A boom shook the entire training hall. The floor trembled beneath my feet, and a shock wave spread out from the center of the room. Several students staggered while others instinctively raised their arms to shield their faces. I turned toward the sound.
A thick cloud of dust was rising from the floor, traces of bluish light flickering around its edges while the sharp smell of burned mana hung in the air. As the dust began to clear, I made out several figures in the middle of the hall. One stood alone while the others surrounded him in a wide semicircle, and judging by their stances, this wasn’t a friendly welcome.
Some had already drawn weapons. A girl on the right held one hand out in front of her, tiny sparks still flickering around her fingers, while another student crouched behind a shield as though expecting a counterattack. The figure in the center slowly brushed dust from his black coat.
“Is this supposed to be a welcome?”
I didn’t recognize the voice. I recognized the stance. Lucius.
He stood slightly sideways with one foot behind the other and his shoulders relaxed. Even surrounded by several opponents, he didn’t look cornered. Mostly annoyed. He seemed just as cold as he had in the classroom, perhaps even more so.
The group around him recovered quickly from the explosion and took up their positions again. It wasn’t a perfect formation, but everyone seemed to know roughly where they belonged. So they had practiced something like this before.
I couldn’t tell who had caused the explosion. The crater in the floor lay between Lucius and the students facing him, and the traces of mana in the air were mixed together badly enough that even someone more experienced than me would have struggled to identify their source. Judging by the expressions of most of the people watching, however, everyone had already decided Lucius was responsible.
I wasn’t so sure. Lucius looked like the kind of person who was easy to provoke, but not like someone who would attack without reason in the middle of a school hall full of witnesses. Especially not on the first day.
“Good reaction.”
The voice came from right beside me. My right hand shot toward my hip and stopped only when my fingers found nothing but the fabric of my uniform. No hilt, no scabbard. Only then did I look over.
Finn stood to my left. He must have approached while I was watching Lucius. He gave my shoulder a light tap.
“I barely heard you,” I said.
“I noticed.”
His gaze briefly dropped to my hand. I quickly lowered it to my side. Old habits.
Finn didn’t ask about it. He simply turned back toward the center of the hall. His expression was different from the one he’d worn in the classroom. The uncertain smile was gone, his shoulders no longer drawn in, and he paid no attention to the dust or the damaged floor. He was watching the people.
Before I could say anything, he stepped forward.
“This isn’t necessary.”
He didn’t speak loudly, but somehow the entire hall heard him. The conversations around us gradually faded, and the students’ attention shifted from Lucius to Finn.
Finn kept walking, each step calm and certain. In the classroom, he had barely worked up the courage to introduce himself to the person sitting beside him. Now he was walking between several armed students as though their presence didn’t concern him at all. Admittedly, I had only known him for a few hours. Even so, it felt like I was looking at a completely different person.
Neither side seemed pleased by his intervention. The girl with sparks around her fingers shot him an irritated look, and one of the students in front of Lucius tightened his grip on his spear. Lucius barely moved. He simply looked at Finn.
“This is my business.”
“Not anymore,” Finn replied.
Several people around me drew surprised breaths. Finn stopped at the edge of the semicircle.
“If you keep this going, you’re going to drag the entire class into it.”
“Then they should move.”
Lucius’s voice remained calm.
“No one is forcing them to stand in my way.”
The students in front of him exchanged uncertain looks, but none of them moved.
Finn did.
He walked between them. Two students blocked his path for a moment, but a single look from him was enough to make both step aside reluctantly. There was no threat in it, which somehow made it stranger. Finn didn’t act like someone trying to force others to respect him. He simply expected them to listen. And they did.
Lucius stepped toward him.
“Move.”
Finn stayed where he was.
“No.”
A simple answer, without a threat or an explanation.
Lucius stopped a few steps away, leaving them face-to-face. He was broader through the shoulders and looked physically stronger. Beside him, Finn seemed even thinner than he had in the classroom. Yet somehow he never looked smaller.
