[Rank 96 and 89 of Arcane Studies, come down to the arena.]
"Your turn, little hedgehog, do me proud."
"Shut it, trash."
Soren kept walking anyway, list crumpled in his fist, eyes flicking down out of habit more than worry, the numbers still looking wrong no matter how many times he reread them.
Rank 89 and 83 of Arcane Studies, and Rank 83 of Martial Studies.
He had expected the academy's first mock duels to be dull, to be predictable, to be padded with "safe" matchups for the bottom ranks so the staff could tick boxes and go home, yet the spread on his paper had punched straight through that expectation the moment he had seen it.
Then the explanation slid into place, simple enough that it almost annoyed him for not landing sooner.
'Class E and Class F are basically the same thing.'
The academy liked pretending there was a meaningful gulf between them, liked the neatness of a letter that implied progress, but he had already heard the truth back when the world was still a game.
The "sprouts" bracket wasn't meant to stay separate, it was meant to be shaved down and shoved together, Class F whittled by attrition and humiliation until it could be merged into Class E by the end of the year anyway.
So what did "E" really mean right now?
It meant you were still down at the bottom, just with a few people below you.
It meant the difference was a couple of ranks, not some dramatic leap in skill, and when the duels were being scheduled this early, the pool they were pulling from might as well have been one messy pile.
That was why his list looked strange.
Not because the academy was being especially cruel, but because it wasn't bothering to be delicate at all, it was throwing the lowest students at each other in whatever combinations gave the staff the most useful comparison points before the year chewed half of them up and spat them into the same merged class anyway.
That should have made him tense.
It should have made his stomach knot, should have dragged sweat into his palms the way it used to whenever anything felt uncertain, like his body was already bracing to be punished for existing.
Instead, what he felt was… light.
Not happy, not careless, but light, as if something in him had quietly recalibrated and decided this did not qualify as an emergency.
As if the part of him that used to panic at being cornered had taken one look at a supervised arena with barriers and referees, compared it to Rena Forest and that bright, cheerful timer counting down his death, and refused to waste the fear.
He didn't understand it until he was halfway down the steps to the arena floor, until the sound of distant spells cracking against barriers threaded through the air like harmless fireworks.
Then the answer arrived in a way that wasn't poetic at all.
Rena Forest had ruined him.
Not in the dramatic sense, or in the way people said "ruined" like it was a tragedy, but in the blunt, practical way a near-death experience rewrote his scale for what counted as danger, and what counted as noise.
After a hobgoblin grinning down at him like he was a toy, after a timer ticking in the corner of his vision telling him exactly how long he had left to stay alive, a student duel with a referee felt almost insulting in its safety, like the world was handing him padded gloves and asking him to pretend they were blades.
And the second reason was even simpler, almost cheap.
He had already seen the quest.
He had already seen the difficulty rating.
Not B+.
Not a survival quest.
Just a quest with a C rating that asked him to win his duels.
It was manageable.
Challenging, sure, but the kind of challenge the system thought a first-year could survive if they didn't do anything brainless.
It wasn't that he trusted the system wholeheartedly, he had learned better than that from all of his experience reading novels, but difficulty ratings had a way of drilling straight into the part of his brain that wanted an objective perspective.
He rolled his shoulders as he reached the arena floor, stretched his arms, let mana circulate through his arms with that faint, familiar warmth, and only then lifted his gaze to the stands.
"Wow," he muttered, voice flat with amusement. "Nobody gives a shit about us, huh?"
The seats were full, but the eyes on his arena were just a handful of bored students slouched across the rows.
Most students had their attention split between several duels unfolding at once, heads turning only when something flashed bright enough to catch the eye.
It was as expected.
He scanned lazily anyway, and his eyes snagged on one familiar posture, one familiar silhouette that looked like it belonged in the centre of a stage even when it was sitting still.
Felix waved at him like a proud parent.
Soren's expression didn't change, but he raised his hand and flipped him off with practiced ease, earning an offended gasp from somewhere nearby, a couple of whispered laughs, and Felix's delighted grin widening as if he had just been given a gift.
Only then did Soren turn fully to his opponent.
Doron Inenklees stood a few paces away, and Soren had to stop himself from squinting, because it was genuinely difficult to tell whether the boy was real or a caricature someone had dragged out of a children's play.
He looked noble in the loudest possible way, hair a glossy brown slicked neatly back as if even sweat would be an insult to his lineage, uniform pristine, posture stiff with the kind of rehearsed pride that came from being told your name mattered long before you had ever done anything worth remembering.
He even held his chin at an angle that suggested he had practised it in a mirror.
