"Huff… this is stupid."
The words slipped out between breaths, rough and thin, less a declaration than something dragged loose by fatigue and irritation, because by this point Soren was too tired to bother pretending he had any dignity left.
He had known from the start that this was unwinnable.
Not difficult, not unlikely, not one of those fights where the weaker side scraped together a miracle through grit and timing and whatever bullshit hidden mechanic the story wanted to reward.
Unwinnable.
That had been obvious the moment Amelia looked at him, smiled like she had found a new toy, and said she wanted to fight.
Even calling this a fight felt generous now.
A fight implied some kind of exchange, some kind of balance, some sense that both sides existed in the same reality.
This was closer to being dismantled piece by piece, his every idea answered, every effort brushed aside, every desperate attempt made to look small by how little it actually changed.
Knowing the gap on paper had been one thing.
He had seen her stats in the game.
He had known what sort of existence Amelia Indras Einhardt was supposed to be, the kind of first-year monster who made the rest of the student body look like background decoration.
But seeing it in front of him was different.
Every time she moved with that casual, thoughtless efficiency, every time she stopped one of his spells or stepped around an attack like she was humouring him, every time she hit him without any strain at all, the truth got driven in deeper.
Numbers on a screen had never captured it properly.
They had never shown what it felt like when the distance between two people was so vast that one of them could afford to be curious.
This was the difference between someone built to matter and someone who was never meant to.
Between an extra and a main heroine.
Between the kind of person a story bent around and the kind it barely noticed.
Amelia's fist drove into his side before he fully registered her weight shift.
The strike landed under his ribs with blunt, awful precision, and all the air in his lungs vanished at once.
His feet left the ground for a fraction of a second, his balance breaking completely before he crashed sideways onto the dirt in an ugly sprawl, shoulder scraping over scorched earth, fingers digging into loose grit on pure instinct.
Pain flared hot and immediate through his torso, sharp enough to make his vision blur.
Then silver light poured over him.
Warmth spread through his body, too quick and too clean to feel natural, bruising easing under divine power, torn flesh knitting, the burning ache in his side blunting into something manageable.
His lungs dragged air in again.
His body, which had just been reminded how fragile it was, got hauled back to functioning by Olivia's healing.
Again.
Amelia hit him.
Again.
Olivia healed him.
Again.
He stood back up.
The pattern had repeated so many times that it had stopped feeling dramatic and started feeling mechanical, like he had been trapped inside the stupidest possible loop, one where he had already exhausted every trick he knew and was now just feeding himself into the same wall over and over in slightly different ways.
Attack, fail, get hit, get healed, repeat.
There was no sudden revelation waiting for him here, no hidden route opening up because he suffered enough, no moment where he remembered he was secretly special after all and turned the tables in a blaze of narrative importance.
That was the sort of thing stories liked to give protagonists, and he was not the protagonist.
He was not even adjacent to one in the way that mattered.
Until Amelia got bored, this was all he had.
He pushed himself upright again, slower this time, boots dragging slightly against the darkened ground.
The exam field around them no longer looked like a normal stretch of forest floor.
Chunks of ice, broken roots, torn soil, scorched patches, and shallow craters marked the path of everything he had already tried and failed to make count.
His cloak felt heavy with sweat, clinging in places where it shouldn't, and his arms ached every time he adjusted his grip on the handaxe.
Exhaustion sat in him so deeply that it no longer felt like a temporary state.
It felt structural, as if his bones themselves had gotten tired.
Not just his body, either.
His head hurt.
His thoughts kept trying to wander, not because he wanted to think, but because some part of him was so frayed that it kept slipping sideways whenever there was a moment to breathe.
Two months ago, he had lived an ordinary life on Earth.
It wasn't a glamorous one, far from it, but it had been relatively normal, far away from any semblance of violence.
The worst fights he had ever been in before this world were clumsy schoolyard scraps and hallway shoves, ugly little bursts of panic and anger where nobody involved knew what they were doing. #
Even then, violence had felt messy and human and immediate, not like this impossible thing where one side moved like a natural disaster wearing a girl's face.
Then he had been dragged here.
And in the span of barely two months, everything had gone to shit.
