Seo Jiwoo

  The vines had thorns.

  I realized that as they tore through the sleeve of my robes and dug into my side, shredding skin like it was parchment. Blood sprayed across the cracked marble beneath my boots. The impact of her last spell had thrown me halfway across the arena, and even now, those damn vines still squirmed like they were alive.

  Because they were.

  Nature magic. A deviant form of mana that I was still in awe after seeing, it was primal and very much pissed off.

  I dragged myself back to my feet, ripping the thorns out. The wounds knit together fast—too fast. Flesh hissed and bubbled as it regenerated, skin lacing back in seconds. My ribs ached, but that was fading, too.

  Beatrix stood on the other side of the battlefield, completely untouched. Her uniform fluttered, white and gold, almost too bright for this bloodstained ring. Around her, the mana pulsed faintly.

  Her green eyes locked on to me—looking like a goddess.

  I looked like a burnt offering. She was indeed the strongest mage in this world.

  Just by fighting her, I could already tell that defeating her under normal circumstances would be quite difficult. Her precise control over mana, her fluid movements, even her battle instincts—everything about her was impeccable.

  I wiped the blood from my jaw, flicked it aside, and gave her a lopsided smile.

  “So much for keeping it simple.” I said, fixing my stance as I felt a warm breeze blow past us.

  Her eyes sharpened. “Finally done playing?”

  “Something like that.” I replied with a shrug.

  The air around me began to shift slowly. If I needed to win, or even come close to winning, I needed to use my strongest approach, meaning, fire and earth magic alone wouldn’t cut it for this duel.

  I needed to use my stronger elements.

  A low current circled my ankles. Dust rose and danced on invisible streams, coiling like mist around my legs. The heat that clung to my fire spells vanished, replaced by a creeping coolness that soaked into the cracks of the broken ground.

  I closed my eyes for a breath—just one. I looked for the power within me, and with just a touch, I felt Mind’s Eye bloom to life, all the mana around me appeared visible to my eyes.

  With a focused breath, I let it out like a howl.

  Wind whispered first—like a breeze turning into a storm.

  Not a roar. Not a gale. Just a smooth, sharp slice through the air. My aura flared, and the entire coliseum seemed to inhale with me.

  Then came water—droplets at first, then they coalesced around me like shiny jewels.

  It seeped from nothing—pulled from the air, from the ground, from every unseen crevice. A thin mist rolled across the arena, curling around me like a second skin.

  I opened my eyes, and the wind moved.

  Beatrix’s eyes widened—only slightly, but I saw it. That fraction of surprise.

  A flick of her wrist. Wind lashed toward me like knives. Precise. Fast. Meant to interrupt.

  I stepped through them, feeling the slightest shift in the air, following the currents turn and twist as they collided with the wind I conjured around myself.

  The moment her stream curved toward my chest, I bent the wind around my body—my wind—and let it slip past me harmlessly, redirecting it with a wave of my hand. She tried to correct it mid-flight, but it was too late. Her magic no longer moved freely here.

  “Your control…” she murmured.

  I smirked. “Fluid enough for you?”

  The vines came next—ripping through the stone like serpents. I leapt, landing on a cushion of wind that floated above the surface. I spun in the air and brought my hand down.

  A spear of water shot forward—thin, shimmering, fast.

  She blocked it with a wall of bark, conjured mid-air, but the force behind it knocked her back a step. Not far. Just enough.

  I landed, sliding across the arena floor. I looked up at her, and I saw her forearm coated by a thick layer of ice.

  This was different now.

  She knew it. Beatrix’s stance firmed, more mana coalesced around her body, her mana crackled her lightning, her fiery eyes locked on to me.

  I wasn’t throwing fire anymore. No more desperate pillars of stone. No more clumsy eruptions.

  Where her vines lashed, my wind danced between the leaves. When she summoned whirlwinds to obscure her movement, I countered—not by dispelling them, but by joining them, reshaping them mid-spin—allowing the wind to change their trajectory. I moved through her magic like I belonged there.

