The day of the second mock duels had arrived.
Unlike the first time, the first-years were practically buzzing.
The arena no longer felt like a place of assessment so much as a place waiting for a spectacle.
The stands were crowded early, filled with students who should have been stretching, revising notes for the final exam, or at least pretending to care about their own matches, yet instead leaned over railings and spoke far too loudly, laughter rising and falling in loose waves as fingers pointed toward the central platform below.
The air felt warm with bodies, voices, and anticipation, restless in a way that made it hard to forget where everyone's attention would go once the right names were called.
There was, of course, only one reason for that.
Hero Alex vs Soren Arden.
It was the duel everyone wanted to see, the one that had turned an examination day into something close to an event.
Some students had gone as far as quietly placing bets, trading murmured odds and half-hidden coins with the smugness of people who believed they were being subtle.
Even the ones who claimed not to care still looked up every now and then, eyes drifting toward the posted matchups as if expecting the names to rearrange themselves into something more sensible.
On one side was the new Hero, Alex.
Golden-haired, blue-eyed, easy in his own skin in that way only certain people were.
He never seemed to force attention onto himself, but it gathered around him anyway, pulled there by something natural and irritatingly effortless.
The chosen one of the prophecies.
The person this world would one day lean on whether it wanted to or not.
Even ranked dead last in Martial Studies, he was not someone people laughed at.
No one here was stupid enough for that.
They all knew what he would become, or at least enough of it to feel the shape of it.
Sooner or later, Alex would grow into something monstrous in the purest sense, a name spoken with awe by some and with fear by others.
On the other side was Soren Arden.
A few weeks ago, his name might only have earned a shrug, maybe a delayed, uncertain, 'Oh, that white-haired one?' or 'The weird mage with the axe.'
Now that was no longer enough.
Stories had started gathering around him, too, messier and less dignified than the ones around Alex, but stories all the same.
The first friend of Amelia Indras Einhardt, the Wild Wolf.
The so-called moving mage, the idiot who cast while in motion and fought like he had missed the lesson where mages were meant to stay still and safe at the back.
The class F student who had somehow placed third in the midterm practical and forced people to look at him twice.
Alex was the star while Soren was the anomaly, the odd shape that did not fit where the academy wanted him to fit.
A curiosity was still a kind of attention, and apparently that was enough to elevate a duel between two class F students into the main event of a duelling examination.
So how was Soren Arden handling all that attention?
'This is bullshit.'
The thought came so dryly it almost would have been funny if the tightness in his chest had not been real.
He stood near the edge of the staging area with Amelia beside him, the noise of the arena rolling over him in waves, his expression blank enough that most people would probably have assumed he was calm.
But he was not calm; he had simply run out of useful places to put the tension.
The problem was not that he had chosen this.
He had not.
Alex had cornered him in front of the class, used both tickets, and removed refusal from the table so cleanly that Soren had only been left with the shape of a choice, nothing more.
Ever since then he had been moving forward because every alternative felt worse, because forfeiting felt like its own kind of failure, because Amelia had taken his hand and told him it was okay, because he had already reached the ugly, exhausted conclusion that he had to do this whether he wanted to or not.
So he had trained.
He had kept eating, kept attending class, kept functioning.
He had done all of it with the same grim, reluctant steadiness as someone carrying a load because dropping it would crush them just as surely as continuing.
Now the day had actually arrived, and the closer it got, the more he felt that old pressure settling back over him.
Not the wild, directionless kind from before, but something heavier and harder to ignore, guilt dressed up as reason and speaking in a voice that sounded dangerously calm.
Every path he turned over ended in the same place.
Alex had to lose.
The story had already bent too far.
If Alex needed this loss, then Soren had to be the one to hand it to him.
That did not make the idea feel heroic or decisive.
It just made it feel inescapable.
Worse, the status window had given him nothing.
That part kept needling at him in a way he hated.
For months the thing had intruded whenever it pleased, handing him objectives, rewards, pressure, and direction, as if it had every right to shove his life into neat little boxes and call that help.
He resented it.
He distrusted it.
He would have liked to pretend he could do without it.
But now, when he kept glancing for it and getting nothing, the silence felt wrong.
No quest.
No warning.
No objective telling him what this duel meant.
Nothing to confirm that he was ruining everything, and nothing to reassure him that he was not.
It was absurd, really.
He knew it was absurd.
At some point he had started expecting the damned thing to interpret the world for him, and now its absence felt like losing a crutch he had never wanted to admit he was using.
