Chapter 73 – Combat Class (Part 5)
For Zane, fighting had never been about strength—it had always been about survival.
Every fight he'd ever been in, every moment of resistance in his life, wasn't to win. It was to endure. To make it through with as little damage as possible. That mindset had been carved into him, not by choice, but through years of relentless bullying. The scars weren't just physical; they were etched into his way of thinking.
It was never how hard can I hit them back—it was how do I get out of this alive?
Through trial and error, he'd developed a strange, instinctive sense of self-preservation. He learned which parts of his body could take hits, which ones to protect at all costs, and how to deflect aggression with just enough pushback to escape. It wasn't elegant, it wasn't formal, and it certainly wasn't taught. But it had kept him alive.