  But, I could already feel the burden of maintaining each spell. Doing this took almost all of my attention and effort. That’s how good Beatrix was. She wasn’t giving me any time to land an attack strong enough to get the upper hand.

  She came at me fast. Faster than before. Her arms spun, a blur of gales and wood, casting spells I didn’t recognize. A wave of moss-coloured light surged forward—dense and twisting, almost like smoke, but alive with spores.

  I didn’t dodge.

  I dove straight through. Not having a choice. By now, even she must have realized the burden of using so much mana. But, she had reached the integration stage, allowing her more resistance from backlash.

  At this stage, she wasn’t just using her own mana, she was relying more on the atmospheric mana, giving her a clear advantage. I didn’t blame her for not exploiting what she had on hand.

  Water rushed to meet me, wrapping my arms and legs like armour. The spores hissed as they hit it, evaporating with a hiss. I emerged on the other side soaked and grinning, a blade of pressurized water forming in my palm.

  Her eyes met mine.

  She spun mid-air, and a volley of thorns erupted outward like a storm of needles. I twisted left, raised a barrier of wind that bent them off course, and shot forward in a gust.

  We clashed.

  My blade now frozen solid met her conjured staff from one of the thick vines, with a snap of water and wind. Each swing echoed like a crack of thunder. She conjured roots from the ground to grab me—I froze them mid-growth. She shattered them with a gust. I countered with a torrent. She turned it into mist.

  We weren’t fighting with raw strength anymore.

  We were understanding. I could see and feel the mana moved to our wills, I may have held the disadvantage of being below her in stage, but with Mind’s Eye, I was able to observe the slightest twitch and turn of the mana, giving me enough time to counter with a spell to match her tempo.

  Each spell met its partner. Each move was met with equal grace. She smiled now—really smiled—and it made her look younger, less divine, more alive.

  No longer the general, commanding the brigade zero, cladded under her cold armour of being a leader.

  “You’ve learned well,” she said between breaths. “Who taught you this finesse? It can’t be that Master Camus taught you to be this well in such a short time?”

  I twirled my fingers, spiralling wind around my legs as I leapt back.

  “My Master,” I said. “ A human, with ridiculous talent to being with.”

  She tilted her head, wiping a trickle of blood from her cheek—my water blade had grazed her. First blood.

  “I see,” she said. “Then let’s make this worthy of your Master.”

  The ground beneath us cracked, not from force—but pressure.

  She cut between my spells, fire and wind intertwining like dancers in her wake. Her form moved effortlessly through the air, graceful and untouchable.

  But then—

  A sudden pressure built around my ears. It felt like something scraped the inside of my skull with jagged glass. The pain was instantaneous. The wind particles in the air had begun vibrating—wild, unstable—until they let out a shriek that tore through my eardrums.

  I staggered, equilibrium lost, the mana in my palm flickering out like a dying flame.

  She was already on me.

  Her mana-forged arm slammed into my sternum. My body whipped backward, crashing into the ground. I spat blood, my vision blurring for a second.

  Beatrix hovered above, her expression sharp. “You’re not the only one who can use different deviants,” she said, smirking down at me.

  I wiped the blood from my mouth, forcing air back into my lungs. I shot back into the sky, stopping only when we were eye-level again.

  A rough laugh left my throat. “Wouldn’t expect any less from you.”

  But I wasn’t done.

  Fire mana surged to life around my skin—and with it, lightning crackled in threads of yellow, dancing over my arms like a storm barely leashed.

  But instead, I turned the coiling tendrils inward—a spell I’d been refining ever since that battle with the Elderwood Sentient, when I first unleashed Lightning Surge.

  The crackle of lightning didn’t burst outward.

  It coiled into me.

  My muscles tensed and jerked under the raw voltage. Each pulse of energy snapped through my veins like a live wire. My heart hammered, my breath grew shallow, and my hair stood on edge, charged by the coursing storm. The world around me slowed—not because it did, but because I sped up.

  Beatrix stared, awe flickering in her eyes. But her stance? Unbroken.

  I exhaled slowly, feeling the sync—body and lightning, one flow.

  Then I vanished.