Lucius gave a faint smirk, not one of contempt so much as curiosity.
“If you’ve got the nerve to stand in my way, prove you can back it up.”
Finn remained silent for several seconds, looking Lucius directly in the eyes and letting the silence speak for him.
“I don’t want to fight you.”
Lucius’s smile faded slightly.
“Then move.”
“I’m not doing that either.”
Finn glanced at the students around them.
“No one here needs to get hurt just because you have something to prove.”
Some people clearly didn’t appreciate that remark. For a moment, Lucius seemed to lose his certainty. He wasn’t the only one.
Lucius was easy enough for me to read. He was proud, confident, and accustomed to people either stepping aside or accepting his terms. Finn had done neither. The longer I watched him, the less certain I became about what he would do next.
A wide circle gradually formed around the two of them. No one marked it out; people simply kept backing away until several meters of open space separated them from the pair in the middle. Tension and anticipation mixed on the faces around me. Some clearly hoped there wouldn’t be a fight. The rest would probably have been disappointed if nothing happened.
Lucius finally lost patience. He took two steps back and shrugged off his coat in a single motion, letting it fall to the floor. There was no heavy armor underneath and no visible weapon. So he was a mage.
At least, that was my first thought. Until now, he had kept his distance from the others, and now he was creating even more space. A sensible choice for someone who needed room to cast.
Finn didn’t even blink. Instead, he took a single step forward. Lucius backed away again. Finn followed, maintaining the same distance between them and refusing to give him space. If Lucius was a mage, it made sense. The easiest way to limit a mage was to close the distance before he could finish his first attack. The problem was that Finn didn’t have a weapon. Or the build of a close-range fighter.
Lucius suddenly leaped backward, this time gaining several meters, and raised his right hand in front of him. The air around it distorted.
At first, I thought it was heat, but the edges of his body didn’t shimmer. They shifted. For a moment, his arm looked longer than it should have. His shoulder seemed to occupy a different position from the rest of his body, and the distance between his fingers and forearm made no sense.
I blinked. The image didn’t correct itself. It got worse.
Lucius stood only several meters in front of Finn, yet at the same time he seemed much farther away. The space between them stretched and contracted with every breath I took. I couldn’t judge the distance between them or even the angle of Lucius’s raised hand.
It wasn’t a spell attacking the body. It was interfering with perception.
Someone beside me staggered. Another student pressed a hand over his eyes. Finn stayed where he was.
“So that’s how it works,” he said quietly.
Lucius closed his fingers. The mana in the hall began drawing toward him. Then Finn placed a hand against his own chest.
「ADVANCED ABILITY: MANA VOID」
The sound didn’t come from his mouth, yet I perceived the words with perfect clarity.
An invisible wave spread through the hall. There was no pressure or heat. Only emptiness.
The mana around Lucius vanished. It didn’t disperse or flow somewhere else. One moment it existed, and the next it simply didn’t.
The distorted space snapped back into place, Lucius’s arm returning to where it belonged as the hall regained its proper dimensions. Several students inhaled sharply. Lucius looked down at his own hand. For the first time since the confrontation began, he seemed genuinely surprised.
Finn lowered his hand. His expression remained calm, though a thin bead of sweat had appeared at his temple. So using it cost him something. The question was how much.
Lucius raised his hand again.
“That’s enough.”
A firm female voice carried across the hall. No one moved.
Our homeroom teacher stood in the doorway with her arms folded, looking considerably less tolerant than she had during her speech that morning.
“This hall is not intended for duels.”
Her gaze settled on the damaged floor before moving across the students surrounding Lucius.
“If any of you are looking for an immediate expulsion, feel free to continue.”
That was enough. The girl who had been holding sparks around her fingers immediately lowered her hand, and the student with the shield dropped it toward the floor. The group around Lucius began to dissolve. Some stepped back into the crowd, while others moved toward the walls as though the confrontation had never involved them.
Within seconds, they had almost disappeared among the other students. As though they had never been there. I wasn’t sure I could have found all of them again if I tried.
