While the crowds were busy doubting Travis, Lucian had been watching him: the way his expression slowly tightened, the way he ground his teeth, his jaw going taut. And the most important thing was...
He's slower now, and his coat's thinning. All of this settled behind Lucian's calm, observant eyes without so much as a flicker.
Yet despite such obvious weakness, Lucian didn't rush.
SWOOSH!
Travis Cole swung again, jabbing at his face. His mind clearly wasn't clear, because Lucian, even lacking speed, could react to anyone aiming for his face by simply raising his elbow.
Why won't he fall? Travis's jaw clenched. Nobody stays standing this long.
BANG!
Again, nothing happened, and the crowd grew even more restless.
"Is Cole even trying?"
"Look at his shoulders. He keeps rolling them."
"Is he hitting him? I can't tell."
Travis wiped his mouth with the back of his wrist, but in truth he was checking whether his hand still worked. His form had started to fall apart, elbows flaring, footwork going sloppy. His right hand was trembling, and he pressed it flat against his thigh to stop it.
"Coward! Only dare to defend?" Even his words stopped making sense as he glared and shouted, trying to mock Lucian with a smile, yet it had no effect.
Travis's mind had gone chaotic. The fight that should have been over in ten seconds was now dragging into two minutes, and the silence from this cripple angered him to the point where he wanted to spit on the buzzing crowd above.
They're watching. They're all watching!
Don't look up. Don't look at them.
"TSK!" At that final breaking point, he pulled back, stooped, and snatched the wooden training blade from the boundary wall.
"What a disgrace!"
"Using a weapon on an unarmed man?"
"Is this how the Vice-Captain acts?"
It doesn't matter. Travis's fingers closed around the hilt. Blades are legal. This is legal.
He'll break like everything else.
Those were barely whispers, yet to Travis, whose pride made him a little too sharp of ear, they landed. He locked on and scanned for the speaker, only to find them blocked by the crowd.
Meanwhile, the proctor had watched Travis go from calm to grabbing the wooden blade and hadn't moved to stop him.
Like Travis thought, blades were legal from the start. So he simply watched with indifference, though his attention was mostly fixed on this youth, Lucian, who had used nothing but his body.
Frustrated, his skin reddening, Travis finally rushed in and swung a descending diagonal slash. "How dare you! How dare!" A heavy, committed chop came down on Lucian's raised guard.
His aura flared, a grey-tinged orange that had been flickering, flooding into his shoulder and forearm as he coated the blade.
And Lucian, looking at this, raised the same left forearm he had used against Karin's oak cleaver back in the backwoods.
CRACK!
The wooden blade met his forearm and shattered in half. Splinters sprayed across the sand.
"H-how could that be?"
"It shattered?"
"With his arm?!"
The crowd in the bleachers went quiet, glancing at Travis Cole, who stood staring at the broken hilt in his hand and then at Lucian's forearm, his eyes wide.
He turned the hilt over once. Flexed his fingers around it. As if checking that it was really broken.
Travis was physically and mentally rocked. Even his concentration cracked under his disbelief. The grey-orange coating stuttered, then dropped off his body completely.
And Lucian, using that moment, dropped his front knee, coiled his hips, and then-
My turn. With flat ash-grey eyes, he drove forward in a straight line without ever rising from his stance.
The second pillar, Compression Step!
The gap closed in an instant. Travis had just blinked when Lucian was already in front of him. No aura flared from this frail, supposedly crippled Aura Knight.
The next moment Travis saw it clearly: Lucian's rear leg driving, hips rotating, shoulder rolling forward. Even his Rank 2 reflexes caught the motion as Lucian's right arm shot out like a piston.
What technique is that?
That bewildered thought crossed his mind as Lucian's palm heel landed dead center in his sternum.
"UGH!" Pain hit him instantly, and then-
BANG!
An air shockwave detonated from the point of contact, blowing dust outward in a ring across the arena. Up in the bleachers, the sound hit like a hammer striking a beam.
Travis was no longer in his original spot. He had drifted toward the western rim during the last minute of circling. When the palm landed, he had nowhere to go but the wall. He hit it with a heavy crack, then slid down it and finally... stopped moving.
Silence.
Complete silence.
Even the applause that had been ready for Travis was gone. Only after someone in the front row stood up and walked out did the crowd react.
"WOW! What is this? A Rank 1 Aura Knight beat a Rank 2?!"
"Did you see him move?"
"I didn't even see him move."
A whistle blew from the proctor, sharp and loud, as if confirming it. He looked down at Travis, then over at Lucian. "Engagement concluded. Winner, Croft!"
Lucian took a deep breath, straightened out of his stance, then shook the dust off his cuffs, finally noticing the proctor's gaze.
There were many questions in that gaze, but all of them were swallowed in silence as Lucian broke his stare. "Self-defense. May I leave?"
The proctor blinked. Then he looked down at the ledger and wrote a single line in it.
"You may," he said, as Lucian walked toward the exit.
…
High above, on the observation pavilion, the highest platform above the bleachers, a pair of familiar pale sapphire-blue eyes had watched everything clearly.
She had been sipping tea, the porcelain cup resting against her pale rose lips.
Now the slender hand holding the cup paused.
Of course this was none other than the familiar fiancée, Seraphina Lysander.
She lowered her cup slowly, and set it down without a sound. Then her fingers stopped moving entirely on the handle.
Below, in the sand, Lucian straightened out of his stance, flicked the dust off his cuff, and walked toward the steps. He had not looked up once.
For a moment, just a moment, the pale sapphire went dark.
Without taking her eyes off the ring, her lips parted.
"Derrick."
The voice that usually came out soft, almost a whisper was gone. This one was firm and cold.
Standing beside her was Derrick Holt, right arm in a dark sling, head lowered.
His good hand was gripping the parapet rail, and the knuckles had gone white, they had been white since the first strike landed, and he had never once let go.
He flinched at his name, his whole body, not just the shoulders. The flinch of a boy who had just understood he was in a different kind of trouble now.
So very different from the person he had been in the recovery ward, even with the goddess right there beside him.
He had stopped breathing when the blade shattered. He had stopped breathing again when the palm landed. And through all of it, he had not once looked away from the ring.
He knew.
He had known since the recovery ward. There was nothing to find, because there was nothing there.
Just a body that didn't break.
"You never told me he was like this," Seraphina continued.
This time the smile was visible: soft, gentle, effortless, the familiar one.