  In a blink, I was on her. My first strike she deflected, barely. But the second—a sweeping arc of fire-infused wind and lightning—slammed into her defences before she could fully adapt. She stumbled back, arms crossing as vines erupted in defence. Blades of wind shot toward me.

  But with this spell—I saw everything.

  Each blade, each twitch of her hand, each shift of weight. My body reacted before my brain even finished the thought.

  I sidestepped the blades before they even fully formed, closed in, and launched a crackling knee to her abdomen that sent sparks snapping across her body.

  “This is what I’ve been working on,” I muttered, eyes glowing. “Not just more power—better control.”

  The lightning cracked across her side, sending her flying back with a hiss of pain, smoke trailing in the air.

  I hovered there, catching my breath.

  “Still think you’re the only one with tricks?” I muttered.

  We both stood still for a moment, the wind howling, the mist swirling, our shadows long beneath the lights above. My blood had dried, my wounds sealed.

  And finally, I wasn’t holding back.

  This…was going to be fun.

  ***

  Aurora Silverlight

  The sky above the coliseum looked as though it might tear open at any moment.

  Winds howled. Mist rolled. Magic pulsed in waves thick enough to feel in your lungs.

  And at the heart of it all—Shun and Beatrix danced through the air like twin storms, their auras slashing across the battlefield with terrifying elegance. Wind curved like ribbons around Shun, while spiralling vines bloomed from Beatrix’s side, responding to her every breath and motion.

  I couldn’t look away.

  Not even blink.

  “…He’s really doing it,” I whispered, fingers clutched at the railing.

  Grandpa Camus stood beside Mordian, only a few feet away from me, and for once, grandpa looked fully immersed, like I’d never seen him before. This was a different kind of immurement. He stood tall, spine straighter than I’d seen in years, eyes wide and glittering like he was twenty again, not well past his sixties.

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  “I haven’t seen a wind-user this precise in decades,” he muttered under his breath, a faint smile tugging at his lips. “And that’s including Beatrix.”

  His gaze was fixed on the battle—on Shun, specifically—as if something old and buried inside him had stirred.

  Mordian stood next to him, arms crossed, expression unreadable. But his eyes were just as fixed. Like stone statues, the two stood shoulder to shoulder, unmoving, locked in.

  I glanced back out to the field—just in time to see Shun take a glancing hit from a thorned whip of conjured vines. It carved across his side, slicing through his ribs.

  “Jiwoo—” Grandma Ariem’s voice rose softly beside me, laced with quiet panic.

  But even before she could finish, we all saw it—his body shimmered faintly, and the wound began closing, the torn flesh knitting itself together with eerie speed.

  Beatrix’s team seemed shocked on the sight, but held their words back for the time being.

  Grandmother exhaled slowly, but her worry didn’t vanish. Her hands were clasped tightly, white-knuckled.

  “He’s pushing himself,” she murmured. “Even if his body heals, that doesn’t mean he’s unbreakable. He just recently fully recovered.”

  No…but watching him now, mid-air, his arms sweeping with practiced grace, his magic bending the very world to his will—it almost felt like he was.

  My eyes wandered briefly—not away from the duel, but to those watching it just as intensely.

  Across the row, seated just above us.

  Korren leaned forward, elbows on knees, his usual calm demeanour gone. His expression was unreadable, but I saw it—the flicker of emotion behind his sharp moss eyes. Every time Shun’s wind moved in tandem with Beatrix’s vines, Korren’s pupils shifted slightly, tracking every motion, every shift in balance. Like he was watching something ancient.

  Beside him, Tessa sat with her fingers laced together, pressed under her chin. Her lips parted slightly, like she’d forgotten to breathe for a split second. Even her usually pristine composure cracked at the edges as she watched Shun redirect a whole tornado Beatrix sent his way—into a spiral of mist that countered her next attack.

  Caelus and Nira didn’t speak.

  Caelus, always the awkward one, had his arms crossed, but his jaw was tight. Not from disapproval—no. From awe. Even he couldn’t hide the subtle upward twitch in his brow as Shun moved mid-air like he belonged there.