Our homeroom teacher walked over to the crater and nudged a piece of broken stone aside with the toe of her shoe.
“No attack took place here,” she said coldly. “The record will show a training exercise that got out of control and resulted in damage to academy property.”
She looked at Lucius.
“This time only.”
Lucius gave a quiet snort. The solution clearly suited him. He nodded once and picked up his coat from the floor.
Finn said nothing. Only moments ago, he had stood in front of Lucius without the slightest hesitation. Now one hand was clenched into a fist so tightly that his knuckles had turned white. He looked at our homeroom teacher. His confidence disappeared almost instantly.
It wasn’t fear of punishment. At least, not ordinary fear. There was something in the way she looked at him that I didn’t understand.
Finn lowered his eyes, then turned without a word and walked toward the back of the group. For a moment, I considered following him. In the end, I stayed where I was. I had known him for only a few hours, and judging by his expression, my questions wouldn’t have helped.
The tension gripping the hall gradually loosened. First came a few quiet comments, then the students started talking again, and within minutes most of them were discussing the incident that supposedly hadn’t happened at all.
Mana Void. The name spread through the crowd in whispers.
I knew of Abilities that could weaken spells or disrupt their structure, but Finn’s seemed different. It hadn’t looked like he blocked Lucius’s magic. He had simply taken away the space in which it could exist.
A skinny tank wouldn’t make much sense. Maybe my guess in the classroom had been wrong.
Our homeroom teacher ordered everyone back into line, and the academy tour continued as though nothing had happened. No one paid attention the way they had before, though. The students’ eyes kept drifting back to Lucius. And even more often to Finn.
He stayed near the rear and didn’t speak to anyone. I left him alone. For now.
The training facilities were completely different from anything I was used to. Back home, we had an empty hall, a few worn-out training dummies, and a basic gym. If we needed to simulate uneven terrain, someone scattered rocks across the floor. Here, all it took was a few commands entered into a control panel.
The floor trembled, and within seconds the smooth surface of the hall became forest ground. Tree trunks rose from the floor, bushes appeared between them, and the smell of damp earth filled the air. Several students eagerly wandered among the trees. I stayed where I was and touched the nearest trunk.
The bark felt real. A small piece even broke off beneath my fingers.
Our homeroom teacher changed the settings. The forest disappeared and was replaced by a desert, dry air hitting my face as sand crunched beneath my shoes. Another adjustment created a rocky valley with narrow passages and several elevated positions that would have been perfect for an ambush.
It felt like I was watching some kind of trick. What bothered me most was that I couldn’t tell where the trick ended.
“The simulation can reproduce most common environments,” our homeroom teacher explained. “Including changes in temperature, visibility, and limited weather conditions.”
Limited. Judging by the wind moving through the valley, I wouldn’t have used that word.
The control panel itself worried me more than any of the environments it created. It was covered in dozens of symbols, sliders, and menus. After my experience with the academy phone, I had no intention of touching it without supervision.
Then we moved on to the sports facilities. They stood right beside the training hall and, like most of the academy, were indoors. There seemed to be every kind of sports field I could think of. Basketball courts, combat-sports areas, a swimming pool, and in the middle of the enormous complex, a football field.
I stopped for a moment. The grass was perfectly maintained. The white lines didn’t have a single flaw, and the goals looked as though no one had ever used them.
I had liked football since I was a child. It was simple. You didn’t need an Ability, expensive equipment, or access to a dungeon. All you needed was a ball and enough room to run with it.
If my life hadn’t revolved around fighting, maybe I would have ended up somewhere like this. The idea was so distant that it almost seemed ridiculous. Even so, I looked at the field a few seconds longer than necessary.
A running track stretched beside it. That drew considerably less enthusiasm from me.
I had never liked running. Thinking about it, I couldn’t remember ever running just for the sake of it. There was always something in front of me. Or behind me.
Maybe it would be nice to run one day without having to worry about either.