Soren leaned back in his chair until it gave a soft, tired creak, then stretched with both arms over his head, forcing stiff muscles to uncoil one by one, his shoulders popping in a way that made him wince more than it should have.
"It's finally over…" he muttered, eyes dropping to the paper still on his desk as if it might lunge at him if he looked away for too long.
For the past three days, his life had narrowed into ink, paper, cramped fingers, and the dry scratch of pens across desks, the written portion of the midterms eating almost every waking hour and leaving him drained in a way that felt nothing like running out of stamina, more like someone had scooped his thoughts out with a spoon and told him to keep going anyway.
'Thankfully, it was pretty easy.'
Almost insultingly so.
With perfect recall and a week and a half of routine drilled into him beforehand, it had been less a test and more a slow endurance grind against boredom, posture, and the constant need to keep his expression neutral while other students around him acted like the exam hall was a battlefield.
'If I had to guess…'
His gaze unfocused on the final page, words blurring into shapes.
'I probably placed somewhere in the top ten.'
The realisation didn't bring satisfaction, not even the thin, petty kind.
It only irritated him.
"Ugh… top ten…"
"Soren Arden."
The sharp voice cracked through his thoughts like a ruler against a desk.
"If you speak one more time, you will be forced to leave the exam hall, and your score will be recorded as zero."
Soren straightened so quickly it made the chair legs scrape, then he froze, jaw tightening as he forced himself into stillness.
"Sorry."
The examiner's glare pinned him for several seconds longer, long enough for heat to crawl up Soren's neck, then the man turned away as if Soren had already stopped existing.
Soren exhaled through his nose and rubbed his face with one hand, fingers dragging over his eyes.
Of course.
Of course the quest didn't care about the written exam at all.
Three days of effort, careful answers, the sheer advantage of remembering every page he had read and every lecture he had sat through, and none of it mattered for what actually counted, not when the practical was the part that would decide whether the quest paid out and whether he ended up with a target painted neatly between his shoulder blades.
He still had yet to come up with a decent plan for the practical exam.
That fact sat in his chest like a dull weight that refused to shift no matter how many times he tried to breathe around it.
Ideas had come and gone in loops over the last few days, and every time he tried to commit to one, it fell apart the moment he pictured the people involved, the kinds of students who treated "midterm practical" like an excuse to legally beat someone into the ground.
Hide and wait it out?
Until the barrier shrank and forced him into someone else's path.
Ambush weaker students?
Assuming he found anyone weaker than him, and assuming they didn't have friends, or pride, or a better spell than his.
Collect beads early and run?
Until his name hit the broadcast list and turned him into an objective.
Wait until late and scavenge?
Until he was the one being scavenged.
Eventually, every line of thought led back to the same dead end, the quiet certainty that if he was alone, then sooner or later he would lose, because he always lost when it mattered, because he never seemed to be the one who got to have the easy answer.
All but one idea.
The single, barely workable plan hinged on cooperation.
— Wanna team up for the midterms?
— Nah. I'm not that bothered about the results, sorry.
Felix's response replayed in his head with infuriating ease, too casual, too light, like the practical was a fun afternoon and not a battle royale with shrinking space and a leaderboard designed to bait the confident into hunting the visible.
Soren couldn't even blame him.
Midterms at Stellaris Academy weren't treated like a big deal.
Rankings shifted over years, not weeks, and most students saw the practical as controlled sparring with a bit of spectacle, the kind of thing you laughed about over dinner afterwards.
The only people who cared were perfectionists or lunatics who enjoyed fighting for its own sake.
That meant Felix was out.
And Soren hadn't even bothered asking anyone else.
Not because he couldn't, not because he didn't have time, but because the moment he pictured himself walking up to someone and suggesting a team, he could already feel the look he would get.
The brief confusion followed by polite dismissal, or worse, the kind of smile that meant, sure, team up, and then watch your back.
After the mock duels, his reputation hadn't improved, and the parts that had changed weren't the parts that made people respect him.
If anything, it had sunk lower.
One of the lowest-ranked students in Arcane Studies.
Frail.
Weak.
Unreliable.
Creepy.
He didn't need anyone to say it out loud for him to hear it, because he had watched the way eyes slid past him, the way conversations didn't open around him, the way laughter sharpened whenever his name came up, and even if some of it was exaggerated nonsense, enough of it felt true that it settled into his skin like dirt you couldn't scrub off.
Even if he asked, who would listen?
Even if he tried to sell it as mutually beneficial, why would anyone believe him when he looked like a liability with a pretty face and a bad vibe?
'Seriously… what's the point of an almost maxed-out Charm stat…'
The thought left him more tired than amused, because whatever that number meant, it wasn't translating into people choosing him, not when their choices came with risk.
At this point, all he could do was hope.
Hope that luck, for once, tilted even slightly in his favour during tomorrow's practical, hope that the barrier didn't crush him into a corner too early, hope that the monsters hunting up north stayed busy long enough for him to scrape together something that counted.
••✦ ♡ ✦•••
The Solis Exam Site sat on the outskirts of Stellaris Academy, a massive enclosed stretch of forest and uneven terrain, the entire perimeter wrapped in a shimmering red barrier that looked almost transparent until the light caught it, then it glowed like a warning.
Students gathered near the edge in loose clusters, some laughing too loudly, some stretching, some checking gear or murmuring to friends, the air buzzing with a mix of nervous energy and quiet excitement, as if the idea of getting hurt was thrilling so long as it happened to someone else.
