The training hall was as chaotic as ever. Dozens of acolytes were fighting dozens of skeletal combat droids, each dancing around the other.
My hearing was shot by the sheer amount of slugthrower fire being thrown around by the droids, though thankfully I'd managed to scavenge a pair of earplugs some time after my battle with Castor.
Besides preserving my hearing, it also had the side benefit of blocking out the annoying screams of dying acolytes.
Beneath my feet, the floor was stained with old blood. The cleaning droids swept up the occasional corpse or body part at the end of the day to keep it from becoming too cluttered. In fact, it was the only time the main training hall was ever really "closed."
A vibroblade flashed down towards my head, only to be redirected to my left by a deft parry. A Force-empowered shove sent the droid stumbling back as I swept the training blade around to my right in time to deflect a slugthrower bullet.
The projectile bounced off the weapon's magnetic field and shot back in the direction it had come from.
Or rather, that had been my intent. From the flash of pain I felt in the Force, I had actually hit another acolyte. So I was still working on my deflection. Sue me.
The blade kept going and "disemboweled" the third droid behind me, its cyclopian photoreceptor going dim as it dropped to the ground. A textbook application of the Deflecting Slash.
I'd have to keep an eye on that one if this took too much longer. They randomized their skill set whenever they got back up again. A few months ago, I had timed how long that would take and managed to get a range of five to ten minutes. It was almost never the same each time, but it almost always fell in between those two.
While my cobbled-together form could technically be considered Niman, the part I focused the most on were the elements I had taken from Soresu.
Of the seven lightsaber forms, Soresu and Shii-Cho were the best "battlefield" forms, in my opinion. Where Shii-Cho was built around eradicating your foes with overwhelming, if reckless, force and following the flow of battle, Soresu was constructed around outlasting them. Both were minimalist in their approach to their respective roles.
Form I used large sweeping strikes and blocks with little in the way of finesse, focusing on taking as many enemies down with each swing as possible. It was simple, inelegant, and relied heavily on instinctual movement. But it was for those exact reasons that it was easy to learn and was used as the base from which to learn the other six forms.
Form III was all defense with no offense, drawn from Form I's blast-deflection training. Though it called for keeping the blade constantly moving, the form was built around preserving as much energy as possible while maintaining a shell of protection.
Calling a Soresu specialist a "stone wall" would not be an inaccurate statement. Once planted, they would rely on tight bladework and subtle dodges, moving their whole body only when necessary and as little as necessary to minimize energy expenditure.
The idea behind the form was to induce fatigue and frustration in an aggressive opponent, causing lapses in their fighting which could be taken advantage of. However, it fell apart when put up against a cautious opponent.
Soresu called for placing oneself in "the eye of the storm." Well, the training hall of the academy was as close to a storm as I was going to find.
The droid with the slugthrower paused and adjusted something on its weapon. Without thinking, I knew what was coming. I allowed myself to sink into the Force, entering a brief moving meditation and allowing my body to move on auto-pilot.
My conscious mind wouldn't be able to keep up with the movements necessary for this particular maneuver. At least not yet.
The muzzle of the droid's rifle flashed faster than I could blink, sending a slew of projectiles flying towards me. My arms moved on their own and soon all I could see was the training saber blurring before my eyes, forming an impenetrable barrier around me.
With the Force empowering my arms, I barely felt the impact of each bullet before they ricocheted off into the room.
It didn't stop even as I leaned to one side, neatly avoiding a diagonal slash from the droid I had shoved back earlier. I spun in place and swept a leg out, returning it to the floor once more.
My training saber flickered behind me, catching a bullet that had been redirected by another acolyte. Whether it had been intentional or not was not known to me, but I deflected it away from me anyways.
When the droid's rifle clicked empty and it went to reload, I retook control, causing reality to slam back into focus. I swept my saber down to "impale" the chest of the rising droid at my feet, finishing it off. As it fell back, its glowing red eye dimming, I surged towards the last.
However, the droid finished reloading before I could close the distance and fired. I ducked under it and dove into a roll.
Today's session in the training hall served two purposes. The first…well, I did need to practice. While I had made significant progress on other projects over the last week and a half, I'd lost days of physical training while waiting for the stains on my skin to fade. Going through the steps wasn't quite the same as using it in live combat.
The second reason was to field test my new weapon. I had already tested the delivery method, but there were only so many ways to test if the venom glands were still functioning and if I could control how much venom was injected.
Testing it on wild animals hadn't worked, as most of Korriban's wildlife were constantly in some state of rage.
A random slave or prisoner wouldn't do either as Sith Poison had very specific effects that only really manifested in Force Sensitives. No, it had to be an acolyte.
While I had been protecting myself with the Circle of Shelter maneuver, the other nearby acolytes had all hit the deck to avoid the hail of bullets I had sent flying in all directions.
Despite that, they had not stayed there for long nor stopped fighting. My tumble took me by one of them, a human man with blonde hair. Blood dripped down his right arm, but he wasn't favoring it, so he had either just been grazed or simply hadn't noticed it.
Besides the standard academy robes, he was garbed in scattered armor, consisting of vambraces and greaves. Like mine, they was battered and scratched from heavy use, but it lacked the hallmarks of being enhanced with Alchemy or Magic.
'Small dose,' I mentally ordered, 'Strike.'