He had almost died in Rena Forest.
He had learned exactly how little the Arden family cared whether he existed.
He had been forced to deal with memories that weren't supposed to be his, with the life of Soren Arden bleeding into his own head until the boundaries stopped feeling clean.
He had met Louise.
He had killed someone with his own hands.
And now he was here, being beaten half to death by one of the people the world itself seemed to recognise as important.
A real main character.
Not a sprite on a screen, not a route, not a list of stats and favourite gifts and event triggers.
A person.
A person whose presence changed the shape of the air around her.
'The story hasn't even properly started yet…'
That thought almost made him laugh, except he was too tired for it to come out as anything but a weak exhale.
According to the game's structure, this was still early.
Barely past the beginning of the beginning.
Act 1 had not yet become the thing it was supposed to be, the real lines had not yet fully formed, the central cast had not yet stepped into the roles they were designed for, and yet Soren had already been chewed up by this world far more brutally than the game had ever bothered to depict.
In two months, he had taken more damage, felt more fear, and been thrown through more emotional whiplash than most of the main cast had in the whole opening act.
The comparison was so absurd that it circled back around into funny, except there was nothing funny about the way his hands were trembling.
He let out a slow, unsteady breath.
Still, there was one thing, only one, that he could think of as a genuine blessing.
He was not the protagonist.
That mattered.
As awful as everything had been, as much as he hated how little control he often felt he had, there was still a kind of freedom in being an extra.
The story was not supposed to close around him.
He was not shackled to the exact sequence of choices the game demanded, not forced toward every scripted tragedy and unavoidable confrontation built into the main route.
At least, that was how it was supposed to work.
"Are you done?"
Amelia's voice cut through his thoughts as easily as if she had reached into his skull and flicked them aside.
Soren blinked and looked up.
She stood a short distance away, posture loose, expression calm, not even breathing hard.
There was no frustration in her face, no annoyance, no trace that this had taken anything from her at all.
If anything, she looked patient.
Patient.
As if she was waiting for him to collect himself so they could continue.
His body screamed at him to stay down this time, to stop, to admit the obvious, accept that he had already done more than enough for a fight he had never wanted, and lie there until she lost interest.
Instead, he forced himself fully upright and raised the handaxe again.
It felt heavier now than when he had first pulled it from his inventory.
Maybe it actually wasn't, maybe his grip had just degraded that much, but either way the weight dragged at his wrist and shoulder.
He tightened his fingers around the handle until the strain sharpened.
He gave her no verbal answer.
Amelia's smile widened slightly.
"Good."
There was nothing mocking in it, which somehow made it worse.
Worse and stranger.
She really did mean it.
She really was pleased.
Soren inhaled through his nose, steadying himself as best he could, and shifted his stance.
Then silver light burst around him.
Not the usual brief wash of healing this time, but something larger, denser, enough that he stopped mid-motion on instinct and turned sharply.
Olivia stood behind him with her hands clasped, fingers trembling so hard they looked close to slipping apart.
Her face was pale, her breath uneven, but her voice, when it came, held together.
"To the one that is watching over me, you have seen the path I have walked, thus you know the path I will walk—"
Soren froze.
Recognition hit so hard it cut through his exhaustion in an instant.
"Huh?"
His voice came out sharper than intended.
"Already?!"
That incantation.
No.
No, that was not supposed to happen here.
Ultimate skills in the game were not things people casually unlocked because the moment felt appropriate.
They were awakenings, big turning points, threshold moments, the kind stories saved because they mattered too much to waste early.
Olivia's awakening, Olivia's real awakening, was supposed to happen during Arc 1's final boss.
That was where she crossed the line from gifted support heroine to something terrifyingly important.
Not here.
Not in a practical exam.
Not because some terrified extra had gotten dragged into a one-sided beating by Amelia.
"—To the one who is protecting me, your belief has been seen—"
The silver radiance intensified, bright enough that it washed the colour from the world for a moment.
A laugh slipped out of him, breathless and disbelieving, because of course.
"Hah… of course."
What else had he expected from one of the people the story actually cared about?
"—to the one protecting me I will ask you; please be 「My Light」."
The world answered her.
