Northern sighed, stretching his arms lazily. Had Lenn gotten slower since their last encounter, or was it just his own perception of time shifting? The wait felt excruciatingly long.
Then, at that very moment, the sword came down on him.
To an observer, it might have seemed like a sudden strike, but to Northern, time had stretched into imperceptible slivers. He had all the seconds in the world to react.
A simple sidestep was all it took. The blade carved down, biting into the ground with a ferocity that rattled the air.
And in that moment—Lenn was wide open.
It wasn’t inexperience. It was pure disbelief. Lenn had not expected Northern to be that fast.
He hadn’t even seen the damn boy move.
Northern’s leg blurred forward, hurling a devastating kick straight at him—only to stop abruptly, inches from contact.
But the wind from the kick did not spare Lenn. The sheer force behind it exploded outward, sending him flying like a ragdoll.
All of this happened in less than a millisecond.
To the watching students, the sequence was incomprehensible—one moment, Lenn had attacked, the next, the supposed non-combative student was standing untouched while Lenn was airborne.
The student council and instructors, however, saw more.
Their perceptions varied in accordance with their rank. Most of the student council members failed to track Northern’s movement, unable to grasp the attack that had sent Lenn flying—it had happened too fast.
Yet a few among them sat tense, their expressions shadowed with unease.
The instructors were no different. They had come to assess Rian, to truly gauge the extent of his capabilities.
And among them, a select few had strained their eyes enough to realize a chilling truth—Lenn had not been struck by Northern’s actual kick.
’If the mere wind of his kick was that strong… how strong would the real thing be?’
One instructor, resting his chin on his fist, shuddered as goosebumps ran across his skin.
And that was the most baffling part of all.
Northern did not seem the least bit interested in the fight.
His posture was lazy, dismissive—even as boos rained down on him from the crowd, their frustration growing with every second of his indifference.
For a brief moment, as Lenn was sent flying, the entire coliseum had froze in silence.
Then the boos resumed, louder than before.
Lenn stood up, gritting his teeth. The fury burning in the depths of his eyes was rising now—boiling like molten lava on the verge of eruption.
He had expected Northern to pull out a weapon at the last second, to block him in desperation. That was, at least, how fast he perceived himself to be.
He might not have been the fastest, nor could he compare to those with speed-based talents, but that didn’t mean he was slow. His ability worked around impact manipulation.
He could take advantage of the momentary force of his feet leaving the ground, channeling a violent recoil that propelled him forward at speeds far beyond his normal limits.
Of course, using his ability this way came at a cost.
In the earlier stages, before he had mastered the recoil, the backlash would snap and shatter his legs. He had suffered through excruciating pain, through relentless training, through calculated essence management, just to reach his current level.
And yet… Northern had reacted that fast?
The last time they fought, the details had been lost to the haze of his alter ego. But now—now—he was fully aware, fueled by rage, and in control. He had the advantage.
He should be seeing better results.
The unsettling doubt gnawed at him. He shoved it away.
Lenn gripped his sword tighter and vanished.
A breath later, he reappeared right in front of Northern, his sword slashing through the air—
And then Northern’s gaze turned toward him.
A small, sinister grin stained his otherwise pristine face.
In that moment, everything froze.
A paralyzing chill drowned Lenn’s senses, as though he had been plunged into the abyss of a frozen ocean. His muscles locked. His breath paused.
He tried to pull back. Tried.
A terrifying gale carved through the air, its force so immense that the pavement behind them split with a swift, clean crack of over ten meters.
The weight of his own attack. The aftermath of Reversal.
That was how much force impact he had stored up. How much he had unleashed.
Northern had dodged it.
With nothing more than a slight tilt of his head.
Cold, condescending eyes bore into him, stripping him bare, making him feel utterly, painfully naked.
Lenn immediately withdrew, launching himself out of Northern’s range before landing a fair distance away.
His stance remained strong, but his eyes—they had changed.
No longer clouded by reckless fury. No longer blinded by impulse.
Now, they were calculating. Examining. Speculating.
And he wasn’t the only one.
Even the most short-sighted and unreasonable in the crowd had begun to sense it. The shift. The unspoken, creeping truth slithering into their awareness.
Something was ominously wrong with this so-called non-combative student.
The entire coliseum fell deathly silent.
A moment of stillness stretched into eternity.
Northern sighed. Loudly.
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And yawned—as if he had just woken up from a boring sleep.
The sound shattered the silence in a way that felt strangely surreal.
His gaze fell lazily on Lenn, and with absolute, unbothered ease, he spoke:
"I thought fighting Drifters my age would be more interesting than fighting monsters."
His eyes half-lidded, his voice almost bored.
"But it seems I was wrong."
Shadows veiled his face, but beneath them—wrath churned.
That nonchalance. That blatant disregard for everyone around him.
All of them—those kinds of people—had that same goddamn look.
The ones who had grown in hell of the dark Continent.
The ones who had suffered and survived in places where no one should.
And because of that—because they had crawled through some vicious abyss, because they had clawed their way out of nightmares—they looked down on those who hadn’t.
And so what if they grew in hell?
And so what if their lives had been torn apart, if they had been forged in suffering?
Did that somehow invalidate the struggles of those who had fought to grow here, in the academy?
Did that erase the effort they had poured into becoming stronger?
Did they think—because they had survived hell—that it gave them the right to belittle everyone else?
And as if anyone had asked Rughsbourgh to choose them as his guinea pigs.
Granted, Lenn didn’t even know what a pig was—and he didn’t care.
All that mattered was the tempest rising inside him.
Fury ignited in his chest, burning through his veins like a wildfire.
He felt it scorch his soul.
And he made a decision.
He would be the one to bring Northern down.
He would tear that nasty, boisterous confidence off his face.
He would humiliate him.
And he would make sure Northern never looked down on him ever again!