The arena continued cycling through duels, names called one after another while cheers rose and fell in waves.
Soren watched some of them without really watching, his attention drifting in and out as students fought, won, lost, and returned to the stands.
The earlier haze of dread had not returned, but neither had complete ease.
What remained was a steady awareness, the kind that sat quietly at the back of his mind and reminded him that eventually his own name would come.
When it finally did, it cut cleanly through the noise.
[Rank 96 of Arcane Studies and Rank 125 of Martial Studies, please come down to the arena.]
For half a heartbeat, there was a pause.
Then the atmosphere changed all at once.
Students leaned forward in their seats.
A visible ripple passed through the stands, excitement tightening the air like a drawn wire.
— The Hero.
— It's finally starting.
— I put money on Alex, so he'd better not disappoint.
— Can Arden actually do anything?
The voices layered over each other, not loud enough to become one roar, but loud enough to turn the arena into something denser, more focused.
Earlier matches had drawn attention, but this was different.
This was the duel everyone had been waiting for, the one that had somehow turned Soren into part of an event.
He exhaled slowly and pushed himself to his feet.
"Hah…"
The breath left him in a faint, almost amused huff.
"I guess it's time."
His body felt strange as he stood, not weak or even especially heavy, but aware.
Aware of the stairs, the eyes on him, the distance to the arena floor.
Aware that Alex was already down there, or would be in a moment.
Aware that some part of him was still anxious and some other part, annoyingly enough, was curious.
Because in spite of everything, Carlen's lesson had left something alive in him.
A small, sharp spark.
He wanted to try it.
Not enough to erase the tension, not enough to make him eager in any normal sense, but enough that the duel no longer felt like a walk straight into execution.
It felt like something narrower than that.
Something grim, maybe, but not entirely joyless.
He was resigned, yes.
Uneasy, yes.
But not broken.
"Win," Amelia said.
Her voice was calm, as if she were stating an outcome rather than wishing for one.
Soren looked at her and managed a faint smile.
"I'll try."
The answer came out more honestly than bravely, and that was probably for the best.
He made his way down toward the arena floor, stopping first at the weapon rack.
His fingers closed around the handle of a handaxe, and some of the tension in him settled immediately at the familiar weight.
He rolled it once in his grip.
Stance.
Balance.
Angle.
Reach.
There was nothing magical about it, just familiarity, but that helped.
Even if this went badly, he didn't have to go in empty-handed.
He murmured the incantation for his blessing under his breath.
"I call to you, goddess, hear my name and help thy champion. 「Minor Blessing of Agility」."
.
[Minor Blessing of Agility has been applied!]
.
A faint light wrapped around his legs, then sank into muscle and tendon, quiet and controlled.
Soren adjusted his grip again and looked across the arena.
Alex was already there.
Golden hair catching the light, sword in hand, and posture open and relaxed, not because he was careless, but because ease seemed to come naturally to him.
And then, to Soren's immediate discomfort, Alex smiled as soon as their eyes met.
"Hello there," Alex said. "We haven't really talked properly yet, have we?"
Soren stopped a few paces away.
Of course he started with that.
Not a taunt.
Not some smug little performance for the crowd.
Just normal conversation, as if this were a chance meeting rather than a duel in front of a quarter of the academy.
"I guess not," Soren said.
The words came out a little stiffer than he intended.
Alex, mercifully or perhaps unmercifully, did not seem bothered.
"You know, Liv's always had a hard time talking to people. So when she told me she'd made a friend, I was really happy for her."
Soren's fingers tightened slightly around the handaxe.
There it was again, that strange problem Alex created just by being sincere.
If Alex had been arrogant, if he had been rude, if he had treated this like a joke, it would have been easier.
Soren could have hidden behind annoyance, behind contempt, behind anything clean and simple.
But Alex was just… normal.
Earnest, open, trying.
Trying to get along.
Trying because Olivia had asked him to.
"So, I wanted to thank you for that," Alex continued with a small smile.
"Right," Soren said, then, because that sounded too abrupt even to his own ears, added, "Sure."
It was awkward, painfully so.
He could feel the mismatch in the exchange, Alex speaking with easy warmth while Soren answered like he had forgotten how conversations worked.
He didn't mean to be rude.
He just genuinely did not know what to do with Alex when Alex was standing in front of him as a person instead of a role.
"Sorry," Alex said, rubbing the back of his neck lightly. "I'm talking too much before a duel, aren't I?"
Soren looked away for a second.
"A bit."
Alex laughed, easy and unoffended.
That somehow made it worse.
The announcement began to rise through the arena, and Soren's attention sharpened at once, grateful for the interruption.
The fight was about to start.
And whatever else Alex was, whatever else this meant, talking was finally about to end.
The announcement rang out across the arena, clear and absolute.
[Duel between Soren Arden and Alex, begin.]
Alex moved first.
There was no wasted motion in it, nothing theatrical, nothing wild.
He did not lunge recklessly or rush in with the loose aggression of someone hungry for spectacle.
He stepped forward with the kind of precision that looked drilled into the body through repetition, his weight balanced, shoulders level, sword kept in clean alignment as his feet carried him over the arena floor in a measured burst of speed.
'He's fast,' Soren thought at once, tightening his grip on the handaxe.
Not just fast in the simple sense, but polished.
Every part of Alex's movement seemed to belong to the next part.