  And Nira—her eyes shimmered slightly, though she said nothing. Her hands rested on the edge of her seat, white-knuckled, but not from fear. From admiration.

  Even they, the elite among elites, held their breath.

  A low grunt came from Lance, seated a step above.

  “…Just how strong has he become since the last time I saw him?” He muttered, voice nearly lost to the wind, but the weight behind it lingered in the air like a challenge spoken to no one—and everyone.

  But suddenly, Shun did something unexpected. He used his lightning, not attacking, but letting it coil inward, moving it through his body, I could visibly see his muscles spasm, his face twitch in pain.

  ‘What are you trying to do?’ I muttered, seeing Shun do the unthinkable.

  A spell. An original he had made by himself. Then, he blitzed through the air, and I couldn’t even blink, his form leaving afterimages, as he was over Beatrix in an instant, giving her no time to defend as he launched a fiery attack and sent her crashing.

  I realised I had held my breath in long enough, as I finally breathed.

  Then—

  “YEEEES! That’s it! That’s what I’m talking about! Ooh—did you see that dodge? Jiwoo you slippery fox!”

  I flinched.

  Lyressa.

  There she was, bouncing in her seat beside Grandpa Camus, a fistful of crunchy fried root snacks in one hand and a juice gourd in the other. Her cheeks were puffed from chewing as she kept shouting between bites.

  “And Lady Beatrix! Whew! War Goddess, alright! Rip him in half! But like—nicely! He’s cute!”

  Grandpa Camus just chuckled, clearly unbothered, even as a bit of root snack flew onto his robe. “Now this is a duel. Reminds me of the skyfall arena in Elvarin city, thirty-six years ago. Same fire. Same wind.” He sat, taking some snacks from Lyressa.

  She happily offered, leaning toward him with a grin. “Did you bet on someone back then too?”

  “Of course I did,” Grandpa Camus said, eyes never leaving the arena. “And I won big time. Unlike Ramus, who whined about being stuck in diplomatic stuff with the Elder from the other cities. Well, he was king back then.” He ended with a smirk.

  The energy in the stands was electric.

  But in the silence that followed Shun’s next spell—a sweeping burst of water, freezing into jagged ice and splitting Beatrix’s thorn net mid-flight—I realized something.

  No matter how strong we’d believed he was before…Shun had come back even stronger.

  ***

  Seo Jiwoo

  The fight had reached a fever pitch. Beatrix’s movements were calculated and fierce, her mastery over wind and nature unparalleled. She danced through the battlefield with precision, each step deliberate, each strike laced with power.

  I bent the motes of water particles around me, feeling the ground dampen in response to my command as water seeped into it’s core, drying all the moisture next moment to make it harder for Beatrix to clear her footing. The air around us twisted unnaturally, wind pulling erratically as I redirected her spell’s trajectory. Beatrix staggered slightly, bending to her knees as she recovered her balance.

  But she was relentless. A surge of mana erupted from her side, the ground beneath me bursting as thick vines snaked upward with alarming speed. One coiled around my ankle before I could react.

  “Not bad,” I muttered, moving my hand to summon a flicker of fire. The flames roared to life, devouring the vine in an instant as I leapt back into the air, narrowly avoiding another attack, as the lightning coiling through me surged.

  Beatrix was already on her feet, her posture steady as her moss-green eyes locked onto mine. She smirked, raising a hand as the wind coiled around her like a serpent ready to strike.

  I landed lightly, the soles of my boots skidding against the dirt as I prepared my next move. The crowd’s cheers were distant noise, their excitement fuelling the tension between us. We didn’t need words to understand what the other was thinking.

  With a sweep of my hand, I called upon the earth once more, no longer holding, using all four elements. Jagged spikes erupted from the ground, racing toward her position. Beatrix responded instantly, a powerful gust of wind cutting through the spikes and scattering the debris.

  “Clever,” I admitted, stepping aside as she closed the distance between us.

  Her strikes came fast—fists and kicks augmented by mana. I dodged to the left, then to the right, weaving through her attacks as my body hummed with energy. One punch grazed my ribs, and I countered with a low kick aimed at her knees. She twisted mid-air, her agility on full display, and landed gracefully a few feet away.