"Tsk," Doron clicked his tongue, gaze sweeping over Soren like he was inspecting a stain. "How unrefined. No wonder you have no friends besides that disgusting filth you always hang around."
Soren stared at him.
Not angry, not even irritated, just… confused.
'Is he seriously doing this?'
"Do not look at me with that vacant expression," Doron continued, voice rising, as if volume could replace substance. "I will not be disrespected by some border mutt who doesn't even understand the basics of decorum, I am Doron Inenklees of House Inenklees, and you will address me with—"
His words went in one ear and out the other, but Soren's opponent continued, not aware that not a soul was paying attention to his less-than-subtle bragging.
"Kekeke," Doron added abruptly, because apparently even his laugh had to be performed. "What's wrong? Too scared to talk back? Am I that terrifying?"
Soren pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes for a moment, not because he was overwhelmed, but because the second-hand embarrassment was physically trying to crawl up his throat.
'Oh my god. People like this exist. They actually exist.'
He had seen it in fiction, exaggerated nobles with inflated egos, puffed-up threats, the kind of side character you were meant to enjoy knocking down for a few quick points of satisfaction, but seeing it play out with a real person standing in front of him made it feel less funny and more… uncomfortable, like hearing someone unironically recite lines they had stolen from a story and expecting the world to clap.
"Give up now, and I might go easy on you. I'm generous when I'm victorious," Doron said, leaning forward slightly, mouth curling as if he had just offered charity.
Soren opened his eyes.
He exhaled once, slow, and he felt it again, that strange lack of anxiety, the way his mind refused to fully spike, the way the forest sat behind his ribs like a stone reminder, heavy enough that nothing in this arena could shove it aside.
That did not mean he felt nothing.
It just meant the fear had been replaced with something else, something closer to annoyance, closer to practicality, closer to the calm you got when you had already accepted the worst-case scenario once and refused to do it again.
"Listen," he said, tone almost gentle, because he didn't have the energy to match Doron's theatrics, "I don't know where you're pulling your confidence from, but you're only barely in Class E. Maybe tone down the… whatever this is."
Doron froze, like his script had skipped a page.
The words landed harder than Soren intended, not because they were cruel, but because they were factual, and Doron looked like the sort of person who treated facts as optional when they threatened the story he told about himself.
"W-what—!" Doron sputtered, cheeks colouring instantly. "You dare mock me? Do you have any idea who I am?!"
"Not a clue."
"You—!!!"
"Please stop," Soren added, and this time it wasn't even provocation, it was a sincere request. "It's embarrassing."
Doron's nostrils flared.
His fingers twitched at his side like he wanted to point, to accuse, to demand witnesses.
Soren almost felt bad, and then Doron opened his mouth again and the feeling died on the spot.
[Mock duel between Soren Arden and Doron Inenklees begins.]
The TA's voice echoed through the arena, the barrier shimmered faintly as it stabilised around the match, and Soren moved immediately, stepping back and widening the distance between them because that was what you did when you weren't interested in being surprised.
He didn't rush.
There was no reason to.
Rena Forest had taught him to be cautious.
That he didn't need to rush, that he could take his time so long as he came out on top in the end.
Sure, he had failed to put that into practice back then, but there was no way someone like Doron was going to push his emotions as far as the demon back then did.
But it seemed that Doron had never learned a similar lesson as he didn't observe; instead, he performed.
A magic circle flared to life in his palm, dark blue, and the spell shot out with a sharp crack.
A compressed wave of water pushed across the floor.
Soren sidestepped it easily, barely shifting his footing, the spray brushing his sleeve and dying against the barrier.
Another circle formed.
Another spell followed.
Then another.
Doron kept firing, one after the other, as if quantity could compensate for everything else, and the longer it went on, the more Soren's brows drew together despite himself.
Something felt off.
Not in the "he's hiding something" way.
But in the "what is he doing" way.
Nearly a full minute passed, and Doron had fired only four spells, all basic magic, all with proficiency that didn't look much higher than Soren's, and the worst part was the circles themselves.
Their structure were sloppy at the edges, lines wobbling as if Doron was forcing them into shape through sheer spite rather than control, mana output uneven, the spells arriving not as clean, decisive attacks but as lurching bursts that lost cohesion halfway through.
There were no feints.
No attempt to herd Soren, to cut off angles, to pressure him into mistakes.
Just angry casting and the hope that one of them would land.
Soren stood there and stared, because for a moment his brain refused to accept it.
'Hello? What?'
His shoulders felt loose, his breathing steady, and the mismatch between his expectation and reality was so jarring it almost made him laugh.
Difficulty C?
'Bullshit.'
————「❤︎」————