The next morning, dust swirled across the open-air training grounds of Schola Progenium.
More than a hundred students in identical black uniforms were engaged in a ruleless melee. The dull thuds of fists and feet colliding, along with suppressed gasps for breath, rose and fell without end.
Hinata Hyuga took a punch to the abdomen from a burly boy and was sent flying, crashing heavily to the ground. The intense pain made her vision go dark, and a metallic sweetness rose in her throat. She turned her head and spat out bloody saliva, the arm supporting her against the ground trembling uncontrollably.
The boy gave her a disdainful glance before turning to look for his next target. In his eyes, this girl from a great clan was only here for the experience. She would soon cry and quit.
A few students who knew the inside story secretly swallowed hard at the sight, inwardly marveling that his guts were bigger than the sky.
Yet Hinata merely clenched her teeth and used every ounce of strength in her body to shakily rise again. The veins around her Byakugan bulged from the chakra flowing through them, her gaze locking firmly onto every figure in the arena.
"Today's training objective is to be the last one standing in this melee." A masked Root instructor stood on high ground, his voice utterly flat. "The losers will run ten kilometers cross-country with weights. Continue."
As those icy words fell, the fighting in the arena became even fiercer.
Relying on the deflection techniques of the Gentle Fist and the Byakugan's three-hundred-sixty-degree vision, Hinata struggled to evade and weave through the crowd. She no longer attacked proactively, devoting all her energy to observation and avoidance, seeking out her opponents' openings and using Pressure Point Strikes at the most