Soren squeezed his eyes shut and braced.
He expected the blow, expected the same brutal certainty every stronger opponent in this world seemed to carry, that horrible instant before impact where his body already knew it was about to be hurt.
He waited for Amelia's fist to cave into him, for ribs to buckle, for his stomach to fold around the force, for pain to burst through him so hard that thought would vanish beneath it.
But nothing hit him.
"My shield is my weapon. My shield is my strength. My Goddess protects me. 「Divine Barrier!」"
Olivia's voice rang out from behind him, clear despite the panic in it, and then the air in front of him warped so violently that he felt it scrape across his face.
Amelia's punch had not stopped.
It had only been interrupted.
The pressure alone tore past his cheek like a blade, splitting skin in a thin hot line, and a heartbeat later, a sheet of silver light surged up between them.
It wasn't anything like his own spell, not that thin, brittle construct that shattered the moment real force touched it.
This one looked denser, fuller, almost weighty, as if the prayer behind it had given it substance rather than shape.
Amelia's fist met it.
The impact did not crack like glass.
It landed with a deep, ugly force that thudded through the clearing and into Soren's chest, a collision so heavy he felt it in his teeth.
The barrier bent inward, silver light rippling across its surface in frantic waves, and fractures spread through it like veins under strained skin, but it did not break.
Soren's eyes snapped open.
For a second, he only stared.
Olivia stood several paces behind him with both hands locked around her staff, the base driven into the ground hard enough to sink into the dirt.
Her legs were trembling.
Her shoulders looked too tight, too rigid.
Sweat had already gathered at her brow and temples, and her jaw was clenched so hard that the muscles in her face had gone taut, but she held the barrier there anyway.
She had stopped Amelia.
The thought hit him so strangely that it almost knocked everything else aside.
'She can already do this?'
A Class B priestess, still a first-year, still someone who usually looked timid enough to apologise to the walls around her, and yet her divine power had just done what his shield could not even dream of doing.
The shock barely had time to settle before instinct shoved the rest of him back into motion.
Soren lunged.
He drove forward through the opening Olivia had bought him and swung the handaxe at Amelia's side, putting all the force he could into the cut.
Amelia stepped back.
Only one step.
Not forced, not driven, not thrown off balance.
She simply yielded the space with a smoothness that should have made the answer obvious, but Soren was too tired, too desperate, and too intent on not dying to care about the distinction.
He had room.
That was enough.
He chased it immediately, bringing the axe around again, then again, refusing to let the gap close.
Each swing fed into the next before his body had properly recovered from the last one, his shoulders already starting to burn, wrists jarring with every abrupt change in direction.
At the same time, pale circles flared to life near his hands and around Amelia's path, spells cast at close range because distance was a luxury she kept stealing from him.
A blast of lightning burst toward her shoulder.
A snap of force drove low toward her legs.
Heat flared bright and brief near her flank.
Amelia evaded all of it.
She didn't even need to move much.
A turn of her torso let the axe pass where her ribs had been.
A slight shift of her footing let the pulse of force rip through empty air.
She tilted her head and a rush of heat flashed by her hair without touching her skin.
When she blocked, it was worse.
It looked easy, casual.
It was the kind of economy that made every frantic movement from Soren feel even more pathetic by comparison.
Still, he kept going.
He could not stop.
That was the only thing he was certain of.
The instant he gave her the initiative back, the fight would go from impossible to finished, so he forced himself onward, boots slipping against churned soil and scattered leaves, lungs dragging for air that never felt like enough.
Slash, step, cast.
Slash, cast, retreat half a pace, then forward again before fear could lock his feet.
His mana felt wrong in his body now.
Olivia's blessing had expanded the pool and sharpened the flow, but that only made the drain harder to judge.
Normally he could feel his remaining mana in rough, instinctive terms, a private measure built from repetition and caution, but now that sense had become blurred.
Every spell left him wondering whether he still had enough for the next one, whether he was spending too much too fast, whether the answer even mattered when Amelia still had not taken him seriously.
His breaths were turning ragged.
His arms were growing heavier.
His palms were slick around the axe handle, and every failed exchange fed that bitter, ugly pressure in his chest.
It still wasn't enough.
Of course it wasn't enough.
"Hm… let's see…"
Amelia's voice cut through the exchange without strain, thoughtful in a way that made his stomach twist.
Then her hand shot out.
She caught the handaxe mid-swing.
This time it was not the same playful interception as before.
Her grip tightened around the head of the axe and the force ran straight through the haft into Soren's hands so violently that his fingers nearly opened on instinct.
His shoulders jerked.
The entire weapon wrenched sideways, dragging his balance with it, and for one sick second he understood with complete clarity that if he tried to contest her strength directly, she would rip the axe away and likely tear something in the process.
So, he let go at once.
The weapon slipped from his grasp and he threw himself backwards, forcing mana into a circle as he moved.
"「Breeze」."
Wind burst in front of him rather than behind, crude but effective, the sudden pressure knocking him further out of Amelia's reach and buying him a few extra strides of distance.
