A Duel Before Its Time
“Serena Ardel.”
A low, heavy voice cut across the lecture hall.
The students who had been chattering only moments before fell silent all at once. When I turned my head, a black-haired man stood in the open doorway.
Neatly buttoned uniform, a sword at his hip, and blue eyes that seemed to pierce straight through a person.
Terren Hack.
The protagonist of the novel I had once read.
“Duel with me.”
I blinked twice, chin still resting on my hand.
I thought I must have misheard, but Terren’s expression was far too serious. If the atmosphere had been even a little more hostile, I would have believed he was challenging me to a life-or-death duel rather than a spar.
“A duel?”
“Yes.”
“Out of nowhere?”
Terren did not answer.
Only that cold, settled gaze remained fixed on my face. It was the look of a man staring not at a beautiful flower, but at a poisoned blade.
My face was not one that warranted that level of wariness.
Serena Ardel was a woman of absurd beauty. Silver hair cascading smoothly to her waist, vivid red eyes, and long, upturned lids that made her seem to look down on others even when she stood still. Dressed neatly in a black gown, she was elegant without a single flaw, radiating a chill that made approaching her difficult.
Even when I first opened my eyes in this body, I had been unable to leave the mirror for a long time.
Until yesterday I had been a man, yet an entirely different face and body stood in the glass. It was astonishingly beautiful, but hard to accept as mine. When I raised a hand, Serena in the mirror raised hers; when I furrowed my brow, the cold beauty’s face twisted the same way.
Three days later, I still sometimes felt as though I were moving in a borrowed body.
“It’s finally starting.”
“I can’t believe Terren actually challenged her to a duel.”
“Even the duke’s name won’t help her this time, right?”
Whispers rose from every corner of the hall.
Even those who hated me could not tear their eyes away. Beauty and fondness were entirely separate matters.
I let out a short breath.
The original owner of this body, Serena Ardel, had been a rather industrious villainess.
She had driven students she disliked out of class, publicly humiliated lower nobles, and threatened to cut off commoner students’ scholarships. She had used her family’s power like a tool for venting her moods.
I had done none of those things.
Yet I could not explain to them that a soul had been swapped. If they were the sort of people who would believe such a claim, they would not have tensed up, inventing new conspiracies simply because I had spent a few quiet days.
I had opened my eyes in Serena Ardel’s body three days ago.
The early-arc villainess of the academy novel I had been reading. The role that suffered a spectacular defeat for the protagonist’s growth and was then pushed out of the story.
Fortunate or not, I had not read much of the novel.
I had followed the early serialization until the similar developments repeated themselves and dropped it. As a result I did not know who the final mastermind was, or what end Serena ultimately met.
All I knew were a few events from the beginning.
One of them was the public duel between Terren and Serena.
Only, that duel was not supposed to happen now.
“You should at least give me a reason, shouldn’t you?”
I tilted my head slightly.
“No matter how famous I am, I don’t think I was the type people pick fights with the moment they see my face.”
“You truly don’t know the reason?”
Terren’s voice dropped even colder.
“Mm.”
I smiled faintly.
“I don’t.”
Terren’s brow twitched ever so slightly.
In the novel the public duel had taken place a week later. The day after Serena seriously injured a lower-class student on the training grounds, an enraged Terren challenged her.
So the moment I possessed her, I had canceled that duel.
I never approached the student who was supposed to become the victim. I even warned the children who followed Serena not to do anything unnecessary for a while.
No one had been hurt yet.
Yet Terren had come a full week early.
“I haven’t harassed anyone lately, either.”
“Lately?”
Terren zeroed in on that exact word.
I clicked my tongue inwardly.
I had added that for no good reason.
“Does that mean you don’t deny what came before?”
“Do you have to pick apart every single thing?”
I wound a strand of hair around my finger and averted my gaze.
“People can suddenly become a little better-behaved, you know.”
“You?”
“Why? Am I not allowed?”
Terren did not answer.