  I didn’t give her a moment to rest. A stream of water surged from my palm, twisting into a whip that lashed toward her. Beatrix countered with a wall of vines, the two elements clashing in a burst of steam and debris.

  The battle was a display of elements and martial prowess, neither of us willing to yield. I could feel my pulse quickening, not from exhaustion but from exhilaration.

  “This isn’t going anywhere,” Beatrix finally said, her voice carrying over the din of the fight. She wiped a streak of dirt from her cheek, her lips curling into a grin. “Let’s end this with one decisive blow.”

  I smirked back. “Fine by me.”

  “And, Jiwoo...” Beatrix’s voice resounded. “Don’t hold back.”

  I gave her a friendly smirk, nodding.

  The air around us seemed to still as we prepared. I reached out to the atmospheric mana, feeling the currents flow around us. Beatrix’s mana surged, and the ground beneath her responded in kind. Vines erupted in a wild frenzy, weaving together to form a domain-like structure. The arena was suddenly alive with her energy, the plants twisting and writhing like living creatures.

  In response, I summoned the cold within me. A frost began to spread from where I stood, creeping across the ground and freezing the encroaching vines in their tracks. My palms glowed with an ethereal white flame, the frost-fire burning with an icy intensity, freezing the very air around me.

  Beatrix wasn’t done. She conjured a complex spell, the air distorting and twisting around her. I could feel the pressure of her mana as the winds coalesced into a vortex, spiralling violently around her.

  But to top it all off, I activated Ruler’s Authority, the power surged from within me, wrapping around my spine as it spread throughout my body, feeling my hold over mana tighten.

  The feeling didn’t leave me overwhelmed, like I held control and the skill listened silently, working to my will. But, for now this was enough. Even in a sealed condition, it worked well.

  The particles bended, forced into submission as Beatrix’s expression shifted completely, my aura rose wildly around the arena, matching her fierce crackling presence.

  We locked eyes, and in that moment, there was no crowd, no noise—only the two of us and the collision of our wills.

  Then we lunged.

  The white flames in my hands surged forward, meeting her spell of wind head-on. The clash was deafening, a cacophony of roaring wind and crackling frost-fire. The ground shook beneath us, the sheer force of our combined mana threatening to tear the arena apart.

  For a moment, everything was light and chaos. The frost-fire burned with an intensity that seemed to consume everything it touched, freezing everything in its wake, while Beatrix’s winds howled with unstoppable fury. The elements pushed against each other, neither willing to give way.

  The flames encompassing my hands threatened to freeze and burn her very spell apart, but her control wasn’t lacking, she matched my pace, I dispatched more mana to Ruler’s Authority, reinforcing more mana to the spell.

  She shifted, the flames consuming the vines which surrounded her as he focused on the spell.

  Then, with a final surge, the energy exploded outward, sending us both flying back.

  I landed hard, skidding across the ground before coming to a stop. My breathing was heavy, my body aching from the strain. Cuts and scrapes adorned my arms and legs, blood seeping from a few deeper flesh wounds that took time to stitch. But already, I could feel my body working to heal itself, the regenerative process kicking in.

  I deactivated my skills, fatigue took hold of my body as I rose to my knees, breathing heavy, eyes blurred, clouds of dust rose around the arena, blinding my vision and the crowd.

  Across from me, Beatrix pushed herself up, her fall cushioned by the vines encompassing her form as she approached, her uniform was torn at her shoulders and hip, vines around her frozen solid and broken, her body was still cloaked with ice, her hair slightly dishevelled. She looked at me with a tired but satisfied grin.

  “Well,” she said, brushing off some dirt, “you certainly didn’t disappoint.” She reached a hand out, I took it and stood, my body closed the wounds as I used mana rotation to recover.

  I chuckled, wincing slightly as I stood. “Neither did you. That was...exhilarating.”

  “Let’s call it a draw,” she offered, her tone light.

  My brows knitted. “It’s clearly your win. You don’t have to spare my pride. I was clearly pushed back by your spell at the end.”