Soren lingered near the back, hands in his pockets, keeping his posture deliberately casual while his eyes drifted, mapping faces and uniforms and ranks the way a prey animal watched for movement in tall grass.
A figure stood elevated on a small platform beside several staff members, and once enough students had gathered, the overseeing professor stepped forward, voice carrying cleanly across the clearing.
"Listen carefully," he said, tone clipped but professional. "The midterm practical examination will run from one p.m. until six p.m. This is a battle royale–style assessment conducted within the Solis Site."
He paused until the general chatter lowered.
"Each participant will be issued an examination bracelet. Mana beads have been distributed throughout the site. Your bracelet will absorb beads upon contact and register your total. The ten highest totals will be displayed on the shared ranking feed."
A few students straightened, interest sharpening.
"Once your name enters the top ten, your location will be broadcast to all participants. You may interpret that as you like," the professor continued evenly, as if he were describing weather rather than a system designed to manufacture conflict. "Beads may be traded voluntarily between students. Any loss incurred through misplaced trust is your responsibility. There will be no intervention for poor judgment."
Soren's jaw tightened slightly.
"Defeating another participant will award you half of the beads currently registered to their bracelet," the professor went on. "Defeat is defined as incapacitation, surrender, or inability to continue. Do not test the limits of the healers assigned to this site. Serious injuries will be treated, but reckless conduct will be recorded."
He lifted a hand, and the red barrier shimmered, drawing eyes.
"Every hour, the barrier will contract. Any participant outside the barrier as it moves will be eliminated immediately. The contraction pattern is not disclosed. Adapt."
The explanation continued for a few more moments, covering the obvious and the ominous in the same calm cadence, then staff began handing out bracelets.
Soren slipped his onto his wrist and stared at it.
Smooth face.
Sleek band.
The way the screen lit when it recognised contact.
'This is… just an Apple Watch.'
Different materials, sure, a faintly metallic sheen that didn't look like steel, and the rune-like etching along the clasp gave it just enough fantasy flair to pretend, but the silhouette was identical, down to the proportions, down to the way it sat against skin.
He pinched the bridge of his nose and fought the urge to laugh.
'What kind of fantasy world is this…'
It was like every time he tried to lean into the escapism of being in another world, something dragged him right back into the mundane, except this version of mundane came with monsters and blood.
Then his attention snagged, abruptly, the way it always did when danger walked into his peripheral vision.
'She's here…'
He knew she would be, since the students from all majors except Academic took the practical together, but knowledge didn't stop the moment of awe when he actually saw her.
Roughly ten metres away stood a wolf beastkin with ash-grey hair, the shade of storm clouds, cut in a way that looked like it had never been styled on purpose, just trimmed when it got in the way, her ears upright and relaxed as if the noise around her barely registered.
Her tail swayed behind her with lazy, controlled rhythm, not nervous, not excited, more like an unconscious metronome keeping time for a body that was never truly at rest.
Amelia Indras Einhardt.
Rank 1 in Martial Studies.
One of the main heroines of ❰The Knight of Stellaris❱.
And one of the primary reasons the quest difficulty was rated A-.
Up close, it was easier to understand why people stared.
Not just because she was pretty, though she was, in a way that felt almost unfair, with sharp cheekbones softened by that beastkin edge, pale skin with the faintest sun-kissed warmth, eyes a neon-yellow that looked half-lidded until you imagined them focused on you, but because she carried power like it was gravity.
Not just physical power, though her build made that obvious even under the academy uniform, with lean muscle in her arms and legs, a loose but balanced posture, weight sitting exactly where it needed to be, but something heavier than that, an overwhelming presence that made Soren feel as if he had stepped too close to a cliff edge and his body had noticed before his mind could.
'She's seriously pretty…'
The thought slipped in uninvited, and unease followed it, because admiring someone like that was the fastest way to forget what they were capable of.
In-game, Amelia was the textbook lazy genius, detached, disinterested, expressionless most of the time.
She didn't have friends, didn't socialise, rarely spoke unless spoken to, and yet she still dominated because talent and obsession did not require conversation.
Until combat.
Then everything changed.
Her eyes lit up.
Her posture sharpened.
And she smiled.
Amelia loved to fight.
She lived for it, and the world might have called it talent, but it was hunger.
To put it nicely, she was a battle junkie.
The one upside to that was that she didn't pay attention to anything that didn't catch her interest, which was precisely why Soren felt a flicker of pity for Alex, because if the exam played out anything like the game, Amelia would start hunting him the moment it began, not out of malice, but because he was the most interesting prey on the map.
As Soren began to look away, a chill crawled up his spine.
Amelia had turned.
Their eyes met.
It was only a second, maybe less, but it was enough to make Soren's stomach drop, the sensation of being seen not as a person, but as something measurable, something assessed.
He tore his gaze away and released a breath he hadn't realised he had been holding.
'Why did she look at me…?'
Amelia was used to attention, people stared at her constantly, so Soren struggled to understand why she would notice his stare in particular, unless it was the same reason he noticed a spider on a wall when most people didn't.
'Let's just hope it's nothing.'
After the final instructions, students were blindfolded and guided away from the gathering point, hands on shoulders, staff voices directing groups like livestock into the trees, and Soren let himself be led, steps measured, forcing his breathing to stay even while the noise of the crowd thinned into forest sounds.
And with that, the midterm practical exam began.
————「❤︎」————