The distance vanished quickly, yet nothing about him looked desperate or strained.
It was the sort of approach taught by instructors, corrected over and over until the body obeyed a pattern too well-practised to break.
Even with the blessing strengthening his Agility, Soren felt the pressure of it immediately.
Fortunately, he had already decided he would not meet that kind of fighting head-on.
The moment the duel began, he lifted his free hand and cast without hesitation.
"「Gaia」."
The stone between them split apart and softened in an instant.
The solid arena floor sagged, collapsed, and turned into heavy sucking mud, the ground swallowing itself into a clinging bog meant to ruin speed, footing, and rhythm all at once.
It was one of the first things Soren reached for against dangerous opponents now, not because it was elegant, but because it worked.
Fast enemies became slower when the ground betrayed them.
Trained movement mattered less when each step risked sinking.
Alex's forward momentum checked immediately.
His boots bit into the unstable surface for only a brief moment before he reacted, the adjustment so quick it barely looked like one.
He halted his advance, shifted his weight cleanly, and pushed away from the bog in a sharp retreating leap, escaping the worst of the sinking ground before it could drag him off balance.
As soon as he landed beyond the softened area, his expression changed.
Not into panic.
Not into frustration.
Into focus.
His eyes narrowed slightly, and his free hand moved with economical calm as his attention turned inward, toward mana.
He's already casting.
Soren clicked his tongue softly in his head but did not wait.
He had learned long ago that giving opponents time was a luxury he could rarely afford, especially not against someone like Alex.
If Alex wanted space to stabilise, Soren would make sure he didn't get it.
"「Shockwave」."
Distorted air rippled forward in a violent rush, the spell tearing across the arena toward Alex with enough force to break concentration or, failing that, force him to defend awkwardly.
Alex remained composed.
"「Freeze」."
Ice spread from beneath his boots with unnerving speed, thin at first, then rapidly thickening as it raced outward over the arena floor.
The cold did not merely creep over the surface; it seized control of it, hardening the muddy bog into frozen ground before it could keep shifting and swallowing.
In seconds, one of Soren's most reliable tools had been blunted.
The bog did not vanish, but its usefulness did.
What had been unstable and clinging became fixed, slick, and far less disruptive.
Soren's jaw tightened.
At the same time, the incoming shockwave reached Alex.
Alex's sword lit with a restrained glow as he moved into position, both hands settling on the hilt with crisp, practised certainty.
「Fialova Swordsmanship - Iron Wall」
He drove the blade downward and braced behind it, feet planted, stance low and exact.
The shockwave hit.
Air slammed into him hard enough to buffet his clothes and send loose frost skittering across the ground, yet Alex held the stance without breaking.
The force split around the glowing sword, diverted rather than allowed to crash through him cleanly, and when the spell finally dispersed, he was still standing where he had been, posture intact.
Soren exhaled sharply through his nose.
'I'm not even surprised.'
It was the difference in styles made obvious almost immediately.
Alex fought like a student who had absorbed instruction perfectly, someone who had been handed forms, counters, stances, and answers, then drilled until each response came out clean.
His movement had structure.
His defence had names.
Every action seemed chosen from a manual and executed without hesitation.
Soren, on the other hand, had never really had that luxury.
What he had was patchwork.
Experience gained while running, bleeding, improvising, surviving.
Tricks learned because he needed them, habits formed because the wrong choice in a real fight could mean getting maimed or killed.
There was no neat sequence to it, no polished chain of ideal responses.
If he had to claw, kick, swing an axe, throw dirt, cast three ugly spells in a row, and ram someone shoulder-first just to make space, then that was what he would do.
Alex lifted his sword from the ground, breath steady, eyes brightening.
"This is fun," he said.
Soren almost laughed, though there was no humour in it.
Of course it was.
For Alex, this kind of thing probably was fun.
A proper duel in a controlled arena, a unique opponent in front of him, a clean chance to test himself without genuine fear of death.
It suited him.
Everything about the Hero suited that sort of stage.
For Soren, the arena only looked clean from a distance.
Up close, all he could think about were openings, risks, angles, the possibility of getting cornered, and how badly things could spiral if he let Alex dictate the pace.
Alex moved again.
This time the frozen surface aided him rather than hindered him.
His boots skimmed over it with smooth, practised control, each step precise, his body aligned behind the sword as if every inch of the approach had already been mapped out in his head.
The blade glowed once more.
「Fialova Swordsmanship - Downward Slash」
The technique announced itself in the shape of his body before it arrived.
The line of his shoulders, the shift of his grip, the set of his stance, all of it signalled the strike clearly to anyone experienced enough to read it.
And yet clarity did not make it harmless.
Alex's speed compressed the distance frighteningly fast, sword coming down in a clean, disciplined arc meant to overwhelm through form, timing, and force.
At the last instant, Soren did something that would have looked absurd to anyone who did not know why.
He closed his eyes.
The crowd vanished.
The shine of the blade vanished.
The sight of Alex rushing toward him vanished too.
Instead, he felt.
Not in some mystical, graceful way, but in the rough, newly grasped sense Carlen had forced into him.
Mana.
The shape of the spell before it fully existed.
The circle forming, not beneath his hand this time, but lower.
Beneath his foot.
There.
Soren shifted his weight, dragging one leg back as the half-formed circle bloomed under the sole.
"「Breeze」."
————「❤︎」————