Law of the minimum

"And I thought we were going to be lifting weights and side jumps," Kazumi said walking in from the door.

"This space is the arena and everyone here is a participant. I'll be watching you from the sidelines."

"You afraid that you'll embarrass yourself?" Kazumi mocked

"What the hell did you just say!" Botan bellowed.

...

"There is only one rule," Daichi explained.

Seeing that Daichi ignored this, Botan reigned in on his anger. Kazumi's smug look threatened a second eruption.

"No killing. However, considering we have greater durability than humans, try not to leave debilitating injuries that even we would struggle to heal from."

Daichi walked to the side of the wall where the entrance is. He looked at the positions of everyone and smiled. They were random.

"Begin."

Everyone seemed to freeze as it was so sudden except for one. Kazumi immediately leapt at a person next to him and punched straight down.

The force of gravity during the fall added to the force of his punch. In one punch he had smashed the inattentive combatant to the floor. Just like that, the first participant went down.

Everyone snapped into action. A flurry of fists and kicks were thrown. Some fought one on one. Some got locked into a confusing three-way. Some were immediately attacked from behind after their opponent was knocked down.

Junpei wasn't good at dodging. He took one hit but counterattacked with another. The same thing repeated but it was his endurance that outlasted his opponent. Seeing his opponent was failing, he gave a powerful sucker-punch to the stomach after blocking a swing.

Another guy came at him from the side after his opponent dropped from a bent-over position. Junpei shrugged his shoulder up in time to block a swing to his face, he tanked the shoulder pain and swung at him.

The guy swiftly ducked and gave two blows to Junpei's stomach but that didn't stop him. Junpei grabbed his shoulders and knee-ed his ribs.

Without a moment's rest, a girl jumped onto Junpei's back and bit into his shoulder.

"Aghh!" He screamed as blood spurted from his shoulder.

She then started punching everywhere on his back, neck and head. Two hands grabbed her by the waist and flung her overhead to the ground. Junpei was about to finish her with a stomp but was knocked over by a running charge.

The guy on top kept swinging at Junpei's face to which he was blocking as a boxer would. Junpei stopped the punches by grabbing his arms and then headbutting him. Now the positions were reversed with Junpei on top.

His opponent tried blocking the same way he did but eventually lost consciousness from consecutive punches. Junpei didn't seem to tire. He kept pummeling his opponent long after he fainted.

A hand reached out and grabbed Junpei. He looked up and saw Hikaru holding his wrist.

***

Hearing that it was a Battle Royale, Hikaru immediately thought of battle plans. The moment Kazumi leapt, Hikaru had jumped away from the crowd. Most didn't even notice Hikaru save Daichi who had a total view.

Daichi praised Hikaru's quick thinking skills. However, intelligence would only go so far according to Liebig's law of the minimum.

Liebig's law can be simplified to the wooden barrel theory. A wooden barrel is assembled by several wooden staves held by a metallic ring. The wooden barrel's capacity is not dependent on the longest stave but by the shortest one. If one were to fill it with water, water would leak out over the shortest stave.

The wooden barrel theory can be applied to many situations. A chain is as strong as its weakest link. Similarly, in agriculture, crop growth doesn't improve by increasing the number of plentiful nutrients but by increasing the amount of the limiting nutrient did the growth improve.

True power requires strength no matter what.

Two bodies were lying before Kazumi. One of which was the first knockout. Kazumi's third one was on his knees with his arms stretched behind his back. Kazumi was pulling his arms and pressing his back with one foot. By now Kazumi was just torturing his opponent who had given up.

Crack

His arms were broken.

Daichi sighed. He had said not to leave any debilitating injuries. He knew that Kazumi had a high disregard for authority and was doing it on purpose for his own amusement. Sure enough, Kazumi turned his gaze to Daichi and grinned.

Botan saw the exchange between his boss and Kazumi and walked toward him.

Daichi looked over to Botan and saw a runner charge towards him. Botan flattened him to the floor with an axe kick.

As expected, the runners were no match. The common infected could be divided into the slow-reacting walkers or the intelligent agile runners. The walkers' and runners' growths were capped. Although some runners are actually enhancers, which are a different species. You wouldn't know if a runner was an enhancer until they manifested their abilities. That's why a runner might have potential.

No matter what species, they were all born with a limit. Innate strength was all predetermined by their genes. Of course, they could grow stronger by maximising conditions like host selection and diet. However, that was just reaching their full potential. There's a peak that one could reach through training but that was within their species' limitation.

This was why Daichi had assembled Kazumi, Junpei and Hikaru and the other runners to test their potential. Nevertheless, Daichi only suspected the top three have a chance of evolving to an enhancer. Daichi already knew his second in command was one. He had involved him in the arena for a bit of... selective pressure.

A girl turned around when she noticed Botan approaching and opened her hands as if she had claws. She was stunned that he was just walking casually and couldn't anticipate his next move.

Botan simply stretched out his arm, grabbed her by the face and threw her back into the concrete wall. He walked on without stopping for anyone near him, determined to reach Kazumi.