The Duel
Elisha finished her meal quickly and was now enjoying a leisurely tea time beneath the warm afternoon sun.
This spacious terrace, reserved exclusively for Class A cadets, offered a view of the scenery outside that was quite pleasing to the eye — but more than anything, what she treasured most was being free from the interruptions of others.
As she tilted her teacup, the voices of other Class A cadets on the terrace gradually drifted into her ears.
At first she dismissed it as so much white noise and closed her eyes, but little by little, her attention drifted toward the content of their conversation.
"Did you hear? Apparently a Class B cadet and a Class E cadet are about to square off in a duel."
"What? Class B and Class E? Did someone pick a fight?"
"No, from what I heard, the Class B cadet was the one who *asked* the Class E cadet for the duel."
"Does that even make sense? Why would Class B request a duel with Class E — what would they possibly have to learn?"
Listening to their murmuring, Elisha found herself nodding along without meaning to.
They had a point.
A duel was never meant to be an institution for the strong to unilaterally torment the weak — it was a mock battle held when cadets judged that they had something to learn from one another.
That was why duels were usually fought between members of the same class, or at worst, cadets only a single rank apart.
And yet, a duel between Class B and Class E?
Unless one side had deliberately provoked the other and dressed the fight up in the pretense of a duel, such a pairing almost never came to pass.
Even stranger, it was the Class B cadet who had made the request — and that stirred Elisha's own curiosity about how the whole affair had come about.
"Anyway, apparently everyone from the other classes is heading over to watch. I'd guess it's because the Class E cadet is that guy from the rumors."
"That guy...? Who?"
"Oh, come on, you know. That commoner everyone's been talking about — the one who supposedly weaseled his way in by buttering up the examiner."
*Flinch.*
At those words, Elisha's ears pricked up and her shoulders gave a small tremble.
She had heard that rumor too.
And she knew exactly who it referred to.
How could she not?
She had been standing right there in the room when his acceptance was announced.
*So that man is fighting someone right now?*
The moment the thought formed, Elisha rose from her seat as if there was nothing more to consider.
Kelsey, standing at attention beside her, blinked in momentary surprise.
But that lasted only an instant. Piecing together the reason from what she had just overheard, she began silently clearing away the teacups and dishes.
One might call her the very model of a capable servant who reads her mistress's mind without a word being spoken.
"Shall I accompany you, my lady?"
"No, I'll be back shortly. You needn't follow."
"Very well. Do take care."
Leaving Kelsey's bowed head behind her, Elisha hurried out onto the terrace and made her way swiftly onward.
According to what she'd heard, the duel would take place at Training Ground 1.
It might already be over by the time she arrived — but hoping against hope, she quickened her pace until she was nearly out of breath.
After all, this was her chance to see, with her own eyes, the swordsmanship of the man whose skill she most wanted to measure.
"Training Ground 1, Training Ground 1..."
It was only her first day at the academy, so she didn't yet know her way around; she first checked the campus map posted in the corridor.
An annex building right beside the main hall. Fortunately, it wasn't far.
Reaching the ground floor, she sprinted without a moment's pause until she arrived at the annex housing the sparring hall.
As she drew near, murmuring voices rose from all around, and a fair number of students could be seen filing inside.
Most were new arrivals like herself, drawn by the rumors.
"Hah... hah..."
Arriving at the entrance marked *Training Ground 1*, she caught her breath and scanned the crowd gathered around her.
Perhaps because most people were still at lunch, the turnout wasn't particularly large.
"Well, if it isn't the Crochel princess herself."
"She must want to watch that disgrace to the academy's dignity get what's coming to him."
"A match between Class B and Class E? If your opponent's a commoner, the outcome's already decided."
Useless chatter drifted in from around her, but Elisha gave no sign of hearing it as she made her way toward the glass wall that served as the spectators' gallery.
The walls were made of a single pane of transparent glass, and the scene inside the dueling hall was laid out plain before her eyes.
Within stood a supervising professor posted in case of mishaps, and two male cadets.
The face of the one on the right was unmistakably that of the man she had met before.
Professor Bremen, the duel's referee, stepped forward between the two combatants as they faced each other across the field, adjusted his glasses with a finger, and began reciting the ground rules.
"Weapons and magic are both permitted in this duel. However, should the combat escalate to the point of endangering either participant's life, the referee will intervene immediately — bear this in mind. If the duel drags on without either party declaring surrender, the referee may also rule on the outcome at his own discretion. Understood?"
"Yes, sir."
"Understood."
The two cadets answered in unison, and the referee withdrew to the side.
At the same instant, both men tightened their grips — the one on his long spear, the other on his sword — and squared their stances.
"Good. Begin!"
The referee's hand swept down through the air, and sparks leapt up from the ground.
*Clang!*
*Fast.*
Watching the exchange with her arms folded, Elisha kept her expression perfectly composed — but inwardly, she was awarding the exchange a very high mark indeed.
Despite swinging that massive long spear, this man Pargeon moved with considerable speed.
It proved that his bulging muscles were no mere for show — his raw strength was the real thing.
Bell, for his part, who had so easily parried the blow, was no less impressive.
In a contest of spear against sword, the spear generally held the advantage in spacing and head-on contests of strength, while the sword held the edge in speed and unorthodox footwork.
Under normal circumstances, a conventional swordsman would have been well within his rights to retreat from that opening attack.