Beside him, Amelia watched quietly.
She had been near him long enough to know what his silence looked like when it actually meant silence, and what it looked like when too much was moving underneath it.
His face was composed, shoulders level, breathing mostly steady, but there was still something wrong in the set of him.
Too much stillness in the wrong places.
Too much restraint in his hands.
His eyes kept drifting back toward the arena floor, then away again, not like someone preparing for a match, but like someone measuring distance to something unpleasant and finding it unchanged every time.
Amelia did not really understand why he felt like this.
To her, fighting was simple.
Not easy, necessarily, but simple.
You stepped in, you moved, you struck, you endured, you won or you lost.
Soren never seemed to feel it that way.
Every battle seemed to pull something taut inside him before it had even begun.
"It'll be okay," she said quietly, and took his hand.
The gesture was simple, and a few days ago it had reached him, anchored him.
This time it barely seemed to.
His fingers did not pull away, but they did not tighten around hers either.
He just stood there with his gaze fixed somewhere beyond the arena, thoughts evidently loud enough that her warmth could not cut through them.
Then another voice arrived from the side.
"Hey, Soren. Are you okay?"
Olivia.
The sound of her voice pulled him back sharply enough that he blinked.
"Ah, yes. I mean, I'm fine," he said, too quickly, then added, "How are you?"
It came out awkwardly arranged, as if he had remembered halfway through that normal people were meant to ask that back.
Olivia did not seem to mind.
She smiled the way she usually did, bright and open, hands clasped lightly in front of her.
"I'm good. A little nervous, but good. Are you ready for your duel later?"
Soren paused a fraction too long.
"Ready enough," he said at last.
The answer sounded passable on the surface, but Amelia's mouth flattened faintly.
There was something off in it, not rudeness exactly, but a strained sort of politeness that sat wrong on him.
Olivia either missed it or decided not to mention it.
"It's exciting, isn't it? A lot of people are talking about it."
'That's part of the problem,' Soren thought bleakly.
Out loud, he only said something completely different.
"Seems like it."
For a moment there was a small, awkward gap.
He did not know how to talk to Olivia anymore.
That was the stupidest part.
She had done nothing wrong.
At worst, she had only been trying to help.
At best, she was trying to bring her two friends closer together.
And that somehow only made it worse.
Every time he looked at her he saw another deviation, another point where the original shape of things had shifted because of him, and since he obviously could not say that, conversation kept snagging on the difference between what he knew and what he could actually respond to.
So instead, clumsily, he latched onto the first thing that felt safe enough to ask.
"You have your own duels too, right?"
Olivia blinked.
"Hm? Ah… Yeah."
"Will you be alright?" he asked, then immediately realised that sounded strange and tried to salvage it. "I mean, with that. Your matches."
She looked at him for a second, surprise softening her expression.
Then, for the first time since approaching, her smile dipped at the edges.
"I'll be okay," she said, and the answer was just a little too light. "…Probably."
Soren remembered the last mock duels without wanting to, remembered her running, dodging, surviving for as long as she could before brute force had finally closed the gap anyway.
She was a priestess, a support class, someone who could never enjoy this part of academy life.
He nodded once.
"Right."
He wanted to say something else, something more useful than that, but nothing came, not naturally, anyway.
Anything he reached for sounded wrong before it left his mouth.
Fortunately or unfortunately, he was spared the effort.
"There you are, Liv. I was looking for you."
The voice was warm, even, familiar enough to half the arena that it did not need announcing.
Soren went still.
Olivia turned at once.
"Ah, sorry, Alex. I was talking to Soren."
Alex approached with that same easy, unhurried confidence that always made him look as though the world would probably make room for him before he needed to ask.
He smiled, first at Olivia, then at Soren, and if there was any awkwardness left over from the classroom challenge days ago, he did not show it.
"I forgot to do this properly last time," Alex said. "Nice to meet you. I'm Alex, no family name, class F, rank 125, and, well, I guess I'm the Hero."
He held out a hand.
It was a simple gesture, completely ordinary, and socially painless.
Yet Soren hated how difficult it became the moment it was in front of him.
For a second, he only looked at it.
Not long enough to be dramatic, but long enough that Olivia's smile faded a touch, confusion replacing it, and long enough that Amelia's gaze sharpened.
Alex himself remained patient, though the moment had clearly stretched beyond what was natural.
Soren made himself move.
"My apologies," he said, and even to his own ears the words sounded wrong, too smooth, too careful, like something rehearsed by someone who did not quite understand the role.
