“Magus? That’s Vinny? But I also heard his Soulcaster is only one-star. A Magus with a one-star Soulcaster... it’s hard to believe that title really means much.”

“That’s what I think too. Even if that Vinny does have some skill, if he really had what it takes to beat someone in the top four of the year, why doesn’t he enter the ranking challenge matches? Doesn’t want to? More like doesn’t dare. He’s probably afraid people will expose that his Magus status isn’t worth much at all.”

“So what do we do? I’m actually really curious who’s going to win.”

The spectators nearby buzzed with discussion. The outcome of this matchup really was too attention-grabbing.

Vinny had already beaten quite a few people who challenged him and proven his strength, but everyone was still curious. As one of the only three first-year Magus, why was he willing to stay ranked twenty-third in the year and never once fight for a higher place?

So people all started guessing. Was it because he simply didn’t have that kind of ability? Because a one-star Soulcaster Magus wasn’t actually that strong? Because if he entered a ranking challenge, his “undefeated legend” would be shattered, so he kept things exactly as they were and didn’t dare push higher?

The more they thought about it, the more it seemed like that had to be the only explanation. If it were them, if they had the strength to reach the top five in the year, they would have gone long ago.

Not only could you show off in front of all these people and your peers, you could also massively increase your chances on the dating market, move into a huge villa, and gain a huge tilt in resources and related privileges. Who wouldn’t want that?

And yet Vinny had never gone to do it. Was that because he didn’t want to?

How could that be? Who wouldn’t want that?

So if it wasn’t that he didn’t want to, then the only answer was that he didn’t have the strength.

People preferred judging things from their own perspective. If it were them, they definitely wouldn’t let that kind of chance to climb upward slip by.

In the first-year competition zone, this match had drawn a great deal of attention.

To be fair, Vinny counted as something of a “campus celebrity” by now. Every match involving him attracted a lot of attention. It was just that the direction of that “celebrity” status was a little off.

When they arrived at the arena, the two of them each handed their student card to the referee. After registering them on a magic device, the referee returned the cards and handed each of them an impact belt.

“Then, for Carillian Academy’s practical combat exam this semester, the match between Vinny Facilis and Eric Zarniman, I will now read the rules before the match begins. Both sides may freely use enchanted weapons. Do not leave the match area. Anyone who leaves the match area will be judged defeated. When your opponent’s belt is knocked off, do not continue pursuing the attack, or it may be considered intentional harm to a fellow student.”

Vinny looked across at Eric, who had taken his place on the other end of the arena floor just like him, and quietly listened to the rules. The rules for the first-year second-semester match had changed slightly from last semester’s.

“Finally, I’ll repeat it one more time. Friendship first, competition second. Do you both understand? Do you need me to repeat it again?”

“I understand, Mr. Referee.”

“I got it.”

“Very good. Then the match... begin!”

Before the referee had even finished that sentence, Vinny had already seen the fighting spirit blazing in Eric’s eyes.

Clearly, the other side had wanted to meet him for a long time now, this so-called “legendary figure” on campus.

The good-for-nothing young master nobody believed in, the Camella Royal Capital delinquent everyone took as a joke, had stunned them all and surged ahead in one clean charge. Even those who had once despised Vinny had no choice but to admit that he really did have something.

And now, as a mere first-year, he had already stepped into the ranks of Magus and left everyone else behind.

Everyone only saw his glamorous, brilliant side.

Nobody knew how much he had paid for it in private.

Eric could feel that much from Vinny’s eyes.

From a person’s gaze, and from the way a person fought, you could roughly read the kind of life that person had lived. Once the battle began, Vinny’s eyes became instantly and completely different from before.

Vinny drove off the ground and rushed in, kicking up dust as he closed the distance. In the middle of that charge, he removed the icy crystal pendant hanging from his ear. After a few flicks of the wrist, it transformed into Frostfang Spear, and he shot toward Eric like a bolt of lightning.

Before the spear point could stab into Eric, it was blocked by a knight’s longsword. Eric gripped the sword with both hands and stopped Vinny’s attack.

That force...

Vinny twisted the spear and dropped low, sweeping the butt of the weapon toward Eric’s legs.

Eric flashed backward and avoided the interference, but the ice spear was like a snake that had fixed on its prey, flicking its tongue with relentless pressure. One move failed, it bared its fangs and bit again.

Eric seized the timing and flicked his longsword upward, trying to knock the spearhead away and then close the distance.

