The duel had already started long ago, and yet neither had made a single move to attack one another.
Two students stood in the centre of the arena, facing each other, one with a weapon drawn and mana quietly circulating, and still… nothing happened.
From the stands, the first-years shifted in their seats, their early excitement slowly turning into puzzled murmurs.
This was supposed to be a duel, spells flying, weapons clashing, someone getting sent flying across the arena.
Instead, it looked more like two statues staring at each other.
Even the teaching assistants posted nearby exchanged uncertain glances.
"What are they doing?" someone whispered.
"Stalling? No, Carlen wouldn't need to stall…"
"Is Soren Arden scared? He challenged a Rank 5, didn't he?"
The whispers rose and fell, but inside the arena itself, the world felt strangely quiet.
Soren could feel all of it, every gaze, every expectation, every assumption, pressing against his back.
He kept his breathing steady by force, fingers tightening slightly around the handle of his handaxe.
Across from him, Carlen Frenun watched him calmly, arms loose at his sides, posture relaxed in a way that only came with overwhelming confidence.
Then Carlen nodded, a small, decisive movement.
"Very well," he said, voice steady. "I'll help you, but it's up to you to pay attention."
Soren blinked, caught off guard by the use of the word "help" in the middle of a duel, but the confusion only lasted a second.
The moment he noticed Carlen beginning to form a magic circle, his focus snapped into place.
'He's really going to show me in the middle of a match…?'
Mana gathered around Carlen's hand, visible even to Soren's naked eye as a faint distortion in the air.
Lines of light began to sketch themselves into the shape of a circle.
When the circle had fully formed in his palm, Carlen looked at Soren and casually asked a question.
"How long have you been learning magic?"
"About three months."
The answer slipped out before he could overthink it.
Soren didn't know how long the original Soren had studied magic for, but he still remembered the status window from right after he transmigrated.
The pitiful numbers, the lack of depth in his skills, it had all spoken to the same thing.
The previous Soren hadn't had much training at all.
"So, since you entered the academy? That makes this easier then," Carlen said.
He raised his palm a little higher, keeping it within Soren's line of sight.
"As you can see, I've formed a magic circle in my palm. This is what Stellaris Academy teaches students, too, correct?"
Soren nodded.
"Yes."
A basic circle, cleanly drawn, held perfectly stable in Carlen's hand.
The kind every student was supposed to learn.
"So does that mean magic circles can only be formed in the palm?"
"No."
He answered without hesitation.
He knew full well that by the third year, palm circles were almost entirely extinct among the talented students.
In the story, truly skilled magicians spread circles around them, beneath them, above their targets.
The palm was just a starting point.
"Then how exactly do you form a magic circle elsewhere, Soren Arden?"
Soren's mouth opened, then closed again.
"...I don't know."
It was subjects like this where his otherworldly knowledge became useless.
Vague explanations and cool visuals weren't enough to teach him the actual method.
The game hadn't needed to explain the mechanics in detail, so it never had.
Honestly, Soren didn't even fully understand how he created a magic circle in his palm now.
It was mostly intuition, muscle memory that didn't really belong to him, supported by the presence of the status window.
Instead of chastising him, Carlen simply nodded, as if that were the answer he had expected.
"Of course you don't. If you did, you wouldn't be in class F." His tone wasn't mocking, just matter-of-fact. "Now pay attention."
Shatter—
Carlen crushed the magic circle in his hand.
The orderly lines of light fractured and dispersed like shards of glass, fading into the air.
Then he began forming a new one.
This time, however, it was different.
Instead of sitting in his palm, the spell started forming in the air above it, suspended without any physical support.
Soren watched in silence, then in awe, as the sight unfolded before him.
'So this is what Lilly meant…'
– If you fight someone a lot stronger than you, even if it's over quickly, you can still learn something from being the one standing before them.
He had heard the words then.
Now he understood them.
Mana in the air began to flow, drawn to a single point above Carlen's hand.
It gathered slowly but steadily, the thin threads converging into a pale blue ring of light.
The circular pattern thickened, deepened, and began to rotate faintly as more mana filtered into it.
Ordinarily, mana was invisible to the naked eye.
It was only when strong spells or mana enhancement came into play that it became visible like this, luminous, ethereal, and a little terrifying.
This was real magic.
Not the weak, basic spells Soren flung out without much thought.
Not the crude ignition sparks or shallow jolts of electricity that he spammed to raise his proficiency.