As I passed, my hand snaked out and the claw tip mounted on the underside snapped out. It struck the acolyte on the back of his leg just below the knee, piercing through cloth and skin.
Compared to the graze on his arm, it would be little more than a pin-prick. If he hadn't noticed the blood on his arm, I would be surprised if he noticed anything was amiss until the poison took hold.
If the poison took hold.
The claw snapped back as quickly as it had lashed out and I continued on my way, having paused for only a split second. I would have plenty of time to finish off the last droid attacking me before it took effect, not that it would take me long.
Normally, poison takes a few minutes to several hours to circulate through the body, but the physical exertion from combat should accelerate its spread.
I deflected the two shots it managed to get off before I closed the distance. Before it could draw its blade, I "amputated" its arms with a single slash, both limbs falling limp as its programming took hold. With a quick flourish, I swiped the training blade across its neck.
"Decapitated," it fell back silently into a jumbled heap. Like the others, it would reactivate in a few minutes.
Now that nothing was attacking me at the moment, I took the opportunity to retreat to the edge of the hall and catch my breath. I'd been in here for several hours, so I was in need of a break regardless.
With my back to a wall, there were only so many avenues of approach. In the five months since I had retooled my style, three opponents was my limit and only if I quickly moved to reduce that number to two.
I paused. It had been four months since I killed Renning. That made it…
That made it almost a year since I arrived at the academy. Nine months, to be more specific. Nearly two years since I had been ripped from my home and dumped into the body of a slave on some dusty hellhole in the middle of fucking nowhere.
I took a deep breath. Alright, maybe I still had some issues to work through about that whole thing. Not for the first time, I shook my head and shoved all of it to a dark corner of my mind to simmer.
As I maneuvered around the countless ongoing battles, something grabbed my left ankle. Pausing, I looked down to find the bloodied hand of a Rodian grasping onto me for dear life.
I nearly kicked the hand away with a growl but restrained myself, instead quickly analyzing its owner.
His…her…screw it, I couldn't tell gender from this angle. Their scarred and branded face was battered and bruised, both of their eyes swollen shut. Given the "bug-eyed" look Rodians have, that was an accomplishment that I was unaware was physically possible. It was easy to tell why they were on the ground though.
Behind the Rodian was blood. While it was not exactly an uncommon sight in this massive chamber, it was smeared across the floor in a gory trail, leading up to the stump that used to be their left leg. It had been severed just below the knee.
They said something, but I didn't understand a word. Not that I could hear what they were saying in the first place.
If left alone, the Rodian would bleed out soon and it would no longer be my problem. But…
I eyed the hand grasping at my leg. Despite the Rodian's weakness, there was the possibility that they could latch on completely and hinder me at the wrong moment. Time spent dislodging it was time I wouldn't be able to defend myself…
And I was thinking too much about this. I blinked and my tired mind finally churned out a simple solution. I shuffled to one side, easily pulling my foot from the Rodian's weak grip.
They tried to say something else, but I ignored it.
I turned my eyes up and away, but they didn't stay there long. I glanced back down to the Rodian, watching their feeble movements.
I suppose…
With a sigh, I waved a hand, sending the wounded Rodian flying. Blood showered down on the heads of the acolytes and droids below as they sailed across the room. The alien landed hard, but their body tumbled through the open door out into the hallway.
Waste not, want not. If they survived, I'd extract a favor from them later. If they died…well, no skin off my back.
That done, I shifted my attention to my experiment. While my eyes were locked on the acolyte I'd poisoned, I was keeping my senses open to watch for incoming danger. Like now.
I tilted my head to the right just as a stray bullet slammed into the wall where it had been a split-second before.
I wouldn't be able to stay here for much longer before getting the attention of more droids, so I drew on the Force to start soothing my aching muscles. It wasn't a substitute for a good night's rest, but it would be enough in case I had to move again.
Thankfully, I didn't have to wait long. The acolyte I dosed started shaking in place. His face, briefly frozen into an expression of pain, swiftly twisted into a mask of utter fury. Taking his training blade in both hands, he let out a roar and started mauling the training droids and acolytes in his vicinity.
Four droids and two acolytes were felled by the acolyte's sudden surge of rage before the pain began to overwhelm him. He steadily slowed, taking cut after cut from vibroblades. Soon, he was unable to defend himself and he was swiftly cut to pieces by the droids.
Other than his two victims, no one else had even noticed.
Interesting, though it seemed the poison acted as an adrenal for someone already using the Dark Side. Oh sure, it caused pain, but that was just fuel for a Sith. On the bright side, the venom glands worked. However, I was still unsure if I could control the dosage. That could only really be tested in a lab setting.
My work done for the day, I started to make my way out of the hall. However, I paused, feeling eyes upon me. I turned to look.
I thought I saw a smile, but I blinked and there was nothing.
I blinked again. This time, the hall had been emptied of all organics. Only the droids remained, frozen in the positions I had last seen them in.
As one, forty some glowing red eyes slowly panned towards me, their skeletal bodies following soon after. I plucked the earplugs from my ears in time to hear the words that drifted from all their vocabulators.
"Greetings, Dark Lord. Assume your opening stance."
Around each, shimmering blue fields appeared.
Pinned against the wall, all I could do was drop the training saber, draw my sword, and summon lightning to my offhand.
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