Kael woke up to the smell of roasted meat and garlic.
His eyes snapped open.
He was back in the pristine, white restricted medical wing, lying on the exact same cot as the night before.
His left shoulder throbbed with a dull, heavy ache, but the searing agony of the dagger strike was completely gone.
He looked down.
His shoulder was wrapped in fresh bandages, but beneath the gauze, he could feel the unnatural heat of Adaptive Regeneration frantically knitting his torn muscle fibers back together.
The blue screen hovered over his chest.
[Host is awake.
Shoulder integrity at 62%.]
[Caloric deficit critical.
Eat the food on the table, or I will start digesting your spleen.]
Kael didn’t need to be told twice.
He swung his legs off the cot, ignoring the sharp twinge in his chest, and lunged for the metal tray resting on the bedside table.
It was piled high with roasted beef, thick bread, and a pitcher of water.
He ate like a starving animal.
He didn’t bother with the silverware, tearing into the bread and meat with his bare hands.
He could physically feel the calories burning the second they hit his stomach, converting instantly into the energy required to stitch his shoulder together.
“Pacing yourself would prevent you from throwing it right back up.”
Kael froze, half a piece of bread shoved in his mouth.
Mori was sitting in the corner of the room.
She was back in her standard white academy coat, but she looked terrible.
Her perfectly styled dark hair was slightly messy, her skin was paper-white, and she was sitting completely rigid, holding her left side with a subtle, protective grip.
Kael swallowed hard, washing the food down with half the pitcher of water.
He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
“You look worse than I do,” Kael noted, his eyes narrowing as he studied her posture.
“Who hit you?”
Mori’s gaze snapped to him, cold and defensive.
“Nobody hit me.
It was a training accident.”
“Right.
And I tripped and fell on a dagger,” Kael said dryly.
He stood up, testing his balance.
His legs held.
He took a step toward her.
“You’re favoring your left side.
Your breathing is shallow, which means core trauma.
Magic burn.”
Mori stared at him, her expression hardening.
“Your observational skills are wasted on an F-rank, Morgan.
Sit down before you tear your stitches.”
Kael didn’t sit.
He leaned against the metal table, crossing his arms carefully.
“You brought me back here.
You covered for me again.”
“You made a spectacle of yourself,” Mori corrected sharply.
“You won, but you bled all over the arena to do it.
The medics were going to take you to the public ward.
If the standard healers ran a mana diagnostic on you while you were unconscious, they would have seen whatever it is you’re hiding.”
She reached into her coat, wincing slightly as she moved, and pulled out her data slate.
She tossed it onto Kael’s cot.
“You should have stayed unconscious.
Sebastian didn’t just bribe the committee to give you a bad draw.
He bought the entire bracket.”
Kael picked up the slate.
The digital tournament tree glowed on the screen.
The first two rounds were over.
He was officially in the semifinals.
Semifinal Match 1: Kael Morgan (F-Rank) vs.
Valerius Thorne (B-Rank).
Kael raised an eyebrow.
“A B-rank?
I thought the provisional bracket was capped at C-rank.”
“Valerius isn’t provisional,” Mori said, her voice grim.
“He’s a third-year noble.
Sebastian had him reclassified as a disciplinary entry just to get him into your bracket.
Valerius is a Pyromancer.
His evolution is Volcanic Discharge.”
Mori leaned forward, her dark eyes locking onto Kael’s.
“Jaxen was fast, but he had to make physical contact to cut you.
Valerius doesn’t.
He turns the entire arena floor into a furnace.
You can’t dodge an area-of-effect attack, Kael.
If you step onto that sand tomorrow, he will burn you alive, and the referees will call it an accident.”
The math was impossible.
Adaptive Regeneration could heal a stab wound, but it couldn’t save him if his flesh was reduced to ash.
Resonance Strike required physical contact.
“If I forfeit,” Kael said slowly, “what happens?”
“You get expelled,” Mori answered instantly.
“Provisional students who forfeit are marked as cowards.
The Academy drops your contract.
You go back to the streets, and the Rank Authority wipes your record.”
Kael set the slate down.
He looked at Mori.
She was an aristocrat, the Principal’s daughter, sitting in a sterile room nursing a wound she was lying about, trying to warn an F-rank street kid to run away.
The battered, pre-Cataclysm history books he’d scrounged from the lower district markets had taught him a lot about how power worked.
Power didn’t respect retreats.
If he ran now, Sebastian won, and the system remained unbroken.
“Tell me about Valerius’s casting time,” Kael said softly.
Mori blinked, genuinely caught off guard.
“Did you not hear a word I just said?
He is a B-rank Pyromancer.
You don’t have the mana to survive a single hit.”
“I didn’t ask about his mana,” Kael countered, his voice dropping into that terrifyingly cold, analytical tone he usually reserved for the monsters in the dark.
“I asked about his casting time.
Magic takes focus.
Focus takes time.
How long does it take him to generate a lethal discharge?”
Mori stared at him for a long, heavy moment.
She could see the absolute resolve in his eyes.
He wasn’t going to run.
“Two seconds,” Mori finally whispered.
“He requires a two-second vocal incantation to anchor the fire to the physical plane.”
Kael nodded once.
“Two seconds is a lifetime.”
The blue screen flickered back to life, glowing faintly in the corner of his vision.
[Calculated odds of surviving a B-Rank Pyromancer: 0.8%.]
[Host is officially a masochist.
Initiating structural analysis of fire-resistant combat maneuvers.]