Amelia Indras Einhardt POV
"Is that guy fucking insane?"
Felix's shout cut through the noise of the arena like a thrown stone through glass.
Amelia did not look at him.
Her eyes stayed locked on the arena below, following the two figures inside the barrier, the lion beastkin covered in metal, and the too-thin human boy who had just set his own mouth on fire.
Literally.
They had all watched it happen a heartbeat ago.
Soren had launched himself at Ivan, climbed the armour like it was a wall, flipped the visor open, and then…
Cast a spell directly from his tongue.
Amelia could still see it clearly in her head: that faint glow inside his mouth, the way the flames had erupted point-blank into Ivan's face, and then the skin around Soren's own lips blistering in the backlash.
Beside her, Esper had both hands clamped over her mouth, fingers pressed against her glossed lips.
Her usual sparkling expression was nowhere to be seen.
"That looked so painful…" Esper's voice came out muffled and oddly small. "Just watching it hurts…"
Felix wasn't doing much better.
He was hunched forward on the bench, mouth hanging open, eyes wide as if he were watching a horror play rather than a school duel.
Amelia, on the other hand, found her body leaning forward on its own, elbows resting on her knees as she stared down at the arena.
Her tail had gone still.
Her ears twitched with every small movement Soren made.
Her eyes were shining.
The move Soren had just used was something none of them had seen before.
Not in training.
Not in mock duels.
Not even in rumours.
"Did you see the aftermath, though?" Esper asked, finally lowering her hands.
Her expression scrunched up, equal parts awe and discomfort.
"His mouth… just, all around here…"
She gestured vaguely around her lips.
"It was completely burned…"
Amelia gave a small nod.
She had seen more than that.
Her vision had always been sharp; as a beastkin, she could catch small details that others missed.
The twitch of Soren's brow when the magic circle formed on his tongue.
The way he had grabbed at his own mouth as soon as he had landed.
The thin line of tears that had gathered at the corners of his eyes before he forced them back.
Even with divine power healing him, that kind of injury wasn't something you could just shrug off.
"It was bad," Esper continued, tone uncharacteristically flat. "Like, really bad. And he just—cast [Heal], wiped his mouth, and carried on like it was nothing. Seriously, what is his pain tolerance?"
From a distance, Soren always looked fragile.
Thin frame.
Pale skin.
Dark circles buried in the shadows below his eyes.
His uniform never quite sat right on him; the cloak hung too loose, his tie always a bit off, his posture slightly slouched unless he was concentrating.
If you did not know him, it would be easy, too easy, to assume he was weak.
"He was in pain," Amelia corrected quietly.
Two pairs of eyes swung toward her.
Felix blinked.
"Huh?"
"He was hurting. You didn't see it?"
"Didn't look like it." Felix frowned. "He barely flinched."
Amelia's gaze did not leave the arena.
"I saw," she said simply. "His eyebrow. His hands. His eyes. He was in pain. A lot."
There was a short silence.
Then Esper let out a long breath.
"...That makes it worse somehow," she muttered. "He's insane and he has a ridiculous pain tolerance. Wonderful."
"When did he learn to do that…?" Felix murmured, sounding more bewildered than impressed.
As a fellow magician, he looked genuinely lost.
Amelia could feel him trying to piece together everything he knew about spellcasting and failing.
"He learned from Carlen," she replied.
Felix turned his head.
"Carlen just showed him foot circles, didn't he?"
Amelia agreed.
She remembered the sight from the week after the mock duels, Soren on the training grounds, falling, sliding, scraping himself as he tried over and over to anchor magic circles beneath his feet while moving repeatedly.
It had been ugly to watch, yet interesting.
What he had done just now was something entirely different, though.
She lifted a hand and tapped lightly beneath her lower lip.
"Tongue. That part wasn't Carlen."
Felix ran a hand through his hair, ruffling it until strands stuck up at odd angles.
"So he took the concept," Felix muttered, half to himself, "and then thought, 'Why not put a circle on my tongue and shoot a spell out of my mouth?' Is his brain okay?"
"Probably not," Esper said, but there was reluctant admiration in her tone. "That's such a stupid idea. And it worked. I'm so jealous…"
Amelia's lips curved the tiniest bit.
"It's his only advantage," she said.
Both of them looked at her.
"What do you mean?" Esper asked.