  My frost-fire was able to disperse her wind spell, freezing everything in the air, but Beatrix’s spell had pushed my control to the maximum, and she was able to triumph under the game of perseverance.

  Beatrix smiled, brushing a strand of hair behind her ear. “Maybe. But a good fight isn’t always about who wins—sometimes it’s about who shows up with everything they’ve got.

  I let out a small breath, the corners of my lips tugging upward. “Agreed.”

  The tension in the arena eased, the cheers of the audience finally registering in my ears as the dust cleared up and they became visible.

  ***

  Ramus Silverlight

  The dust hadn’t even settled yet.

  Chunks of the coliseum’s outer ring lay cracked and smouldering, the once-pristine marble now pockmarked with scorch trails and jagged scars, layered and coated by thick ice as small pieces of ice drifted in the air with the dust and debris.

  I could still feel the aftershocks in my boots. The silence that followed wasn’t peace—it was the kind that comes when everyone’s too stunned to speak. No cheering. No gasps. Just…stillness.

  The dust around us settled and the figures of both Jiwoo and Beatrix came into vision. Battered, fatigued, but both standing tall.

  Then it finally came, the loud booming of the crowd, consisting of our group, brigade zero and the soldiers in the stands, they cheered, exhilarated by the fabulous performance from the two. I could even feel the adrenaline rush in the crowd, the soldiers screamed like girls, Lyressa and Camus behind me, cheering like they had nothing better to do—which to be honest was true.

  I stepped forward, boots crunching lightly over broken stone, eyes fixed on the centre. Lord Astrionyx beside me floated in the air, feet lifted and then he descended to the centre, his stride was slow as he approached Jiwoo, I followed suit.

  Beatrix stood tall, shoulders squared, her arms eased by her sides, her mana still, like a peaceful lake, sheathed back. Not a single drop of arrogance in her stance, just something rare for her: thoughtfulness, shared with a smile.

  Jiwoo stood opposite her, his shirt torn at the hem, smoke curling from his sleeves. His hands were relaxed at his sides, fingers twitching faintly, as if the magic hadn’t quite finished leaving him. His gaze was even. Quiet.

  Surprisingly, I didn’t see a single wound on his body, only stains left by the blood that stained his shirt. His regenerative capabilities were just extraordinary no matter how many times I saw.

  Beatrix on the other hand was the opposite, her uniform was roughed up, ripped from places, flesh wounds visible here and there, but the most noticeable one was on her forearm, where the cloth was smouldered and a fresh burn mark was visible, it looked red, close to purple.

  A reminder of the spell that Jiwoo had launched at her just now. Those white flames...a deviant form of fire magic I had never laid my eyes on.

  Both didn’t speak for a moment. Just looked at each other, like two warriors acknowledging something neither of them had expected to find.

  The air was calm, the tension slipping away as the others joined us from behind.

  Then Beatrix spoke.

  “Your spells…I’ve never seen anything like them.” Her voice didn’t echo—it cut through the stillness. “They were extraordinary. Controlled. Like how you wielded that deviant cold fire. I swear, if I hadn’t realized sooner, I would have gotten wounded pretty badly.” She said, rubbing the lingering frost off of her arms, touching her left forearm which was severely burned.

  I felt my brow rise slightly. Cold fire? So that fire uses the properties of ice. I looked at the boy with new found awe.

  At first, I had thought he was using two different elements at the same time like he had done during the match, using ice and fire magic simultaneously to manipulate a spell strong enough to match against Beatrix’s wind spell, but, for Beatrix to reveal this.

  This would mean Jiwoo has to perfectly control the heat and frost aspects of the two elements when he uses this deviant magic. To be able to create a fire that freezes everything in its path and even make the moisture freeze at the atomic level.

  I had no words for it.

  Jiwoo didn’t reply immediately. He just tilted his head slightly, as if the compliment hadn’t quite registered as important. That part of him always rubbed me the wrong way—not in a bad sense. Just…he was too used to the unbelievable.