What Carlen was assembling was an intermediate magic circle.
And it wasn't just the rank of the spell that set it apart.
He was creating the circle away from his body, without directly relying on the support of his own magic circuit.
He was anchoring it in the air itself.
Soren narrowed his eyes and focused, forcing himself to track every detail he could catch.
From the invisible currents of mana feeding into the point in the air, to the structure of the circle that formed, to the subtle adjustments in Carlen's expression and breathing, he tried to memorise it all.
His gaze moved from the pattern in the air, to Carlen's palm, to the tiny changes in the ambient mana.
He knew that even if he memorised every line, every movement, it wouldn't automatically mean he could replicate it.
But he refused to waste the opportunity.
By the time the spell finally completed, beads of sweat were visible on Carlen's forehead.
The circle spun lazily in the air, stable and controlled.
Carlen opened his eyes and turned his attention back to Soren.
"So," he asked, "how did I do it?"
'How…?'
Soren frowned slightly.
He understood pieces of what Carlen had done, the gathering of surrounding mana, the focus, the way the circle wasn't directly tied to his physical body, but fitting those pieces into a full, coherent explanation was another matter entirely.
Intermediate magic was still far out of his reach, and creating a circle away from his body raised more questions than he had answers for.
He thought back to the sensation he had felt earlier, when the mana in the air had shifted direction for a moment.
"Did you use the surrounding mana to form the circle away from your magic circuits?" Soren asked, cautiously.
In response, Carlen smiled.
"Close. I used the surrounding mana to stabilise the circle, then inserted my own mana to complete the spell."
He tilted his head slightly, as if genuinely impressed.
"Well done, though. You must've made it into Stellaris Academy using your brain."
Snap—
He clicked his fingers, and the glowing circle shattered into fragments of light that dissolved into nothing.
"What I just did is far above your level, right?"
Soren nodded.
"Thought so. How about I lower the level a bit and see if you can keep up?"
There was no mockery in his voice. If anything, he sounded interested.
Once again, Carlen closed his eyes.
Soren realised that this had become a lesson more than a duel.
The teaching assistants at the edge of the arena looked lost, but no one interrupted.
As long as both combatants were still within bounds, the match was technically ongoing.
Carlen's breathing slowed, his posture steady as he began forming a new magic circle.
This time, unlike before, the circle did not appear in the air.
Instead, mana gathered lower, sinking, until…
A faint pattern flickered into existence at the bottom of his foot, clinging to the sole like a luminous seal.
The magic circle was stuck to the ground beneath his left foot.
.
[Unique Skill [???] is showing signs of awakening.]
.
'What?'
Soren's left pupil became translucent, the colour draining from it.
And this time, he saw it.
He saw the entire process from start to finish.
He saw Carlen's mana gather in his heart.
He saw the magic circuit inside Carlen's body awaken, like a network of glowing lines branching through his limbs.
He saw the mana flood into that circuit, then get pushed down, down, down toward Carlen's left foot, flowing through channels that looked like rivers of light.
Then he saw the magic circle form at the end of that path, etched in mana rather than ink.
Through all of this, Soren finally understood, truly understood, how magic circles were formed.
Not as theory.
Not as vague game knowledge.
But as a real process playing out in front of him.
The moment the process ended, Soren's left eye returned to normal, colour flooding back in an instant.
Then a searing pain lanced through his skull.
"Aghh–! Shit! Grrrgghhh–!"
He clutched his eye and dropped into a crouch, as though someone had driven a hot needle straight through his socket and out the back of his head.
'What the hell is going on?'
He could barely think through the pain.
His vision wavered at the edges, a black vignette threatening to swallow everything.
"Soren Arden?"
Carlen's voice reached him, edged with confusion.
"Give me… a second…"
Soren gritted out. Then, through clenched teeth, he forced the incantation out.
"Stitch thy flesh, I end thy agony. 「Heal」"
Warm light gathered around his hand and flowed into his eye.
The pain dulled from a stabbing burn to a deep, throbbing ache.
Sweat trickled down his neck as his breathing slowly steadied.
Once the worst of it had eased, he let out a long breath and pushed himself back to his feet.
"Sorry," he said. "I'm not sure what happened."
Carlen watched him for a beat longer, as if weighing whether Soren was about to collapse.
"Were you able to catch what I did?" he asked.
"Yes… somehow."
Soren still couldn't wrap his head around what had just occurred.
He had been watching Carlen cast a spell when, out of nowhere, his hidden unique skill had flared to life.