He landed badly, boots skidding over dirt and roots, knees bending hard to absorb the momentum, one hand nearly touching the ground before he caught himself.
When he looked up, Amelia was smiling.
Not broadly.
Not mockingly.
Just a little wider than before, as if something had finally become interesting enough to hold her attention properly.
"…Interesting."
The word settled over him like a warning.
Then she disappeared.
There was no blur to track, no visible acceleration, nothing his eyes could even fail to follow because there was simply nothing there.
One moment Amelia stood ahead of him, silver-grey hair shifting lightly with the aftermath of his spell, and the next the space was empty.
Something in him screamed.
Soren's body tried to react before his mind did.
Mana surged toward another circle.
His lips were already parting to call [Shield].
He never got the spell out.
Amelia's fist drove into his stomach from the side with a force so obscene it didn't feel like a punch at first.
It felt like something large and fast had passed through him, compressing everything inside his body into one blinding instant.
His diaphragm seized.
Air vanished.
Pain tore through his middle and then outward, sharp and deep and wrong, as if his organs had been shoved against his spine all at once.
His body folded around the strike, whether he wanted it to or not.
The next moment he was no longer on his feet.
He flew.
He hit the tree behind him hard enough that the trunk shuddered and bark burst outward against his back and shoulders.
The impact snapped his head backwards, then forward, and he slid down the rough surface in a half-collapse, half-fall, all strength abruptly gone from his legs.
A sound tore out of him, raw and ugly, barely more than a broken gasp.
For a second he couldn't tell which pain was worse.
His stomach felt as if something inside had been pulped.
Meanwhile his back burned where the tree had caught him.
The back of his skull throbbed from the recoil.
And his lungs would not work properly.
Every attempt to breathe snagged halfway, turning into a shudder instead.
He folded forward on instinct, arms tightening across his middle even though touching it made everything worse.
It was brutal in a way that left no room for pride.
Not a duel.
Not an exchange.
A reminder.
A single hit from Amelia had turned him from fighter to wreckage.
A single punch that had not even a trace of mana behind it.
"Soren!"
Olivia's footsteps rushed toward him, uneven and hurried through the undergrowth.
"Don't worry, I'll heal you. Stitch thy flesh, I end thy agony. In the name of Aryn, 「Heal!」"
Silver light poured over him.
It spread warm through his body, sinking first into the ruined knot of pain in his stomach, then outward through his chest and spine and limbs.
The agony loosened with startling speed.
The breath trapped in his lungs eased.
The deep bruised ache receded as if drawn backwards by invisible hands.
Even the tremor in his muscles softened.
By the time the light faded, he could breathe again.
Not perfectly, not without awareness of what had just happened, but enough that the immediate panic of pain had lifted.
Too quickly.
Too cleanly.
Soren lifted his head and forced himself upright just enough to see past Olivia.
Amelia was standing several metres away.
Waiting.
She had not pressed the advantage, had not followed through while he was down, had not even moved to stop Olivia from healing him.
She was just watching.
Smiling.
That expression hit him with a cold familiarity he hated.
Detached amusement, loose posture, no urgency whatsoever, the look of something stronger observing a struggle it had never really considered threatening.
He had seen that kind of gaze before, back in Rena Forest, in the hobgoblin that had loomed over him with casual superiority.
Only this felt worse.
The hobgoblin had been a monster, so its malice had made sense.
Cruelty was at least simple.
Amelia did not look cruel.
She looked engaged, curious, delighted, even.
And somehow that made the humiliation settle deeper.
'She's playing with me.'
The thought landed in him with flat, miserable clarity.
Not because she wanted to humiliate him or because she was dragging this out to be vicious, but because, from her perspective, there was room to play at all.
She was strong enough to let the fight breathe, strong enough to wait for Olivia to heal him, strong enough to let him stand back up and try again, strong enough that none of it endangered her in the slightest.
What did she even want from him at this point?
If this had begun as curiosity, surely she had seen enough already.
She had seen his offensive spells, his improvised combinations, the axe, the hidden circle work, the way he used brief openings and desperation in place of proper skill.
There was no dramatic adaptation happening here, no miraculous growth in the middle of battle.
Alex, maybe, in the game, could justify a drawn-out fight.
Alex became sharper the longer he was pressed.
Alex turned pressure into power.
Soren was just getting worn down.
Even with Olivia's blessings behind him, even with healing, even with the fact that Amelia still was not trying very hard, he was barely surviving a sequence of exchanges she likely considered light exercise.
His gaze dropped to the bracelet on his wrist almost on reflex.
The time had crawled past half-five.
His chest tightened for an entirely different reason.
'The plan's fucked.'
Even if Amelia decided to lose interest and walk away right now, the exam was functionally gone.
Too much time had been burned, and too much movement had been wasted.
The careful idea he had built with Olivia, the one ugly but workable route he had found to a top-ten finish, had been dragged out behind Amelia's amusement and left in pieces.
He had fought this hard, taken that hit, spent that mana, and it still might all amount to nothing.
"All done!" Olivia said, too brightly, the forced cheer in her voice obvious enough that it hurt. "Do you feel better now?"