After all, a spear was strongest at mid-range, and mid-range was extremely unfavorable for sword weapons.

But to his surprise, the ice spear wasn’t knocked away. It clung to his blade like a snapping turtle that had latched onto something and refused to let go.

Eric’s eyes sharpened.

He could see it now. Vinny had already begun to form a combat style of his own.

His style was ferocious, like someone fighting for his life. There was no showmanship in any move, no flashy elegance. Every strike and every form existed only for one purpose—how to win as quickly as possible, how to finish an enemy as fast as possible. There wasn’t a single unnecessary flourish in it.

He fought according to the experience he had carved out in life-and-death struggles—experience in how to control an enemy quickly and efficiently.

It was hard to imagine how many life-and-death battles he must have gone through to develop a style like that.

It was like the frenzied counterattack of someone making a final stand with his back to the river.

He really was no ordinary person.

His real combat experience might very well far surpass Eric’s.

Eric slowed his breathing and focused fully on the fight. He had wanted to cross blades with Vinny for a long time and see for himself just what the only surviving sprout of House of Facilis was capable of.

Even though he had already expected that the current him would most likely be unable to beat Vinny. After all, there was a full major realm between them.

Eric pushed his family’s swordsmanship to its limit. Wave after wave of sword-rain hammered against Vinny’s spear blade and shaft, and the ring of metal striking metal never ceased.

The students watching were dumbfounded.

Quite a few students who had merely been passing by on their way to practical matches in other arenas couldn’t help stopping to watch the duel.

The two sides had utterly different fighting styles—one school-trained, one battle-forged—but both displayed overwhelming combat power.

“Young Master Eric is serious,” one of Eric’s close friends sighed from below the arena.

It {N•o•v•e•l•i•g•h•t} was the first time he had ever seen Eric unleash his Zarniman swordsmanship without reservation, like a hawk’s beak and talons tearing madly at prey.

And yet, in the face of that violent offensive, Vinny’s rhythm didn’t seem shaken at all. His defense was flawless.

Or rather, he was using offense as defense—point against point, face to face, dissolving every one of Eric’s attacks.

Eric knew close range was his advantage zone.

But for some reason, he simply could not get close to Vinny.

That ice spear had built a wall of ice, cutting him off outside it. He couldn’t close the distance by even half an inch.

At that point, he had no choice but to use magic.

[Flame Slash]

A layer of scorching fire wrapped itself around Eric’s sword blade, and the blazing heat showed just how high his fire affinity was.

And Eric had slipped the spell into the middle of his storm-like offensive, striking without warning, catching the other side off guard.

Would Vinny choose to meet it head-on?

Eric guessed at what Vinny would do next. There was no way Vinny could directly block his magic. The only option should have been to neutralize it by using magic against magic.

But what Eric hadn’t expected was that Vinny did cast a spell—

Just not at him.

Vinny flipped one hand to the side, and a chain of ice shot out from his palm, catching the ground diagonally behind Eric and yanking Vinny in that direction.

What is he doing?!

For a moment, Eric couldn’t read Vinny’s intentions at all. He had thought Vinny was casting magic to clash with his own, but it seemed the other side had never intended to meet him head-on in the first place.

Eric didn’t know what Vinny meant to do, but he didn’t hesitate. He slashed his fire-wreathed knight’s sword toward him.

As Vinny was being dragged sideways by the ice chain, he rolled, dodging Eric’s [Flame Slash], then gripped the front section of the spear and used it like a blade, slicing across in one clean pass.

The instant Eric realized his [Flame Slash] had hit nothing, he froze.

Only then did he understand what Vinny had been trying to do.

But it was already too late.

Vinny rolled to the ground, one hand holding the spear, one hand braced against the floor, down on one knee.

Eric, meanwhile, still held the posture from that missed slash and did not move.

Clack.

The next moment, the belt fastened around Eric’s waist fell to the ground, the sound crisp and clear.

The entire arena fell silent.

With the end of the match, many of the rumors collapsed on their own.

A lot of students had been able to imagine that Eric might not be Vinny’s match, but they had never expected Eric—the gifted young master of the Zarniman Family, ranked fourth in the year, the genius praised all across the Camella Royal Capital—to lose this easily.

They had thought the fight would last dozens of exchanges.

Instead, it ended in barely more than ten.

It was an overwhelming victory for Vinny.

No one was more shocked than Eric himself.

