History Literature / WarformedStormweaver

* CrazyEnoughToWork: [[spoiler: How Rei beats Logan Grant. He lets Logan chop into him with his axe in order to get him to lower his guard and allow Rei to use his ability and sword to cut off Logan's hands.]]

** In the second book, [[spoiler:Kamea Haruto puts the entire economic future of his megacorp in danger to get Rei under his protection. While Rei will doubtless be ''extremely'' profitable for the company, there is no question that Haruto just wants to keep his grandson safe. At the very end of the book, Rei agrees to the deal shortly before the company was about to make what would doubtless have been a disastrous deal with their competitor to get him on side]].

* TheSquad: What [[spoiler: Aria's]] team is shaping up to be.
** TheLeader: Aria
** TheLancer: Rei
** TheBigGuy: Viv / [[spoiler: Logan]]
** TheSmartGuy: Catcher / [[spoiler: Cashe]]
** SixthRanger: [[spoiler: Logan]] / [[spoiler: Cashe]]
* TournamentArc: The last third of the novel depicts the Intra-School tournament, which determines which students will represent Galens in the Sectional tournament.
* TrainingFromHell: Rei spends nearly 16 hours training non-stop against Christopher "Lasher" Lennon, the school's Ace. He "dies" 20 times in about 4 hours. [[spoiler: It's worth it in the end.]]
* WhipSword: The reason for The Lasher’s name is that his A-Type weapons are this.

* RedBaron: Pretty much universal among SCT combatants.

Reidon Ward has been looked down on his entire life. His parents abandoned him at birth due to his rare bone disease, and while government-provided health care has let him survive, he is still scrawny, weak, and covered in scars from his many surgeries. But there is one solution: A Combat Assistance Device, one of the near-miraculous devices that grow with the user and are used to fight the alien Archons. One of the first benefits of a CAD is genetic correction, so if he earns a CAD his disease will be a thing of the past.

** Half the students at Galens (and a small but noticeable number of the instructors) hate Rey for "dragging everyone else down" (which doesn't even make sense, since no one actually has to help him) and constantly tell him he doesn't belong. When he starts catching up, they ''still'' yell at him for not belonging, but at this point it's clearly out of fear.
** Near the end, it's pointed out that the school has been divided in half: The ones who hated Rey from the start (and thus have to keep hating him to cover their fear) and the ones who were nice from the start (or at least not assholes). Several people jump the line and start hating him when he starts surpassing them, but not many. [[spoiler:Logan Grant is one of the few who jumps the other way, finally admitting that Rey does have what it takes]].

* CombatPragmatist: Rey is known for being a very tricky and annoying fighter to deal with. In his first fight with Aria, he blinds her with a thrown hat and then tricks her with a discarded cloak. Notably, ''this'' is the reason Logan Grant hates him (rather than his low stats like everyone else), believing he's just a coward who will get people killed on the front line.
* CoveredInScars: Rey has had ''weekly'' surgeries for most of his life in order to keep ahead of his disease. While the surgeries are covered under universal health care, fixing the scars is technically an elective procedure, and Rey has never had the money to spare.

* DesignerBaby: It's common practice to modify embryos for cosmetic purposes. Because of this, nearly everyone in Rey's generation is excessively attractive, most of them having impossible hair or eye colors--from the merely improbable like Aria's extremely striking green eyes and red hair to the literally impossible like Grant's red-black eyes. As Viv notes, even Rey is an example, though he didn't get to take advantage of most of the modifications because his disease messed with everything.

** Many of the cadets hate Rey for being a weakling in one of the top combat schools. But they only get violent about it when he starts ''catching up''.
** Major Dyrk Reese repeatedly yells at Rey for... basically anything he can think of. Including, on multiple occasions, yelling at him for something that someone else did first.
* MagikarpPower: All of Rey's stats start at the literal lowest they can go, no improvement over the human baseline... except for Growth, which starts at '''S'''. Growth is the hardest stat to raise and the most important; even a low A-rank in any stat at CAD assignment is extremely rare, and S-rank has '''never''' happened in the entire history of [=CADs=]. Everyone who finds out about it warns him to be very, very careful about who he tells, and the basic book description says that he will one day become a god.
* MeaningfulName: The surname "Ward" has largely been co-opted by the government to designate orphans who are wards of the state.
* MorphWeapon: The Arsenal Shift ability, a rare (and extremely desirable) ability that is somewhat more common in A-type CADs like Rey, Valera Dent and The Lasher’s, grants the user the ability to change their weapon into a different one, usually with a few available varieties. Rey [[spoiler: thinks that he’s developed it while training with Christopher. Instead, he develops Type Shift, a unique ability that does the exact same thing but on the scale of his entire [=CAD=] instead of just its weapons.]]

** Cashe accuses Rey of this, that some well-off family refused to accept an F-ranked son and got him shoved into one of the best combat schools. Several weeks later, once she realizes that she accused an ''orphan'' of using his ''family connections'', she is mortified.
** On the other hand, Aria ''is'' the niece of the academy's commanding officer. While she did genuinely earn everything on her own, she is still getting special one-on-one time with him on a regular basis. [[spoiler:When Rey is brigged and she realizes that Reese will never give him permission for a sparring partner (which will set his training back), she goes over his head to get permission from her uncle]].
* RPGMechanicsVerse: has all the elements of one.

* SingleStrokeBattle: [[spoiler: Rei vs Warren in the 1st round of the Loser's Bracket. Rei reads her opening move, dodges it, and uses his WolverineClaws to slice open her femoral artery, leading to the fastest win of the tournament.]]
* [[spoiler: SpoilerCover]]: [[spoiler: You'd be forgiven if, after reading through almost the entire book, you thought this was a case of CoversAlwaysLie. It's not.]]

** TheSmartGuy: Catcher / [[spoiler: Cash]]
** SixthRanger: [[spoiler: Logan]] / [[spoiler: Cash]]

* TrainingFromHell: Rei spends nearly 16 hours training non-stop against Christopher "Lasher" Lenon, the school's Ace. He "dies" 19 times in about 4 hours. [[spoiler: It's worth it in the end.]]

* {Animesque}: This is Progression Fantasy, and the genre itself takes a lot from JRPGs and Isekai.

* WhipSword: The reason for The Lasher’s name is that his A-Type weapon is this.

** TheBigGuy: Viv

** SixthRanger: [[spoiler: Logan]] /

** TheBigGuy / SixthRanger: [[spoiler: Logan]] / Viv

* DesignerBaby: It's common practice to modify embryos for cosmetic purposes. Because of this, nearly everyone in Rey's generation is excessively attractive, most of them having impossible hair or eye colors--from the merely improbably like Aria's extremely striking green eyes and red hair to the literally impossible like Grant's red-black eyes. As Viv notes, even Rey is an example, though he didn't get to take advantage of most of the modifications because his disease messed with everything.