He took Alex's hand because not doing so would have been worse, shook once, and let go almost immediately.
"Soren Arden. Rank 96. Magician."
His words were formal, polite, and empty.
That was probably the worst part.
If he had snapped or stumbled or said something strange, Olivia might have written it off as nerves.
Instead he sounded controlled in a way that only made it more obvious that he was not himself.
Olivia looked between them.
"Soren?"
He turned toward her too quickly.
"Yes?"
Her brows drew together.
"Is something wrong?"
"No," he said, with the kind of immediate smoothness that made it obvious enough that something was.
A small silence followed.
Alex, to his credit, tried to carry it.
"I'm looking forward to our duel," he said. "Liv's said a lot about you."
Soren managed a faint smile that didn't reach anywhere near his eyes.
"Has she. That's kind of her."
There it was again, that same polished wrongness.
Not blunt.
Not hostile.
But somehow worse.
Olivia visibly noticed it this time.
Her head tilted just slightly, uncertainty creeping in where it had not been before.
Even Alex's expression shifted by a fraction, not enough to break his composure, just enough to show he had heard the strain underneath the words.
Soren knew he was handling this badly.
He knew Amelia was staring at him.
He knew the entire exchange had acquired the stiff, unpleasant shape of a conversation everyone wanted to leave but was too polite to cut short.
But he just could not seem to fix it.
Alex let out a breath that might have been amusement if the air were lighter.
"Right. Well, I'll see you later, then."
"Yes," Soren said. "Later."
Olivia hesitated.
"Soren, are you sure you're..."
"I'm fine," he said, softer this time, and that at least sounded more like him, though not by much.
She still looked unconvinced, but Alex was already turning away, and after one last uncertain glance, she followed him.
When they were gone, Amelia looked at him for a long moment.
"What was that?"
Soren kept his eyes on the arena instead of her.
"What was what?"
"The way you were talking."
He swallowed.
"I was talking normally."
"You weren't."
That would have been easier to argue with if she had been wrong.
He exhaled through his nose.
"I don't know how I'm meant to talk to him."
Amelia considered that.
"Like a person."
"That would be easier if he were just a person."
Her ears twitched once.
She didn't understand the full shape of that answer, but she understood enough to hear that he meant it.
After a pause, she spoke again.
"You're being weird."
Soren gave a tired huff that almost counted as a laugh.
"I'm aware."
Amelia watched him for another second, then, mercifully, let it go.
"…Never mind."
••✦ ♡ ✦•••
[Rank 96 and Rank 5 of Arcane Studies, please come down to the arena.]
The announcement rang out over the arena, clear enough to cut through the chatter without needing to be shouted.
Soren let out a slow breath.
"It's my turn."
Amelia's hand shifted from his to his wrist, fingers closing there for a moment, firm and warm.
"Good luck."
It was not a grand reassurance or some elaborate attempt to talk him out of his own head.
Amelia was not built for that, and Soren was not in a state to be talked out of much anyway.
But the brief pressure grounded him more than the words did.
He nodded once, then stepped away.
The walk down to the arena floor felt longer than it should have, not because the distance itself had changed, but because being watched made every step more tangible.
He could feel eyes following him from the stands, curiosity from some, dismissal from others, interest from almost everyone.
Somewhere above, people were still waiting for the Alex duel, still treating the day as if it built toward that, and Soren could not even resent them for it.
They were right.
This was only one part of the problem.
On the way down, he reached for one of the weapon racks lined along the descent and took a handaxe from it.
The weight settled into his palm with familiar solidity, the leather-wrapped handle worn smooth where hands were meant to sit.
It helped, a little.
Not much, but enough to give his fingers something real to close around.
Under his breath, low enough that no one nearby reacted, he murmured a single word.
"「Status」."
.
[Status Window]
Name: Soren Arden
Age: 18
Race: Human
◈ Stats
Mana - 1.4 (E-) → 1.6 (E)
Divine Power - 0.5 (F+) → 0.8 (F+)
◈ Skills
- Basic Magic
└ Ignition (C-) → Ignition (C)
└ Shock (D+) → Shock (C-)
└ Breeze (E-) → Breeze (E)
- Blood Magic
└ Blood Absorption (F) → Blood Absorption (E-)
- Pain Tolerance (F) → Pain Tolerance (F+)
- Basic Axemanship (F)
.
The window hung before him in quiet indifference, numbers and labels set neatly in place, and he hated how much relief there still was in seeing it at all.