This was completely different from the ending he had imagined.

Not because he had thought he could win, but because he had imagined that they would at least fight to the very end, both sides drawing out their trump cards and ultimate magic before he finally lost.

Instead, the ending was nothing like that.

He had underestimated the gap between Sorcerer-class and Magus. He had also underestimated the gap between himself and Vinny.

There had been none of those exchanges of ultimate techniques he had pictured. None of the spectacle he had imagined.

He had simply lost because his opponent seized on one tiny opening—too small to be any smaller—and that was that.

There had never been any suspense at all.

Vinny stood up and turned Frostfang Spear back into an icy crystal earring, hanging it once more from his ear.

This wasn’t the kind of show-off posing where an expert never turns around to look at the explosion behind him.

It was confidence.

He knew that move alone was enough to decide the match.

If the rules said all he had to do was knock off the impact belt, then wasn’t it enough to attack the weakest point of the belt?

As long as the belt fell, he won.

And he had won so cleanly that even the referee hadn’t reacted at first. The referee had still been wondering how a fight that had looked so evenly matched and likely to drag on had ended in an instant.

The impact belt on this field could withstand quite a bit of magical bombardment, so how had it suddenly failed so easily?

Then he saw it.

Vinny had struck the linking point of the belt directly and knocked the whole thing off.

This...?

Even the referee was stunned.

Was that allowed?

Could it count as a win?

Of course it could. He had seen situations like that before.

It was just extremely rare.

For something like that to happen, there usually had to be an enormous gap in strength between both sides—like when an upper-year student crushed a lower-year one.

Because doing this was not easy at all. Only when the stronger side had an overwhelming margin could someone afford, in a duel where the situation could reverse in an instant, to precisely target the connection point of an opponent’s belt.

It was pure high-difficulty showmanship.

If something like this happened, it meant the difference between the two sides was absurdly large.

They were completely not on the same level.

The referee had of course heard that Vinny was at the Magus realm.

But now he had a new guess.

This student Vinny... had he improved again?

A realm increase didn’t only raise mana capacity, mana purity, and spell power.

It improved many other things too.

Strength, agility, perception—under the nourishment of purer mana, all of these would rise as well.

“The winner has been decided. In this practical duel, the victor is Vinny Facilis.”

Only after pausing for several seconds did the referee realize Vinny had already put away his weapon and was waiting for the result to be announced. He hurriedly declared it.

Eric looked at the belt lying off to the side and took a deep breath.

He had figured out what had happened now, and he accepted the result. His expression was filled with helpless resignation.

“Thank you, Vinny, for teaching me a valuable lesson,” Eric said as he walked over and thanked him modestly.

“In a practical duel, I fought with everything I had. I only hope you won’t take offense, Eric,” Vinny said.

“How could I? If you had held back, I’d have been unhappy instead. Thank you for letting me see the gap between me and a real expert. This experience was extremely valuable.”

Eric let out a helpless laugh.

He had the distinct feeling that in the year since enrollment, Vinny had improved at terrifying speed.

Not just in realm.

In temperament too.

He was far steadier than before.

As expected, progress never came in strength alone. Temperament advanced alongside it.

“Yeah, yeah, of course. No matter what, he’s still at the Magus realm. A whole major realm of suppression—no technique can make up for that. There was no way Eric could win.”

The students below the arena immediately began making hindsight comments.

“Tch. Weren’t you just saying that a one-star Soulcaster Magus didn’t have any real value?”

“I was just—I was just saying that casually! A Magus is still a Magus, okay? How could Young Master Eric, a high-tier Sorcerer-class, possibly beat one?”

“But he’s ranked fourth in the year. He got taken down that easily?”

“What else were you expecting? Being able to exchange that many moves with a Magus is already impressive enough, all right? Did you really expect a high-tier Sorcerer-class to beat a Magus? Keep dreaming.”

“That’s weird, though. If that Vinny is that strong, why doesn’t he challenge the year rankings? Why stay at twenty-third? Is he especially attached to the number twenty-three?”

“Who knows? And why do you care? He obviously has his own plans.”

Vinny had long since become immune to this kind of talk.

After exchanging a few simple words with Eric, he said goodbye and strode away, leaving the arena behind.

To everyone else, this practical match had been nerve-racking.

To him, it had felt like nothing more than going through the motions.

It was far too elementary for him.

He hadn’t been nervous in the slightest.

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