Yet Bell had answered strength with strength, stopping the strike dead at the front — as if to declare that no weapon held any natural superiority at all.
"Hnngh!"
Taking the parry as a provocation, Pargeon launched himself from his position and brought the long spear crashing down.
Most spear attacks, unlike those of the sword or blade, favor thrusting over cutting — but with strength like his, improvising a change of approach was entirely within his means.
Simply put, he was wielding the spear like a club.
*Even if he dodges, I won't give him an opening.*
From this position, evasion was the only option left to Bell.
And so Pargeon brought the spear down with his next move already in mind, his eyes fixed on his opponent's legs.
If Bell's escape was even slightly delayed here, Pargeon would use the spear's superior reach to hunt him down the moment he tried to slip out of range.
That was his plan.
*KAANG!*
"!?"
But that conviction didn't last long.
Bell had met the attack — heavy with Pargeon's full weight and strength — head-on, sword gripped in both hands.
The shriek of steel grinding against steel rang out beyond the walls of the dueling hall itself.
"Wait, he's *blocking* that?"
"All that fuss over stopping a single attack? He should've just dodged it. Why block?"
"Exactly. Against a big swing like that, dodging and counterattacking is the smarter play."
Surprise flickered across the faces of the watching cadets, but for most of them it quickly curdled into smirks.
Watching them spout advice and pass judgment as though *they* were the ones in the ring, Elisha let out a small sigh.
*Fools, the lot of them.*
In her eyes, Pargeon's strike had been an excellent move.
Given his speed and raw power, if Bell had dodged even slightly clumsily, he wouldn't have merely conceded an opening — Pargeon would have created one and seized the counterattack himself.
Granted, that might not have worked against another swordsman. But considering that great spear, and the ease with which he swung it as lightly as a blade, it was a very real possibility.
In other words, Pargeon had presented Bell with a textbook lose-lose dilemma.
*Blocking is impossible — so dodge. But I won't grant you breathing room after you do.* That was the idea.
Yet Bell had laughed the dilemma off and stopped the attack without any visible difficulty.
And even that act of blocking was, in Elisha's eyes, nothing to take lightly.
Students who hadn't reached a certain level of mastery might not have caught it with the naked eye — but Elisha saw it, plain as day.
The blue mana wreathing Pargeon's entire body.
Bell, by contrast, carried not even a trace of mana upon him.
Which meant he was fighting a warrior whose body had been reinforced with mana to a standstill — on pure, unaided physical strength alone.
It was the very fighting style of the Sword Saint, the man of legend from ages past.
*So it really is true?*
The doubt first planted in her conversation with Kelsey welled up again, and her eyes narrowed all the sharper.
She could manage something similar herself if asked — but that was only because, comparatively speaking, she was facing an inferior opponent.
Which meant that the man whose skill she had taken such an interest in was, by her measure, superior to that spear-wielder.
A man of that caliber, appearing out of nowhere at the academy with neither family name nor reputation to his credit?
It defied everything she understood about how the world worked.
Unless there was some reason his existence had been deliberately concealed.
*Griiiind!*
The deadlock — neither side giving an inch — collapsed in the span of a single breath.
Bell swept his blade down along the spear's haft as if to shear it away, then spun his body full circle to the left, threading past the spearhead by a hair's breadth and slipping free of the contest entirely.
Pargeon, with all his strength and weight committed to the strike, failed to react in that fleeting instant.
Part of it was surely the shock of having his own self-proclaimed masterstroke stopped so easily.
The instant the obstacle before him vanished, his balance of weight crumbled.
Pargeon's body pitched naturally forward — and in that sliver of an opening, Bell took his opponent's back and brought his sword down.
But Pargeon was no pushover either.
Even as he toppled, he fought to recover his balance, planting the spear's haft upright in a desperate attempt to stop the coming blow.
Every spectator held their breath, waiting for the result.
And then the duel ended in a most unexpected verdict.
"That's enough."
Professor Bremen had wedged himself between the two men and stopped Bell's blade with nothing but two fingers.
The watching cadets simply gaped, mouths hanging open in stunned silence.
He looked between the two combatants, had Bell return his sword first, then took his hand and raised it high into the air.
"By the referee's judgment, the victor of this duel is Bell Dinauer."
At the proclamation, the murmuring among the students swelled.
It was true that Bell had struck squarely at his opponent's exposed back — but surely a single move wasn't enough to settle the victor so casually?
Of course, that was only the surface of their complaints; the real grievance was that they'd been denied the spectacle of the infamous commoner getting his comeuppance.
Among all those standing in the gallery, only one person deemed the ruling entirely justified — Elisha.
*No need to spill blood over nothing. A fine referee indeed.*
Even if Pargeon had managed to plant his spear and block the blow, the fight was already lost as far as she could see.
Had he stopped it there, he'd lost his center of gravity the moment before — dodging or stopping a second attack would have been beyond him.
Certainly, injuries in duels were common enough. But there was no reason to continue a fight whose conclusion was obvious even to an outsider.
"Any objections, Cadet Pargeon Glett?"
"...None."
Pargeon accepted the result without a word of protest.
Still, the way he hung his head, disappointment written in every line of his posture, told any onlooker just how fierce his competitive spirit truly was.
And so the victor was decided, and the murmur of the crowd swelled louder and louder.
It was a small disturbance within the academy walls — one that had broken out on the very first day of school.