  Just what did this boy do to get this far at such a young age? Even Beatrix wasn’t this good when she was his age.

  Beatrix took a step closer. Her eyes narrowed, not in hostility, but in the way a tactician studied a puzzle they can’t solve.

  “How long?” She asked. “How many years have you been working on that kind of conjuring? That level of mastery over deviant magic requires years of endless training, and yet, even after that the majority of mages are still unable to do what you have pulled off with ease.”

  Jiwoo turned to face her properly now. No smirk. No dramatics. Just that dead-serious calm that he always carried himself with, like he was never really surprised by anything anymore.

  A short smirk played on his face as he replied, “You say ease, but I had to work my arse off to even control that spell when I first created it a year and a half ago.”

  His tone was casual—not overbearing, just light, as if he were sharing a fact barely worth anyone’s attention.

  Silence.

  I swear I heard someone behind me choke on their breath. Perhaps, Caelus or Nira, but I could say the same for everyone else, myself included.

  Beatrix didn’t respond right away. Her lips parted slightly, as if to challenge it, but nothing came out. The surprise on her face wasn’t loud—it was quiet. Curious. Perplexed. The kind that comes when your whole understanding of someone shifts sideways.

  I glanced at Lord Astrionyx, who stood nearby in his human form, arms folded, one boot resting atop a chunk of collapsed debris.

  He didn’t speak either. But he gave the faintest curl of his lips. Just barely a smirk. If you weren’t watching, you’d miss it.

  But I was watching.

  And I understood. That was pride.

  “How long have you been an augmenter mage who uses spells like that?” Caelus asked from behind, his curiosity almost childlike, the question slipping out before he could stop himself.

  Nira stood beside him, fists clenched so tightly her knuckles turned pale. Her usual confidence had flickered, replaced by a mix of disbelief and something bordering on inadequacy.

  Korren’s eyes narrowed, not out of suspicion—but focus. He kept staring at Jiwoo like he was trying to piece something together, like the boy didn’t make sense anymore.

  Tessa shared that same expression, her lips slightly parted, eyes tracking Jiwoo as if seeing him for the first time.

  But Lyressa just looked at Jiwoo with a smirk, as if whatever he might say had already been accepted by her.

  Jiwoo shrugged like it meant nothing.

  “Truthfully? I’ve been an augmenter all my life. My real specialty’s the sword.”

  His tone stayed light, casual, like he was just chatting.

  “I only started dabbling in conjuring about a year and a half ago.”

  Silence followed, heavy and unspoken. The kind that weighed down on pride.

  Because no matter how they looked at it—they were born into great households, trained from a very much age to be better than other mages their age.

  But Jiwoo? Yet this one human boy from a different realm had shaken the strongest brigade in our world to its core.

  They simply looked, at him, acknowledging him, no longer as a boy, but as a rival.

  The others began to gather around now—Aurora, arms crossed but eyes glued to Jiwoo; Camus too, both bombarded him with a train of questions over his fighting style, his spells, Camus, ever so smug over the fact that Jiwoo had mastered his spell and created a version better suited for him fighting style.

  Behind us, brigade zero was stiff with something between awe and disbelief; even Lance, though always calm and sometimes arrogant, even his gaze held a quiet respect for him, like he’d known all along that Jiwoo would pull of something tat he had never expected before

  The coliseum was broken. The duel was over.

  But something in the air had changed.

  Not just the hierarchy. Not just our expectations. Something deeper.

  Because after what we’d just seen, none of us could pretend Jiwoo was just another prodigy anymore.

  He was something else entirely.

  And frankly?

  That scared the hell out of me. That one human boy was able to reach a level, how much potential did his entire race hold?

  But, that could mean Jiwoo was special. A rare talent amongst the rarest gems.

  “I believe you’re questions can be saved for later. I think we should let them rest first.” I looked at Aurora and Camus whom had swarmed Jiwoo’s sides. “They both must be exhausted after their duel.”

  Everyone nodded, as I saw Ariem reach over to Beatrix, bringing her hands forward and treating her wounds.

  She thanked her wholeheartedly with a bow, as we returned to the stands for the time being.