The silence held for a while.
Everyone felt it. They were witnessing something that never occurred in the history.
Skill rank mattered the most. It meant everything in today's society.
Sure, there were cases of a C-rank skill defeating a B-rank skll, D-rank skill defeating a C-rank skill, and hence on.
Here, they were talking about S-rank versus F-rank. One was the highest rank—save the SS-rank skill that only appeared once throughout the Kingdom's history—while the other was the lowest rank possible, known to be useless in every single category.
It was beyond unbelievable. It was, logically speaking, something that wasn't meant to be possible.
As these thoughts ran through everyone's mind, the first voice came from the upper tiers.
Not as a chant, but as a question, passed between two students who had forgotten to keep it internal.
"—did that just—"
"—the glass is—"
"—F-rank: [Condensation], it was F-rank: [Condensation] against S-rank: [Lightning Spear], for fuck's sake—"
The question spread rapidly and the noises of thousands of inquiries arose. The upper tiers first. Then the middle. Then the lower.
Then the public squares in the capital, where the broadcast projection had gone white and returned to show Isaac standing with blood on his lip and Silas's chamber as empty.
"—rigged—"
The word moved through the upper tiers with the speed of something people had been waiting to say without knowing they were waiting.
"—has to be rigged! F-rank doesn't do that—"
"—the device malfunctioned—"
"—someone tampered with the glass—"
In the lower tier, Fulgur Patriarch's expression had shifted from the quality of someone finding the silence appropriate to something that had not resolved into anything clean. He sat with it for a moment. Then he turned toward the tiers where the "rigged" murmur was the loudest.
"Enough."
His voice had the authority of someone who had spent decades silencing chatters.
The nearest tiers quietened.
"The colosseum's Manafold Circuitry has been in place since before any practitioner in this building was born," he said. "It was constructed and calibrated by faculty whose combined assessment tenure exceeds a century. The mana-glass heart mechanism has never malfunctioned in its recorded history." He looked across the tiers. "To call this result rigged is to insult every institution that made the result possible. Including mine."
He said mine with the specific weight of a Patriarch who had just watched his house's name being chanted and his adoptive son's fight produce an outcome he hadn't predicted. The word landed as a warning rather than a claim.
The murmur about "rigged" disappeared. No one was willing to be subjected to the wrath of the Fulgur Patriarch, who owned the same S-rank: [Lightning Spear] as his son.
"Valerius."
Then, the Fulgur Patriarch called out to the Valerius Patriarch, who turned upon the call of his surname.
"It seems that... my earlier judgment to the past member of your house has been... inaccurate. My sincere apologies."
The Valerius Patriarch stoically nodded, as if still processing what happened. The Fulgur Patriarch then stood up and stormed out of the area, in the middle of the ongoing chaos.
The Valerius Patriarch turned back, gazing Isaac far ahead.
He sat with the calculation that had been running since the colosseum filled, and now the calculation had new inputs. Isaac was standing, victorious for the first time in his memory. The broadcast had carried it to the public squares. The kingdom had seen it.
It was ridiculous. House Valerius was now a house that had disinherited a practitioner who had just defeated an S-rank second-year in public, on broadcast, in front of the King.
He turned and peeked at the royals. The king and prince seemed to be discussing something among themselves. Lyra seemed to be pondering, lost in her own thought.
He opened his mouth—or was about to, as if having made a decision. Then, he stopped.
"…Father."
He felt Caspian's gaze before he saw it. Slowly, he turned and looked at his son.
"It everything fine?"
Caspian was not looking at the fighting floor. He was looking at his father. The composed attention he had brought to every moment since they arrived, was now directed at his own father.
S-rank: [Great Deluge]. That was Caspian's skill.
His words and demeanor didn't match. The pressure existed.
The Patriarch's mouth closed.
He sat back. Faced forward.
Beside him, Caspian's gaze returned to the fighting floor.
___
On the fighting floor, Silas had not moved.
He was staring at Isaac for a long time.
Isaac looked back, nonchalantly.
The blood had reached his chin. Reaching into his pocket, he took out a clean handkerchief. Wiped the blood away.
"Silas Wason."
Then, Isaac spoke the name. Upon registry, something happened in Silas's expression—not the dumbfounded quality of the moment after the glass shattered, but the rigidness and the look of surprise that stemmed from wondering how Isaac had the information.
"You are privileged," Isaac stated. "Be it the skill, status, talent… you got them all. And, do you know what they all share in common?"
"If only your mother knew she'd give birth to someone like you."
Isaac didn't forget the insult. He could tolerate everything else, but… when the word "mother" was involved, it was a different story.
"They are all granted to you on a silver platter, rather than earned."
In silence, everyone heard his words. They remained quiet. Many civilians resonated with his words, although they didn't let such sentiments show outwardly.
"The only thing you demonstrated today is your stupidity."
Folding his handkerchief neatly, Isaac chuckled.
Silas's face was reddened. Yet, he made no response. Rather, he couldn't, because he couldn't find a right counter for it.
"I will say this one more time."
Isaac then took a step. Then another step. Toward Silas whose height was taller. Then he leaned in. Whispered,
"Mind your own business, fucker."
Silas remained still as Isaac leaned back.