"He's weak," Amelia answered bluntly. "Physically. His fire is weak, too. But… his brain is weird. He thinks of stupid ways to use small things. So he can fight."
Felix snorted.
"Even in the first mock duels, he was already doing things like that. Moving while channelling, forcing spells where they shouldn't fit. It was sloppy back then, but now…"
He trailed off, shaking his head.
"He's definitely gotten weirder."
Esper rested her chin on her hand, eyes narrowed thoughtfully as she watched Soren in the arena.
"This is the first time I've seen him fight seriously," she admitted. "Well, as seriously as he can with that body. Is he always like this?"
"Yes," Amelia said.
"Pretty much," Felix added.
Esper huffed.
"But how? You can't just decide to cast from your tongue because it's cool."
Felix shrugged helplessly.
"No clue. I asked him once, during the first mock duel. He wouldn't give me a straight answer. Just smiled and changed the subject."
"That sounds like him," Esper sighed.
"For someone who talks so much, he hardly talks about himself," Felix repeated.
Amelia didn't respond to that.
She knew it was true.
He would complain endlessly about Felix.
Bicker pointlessly with Louise.
Let Esper drag him into nonsense.
Let Amelia herself pull him and do whatever she wanted.
But when it came to things that mattered, why his eyes sometimes went empty, what his nightmares were about, why he flinched at certain words, he just smiled, shrugged, and said nothing.
A shout rose from the other side of the stands, drawing their attention briefly.
Louise's group was making noise again, cheering aggressively every time Soren moved.
Amelia's ears flicked toward it, then away.
"Do you think he'll win?" Esper asked quietly.
Felix leaned forward, elbows on his knees.
"If it were just the ranks, I'd say he's screwed. Sixty-fourth in Martial Studies versus ninety-sixth in Arcane Studies isn't exactly fair. Especially when the sixty-fourth is built like that."
He nodded toward Ivan's hulking form.
"But…? This is usually where you would add one, you know." Esper prompted.
Felix watched Soren, watched the way he slid around the arena, the way he never met force with force, the way he looked like he was always half a step away from disaster but never quite fell into it.
"But this is Soren," Felix finished. "And he's pissed."
Esper chuckled weakly.
"So…?"
"He'll win," Amelia said, cutting in before Felix could answer.
Both of them looked at her again.
Her eyes never left the arena.
Her tail had begun to sway once more, a slow, barely-there motion.
"He will," she repeated calmly.
Felix stared at her profile.
"…You sound sure," he said.
"I am."
It wasn't logic.
By any reasonable measure, Soren should have been outmatched.
The physical abilities mattered.
The armour mattered.
The racial difference mattered.
The skill sets mattered.
And yet…
Every time he had been cornered so far, he had found something else.
Some other angle.
Some other way to twist what he had and force a crack open.
He was not strong.
But he was stubborn.
And strangely, relentlessly creative.
Amelia knew that type of person very well.
"I'm so jealous…" Esper repeated, but softer this time, eyes fixed on Soren with something like hungry curiosity. "I want a weird brain too…"
"Me too, Esper," Felix said, letting out a long sigh. "Me too…"
Their voices faded into the background as Amelia focused once more on the arena below, watching the way Ivan's mana began to gather like a storm around his body.
Her fingers curled slightly on her knees.
'Don't lose,' she thought, eyes narrowing.
'You said you wouldn't lose.'
••✦ ♡ ✦•••
Ivan Olfram POV
"Shit…"
The word slipped out of Soren's mouth, low and bitter, but Ivan barely heard it over the ringing in his own ears.
Luckily, his relic had negated the majority of the blow, but his vision was still a little blurred from the flash of light and heat.
The world had turned white for a second when the flames blasted into his face; even now, every blink felt raw.
But he was standing.
That was all that mattered.
He could see enough to know the important things:
The barrier was still up.
The duel hadn't been called off.
Soren was still there, a few steps away, clutching at his mouth and healing himself like an idiot.
Mana gathered around Ivan's body, thick enough that even those in the stands would be able to see it.
It rose like invisible steam from his skin, clinging to his limbs, then tightening, condensing.
Mana Enhancement.
"You…" Ivan's voice scraped out of his throat, rough and hoarse. "What is wrong with you?"
He wasn't sure which part he was asking about.
