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[ ARGA ORLANDO — POV ]
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The transparent barrier locked us inside. The air thickened immediately—the specific dense quality of a sealed duel dome, where ambient mana accumulated rather than circulated. Above us, the ODICIOS interface displayed our status to the crowd outside.
For them, it was a starting pistol. For me, it was a mandated sixty-second waiting period in a soundproof dome while the system calculated their betting odds, staring at a furious Noble Lord who couldn't start fighting until the timer hit zero. I just wanted to get it over.
I looked at the equipment. Fen Aldric Carault: range control. Wren Edas Solbeck: aggressive pressure. Dav Orlin Lethis: positional disruption. Together, they formed a triangle designed to keep me stretched between all three points. Separately, each was manageable.
I pulled my Odic Gear broadsword from my pocket space. Heavy steel, copper filigree, dull Induction Coils along the flat. A working weapon. Nothing elegant—the kind of thing a Haldia commoner carried because he couldn't afford anything better.
Let them keep thinking that.
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[TIMER: 0:00]
[ODICIOS / DUEL ACTIVE]
Fen Aldric Carault [████████████████████] 100% HEALTH
Wren Edas Solbeck [████████████████████] 100% HEALTH
Dav Orlin Lethis [████████████████████] 100% HEALTH
Arga Orlando [████████████████████] 100% HEALTH
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"Begin," the system announced.
"Crush his footing!" Fen barked from the rear, his voice dripping with aristocratic authority. "Don't let him step forward!"
Dav moved instantly. He didn't just slam the paving stones; he channeled a massive surge of Amber Vein-light into both gauntlets and drove his fists directly into the earth. The ground didn't just shudder—it erupted. Three jagged spikes of raw stone shot upward from the grass, tearing a direct, lethal path straight toward my boots.
Earth attunement. Heavy commit. He's anchoring himself to sustain the manipulation.
I didn't try to dodge backward. Retreating meant giving Wren the blind spot he was already sprinting toward.
Instead, I kicked off the rising stone of the first spike just as it broke the surface, using Dav's own kinetic momentum to launch myself into the air.
"I've got him!" Wren screamed, intercepting my landing trajectory. The crimson Vein-light on his arms burned fiercely as he lunged with both knives, attempting to catch me mid-air where I had no leverage. "Burn, you arrogant trash!"
Predictable.
I didn't swing my sword. While still airborne, I reached for the Governor Valve on the hilt of my broadsword and cranked it open a fraction. High-pressure steam shrieked from the release ports directly into Wren's face.
Wren flinched, his eyes squeezing shut against the scalding heat, his strike hesitating for half a second.
That half-second was all I needed. As my boots hit the grass, I stepped hard into his guard and drove the heavy steel pommel of my broadsword precisely into the inside of his right elbow—striking the copper inlay of his wrist brace right as his mana commit hit twenty-five percent.
Spellblast.
The unreleased fire mana had nowhere to go. It violently collapsed inward. A muffled, sickening thud echoed from inside Wren's own limb as the raw mana rebounded into his secondary nodes.
"AARGH! My arm! My arm is burning!" Wren shrieked, dropping his knives as his muscles locked into a rigid, paralyzed spasm. He staggered backward, clutching his useless limb.
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[TIMER: 0:010]
Fen Aldric Carault [████████████████████] 100% HEALTH
Wren Edas Solbeck [████░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░] 26% HEALTH — Spellblast | Arm Locked
Dav Orlin Lethis [████████████████████] 100% HEALTH
Arga Orlando [████████████████████] 100% HEALTH
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"You worthless idiot!" Fen roared at Wren. The aristocratic composure was already fracturing. "Dav! Break his spine!"
Dav didn't need to be told twice. Furious at seeing Wren fall, he abandoned his positional discipline. He ripped his gauntlets from the earth, charged forward with the sheer mass of a runaway carriage, and threw a devastating, wide right hook aimed straight at my temple.
He's putting his entire body weight into the swing. Amateur mistake.
I stepped inside the arc of his massive fist, letting the iron gauntlet pass harmlessly over my shoulder. Before his momentum could carry him away, I slammed my left boot into the back of his knee, forcing his leg to buckle. As Dav pitched forward, off-balance and entirely exposed, I brought the flat of my broadsword down in a brutal, economic strike across the back of his neck.
The kinetic weight of the Odic Gear drove him face-first into the dirt with a loud, absolute crunch. He didn't get back up.
