Soren blinked, caught off guard by how open she sounded, then he nodded, because refusing would only make her shut down, and he didn't want that.
"Sure, as long as you're comfortable."
Olivia let out a nervous little laugh, then she hugged her knees tighter, curling into herself as she spoke, words spilling out faster once she started, like she had been holding them in for years.
"Uhm… I won't say too much since we're still in the exam, but… there's this boy," she began, cheeks still pink. "He lived in the same village as me, and we've been together for as long as I can remember."
Her voice went softer, and the cheerfulness shifted into something tender.
"When we were kids, I was… a bit chubbier," she admitted, wincing as if the memory still stung. "I got bullied a lot. And…," she paused, flushing deeper, then forced herself to continue, "Alex was the one who saved me. He stood up for me when nobody else would. Not even my parents."
Soren stayed quiet, letting her speak, letting her have the space.
"Ever since then, we've never been apart. We even came to the academy together…" Olivia continued, eyes shining now.
'Ah.'
Soren felt his chest do something annoying and soft.
He had always been team Olivia in every shipping debate, even when he had been just a player looking at sprites and dialogue boxes, because there was something almost unfair about how earnest she was, like she had been designed specifically to make people protective.
Now, in person, it was worse.
The sheer destructive power of the girl sitting in front of him was unreal, and he could feel his own face warming at the purity of it, at the simplicity, and at the fact that she was talking about love like it was something safe.
And that was exactly why he couldn't support the idea of Alex building some ridiculous harem, no matter how much this world's laws tried to normalise it, because Olivia wasn't built for that kind of pain.
Soren let out a quiet breath, then smiled at her sincerely.
"I hope things work out between you two," he said, voice gentle. "And… if you ever need advice, you can come to me."
He almost regretted it the moment the words left his mouth, because it sounded like he was inviting himself into something personal, but he didn't mean it that way; he meant it the way he had meant the canteen, the way he had meant the wrist-grab, a simple offer of support because she didn't have many people besides Alex.
Olivia lifted her bright red face from her knees and beamed at him, grin wide enough to make her whole expression glow.
"Hehe… thank you, Soren," she said, then she looked shyly pleased, as if she had just been handed something precious. "You know, I've always wanted to have girl talk like this."
"Huh?"
"I've always struggled to make friends," Olivia admitted, voice softer, and her smile turned bashful. "So this is the first time I've really talked about my feelings…"
Soren's mouth opened automatically, the correction already forming, because he was not a girl, and he knew from the web novels he had read back on Earth that letting such misunderstandings linger was dangerous, but…
"Soren—!"
Olivia's expression snapped from warm embarrassment to alarm, eyes locking on something behind him, pupils shrinking.
Soren's blood went cold.
He didn't ask what; he just turned.
A figure was already in motion, hurtling toward them with an absurd, terrifying speed, the air itself seeming to distort around the approach.
"Shit!"
Soren moved on pure instinct.
'I don't have time to cast—'
The thought barely formed before he threw himself sideways, boots skidding through dirt, shoulder twisting to protect his head.
The ground where he had been sitting exploded.
Not metaphorically, not dramatically, but literally, dirt and splinters and shattered root spraying outward as a crater punched into the forest floor with enough force to make the trees shudder.
Soren hit the ground hard, pain flaring across his shoulder, then rolled once and scrambled up, eyes wide, chest tight, staring at the gouged earth like it had personally insulted him.
'What the fuck?!'
His breath caught, and for a horrible heartbeat he could only think one thing.
'Wouldn't I have died if that hit me?'
Sweat slid down his spine, cold and slick, as the dust began to clear.
"This is the worst…" he muttered, voice thin, and it wasn't even a joke.
Because standing in the crater, framed by disturbed soil and drifting debris as if she had just landed from the sky, was someone he recognised instantly, even without the bracelet's feed.
Amelia Indras Einhardt.
Ash-grey hair, wolf ears high and alert, a tail that moved with a casual confidence that made Soren's stomach drop, and neon-yellow eyes that seemed to glow against the shadowy green of the forest.