He looked at the empty casing. At the fighting floor. At Isaac.
"A failure. A worthless bag. A pawn..." He whispered through the insults he threw at Isaac just before. He paused. His lips quivered.
"...You win."
At last, he said to Isaac. The flatness of it was genuine—not the flatness of performance, but the flatness of someone who had no choice but to accept the loss.
"That's... all I have."
He turned.
He walked toward the west gate at a pace slower than before. As he walked, his hands were trembling.
He disappeared into the gate.
"…The result of this Trial petition," The Headmaster finally spoke from the floor's center, "is officially concluded as Isaac Nameless's victory over Silas Fulgur."
He looked across the colosseum.
"The Trial is closed."
The colosseum received it.
Then, it produced the sound that crowds produced when they had been holding their collective breath and were given institutional permission to release it—not a cheer, not the chanting of names, but the overwhelming noise of thousands of people processing simultaneously and finding that the processing required volume.
It was loud, loud in the way that only events that hadn't been predicted could produce.
In the faculty section, the professors had the specific expressions of people whose professional frameworks had just been presented with evidence they could no longer manage.
Maren Solke was looking at the glass heart casing with the expression of someone who was trying to process how such an outcome was possible.
Henrick Osse had his ledger open. He ripped off the page and furiously shredded it apart with hands.
Lina Cae was already running numbers. The algorithm's rank 2 placement. The fight's data, now added to the database. F-rank in top 16 was ridiculous enough. F-rank as rank 2 wasn't supposed to be possible. F-rank defeating S-rank was...
She looked at Thorne.
Thorne was writing in his private notebook, furiously.
"If we input today's data," Callum Wrest said, quietly, to the faculty section generally, "he doesn't stay at rank 2."
Nobody responded to this.
The implication sat in the faculty section's ambient air with the weight of something everyone had heard and nobody was ready to act on in public.
"Silas Fulgur remains rank 1," After a considerable thought, Maren said. Her voice had the flat quality of someone making a decision by stating it. "The designation stands as recorded. Today's data informs the record. It does not revise the designation."
The faculty section received this.
Thorne said nothing. He kept writing.
___
In the middle tiers, Elara had both hands pressed against her mouth.
She had watched it all. All that Isaac went throughout. The number of times he was called a failure. A puddle.
Everyone expected today's him to be the same. However, he proved otherwise.
She lowered her hands from her mouth. Her eyes were doing something they didn't do in public. She wasn't performing composure. She was sitting in the middle tiers of the colosseum with thousands of people around her making the noise that the result had produced, and she was looking at Isaac on the fighting floor with the iron charm in his pocket.
…Now that she thought about it, she had never seen him in action until today.
Meanwhile, Cassiopeia had opened her notebook.
She was holding it open without writing anything, because her mind was currently flooded with an observation that had exceeded her frameworks. She looked at the page. At the empty space where her notes on Isaac Nameless would go if she had a framework for what she had just watched.
She didn't write anything. Her mind was blank from the shock.
She looked at the fighting floor, and at Isaac still standing in the center of the colosseum.
He actually stands a chance, she had thought, before the fight.
Oh, how wrong she was. He didn't just stand a chance. He had far more than that.
She closed the notebook.
In the centre of the fighting floor, Isaac breathed. He turned, finding no remain to stay in the colosseum any longer.
The east gate was open. He walked toward it.
Leaving the audience behind, he exited the colosseum.
The corridor outside was booming with people as they flooded out of the colosseum upon the conclusion having been reached. They noticed him and opened a way that he could walk through, rather respectfully.
Without a word, he walked through. His eyes caught onto a familiar face.
The beautiful girl, Irine, was present.
Her eyes were different from the morning. The boredom wasn't present in them the way it had been.
"You are different," she whispered.
Without spending an ounce of attention on her, Isaac kept walking, tired.
Irine watched him go with an expression that was not the expression of someone whose interest had been declined. It was the expression of someone whose interest had been confirmed.
...
The next morning, the official academy board had a new posting.
The posting explained that the Mechanism Room's assessment was meant for the class designation.
Below, the second-year class designation results were presented in the standard institutional format.
A significant number of students—ranging from first-year to fourth-year—gathered around the posting.
They read.
Higher Class:
Rank 1: Silas Fulgur. S-rank: [Lightning Spear].
Rank 2: Isaac Nameless. F-rank: [Condensation].
The corridor produced its noise—the specific sound of hundreds of students processing two lines that required more revision than a list of names usually required.
Rank 2.
F-rank: [Condensation] at rank 2.
Some even slapped their faces, wondering if they were dreaming.
At the board's far right edge, slightly removed from the densest cluster of students, Caspian stood.
He had arrived before the crowd. He had read the list before the majority. He was still there when it was full, full of thought.
He was looking at rank 2.
Isaac Nameless. F-rank: [Condensation].
His expression was composed. It was always composed—even upon the victory of Isaac against Silas Fulgur.
Or so everyone thought.
Others are just... dry.
He had watched the glass shatter yesterday.
He was looking at rank 2 now.
"Well, Isaac..."
Caspian eventually formed a smile.
"It looks like you managed to surprise me... well done."
However, that smile… appeared a tad forced.
Outside, the Academy went about its morning.