"Us attack her?"
"That’s hardly fair —"
"Wait, she wants all of us to go at her at once?"
Flint stood perfectly still, arms folded across her chest, her chin tilted upward with a near‑provocative smirk tugging at her lips. "Too afraid? Then trudge back to your theory lectures, sit in a classroom listening to me drone through textbooks all semester, scrape by with a passing grade, and pack your bags when it’s over."
Her words lit a powder keg. Several boys in the crowd moved first. Summoning their Spirit‑Beasts, they charged forward: a grey‑scaled stone lizard, a copper‑billed raven, and a short‑tailed weasel. The three common‑rank beasts lunged toward Flint from separate directions. Flint did not even draw her whip. She merely sidestepped half a pace, letting the raven’s sharp beak graze past her shoulder. When the stone lizard pounced head‑on, she planted her boot on its tail, pinning it helpless to the ground. Before the short‑tailed weasel could so much as touch her boot, a casual flick of her hand sent it rolling away.
The three Spirit‑Beasts froze, standing there bewildered.
"Next," Flint said, her expression unchanged.
More students rushed in, then even more. Provoked and goaded, the whole Group‑B surged toward the red‑haired woman at the centre of the training ground beneath the morning light. Dozens of Spirit‑Beasts and their masters swarmed her, the scene chaotic like boiling porridge. Flint wove through the mob, lithe as a water‑snake. Every lean, raise of an arm, and lift of a knee dodged incoming strikes precisely. Several times she used her elbows to deflect beasts aside, applying just enough force to stagger them without inflicting injury.
Within three minutes, over a dozen Spirit‑Beasts lay on the ground alongside seven or eight gasping students. Flint remained in the middle of the field, her hair untouched, her breathing as steady as if she had only been out for a stroll.
"That is all you have?" She brushed dust off her sleeves. "Is this the full extent of every one of you?"
Cecil had not moved from his spot. Gwendolyn perched on his shoulder, her tail raised slightly.
"She is strong," Gwendolyn murmured, her voice low enough only for Cecil to hear. "But she underestimates us — she did not account for you."
Cecil said nothing. He studied the patterns in Flint’s footwork. Over those three minutes, she had leaned sideways four times, lifted her legs twice, and raised her hands seven times. Every movement followed a predictable rhythm. When facing a frontal assault, her body instinctively tilted a fraction to the left before dodging right. The tell‑tale twitch happened in the blink of an eye, yet Cecil’s eyes could pick it out clearly now.
"Are you going?" Gwendolyn asked.
"I’m going."
Cecil stepped out from the ranks. He did not run. He walked forward a few paces and halted roughly ten steps away from Flint. Gwendolyn hopped off his shoulder to land at his feet, her blue‑and‑white form glinting in the morning sun.
Flint glanced at Gwendolyn, then at Cecil. The beauty mark beneath her eye twitched faintly. "You’ve been watching this whole time. Three minutes. What were you waiting for?"
"Waiting for your tells to show themselves," Cecil replied.
Flint’s smirk faded for a heartbeat. Her gaze lingered on his face, then she slipped back into her nonchalant demeanour. "Quick study. But seeing and doing are two very different things."
Cecil gave no answer. Hidden beneath his robe, a thin layer of frost gathered at his fingertips. Silver characters flickered deep within his consciousness — [Frost Resonance · Beginner‑Tier · Resonance Efficiency Increasing]. The bond linking him to Gwendolyn felt clearer than it had the night before, like a drawn‑tight bowstring.
He stepped forward.
No sprint, no shout. He simply advanced toward Flint with even strides, his right hand hanging loose at his side. Flint’s eyes locked onto his motions. Her right foot shifted half a step backward — the pre‑signal for her sidestep, leaning toward her left.
Cecil saw it.
When he reached three paces from her, he burst forward, leaning his weight in. His right hand slid out from his robe, wispy white frost streaking through the air toward Flint’s left shoulder. Flint reacted with blinding speed, tilting left exactly as her habit dictated, before trying to dodge right. But at the very last instant, Cecil redirected his frost. It no longer aimed for her original position, locking instead onto where she would land after her rightward evasion, half a second early.
White mist burst where her right boot was about to touch the earth. A thin sheet of rime instantly coated that patch of ground, slick as polished glass. The moment her sole met the frost, her balance faltered for less than a fraction of a second — just long enough for Cecil to spot her heel lift off the stone.
He closed the gap in that split instant, hooking upward with his left hand, aiming for her wrist. At the same moment, Gwendolyn launched herself from the ground. Her blue‑white form skimmed the grass to Flint’s left, exhaling a tightly compressed blast of cold air. Two streams of frost sealed off both of Flint’s escape routes, leaving retreat as her only option.
Flint took it. She stepped backward half a pace, her boot scraping a mark across the turf. It was only half a step, but her feet had moved.
A dead silence fell across the training ground.
Flint steadied herself and glanced down at the scrape gouged into the grass behind her heel, a shallow furrow carved into the earth. She slowly lifted her head. For the first time, her ice‑grey eyes held something entirely unlike what had come before.
No amusement, no anger. She studied Cecil, her gaze travelling from his face to the small blue‑white lizard at his feet drawing back its frost breath, then returning to lock onto him for two long seconds.
"Your name?"
"Cecil von Ashford."
Flint offered no comment. She turned to face all of Group‑B, sheathed her whip at her waist, folded her arms, and lifted her chin.
"Class is dismissed for today. From now on, I set the terms. Free‑form training, bound by no textbooks." Her voice sharp and crisp once more. "Every single one of you — including those flat on the ground just now — must reach the level he just demonstrated before graduation. Those who fail will repeat training, be held back, or be expelled outright. I only teach fighters."
An uproar erupted across the field again. Unlike the earlier outburst, this one held new layers: excitement, dread, and even students still sprawled on the ground staring ahead with blazing eyes.
As Flint reached the edge of the grounds, she paused. Without turning around, she tilted her head sideways and spoke over her shoulder. "Ashford. That frost you unleashed a moment ago was not your Spirit‑Beast’s skill."
Cecil did not reply at once.
"Spirit‑Beast skills originate from the beast itself. The contractor may only guide their direction; they cannot cast them directly." Flint’s ice‑grey eyes locked onto him. "Yet that frost that burst from your right hand came from you. Your little lizard exhaled one blast of cold from the left, while you unleashed another from the right. The two streams of frost were cast separately, drawn from different sources."
Gwendolyn perched on Cecil’s knee, her tail falling completely still.
"Do you understand what this means?" Flint asked.
Cecil held his tongue. He did understand — Soul Resonance Art, a discipline only high‑ranked knights learned. But Flint clearly did not require his answer. She pressed on, her tone holding a restrained, almost burning curiosity.
"I served three years as an assistant instructor for Group‑A. I have seen hundreds of students and their Spirit‑Beasts, over a dozen holders of rare‑rank beasts. Not a single one could cast an elemental skill directly through human will alone only four days after enrollment. Not one." She paused. "You are the first."
"So what?" he said.
Flint did not answer straight away. She leaned against a tree trunk and fell silent for several seconds, as if weighing something over in her mind. Then she spoke. "I do not wish to know how you accomplished this. Not yet, at least. But are you free this afternoon? I want to talk to you in depth about certain —" she chose her words carefully "— matters concerning Soul Resonance Art. Nothing related to class curriculum. A private conversation."
Cecil met her eyes. There was no malice within those ice‑grey irises, nor the greedy hunger of someone intent on prying secrets out of him. Instead he recognised something familiar: the instinctive urge to draw near when one beholds something beyond their own understanding.
"What time this afternoon?" he asked.