The system windows came one after another, flaring into existence in front of Soren's eyes so quickly that they almost blurred together.
.
[My Light (EX) has been applied!]
.
[Blessing of Stamina has been applied!]
[Blessing of Strength has been applied!]
[Blessing of Agility has been applied!]
[Blessing of Mana has been applied!]
[Blessing of Divine Power has been applied!]
[Blessing of Charm has been applied!]
[Holy Infusion has been applied!]
[Heal has been applied!]
.
[Unique Skill [Blessing of Aryn] has increased [My Light (EX)]'s effectiveness!]
.
And then his status window unfolded in front of him.
.
[Status Window]
Name: Soren Arden
◈ Stats
Stamina - 3.2 (0.9)
Strength - 3.0 (0.7)
Agility - 3.6 (1.3)
Mana - 3.6 (1.3)
Divine Power - 2.6 (0.3)
Charm - 10.0 (8.7)
.
"…Wow."
He said it quietly, because for a second there was not really anything else to say.
His body felt wrong.
Not bad wrong.
Not painful wrong.
Just different in a way so dramatic that it bordered on unreal.
The exhaustion did not vanish entirely, but it got pushed back far enough that he could suddenly feel what his body was capable of under the strain.
His limbs felt lighter.
His senses felt cleaner.
Mana sat in him with a density that made his skin prickle.
Even the handaxe felt easier to control.
For the first time since arriving in this world, he felt something close to confidence.
Dangerously close.
[My Light] had always been absurd.
In the game, it was the kind of support ultimate that made players build entire teams around Olivia once she unlocked it, because a flat increase across the board, holy infusion, and a massive recovery effect all at once was disgusting value, especially that early.
Later on it got scaled back by progression, losing some of its sheer stupidity once characters crossed higher thresholds, but in the early game it was monstrous.
And right now, on him, it was shoving him up into territory he had no right to touch yet.
Class C range.
Still nowhere near Amelia, but enough that the difference between before and after felt like stepping into someone else's body.
Then the light began to thin, and the first thing he noticed was Olivia.
She looked awful.
Her knees shook visibly.
Her breathing came shallow and uneven, chest rising too fast.
Most of the colour had drained from her face, and even standing seemed to be costing her more effort than she had left.
His stomach clenched.
'She burned through her divine power.'
He took a step toward her without thinking, panic flaring fresh under the borrowed confidence, but Olivia shook her head immediately, small and weak and stubborn all at once.
"Good… luck…"
She smiled when she said it, or tried to.
It came out thin, but it was still a smile.
Soren swallowed hard and nodded once.
Then he turned back around.
Amelia was looking past him, not at him, her bright yellow eyes fixed on Olivia with open interest.
"Another interesting person…"
He couldn't even disagree.
A second later, there was the soft, unmistakable sound of a body giving out behind him.
Olivia collapsed.
Every muscle in Soren's back tightened, but he did not turn again.
She had already told him not to worry, and Amelia was still right there, still watching, still ready.
The thought still lodged in his mind anyway, ugly and persistent.
Olivia had awakened early, two months early.
Because of this.
Because of him.
Because he had gotten noticed.
Because an extra had made enough of a mistake to brush against the story hard enough that one of its proper turning points had shifted.
The thought sat badly in him, but there was no space to unpack it.
Amelia rolled one shoulder, loose and ready, excitement returning to her face as naturally as breathing.
Soren tightened his grip on the axe.
Then he ran.
The difference was immediate.
The ground came at him faster.
His body responded faster.
Muscles that had felt like lead moments ago now obeyed without the same lag, and the sudden sharpness of it almost threw him off for a step because he was not used to moving like this.
The exam field blurred around the edges as he closed distance.
"「Freeze」!"
Mana surged from him and the ground flashed white beneath Amelia's feet.
Frost raced outward in branching lines, hardening dirt, crawling over broken roots, building into a layer thick enough that the earth itself cracked under the cold.
For a heartbeat it looked like it might hold.
Then the ice burst apart under her.
Not with a big dramatic movement or with some visible exertion, but simply because Amelia moved and the spell failed to matter.
Shards scattered across the field in a spray of glittering fragments, the frozen layer breaking around her boots as if it had never been more than thin glass.