No quest.
Still nothing.
Just the familiar frame, the familiar accounting of what he had gained.
It had been almost a month since the midterms, and he had not wasted that month.
Between tutoring sessions with Lilliana, physical training in the evenings, and practice whenever he had enough mana or divine power left to justify using it, he had pushed himself with a kind of stubbornness that looked productive from the outside and felt more like compulsion from the inside.
Not elegant training, not always efficient, but constant.
He had taken every spare stretch of time and fed it into the same goal: to become less weak than before, to become just strong enough that he could finally live that quiet, peaceful life he had wished for since the moment he had been dropped into this world.
Some of that effort had actually paid off.
[Blood Absorption] reaching E- was the clearest example.
On paper, the change seemed minor, another small shift in a system that loved reducing effort to symbols, but in practice it mattered.
He could now drain blood through contact rather than by mouth, which turned the skill from something deeply awkward into something somewhat useful.
It still made blood magic risky.
It still made it so blood magic was something he could not use carelessly.
And it was still the kind of magic that demanded restraint if he did not want to damage himself with it.
But it was progress, and progress was hard enough won these days that he could not afford to dismiss it.
Then there was the new skill that had appeared.
Through actual training, with Amelia's help and a great deal of repetition, he had finally earned [Basic Axemanship] without buying it.
The result was still rough.
His swings were not clean enough, his timing was inconsistent, and his form still carried the marks of someone who had taught his body to do something before truly understanding it, but it was his.
Not a shortcut purchased out of the shop, not another transaction, but something dragged out of himself by practice.
Objectively, it was decent progress for a month.
Objectively, he was improving.
And yet as he looked at the status window, only one thought seemed to matter.
'I'm still weak.'
The words settled with all the familiarity of an old wound.
Not dramatic or surprising, just true enough to keep returning.
"So why did you challenge me, Soren Arden?"
The voice was deep, calm, and entirely unbothered.
Soren looked up.
Carlen Frenun stood across from him, broad enough to make the space around him seem smaller.
His uniform sat tightly across his shoulders and chest, stretched over a frame that looked more suited to the vanguard than to Arcane Studies, and yet the pressure around him was unmistakably that of a mage.
Not Amelia's sharp, predatory intensity, and not Alex's easy brightness either.
Carlen's presence was heavier than both in a different way, steady and grounded, like something that had no need to prove itself because it already knew its own weight.
Rank 5 in Arcane Studies.
Class A.
One of the strongest first-years in the academy, and the person Lilliana had recommended when Soren asked who he should challenge before the rest of the day went wrong.
The memory rose in fragments.
— Well, if I had to give a name, it would probably be Carlen.
— Why? Mmm… If I had to explain, unlike most of the other class A students, Carlen is relatively straightforward. Most of the others here are at least a little… strange, but he's… less so.
It had not exactly been glowing praise, but coming from Lilliana, it was close enough.
Another memory followed, quieter.
— If he's anything like his brother, he'll probably help you if you just ask honestly.
That part had stuck with him more than he wanted to admit.
He could still remember walking up to Carlen earlier, tickets in hand, aware even then that this duel had once been the part of the day he could actually control, back before Alex had stepped in and overwritten the rest of it.
Carlen had looked at him, looked at the tickets, and accepted without complaint.
No mockery, no visible surprise, just a measured kind of attention that had somehow made the whole thing more intimidating.
Now that same attention was fixed on him again.
Soren swallowed.
His throat felt dry, and his grip shifted on the axe.
He could dodge the question if he wanted.
He could say something about testing himself, about rankings, about wanting experience against a stronger opponent.
All of that would have been reasonable enough, and at any other time he might have reached for one of those answers automatically.
Instead, perhaps because he was too tired to be clever, or because the rest of the day had already stripped so much choice out of him that pretending here felt pointless, he said the plainest version.
"I'm weak," Soren said. "I lose too often, and I'm tired of it."
The honesty sounded blunt even to him, but not dramatic, just flat in the way truths often were when they had sat in someone long enough.
For a moment, the arena seemed to soften around the edges, noise still present, but held at a slight distance.
Carlen raised one brow.
Then he folded his arms across his chest and studied Soren properly, not dismissively, not with casual interest, but as if reassessing him from the ground up.
"Hm."
The sound was thoughtful rather than doubtful.
Soren waited, axe still in hand, pulse slow and heavy in his throat, the weight of the coming day pressing at his back even here.
————「❤︎」————