The smile caught Ronald off guard.
But what surprised him far more was what Elizabeth did next.
She dropped her head.
Ronald’s kick swept through the space where her face had been a half-second earlier, cutting clean air. The mont it passed, Elizabeth didn’t pause, didn’t allow herself even a single breath of relief, because she already knew. The attack wasn’t finished. It was never just one move with soone like Ronald.
She broke away instantly, resetting her footing, bringing her sword back to bear.
Her mind had caught up to what her instincts had already processed: that opening had been fabricated. A lure, dressed up to look like a mistake. But here was the thing — it had served its purpose. By committing to the fake gap, by forcing Ronald into his counter, she had made him move. And movent left traces. Real ones.
Now, looking at him across the few feet between them, she could see it, the genuine openings his rotation had created, small and fleeting but there.
Ronald felt sothing warm and quietly satisfied settle in his chest. He hadn’t expected that level of in-the-mont reasoning from a first-year. He was genuinely pleased.
Elizabeth gripped her sword in both hands and advanced again. No hesitation this ti, no circling. She moved directly toward the real opening she’d identified and drove the thrust forward with full commitnt.
Ronald didn’t step aside.
He didn’t catch the blade either.
He simply stood there.
Elizabeth’s sword passed through him. Not around him. Through him. No resistance, no impact, no sensation of contact at all. Like thrusting through still air. A mont later the image of Ronald standing before her dissolved entirely, unravelling like smoke.
Elizabeth blinked. Around her, the other students had gone completely still.
Then sothing at the back of her neck told her.
Ronald was behind her.
She was already turning when the kick landed, and she was fast enough to bring both arms around, crossing them at the wrists to absorb the impact rather than take it clean. It wasn’t enough to stay on her feet. She skidded backward across the training ground, montum carrying her several tres before she stopped.
She lay still for a mont.
Then she pushed herself up.
Her arms were nearly useless, both hands had gone numb to the wrist from blocking the full force of his strike, her fingers barely responding when she tried to close them. But she stood anyway, squaring her shoulders and straightening her spine until her posture said what her body couldn’t quite manage on its own.
Ronald was looking at her with sothing that hadn’t appeared on his face once during the entire assessnt.
A genuine smile. And behind it, sothing that looked very much like pride.
"Good." The single word landed with more weight than most sentences. "You did well. Return to your position."
Praise. From Professor Ronald’s mouth, directed at her, in front of everyone.
Elizabeth felt sothing bright and full expand in her chest. Every bruise, every hour of training, every morning she had dragged herself onto the practice grounds when everything in her wanted to stop, all of it had added up to this mont, this one word, and it had been worth it.
She walked back to her place in line.
The students around her watched her return with open admiration, the kind that doesn’t need to announce itself, that simply shows in the way people look at soone.
And from where he stood slightly apart from the others, Necrotize watched her too.
With considerable interest.
***
The rhythm continued. Students stepped forward, and students went down, one after another, with the patient regularity of a tide going out. The training ground accumulated a scattered collection of bruised first-years, each picking themselves up with varying degrees of dignity.
Then the boy with blue hair walked up.
He had the kind of build that people looked past, nothing particularly imposing, nothing that announced itself. Average height, lean fra. What he carried in his hands was a wooden staff, held loosely at the midpoint in a single hand.
Ronald looked at him carefully.
There was sothing about this one that resisted easy categorisation. Not in his posture, which was imperfect, his footwork rough at the edges, nowhere near the polished stances the heirs of noble houses had walked in with. It was sothing else. Sothing in the quality of his attention. The way he looked at Ronald reminded Ronald of n he had known on actual battlefields, soldiers who had stopped thinking about winning and started thinking about killing.
The boy stood across from him and didn’t move imdiately.
He held the staff at his centre and simply watched. Reading. Calculating. Taking the ti that most students hadn’t allowed themselves.
Then he began to walk.
The walk beca a jog. The jog beca a run. And then, just before the distance closed, he planted the staff into the ground like a pole and launched himself upward, using it to throw his entire body into the air above Ronald’s head.
Ronald tilted his head back.
The boy was a considerable distance up. Airborne, unhurried, already rotating, his body completing a full spin before he brought his attack down toward Ronald from above.
Ronald sidestepped, letting the strike pass beside him.
But the boy wasn’t done. Still in the air, still falling, he swung one leg in a sharp kick toward Ronald’s head.
Several students made involuntary sounds.
Ronald moved clear of it, and the boy landed, but not the way the others had landed when they’d been thrown. He deliberately created a small gap on the way down, absorbing his own montum, letting his feet find the ground on his own terms.
Then he threw the staff.
Ronald dodged. And the boy was already inside his reach, a bare-fisted punch driving toward his face.
Ronald caught the wrist and threw him.
The boy went airborne again, but this ti he tucked, corrected, and landed on both feet. Not cleanly. Not gracefully. But on his feet.
The training ground went very quiet.
Ronald and Necrotize arrived at the sa realisation at almost exactly the sa mont, from their very different vantage points.
No formal technique. None at all.Everything this boy had done, the pole vault, the aerial kick, the feint with the staff, the follow-up punch, none of it ca from a school or a style or a family tradition. It ca from sowhere rawer than that. Pure accumulated experience, distilled into a fighting instinct with exactly one operating principle underneath it.
Kill or be killed.
Ronald felt sothing stir in his chest that hadn’t stirred in quite so ti. A slow smile crossed his face, not the professional acknowledgnt he’d offered Elizabeth, but sothing more genuine than that. Sothing closer to excitent.
An uncut diamond. That was the only phrase that fit. Rough everywhere you looked, no refinent, no polish, but underneath all of that, sothing that could beco extraordinary. Given the right hands. Given enough ti.
If this boy is trained properly, Ronald thought, he will be counted among the strongest in this Empire before it’s over.
"You," Ronald said. "Your na."
The boy answered without hesitation, without embarrassnt, and without any apparent awareness that either might be expected.
"Arthur. No family na. I’m a commoner."
Ronald studied him for one more mont.
"I see. Return to your position."
Arthur walked back to his place and stood quietly, as though nothing particularly notable had just happened.
***
Necrotize watched him go with open satisfaction.
This, he thought, surveying the training ground, the exhausted students, the professor who had just cracked a genuine smile for the second ti all morning. This is exactly what I was hoping for.
Academy life was already exceeding expectations.
He picked up his wooden sword and walked onto the training ground.
Ronald’s expression didn’t change. But sothing behind his eyes did, the steady professional calm he had maintained through the entire assessnt developing a hairline fracture as Necrotize ca to a stop in front of him.
For the first ti all morning, Ronald reached for a weapon. He retrieved a wooden sword of his own, because standing with his hands behind his back was apparently no longer sothing he was prepared to do.
Necrotize looked at him across the short distance between them and smiled, easy, warm, and entirely without nace.
Ronald drew a long breath.
Prepare yourself. You have to do this. And whatever happens, do not embarrass yourself in front of Lord Necrotize.
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