by the Thorne family.
If they watched this pathetic, shaking performance, if they saw him fold like a cheap chair, they wouldn’t just be disappointed. They’d tear him apart.
The thought of the Thornes’ hands on him, the scorn in their voices, the cold calculations behind their eyes, it was worse than fear of Bruce’s cold hands. It was the terror of losing everything he had been groomed to be.
His heart sank deeper at that realization.
"Yeah, that’s it," Bruce said softly, his tone disturbingly calm. "You have no choice but to fight me. No choice but to kill me. Which means..." his eyes gleamed with quiet amusement, "you have no choice but to be my test subject. So fight like your life depends on it. Because if you don’t..." his smile sharpened, "you’ll find out exactly what my experiments feel like."
Ozai just needed a little push, and Bruce knew exactly how to give it.
The next moment, Ozai drew in a long, trembling breath. His mind spiraled back into those memories, the feeling of helplessness, the humiliation of being treated like a tranquilized lab rat at the mercy of a mad scientist.
The shame. The rage. The burning sting of pride that screamed he was Thorne blood, not some disposable experiment.
The deeper he sank into that anger, the more it consumed him. The noble pride carved into his bones flared to life, twisting into fury that roared through his veins.
He didn’t care how strong Bruce had become. He didn’t care what tricks or confidence backed that maddening smile.
All that mattered now was making him pay.
Even if it meant losing himself to the fire he’d just unleashed!