That silence scraped at my nerves in a strange way.
I narrowed my eyes and looked up at him.
“You act like you know me quite well.”
“…….”
“It’s almost frightening.”
Again there was no reply.
Only the fingers resting near the hilt of his sword stiffened a little.
I lowered the hand that had been propping my chin and rose from my seat. Silver hair spilled over my shoulders, and the surrounding gazes followed it naturally.
It was a figure far too eye-catching for a quiet life.
“So what changes if we duel?”
“You will no longer be able to lay hands on other students.”
“Are you planning to make sure I never get back up?”
I asked lightly, but Terren did not deny it.
His eyes held an emotion older and heavier than anger.
As if he had already witnessed the things I would do in the future.
The Terren of the novel had disliked Serena at this point. But he had not been this wary. At least not yet, he had not looked at her as a monster that absolutely had to be stopped.
“Strange.”
When I murmured it, Terren narrowed his eyes.
“What is?”
“You look like someone trying to stop things that haven’t even happened yet.”
The air in the lecture hall sank for a moment.
Terren’s gaze wavered for the briefest instant.
It was truly short.
But I did not miss it.
I lifted the corner of my mouth slightly.
“Do you know what I’m going to do?”
“You would know best.”
“I don’t, though.”
“Then stay ignorant.”
Terren spoke low.
“I will not let things go your way this time.”
This time.
I stopped the hand that had been toying with my hair.
Nothing had happened yet. Yet Terren spoke as if he had already lived through the same events.
Could he be a regressor?
Or did he possess the ability to see the future?
It was possible such a setting appeared in the later parts I had never read. I never expected to regret dropping the novel after only the early chapters.
“You may refuse the duel.”
Terren said.
“In exchange, return everything you stole and swear never to touch another student again.”
The conditions themselves were not bad.
I had no intention of living like the original Serena anyway. If something belonged to someone else, I could return it; I had no desire to torment people.
But his attitude grated on me.
From the start Terren’s eyes were certain I would not refuse. As if he already knew even my choice.
I hated having someone else decide my actions for me.
Even if that someone was the novel’s protagonist.
“Fine.”
Small gasps burst from around the hall.
I crossed my arms and looked at Terren.
“I’ll accept.”
“Three days from now at the official dueling grounds—”
“Today.”
Terren’s words cut off.
“What are you scheming?”
“You’re the one who challenged me.”
I smiled, eyes curving slightly.
“Now that I’ve accepted, are you scared?”
A few students swallowed hard.
Smiling with Serena’s face looked more dangerous than kind. Like someone offering a poisoned cup and casually inviting you to drink.
Terren’s gaze cooled.
“You’ll regret it.”
“I’ll think about that after it’s over.”
I answered as if it were nothing, but my heart was beating a little faster.
To say I was not nervous would have been a lie.
Even so, I had no intention of avoiding the duel.
I had read this fight in the novel.
I knew which technique Terren would open with, which direction he would move, and how he would finally bring Serena down.
If it was the same as the original, I only needed to hold out moderately and lose.
I could avoid serious injury, ease Terren’s suspicion a little, and somewhat clean up the notoriety the original Serena had built.
It was not a bad plan.
With one condition.
Only if the man in front of me was the same Terren I had read about in the novel.
A short while later, at the dueling grounds.
Terren drew his sword.
Blue mana exploded along the blade like a burst of light.
I slowly wiped the smile from my face.
I knew that technique.
It was the one Terren finally perfected in the mid-story after countless battles.
Not a power the early-arc him should have been able to use.
Terren leveled the tip of his sword at me.
“Begin.”
The referee’s hand rose slowly. The noise from the spectator seats faded, and only Terren’s blue eyes stood out with unnatural clarity.
He was not a man certain of victory.
He looked like someone finally facing the source of a nightmare that had tormented him for a long time.
I bit the inside of my lip lightly.
Pain isn’t really my thing.
It seemed this duel was going to unfold in a way completely different from what I had planned.