The presence rolling off her wasn't like a strong student; it was like a predator deciding whether to play with its food.
Soren's body reacted before his mind could organise itself, heart pounding so hard it felt like it was trying to claw out of his ribs, fingers tingling with that familiar, awful numbness that came before panic.
Rena Forest had been fear mixed with confusion, pain mixed with survival instinct.
This was cleaner.
This was terror that came from certainty.
"S-Soren…" Olivia whispered beside him, trembling, but she didn't run.
She stayed standing close enough that her sleeve brushed his arm.
"What should we do…?"
For half a second, relief flickered through him, irrational and sharp, because she had stayed.
If it were someone else, they would've bolted the moment Amelia appeared, abandoning him without a thought, but Olivia stood by faithfully, waiting for his direction like he could magically solve this.
'I knew my plan was right,' he thought, a bitter little spark of vindication that immediately got drowned by dread.
Because the problem wasn't loyalty.
The problem was Amelia.
And then she laughed.
"Hehe."
The sound was light, almost delighted, and it made Soren's skin crawl.
"You dodged?" Amelia asked, as if that was the interesting part of this encounter, not the crater, not the fact that she had attacked without warning, but the fact that he had survived the first strike.
Her gaze dragged over him slowly, neon eyes tracking his body with the lazy focus of someone assessing prey, looking for the best place to bite.
Soren swallowed hard.
'Fuck, I'm scared.'
The fear that had gripped him on death's door back in Rena Forest couldn't even compare to this, because back then he had believed there was a chance, a small chance, that he could grit his teeth and crawl out.
Here, he knew exactly what Amelia was.
Rank 1.
A monster in a student's uniform.
And it took every fibre of his being to stop himself from turning around and running, because running from Amelia was like sprinting from a lightning strike.
He forced his brain to work, to scramble for options, to do what it always did when he was trapped, inventory, spells, tricks, anything, but the moment he tried to build a plan, it collapsed.
There wasn't time.
There wasn't distance.
There wasn't a clever angle.
He could throw [Shockwave] and hope the noise distracted her.
He could throw [Gaia] and pretend mud would slow a wolf.
He could put up [Shield] and watch it shatter like glass.
Nothing mattered.
No matter how hard he racked his mind, there wasn't a single idea that didn't end with them on the ground.
Three seconds.
That was all it would take for Amelia to end them if she decided to, and the fact he knew that with such clarity made his throat tighten until breathing felt wrong.
She was a bruiser tank built to dominate, using nothing but her fists and feet to beat her opponents into submission, all with a bright grin on her face.
Even through constant patch notes and meta shifts, Amelia remained relevant all the way until the end of service, even though she was one of the first characters that could be recruited.
And now she was real.
While Soren stood there, trying not to shake, Olivia's voice rose, small but determined, trembling with desperation.
"Uhm… Miss Amelia Einhardt?" she called, trying to sound polite even as fear cracked through every syllable. "Why are you after us? If it's beads you need, we can give them to you…"
Soren's chest twisted.
It wasn't just fear in her voice; it was sacrifice.
She was offering up her entire future allowance, all the little hopes she had just confessed, clothes, makeup, maybe the courage to stand beside Alex looking like she belonged, and she was trading it for survival without hesitation.
Soren wanted to grab her wrist again, to pull her back, to tell her not to do that, not for him, not for this, but he didn't move, because he couldn't move, because Amelia was watching, and any twitch could become an excuse.
"Heh."
Amelia just laughed, like Olivia's offer was cute.
Then, instead of answering Olivia, she looked directly at Soren.
Not past him.
Not around him.
At him.
A wild grin spread across her face, bright and feral, and Soren's stomach dropped so hard he felt nauseous.
"Fight me."
For a heartbeat, the forest seemed to tilt, the words landing like a physical blow.
Soren's thoughts scrambled, useless and frantic, and all he could feel was the sheer, suffocating reality of her presence, the certainty that if he made the wrong move, if he hesitated, if he even blinked at the wrong time, he would be on the ground, and Olivia would be beside him, and the exam would become something else entirely.
'I'm fucked.'
————「❤︎」————