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[TIMER: 0:15]
Fen Aldric Carault [████████████████████] 100% HEALTH
Wren Edas Solbeck [████░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░] 26% — Arm Locked
Dav Orlin Lethis [████████░░░░░░░░░░░░] 42% — Incapacitated
Arga Orlando [██████████████████░░] 92% STATUS: Light Bleed — Shoulders
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"Two down," I said, letting out a slow, tired breath. I rested the tip of my broadsword against the grass and looked up at the Noble Lord. "Are you going to keep shouting orders at people who can't hear you, or are you going to use that rapier?"
Fen's face flushed with a mixture of horror and pure, unfiltered rage. He looked at his two fallen vassals, then at the mud-stained commoner standing casually amidst the wreckage of their textbook formation.
"You think this makes you our equal?" Fen hissed, his voice trembling with volatile pitch. The pale silver-white Vein-light of Wind attunement flared violently across his arm, feeding into his flawless Grade II Shard. "You are a filthy, unranked stray! I will show you the gap between our bloodlines!"
He didn't just throw a single wind burst. He traced a rapid Arithmancy formation in the air with the tip of his rapier, linking the spell to the auto-regulator on his Palm-brace.
A localized cyclone of razor-sharp wind blades erupted from the runes, tearing across the twelve-meter dome. The grass was shredded instantly. The air shrieked as half a dozen compressed air-blades shot toward me from multiple angles.
He's dumping sixty percent of his mana pool into a single barrage to overwhelm my evasion routes. Not bad. But his control is absolute garbage.
I didn't try to dodge. I pushed the Governor Valve all the way to redline.
Steam exploded from every port of my broadsword. The dull copper Induction Coils burned a brilliant, dangerous red, generating a massive Odic distortion field around the heavy steel. I swung the weapon in a wide, brutal arc, treating it less like a sword and more like a demolition hammer.
The physical mass of the redlined broadsword crashed directly into the incoming wind barrage.
The collision was deafening. The distortion field shattered three of the wind blades instantly. Two others grazed my shoulders, tearing the fabric of my uniform and leaving shallow, bleeding cuts, but they lacked the kinetic mass to stop my forward momentum.
"How are you still walking?!" Fen screamed, his eyes wide with panic as he frantically tried to draw another rune. "Stay back! STAY BACK!"
"You're over-channeling your primary node to compensate for your fear, Carault," I said, my voice completely hollow of any adrenaline as I closed the distance. "It's embarrassing."
Fen lunged forward with a desperate, uncoordinated thrust, pouring the very last of his unstable Wind mana into the silver-coated rapier, forcing the massive flow down into the cheap brass auto-regulator on his wrist.
I stepped slightly to the right, letting the blinding thrust pass my chest. Before he could pull his arm back, I brought the heavy, flat side of my broadsword down hard against his extended wrist.
The heavy steel bypassed the rapier entirely and slammed directly into the cheap brass of his auto-regulating Palm-brace.
The fragile mechanism shattered on impact. Without the external regulator's Governor Valve to desperately hold back the Grade II Shard's output, the concentrated mana inside his rapier lost all coherence and violently fed back into his own hand.
CRACK.
A violent, localized external Spellblast detonated directly over Fen's knuckles.
"MY ARM!" Fen shrieked, a high, broken sound, as the rapier was blown out of his grip. The backlash rippled up his limb, rendering it instantly dead and limp.
He collapsed to his knees, clutching his paralyzed shoulder, the arrogant Noble Lord entirely replaced by a terrified, weeping boy.
I stopped walking. I planted the tip of my rusted broadsword into the grass, exactly one inch from his collarbone.
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[TIMER: 0:24]
Fen Aldric Carault [███░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░] 12% — Circuit Overload (Critical)
Wren Edas Solbeck [████░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░] 26% — Arm Locked
Dav Orlin Lethis [████████░░░░░░░░░░░░] 42% — Incapacitated
Arga Orlando [██████████████████░░] 92% STATUS: Light Bleed — Shoulders
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The system flashed the warning across the dome. Fen's CVI was hovering at twelve percent. One more physical strike, and the barrier monitor would register a lethal threshold.
"I.. I am the heir of House Carault!" Fen sobbed, staring at the rusted steel resting against his neck. His body trembled violently. "I don't... I don't fall to nameless trash!"
"You just did," I said, looking down at him with the profound, heavy exhaustion of someone who wanted to be anywhere else. "Now use your left hand and tap the prompt. Or I am going to break your other arm."
Fen stared into my eyes. He found absolutely no mercy, no hesitation, no bluff.
He didn't try to salvage his pride anymore.
"Yield!" he screamed, his voice cracking violently in the quiet dome. "YIELD! I YIELD!"
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[⚠ YIELD COMMAND REGISTERED]
All combat parameters suspended.