Soren had already abandoned the idea of pressing that opening.
Instead he kicked off the ground and flung himself backwards.
"「Breeze」!"
Wind burst from his palm in a compressed shove, catching his body and driving him further back through the air.
The extra distance bought him a breath, maybe less, but it was enough.
He clasped his hands together as he moved, forcing the incantation through before Amelia could reach him.
"To the one that watches over me, see my strength and give your blessing for my victory. 「Blessing of Lightning」."
This time it worked.
Purple-silver light spread across his palms, thin crackling lines racing over his skin like they were searching for somewhere to discharge.
.
[Blessing of Lightning has been applied!]
.
[25% Increase to Lightning-Element damage!]
.
By the time the message vanished, Amelia was already in front of him.
Of course she was.
He barely had time to see the shift of her shoulders before her fist drove toward his stomach again, fast enough that before Olivia's ultimate he would have been too slow to do anything except brace and fail.
But now he was faster too.
Not enough to dominate, not enough to control the exchange, but enough to react.
Enough to do something.
"「Shock」!"
Lightning erupted from his outstretched hand in a pale-yellow burst, snapping through the space between them just as he yanked the axe across with his other arm in a desperate, ugly follow-up, because that was what all of this was, desperation layered on desperation, him throwing whatever he had in the hope that something somewhere would stick.
Amelia shifted back at the last second and raised her gauntleted arm to block.
And that, for once, was the wrong answer.
The lightning crawled greedily over metal.
It raced across the surface of her gauntlet and up her arm in a jagged flare, the conductive path making the spell bite deeper than it should have.
Amelia's body jerked, just slightly, but it was enough.
Enough.
For the first time since the fight started, Amelia stopped.
Not long.
Barely a heartbeat.
But she stopped.
Soren moved before the thought had even finished forming.
He wrenched the handaxe down and across into her side with both hands, every scrap of his augmented strength behind it, breath ragged, muscles burning, body already overcommitted because hesitation would have wasted the only real opening he had gotten.
The blade bit.
Not deep.
Not clean.
Not the sort of strike that turned a fight.
But it bit.
Blood welled at Amelia's waist, no more than a thin line, barely enough to count as a wound, but it was there.
Everything stopped.
Soren's eyes dropped to it, then widened.
Amelia looked down too.
For a second, neither of them moved.
Even the air seemed to go still.
"Huh?"
The sound left Amelia first, plain surprise slipping through her voice in a way Soren had not heard from her before.
He stared at the blood again, his thoughts lagging behind the sight in front of him.
"What?"
It came out of him automatically, stupid and breathless and completely genuine.
Because it was real.
Not imagined, not wishful thinking, not one of those desperate moments where he mistook contact for damage because he wanted it to matter.
The axe had actually cut her.
Not deeply, not enough to change anything important, not enough to make this anything other than hopeless, but it had cut her.
He had hit Amelia.
For one disorienting instant, the shock of that landed harder than any blow she had given him.
His body reacted before his mind did.
He took half a step back, grip tightening on the handaxe as a spike of alarm shot through him, because some panicked part of him immediately assumed this was the point where she stopped playing around, where the small, accidental line he had managed to carve across her side turned her from curious into serious.
Instead, Amelia's face lit up.
"Nice."
The word hit him almost as hard as the realisation had.
Soren blinked.
"…Nice?"
"Yep."
Her grin widened, bright and open and completely sincere, as if the sight of her own blood had only made her happier.
For a moment he could only stare at her.
Then the obvious thought, stupidly delayed, finally caught up.
'Oh… right.'
She was insane.
"Well done."
The praise landed so strangely that he almost forgot to be afraid of her for a second.
"Uh… thanks?"
That only seemed to amuse her more.
She moved then, and Soren tensed on instinct, shoulders locking, breath catching, but instead of another overwhelming strike or some blur-fast attack he could not possibly answer, she stepped around behind him with easy casualness and gave him a light pat between the shoulders, as if congratulating him after a good effort in class rather than after a one-sided beating that had left him bruised, healed, exhausted, and still half convinced he might die if she got even slightly more serious.
And strangely…
it felt good.
————「❤︎」————