The part where Soren had launched himself at Ivan, grabbed his visor and flipped it up in the middle of a duel.
The part where the boy had cast a spell from his tongue.
Or the part where he had burned his own mouth to do it, then treated the injury like an inconvenience.
"Huh?" Soren looked back at him, eyes wide, expression genuinely confused.
That only made Ivan angrier.
'Of course he doesn't get it,' he thought. 'Humans never do.'
They never understood what it meant to fear properly.
To hold yourself above others.
To carry a name that meant something.
He could still feel it, that instant, cold spike that had shot through his chest when the visor flipped up and that glowing mouth was suddenly inches from his face.
Fear.
He had felt fear.
Because of a human.
Because of that human.
His hands tightened on the hilt of his bastard sword.
The leather of the grip bit into his palms.
'Unacceptable.'
Step…
He took a single step forward.
Even that small movement sent a faint tremor up through the ground.
With Mana Enhancement feeding into his muscles, each step carried weight, purpose, and pressure.
The mana around him thickened further, clinging to his frame like a second, invisible suit of armour.
Right now, only one thing mattered.
Him.
His gaze locked onto Soren.
The boy had finished healing his mouth and was watching Ivan warily, Labrys resting loosely in his hand.
There were faint burn marks around his lips, already fading, but Ivan could not forget how bad they had looked seconds ago.
He should have been out of the fight.
Instead, he had almost taken Ivan down with him.
'What is wrong with you?' Ivan repeated inwardly, but this time it wasn't confusion.
It was disgust, fear.
'When did I start feeling fear… toward that?'
He was a lion beastkin.
A scion of the Olfram family.
Descendant of a line that had once made monsters flee with a single roar.
From the moment he could stand on his own two feet, his father's voice had carved those truths into his bones.
– Ivan, remember this. Never let any of those lowly creatures look down on us.
His father's words echoed through his mind, clear as if he were standing right beside him.
– Dwarves, who are only good at tinkering. Elves, who look down on everything, blinded by their own arrogance. Demons, who taint whatever they touch.
The mana around him flared hotter.
– And humans… the worst of them all. Greedy and gluttonous, yet weak. Lustful and prideful, yet stupid. They ruin everything they come into contact with. Never bow your head to them. Never forget that we lions must stand above them if we are to regain our former glory.
He had heard those lines so many times growing up that they had ceased to sound like words and become something closer to instinct.
He had believed them.
He still believed them.
And yet…
A human had made him afraid.
A human had forced him to rely on the relic his father had lent him, earrings hanging beneath his helmet that had flared at the last second, dulling the worst of the flames that should have ruined his face.
For a moment back there, with that boy clinging to him like a parasite and fire blooming at point-blank range, Ivan had thought…
'If this hits properly, I'll lose.'
The memory made his stomach churn.
'Feeling fear toward a human… what a disgrace.'
His lip curled behind the visor.
'I'll kill him.'
The thought came naturally, cleanly, without hesitation.
Not as a dramatic vow.
Not as a threat to shout.
Just a simple conclusion.
He no longer cared about the original reason he had challenged Soren.
He no longer cared about the Princess watching from the stands, or how his actions would look to the academy, or the whispers of other nobles.
All of that was still there, simmering below the surface, but it was no longer the main fuel.
Now the hatred itself was burning.
Hatred for the way Soren always seemed to stand among people he had no right to stand beside.
Hatred for the way the Princess leaned against him so casually, as if trusting him were natural.
Hatred for how relaxed he seemed even now, despite his size, despite his rank, despite his background.
Hatred for the fear Ivan had felt earlier, sharp and cold like a knife in the ribs.
'Both the Princess… and a lowly creature like him. I'll kill them both'
He lifted his head, eyes narrowing inside his helmet as he stared straight at Soren.
If Soren could have seen the look in his eyes through the visor, he would have realised it immediately.
This was no longer a duel between two students.
It was a predator who had decided its prey needed to be broken.
Step…
The sound of his boots against the arena floor seemed louder than it should have been.
Each step felt deliberate, the mana enhancement sinking deeper into his muscles with every movement.
The pressure in the air grew heavier, like a storm rolling slowly across the sky.
Ivan took his second step since the duel had begun.
Then his third.
And slowly, methodically, he began to advance.
————「❤︎」————