"I'm coming for you next."
He heard the faintest voice whisper it, like the rustling of a young wind past a dry leaf. Though Vicktor lay on the arena ground, bruised, exhausted, and completely unaccustomed to listening to others, he knew the victor's words—blue hair and all—were not directed at him.
Need more power.
Swoo. The air parted. Not even an hour after suffering a crushing defeat in the practice arena, his stamina had recovered, and he was swinging his practice sword again under the heavy blanket of night.
Thoughts.
Three swings.
Just get in the way.
Ten swings. Sweat beaded on his forehead, flying off into the bright afternoon sky.
Steel is simple.
Twenty swings.
You swing. Things break.
Thirty swings. The blade hummed, a perfect, unbroken arc of silver.
Magic is just noise.
Read her patterns? Stupid. I will just shatter the shield. React and cut. That is it.
Winning is all that matters.
His sword swung once more, slicing the cold air under the midnight moon.
Why do they complicate it?
The memory of his next duel surfaced. He stared at the distraught expression plastered across Celeste's face. His sword tip had hovered mere inches from Celeste's eyes—eyes that refused to look at anything other than the fierce, unforgiving edge of his blade.
"Ah! Stop it, you brute!" she had screamed. It hadn't been a cry of genuine terror or strategic deception, but a wail of pure, childish entitlement.
I pushed too hard, Vicktor thought, a sudden pang of regret piercing his focus. She is actually shaking. I did not mean to genuinely frighten her. Just walk away before you make her cry.
To everyone else, he simply looked disgusted. He had retracted his sword, turning his broad back on her without a single word of apology and returning to the spectator seating.
"Nice work," a passing student had muttered, but Vicktor was entirely distracted. His eyes were locked onto the Mage in the corner of the arena. Cedric. The boy was wielding a sword aura radiating a color Vicktor had never seen before.
Instinctively, Vicktor associated the unknown with danger. But it was a deeper fear that drove his next thought:
I have to break through.
Swoo.
She got lucky once.
Swoo.
I crushed her twice.
Swoo.
She won't touch him.
"Ugh! Would you stop ruining my fun? You're completely ruining my aesthetic today!" Celeste had screamed after her second loss, her voice lacking the fiery anger of her previous defeats. Even Vicktor had noticed the hesitation in her tone.
He had heard her complaints, but all the mental energy he allotted to matters of unimportance had already been spent. His singular, consuming focus always circled back to Cedric and that mysterious, impossible aura.
He is my target.
The first month of the second semester concluded. The score of his weekly duels stood at three wins and two losses.