Soren let out a slow breath and accepted the hand she offered.
"Yeah, thanks."
She pulled him to his feet.
His body obeyed, though there was a heaviness to it now, a deep fatigue that healing had not erased because healing could close damage but not restore what fear, exertion, and repeated bursts of effort had already taken from him.
His limbs felt steadier, yet underneath that steadiness sat exhaustion, like sand packed into the joints.
Amelia looked at him as soon as he straightened.
"Ready?"
That was all.
No explanation.
No grand demand.
No taunting speech.
Just expectation, spoken as naturally as if the answer should obviously be yes.
Soren swallowed irritation.
"Just… wait a second."
She stopped.
Actually stopped.
The fact that she would grant him that much space so casually scraped at him, but if Amelia was willing to wait, then he would use every second of it.
He drew in a breath, focused on the fragment of divine power he had only begun to understand, and spoke the incantation.
"I call to you, goddess, hear my name and help thy champion. 「Minor Blessing of Stamina」."
Nothing happened.
No light gathered around him.
No pulse of divine power.
No response at all.
Soren frowned.
Maybe the phrasing had slipped.
Maybe his concentration had wavered.
Maybe the timing was wrong.
He tried again.
"I call to you, goddess, hear my name and help thy champion. 「Minor Blessing of Stamina」."
Still nothing.
The absence felt almost insulting in its emptiness.
Amelia's expression shifted by a fraction.
Not confusion, exactly, but a sharpened dissatisfaction, as though whatever she had expected from him had not materialised.
Behind him, Olivia hesitated.
"Uhm… Soren?"
He glanced sideways.
"Yeah?"
"Can you use divine power?"
He nodded once.
"A little. I can use some prayers. But for some reason that one isn't working."
Olivia blinked, then hurried to explain.
"That's probably because your body's already at its limit for reinforcement. You can only strengthen it so much before it stops responding properly. Once enough blessings are layered onto the body itself, it won't accept more."
"Oh."
It made immediate, irritating sense.
"But there are other kinds," Olivia added quickly, clearly trying to be helpful before his mood sank any further. "You can bless magic itself, or weapons directly. It's more complicated, though. I'm still learning those, so I can't do them yet."
Soren turned to her properly.
"How does the prayer go?"
She told him, voice fast and quiet, and warned him at once that it probably would not work for him; he listened anyway.
By the time she had finished, he already had a new circle forming at his fingertips, because standing still was beginning to feel unbearable.
His mana reserve was still impossible to read cleanly.
His body was tired.
His plan was in ruins.
And Amelia was waiting with that same bright, intent stillness that made his skin crawl.
He had no real answer for any of it.
Only motion.
Only the next attempt.
Only the thin, stubborn refusal to lie down and lose gracefully.
And then, with Amelia still watching, the one-sided fight began again.
••✦ ♡ ✦•••
Olivia clutched her staff tightly, eyes fixed on the fight in front of her.
At first, she hadn't known what to think of Soren.
A stranger had appeared out of nowhere, spoken gently to her, then offered an alliance so naturally that she had accepted before she fully understood why.
Looking back, Olivia thought the answer was simple.
Soren had felt safe.
Strange, guarded, and hard to read, but safe.
There had been no greed in her, no cruelty, no sense that she wanted anything ugly from Olivia.
That was why Olivia had trusted her.
And now that same girl was fighting Amelia Indras Einhardt.
Olivia knew exactly how absurd that sounded.
Even out in the countryside, far from noble society, she had heard Amelia's name many times before ever enrolling at Stellaris Academy.
The youngest princess of Einhardt.
The Wild Wolf.
The prodigy everyone already treated as the strongest first-year without question.
So when Amelia appeared, Olivia had given up immediately.
But Soren had not.
Even after seeing who stood in front of them, even after understanding how impossible the gap was, Soren had still asked for blessings, still stepped forward, still fought.
And now Olivia could only watch.
Soren attacked with a desperation that made her chest ache.
There was no elegance to it, no polished rhythm, just relentless motion, spell after spell, swing after swing, each action forced into the next before fear or exhaustion could catch up.
She looked small in front of Amelia, not because she lacked presence, but because Amelia felt overwhelming, like something that could not be moved no matter what was thrown at her.
Every time Soren tried to create an opening, Amelia answered it with terrifying ease.
She dodged with tiny movements, blocked without strain, and when she struck back, the difference in power was so brutal that Olivia's breath kept catching in her throat.
Soren kept getting back up anyway.
That was what hurt most to watch.
Not because she looked fearless, but because she clearly wasn't.
Olivia could see the strain in her, the roughness in her movements, the way her attacks were starting to lose sharpness as exhaustion built, and still she forced herself to continue.
Long gone were Olivia's thoughts of ranking high.
The extra allowance, the pretty clothes, the makeup she had wanted to buy, none of it mattered now.
All she wanted was to help.
So Olivia tightened her grip on her staff, kept her healing ready, and prayed silently.
'Please, Goddess… lend me your strength.'
Because all she could do now was protect, heal, and watch the white-haired girl fighting so desperately in front of her.
Hoping she would win.
————「❤︎」————