"You finally opened that mouth of yours!" Julian shouted.
He surged to his feet, charging at Michael like a wild beast. But Michael wasn't having it today. He pivoted, meeting Julian's face with his open palm and hoisting the noble into the air. As Julian squirmed, Michael drove him straight back down.
Slam!
Julian's back hit the stone with a sickening thud.
"You piece of trash!" Julian snarled, scrambling back to his feet.
He loathed the thought of wasting his precious mana on a commoner, but being manhandled by one was a humiliation he couldn't endure. Embers gathered rapidly around Julian's fingers, swirling into a blazing sphere of fire within his palm. The sheer density of the mana immediately proved why he was the son of a Duke.
"Burn!" he yelled, hurling the fireball straight at Michael's face.
Out in the open with no cover, Michael instinctively crossed his arms before his face and braced for the impact. His heart hammered against his ribs. 'Too fast... fuck, fuck, fuck!' he thought as the air around him reached a blistering temperature.
Boom!
An explosion of orange flames engulfed Michael and the surrounding area. The crowd gasped—not out of pity for Michael, whose life was worth less than a copper tor to them, but at the sheer intensity of Julian's magic. With so little effort, the Duke's son had unleashed a strike of terrifying power.
As the smoke cleared, Michael's body lay on the scorched ground, covered in seared marks. Julian glanced toward the spectators, his eyes darting away as if the entire encounter were beneath him. He turned his back and walked away, considering the fight an embarrassment to his status.
Everyone expected Michael to be charred blacker than a burnt tree. But to their surprise, as the soot settled, the burns he had received appeared remarkably minor.
"Someone call the faculty! Get this trash to the infirmary before he dies on school grounds and tarnishes the Academy's reputation," a nobleman shouted from the crowd.
◇◇◇
Moments later, Michael came to. To his lack of surprise, no one was by his side—not even the school nurses. He sat up, the raw sting of the burns flaring across his skin. The infirmary staff were top-tier healers with specialized domains, but they wouldn't dare "waste" their power on someone like him.
Michael looked over his body, stunned by his own resilience.
"...I'm okay?" he whispered, his hand gently hovering over the reddened skin. "...But I remember feeling something right before that attack hit me. My body felt a little hotter than usual. ...Is this what my domain does?"
After sitting in the silence for a few minutes, he stood up, grabbed his scorched uniform jacket, and walked out. Luckily, his trousers had survived the blast, or he would have been walking out into the night naked. By the time he reached the school grounds, the students and faculty had cleared out. He was the only one left.
During their time at Spiral Academy, students lived in the dorms, only returning home during major breaks. For Michael, "home" was a town far from the capital city of Drakemire. During his second year, he had received news of the death of the old man who raised him. Since then, he only returned to pay his respects at the grave.
But this was it. His time at the Spiral Academy of Magic was officially over.
He made his way to the commoner dorms—the "Slave Shack," as he called it, due to its crumbling infrastructure and peeling paint. He grabbed his backpack, which held the only three sets of clothes he owned. He was poor even by commoner standards, but he took a small bit of satisfaction in keeping the uniform, even if it was half-burnt.
He slung the pack over his shoulder and stood in the doorway, looking back at the cramped, dingy room.
'So this is it...' He let out one last, long breath, tasting the familiar air of the academy for the final time. It wasn't sadness that he felt, just a quiet, heavy finality.
"Time to leave, I guess."
The sun had long since set, leaving the moon and stars to light the sky. As he stepped outside the Academy gates, he looked to his left, then his right, and finally settled his gaze on the road ahead.
"Where to now? I can't go back home—there's nothing waiting for me there." He adjusted his strap and looked toward the horizon. "I guess I'll just go with the flow."
He took his first step forward and began walking north into the cool night air.
A/N: Thank you for reading BoundlessKnight, remember to add it to your library and don't forget to leave a power stone or 2
•Tors - are coins e.g 1 copper tor = 1 copper coin.
-Copper tor = 0.01$
-Silver tor = 1.00$
-Gold tor = 100$