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[ODICIOS / RESULT --- 0:30]
[CHALLENGER WINS]
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[ODICIOS / POST-DUEL LOG --- Duel #0014-D1]
Combat data successfully recorded and archived.
Thank you for your participation in the Academy Duel Protocol.
Merit / Demerit impact : Pending Faculty Review.
Points will be distributed to all participants based on combat assessment, parameter adherence, and final performance evaluation.
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The towering cyan dome shuddered, then shattered into a million harmless particles of ambient light, dissolving back into the manicured grass of the courtyard. The heavy hum of the Odic Circuits vanished, instantly replaced by the raw, atmospheric reality of the afternoon.
I straightened up, shut off the Governor Valve, swiped away the polite, institutional notification without reading it, and returned the broadsword to my pocket space. I released the anchor on my Shard. The jagged fragment collapsed inward, its dull light fading as it dissolved seamlessly back into its bounded state within my solar plexus
I turned to leave. I didn't look at the crowd. I didn't look at the three groaning nobles bleeding in the dirt.
I walked past the weeping willow tree. The girl—Alya Pance Varine—was still standing there, clutching her textbook to her chest. She kept her chin tucked, letting her cheap brown bangs and the glare of her thick, heavy-framed glasses completely hide her eyes from view.
I knew exactly who she was. And I knew what she was hiding behind those ugly glasses.
When I didn't stop, she took a hesitant half-step forward, clumsily pushing her glasses back up the bridge of her nose.
I stepped in because I was profoundly tired of watching people get backed into corners by loud, incompetent idiots, yes. But more than that, I did it because I needed her to recognize me. In a world that was inevitably going to catch fire, leaving a flawless first impression on the future Princess of Cinder was a critical investment.
And the strongest impression you can leave on someone who expects every rescue to come with an invoice, is to walk away without collecting it.
"Th-thank you," Alya stammered, her voice pitching perfectly into a quiet, trembling register. She kept her chin tucked, letting the cheap brown fringe of her hair hide her eyes behind the glare of her lenses. Her knuckles turned white around the edges of her book. "For helping me. You didn't have to—"
"Keep your thanks," I interrupted, my voice completely flat. I didn't stop walking. I didn't even turn my head to look at her as I passed. "Just go to the General Library. Third floor reading room. The upper-tiers avoid it on the first day. It's a good place to hide if you actually want to be left alone."
I didn't wait for her response.
My right arm and shoulder were throbbing. The fabric of my uniform was torn from Carault's wind blades, but there was no blood. The barrier's safety protocol had rendered the strikes as phantom wounds, yet the invisible lacerations burned with the agonizing, dry heat of stripped circuit nodes. The CVI damage left the entire limb heavy, cold, and profoundly numb.
I need to reach the infirmary. The circuit degradation hasn't stabilized, and I still need to finalize my House enrollment before the system flags me.
I kept walking.
Thirty seconds. Not my cleanest run, but efficient enough.
I looked toward the stone table inside the Atrium lounge.
There were two people sitting beneath the weeping willow.
The girl, I recognized immediately. I knew the specific shade of her amber eyes. I knew what terminal disaster was quietly sleeping inside her circuit and the invisible, three-meter isolation radius around her had been an absolute law of nature. No one ever sat next to the host of that parasite. No one survived the outward pressure of her toxic mana long enough to try.
But someone was sitting there now. Not only in Grand Hall. But also in there too?
And as I watched, the absolute, impenetrable wall of her composure didn't break—it settled. It was a microscopic shift—a faint lowering of her rigid shoulders, a subtle flicker of weary, deadpan exasperation in her eyes as she watched the boy sitting beside her devour a dripping, structurally offensive stack of meat and grease. It was the expression of someone who had stopped trying to maintain their isolation and simply accepted the sheer absurdity of the person sitting inside it.
I had never seen her accept anyone's presence for a fraction of a second.
I shifted my gaze to the boy who had caused it.
The boy in the mud-stained uniform wasn't checking his terminal. He wasn't reacting to the chaotic grief of the screaming nobles around him who had just lost their stipends.
He wasn't cheering or anything. He was holding that grease-stained stack of meat and bread. As I watched, he took a slow, deliberate bite. He chewed it with a completely vacant, deadpan expression, not breaking eye contact with me for a single second.
He was looking at me not with shock, or relief, or the particular excitement of someone who had just won a massive payout.
He was looking at me the way you look at something you have already seen.
I know every face that matters in this academy. I know the ones who will die. The ones who will betray us. The ones who will hold when everything else breaks.
I know the girl sitting next to him is a tragedy waiting to happen.
But I have never seen his face before. Not once. Not in any timeline.
Who are you, Arzane Vornelius Astarte?