For a brief moment, he had been able to see the flow of mana inside someone else's body and circuits, as clearly as if someone had drawn it on a board.
Then, once the process ended, it felt as if his left eyeball had exploded.
It took a couple of minutes, long, uneven breaths and the lingering sting behind his eye, before Soren felt like he had returned to something close to normal.
Carlen didn't rush him.
He simply stood there, arms relaxed again, waiting with the unshakeable patience of someone who didn't feel threatened in the least.
"Do you want to give it a shot?" he asked at last.
His tone was almost casual, but there was a quiet expectation under it.
"Sure," Soren replied. "I'll try."
He closed his eyes.
He technically didn't need to, he had [Concentration], after all, but this time he wanted no distractions.
If he was going to attempt this, he needed every bit of focus he could gather.
'First, gather the mana…'
It was the first time he had truly paid attention to the mana inside his own body.
Until now, whether because of his body's prior experience or the subtle assistance of the status window, he had been able to cast from his palm without much difficulty.
The process had been automatic, like pressing a skill button in a game.
This time was different.
He had to watch the mana, guide it, force it into a path it wasn't used to taking.
He gathered mana near his heart, feeling the faint pressure there as it pooled.
Then he activated his magic circuits.
These circuits were the core of every magician and warrior, the internal pathways that allowed a person to channel mana for spells or enhancement.
They ran throughout the entire body like invisible veins, usually unnoticed until someone tried to use them deliberately.
As the mana spread through those circuits, it instinctively tried to run towards his right palm, the place it was most used to going, the route of least resistance.
This time, Soren stopped it.
He cut off the circuits in his right arm, blocking the flow.
Pins and needles shot through his limb, his arm going faintly limp for a moment as he denied the mana its usual route.
He ignored it and forced the mana down instead, redirecting it through his torso, past his hip, and into his left leg.
Slowly but surely, the mana obeyed.
It pushed downward, even as it repeatedly tried to surge back toward familiar channels.
Every time it tried to retreat, he shoved it back into line.
Down.
Further.
Further.
Until, at last, it settled near his left foot.
A faint light flickered beneath his sole for a split second, then vanished.
'I guess I can't do it yet…'
Soren opened his eyes.
He had tried to mimic the intermediate spell Carlen had used earlier, aiming for the same kind of structure, the same level of refinement.
The magic circle had dissolved before its shape even stabilised.
Although he couldn't fully explain why the spell had failed, one thing was now clear.
It wasn't enough to simply memorise a magic circle's pattern.
That had always been the limit of his first unique skill: copy the shape, repeat it, rely on it.
This was different.
He had reached the boundary of what memory alone could offer him.
But strangely, he didn't feel frustrated.
No shame, no self-hatred, no bitter voice telling him he was useless.
Instead, his mind was filled with something else entirely.
'Then I just have to start from where I actually am.'
He closed his eyes again.
Once more, he gathered the mana within his body, following the same route, heart, circuits, down past his arm into his leg, but this time, he changed the spell he was trying to form.
No intermediate structure.
No forced imitation.
He aimed for something simpler.
Something at his level.
Woooonggg—!
A soft vibration rang out.
A light green magic circle blossomed beneath his foot, lines of mana tracing themselves into a clean, simple pattern on the heel of his boot.
He had done it.
He had created a magic circle somewhere other than his palm.
Soren opened his eyes, his vision swimming slightly.
Sweat clung to his skin, his clothes sticking uncomfortably to his back.
And yet he grinned.
It was the first time since transmigrating that he had truly felt proud of himself.
He had done something that anyone else at his level would struggle with.
Not because the system told him to.
Not because of some predetermined script.
Because he had learned it.
Here.
Now.
"Wow…" Carlen breathed. "Well done."
It was a small phrase, almost offhand, but to Soren it landed with surprising weight.
"Thank you, Carlen."
"It was nothing," Carlen replied with a slight smile, though his eyes still held that measuring, appraising light.
The crowd in the stands didn't quite understand what they had just witnessed.
From their perspective, two students had stood still, formed a few glowing circles, and then stopped again.
Confused murmurs rippled through the arena.
Soren ignored them.
He turned toward the teaching assistant overseeing their match.
"I forfeit."
The assistant, who had been frozen halfway between intervening and watching, jolted.
"R-right. Match concluded. Winner: Carlen Frenun!"
[Carlen Frenun wins!]
————「❤︎」————