The two virtual capsules stood facing each other.
The massive screens on all sides illuminated, reflecting two contrasting images that were almost impossible to believe.
Zekro stood in his capsule, his blue aura glowing with calculated confidence. His right hand gripped the sword with innate mastery, while his left held a dagger as a natural extension of his body. Everything about him signaled that he already knew how this would end.
On the other side…
Uzuki.
Just standing.
A shabby black staff was in his hand, so old that the wood looked as if it would crumble at the first strike. His fragile frame, hidden beneath loose black clothing, was a mass of scars and fractures that had never truly healed. He stood with a stillness that resembled neither confidence nor fear.
He resembled nothing at all.
The crowd was already laughing.
A student from the back shouted: "Is he serious? That stick will break just from being looked at."
Another added: "Let him be. It'll be fun to see how many seconds he lasts."
Zekro did not laugh. He stared at Uzuki with sharp green eyes, and deep inside, something small—something he didn't want to admit—told him that this wasn't normal.
He ignored it.
The duel began.
Zekro moved with calculated speed, his steps measuring the distance, his hands knowing by instinct where to strike. His ability for absolute mastery transformed every weapon in his hand into an extension of his soul; the sword was not a tool, but a part of him.
The first strike came from the left.
Uzuki moved.
Not with speed, not with technique. He moved with something older than all of that, something that resided in the muscles rather than the mind—as if his body remembered a similar moment from a place he didn't know.
But his damaged body could not keep up.
The strike connected.
The sound was painful even to hear—the crack of bone receiving a blow it wasn't prepared for. Uzuki skidded backward, his feet barely keeping him upright.
The crowd erupted in laughter.
Zekro did not stop. The second strike hit the flank, then the third on the arm, then the fourth, then the fifth.
Every strike was methodical—not blind cruelty, but a deliberate proof of one point: This is what happens to those who enter a place they do not deserve.
Uzuki kept falling and rising. Falling and rising.
He did not scream.
He did not ask to stop.
He did nothing but stand up every single time, with the same funeral-like calm he had when he entered the capsule.
That was what made Zekro feel that strange sensation again. Not admiration, not respect, but an incomprehensible shiver.
A shattered body that doesn't ask to stop? Why?
In a single instant, something changed.
Zekro raised his sword for the finishing blow—a calculated angle, a perfect distance.
And Uzuki's body moved.
It wasn't a decision. It wasn't a thought. It was something dwelling in the depths of his muscles and bones—a memory his mind did not know, but his body knew perfectly.
The black staff cut through the air with unsettling precision, a sudden thrust from an angle no one had calculated.
It reached.
The crowd fell silent for a single second.
Zekro did not retreat, he showed no pain, but something shifted inside him—a feeling that what stood before him could not be explained by the rules of the System.
Then, he finished it.
The sword came down with full force.
In the virtual world, the pain is entirely real.
Zekro's finishing blow cut through completely. Uzuki fell to the ground, his severed hand beside him, his body motionless.
The crowd exploded.
The duel was over.
Zekro stepped out of his capsule, his aura glowing, his face reflecting the certainty he had brought with him. He looked toward the screen announcing the end of the duel and turned his back.
He did not look at Uzuki again.
He wasn't even worth a final glance.
But Phili, who was monitoring the data, suddenly stopped. She looked at Zekro's palm, then at the screen, then at his palm again.
Something in the numbers was wrong.
She whispered with total calm:
"Zekro."
"What?" Zekro replied.
"Your fingers."
Zekro looked at his right hand.
His last two fingers… he couldn't move them. He thought, Is it possible that in that one moment, he actually severed my fingers?
He hadn't felt them being cut. The System hadn't alerted him. At some point during the duel, in that one thrust he hadn't calculated, something happened that he couldn't explain.
A long silence followed.
Then he closed his eyes and turned his face away.
Uzuki exited his capsule.
His body moved with visible difficulty, his injured arm hanging limp, his steps uneven. But his eyes were the same—dark and hollow, without visible pain, without anger, without anything.
The crowd didn't wait.
Things began to be thrown. Harsh words, laughter, voices demanding he leave and never return.
Uzuki did not raise his head. He did not stop. He began to drag his defeated body slowly toward the exit.
He didn't understand why these things were being thrown at him.
He didn't understand why they were laughing.
He didn't even understand what they wanted from him.
He just kept walking.
Then, the air froze.
A massive wall of ice erupted from the ground with staggering speed, separating Uzuki from the crowd—a solid, transparent mass reflecting everyone's stunned faces.
Iris stood at his side, her icy aura filling the air around her with a biting chill. Her blue eyes were completely frozen.
She didn't look at the crowd.
She only looked at Uzuki.
"What are you waiting for?" she said, her voice as cold as the ice she had created. "Go home."
There was no pity in her voice, no warmth. But there was something else—something even she couldn't name.
Uzuki paused for a moment.
He looked at the ice wall.
He looked at Iris.
He said nothing. He turned and walked away.
Sheena watched all of this with eyes that didn't miss a single detail. The moment Iris moved, the moment the wall rose, the moment of Uzuki's final look before turning away.
Something in her chest stirred.
She didn't know what to call it.
Suddenly, Zekro pierced through the ice wall with his blue aura, a piece of it shattering under his feet.
He stood before Iris.
"Why do you care about him?" Zekro asked. "Did you fall in love with him or something?"
Iris didn't move. But the air around her grew one degree colder.
She reached out and grabbed Zekro's collar with a terrifying calm, her aura expanding around them as everything within a one-meter radius began to slowly freeze.
"Should I consider this a provocation?"
She didn't wait for an answer.
"You bully someone whose body cannot move correctly. You beat him even when it was clear he had nothing to defend himself with. And you ask why I care?"
Her eyes didn't blink.
"I hate people like you. Those who call power 'responsibility' and then use it against those who have nothing. Perhaps I should teach you a lesson here."
Ice began to form around Zekro's feet.
"Zekro."
Phili's voice came, calm and decisive at the same time.
Zekro looked at Phili. She looked at him with dry brown eyes and said in a tone that brooked no argument:
"Not today."
A long silence.
Zekro calmly brushed Iris's hand away. He gave her a look that didn't mean surrender, but signaled that this wasn't the end.
"Another day, Iris."
He turned and walked away, Phili beside him typing on her tablet as if nothing had happened.
Iris remained standing. Her icy aura slowly melted.
Sheena approached her silently.
A long moment passed.
"Why did you do that?" Sheena asked.
Iris didn't answer immediately. She looked at the spot where he had been.
"I don't know."
Sheena said nothing. But she looked toward the door Uzuki had exited through and kept her gaze there a second longer than she should have.
The outer corridor of the Academy was empty.
Uzuki was walking.
His steps were slow, his injured arm hanging at his side. His body remembered every blow he had received, but his face reflected none of it.
He wasn't thinking about the duel.
He wasn't thinking about the ice wall.
He wasn't thinking about the cold voice that told him, "Go home."
He was just walking. As he did yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that.
The same path.
The same silence.
The same void that filled everything around him.
Somewhere behind him, the Academy was still buzzing with voices, laughter, and comments about the duel—about the weakling who came and went.
But the corridor was silent.
And Uzuki was walking.
Alone.
As he always was.
End of Chapter 5