Meanwhile, the glory, the champion, our Lucian, was stepping out from the sunken sand ring of Ground 4, shaking the pale sand from his uniform cuffs, leaving the bleachers stunned as he passed through the eastern iron gate into the stone colonnade.
It was a 40-meter covered stone arcade of grey pillars, deep shadow pooling between them.
The sky beyond the pillars was flat grey, thick cloud cover, no sun, no hard shadows anywhere. Just diffuse, even light and the smell of cold stone as Lucian looked up.
It's actually tingling. He lowered his head and smiled. Now he had a pretty good sense of his true power, the capability of his combined passive skills.
He could even hold his own against someone a full rank higher. How could he not be happy?
Of course a fucking blessing! Finally got my own cheat!
There was no pain at all, and this made him overjoyed. Despite being hit and blocked by Officer Cole's attack several times, he had felt only a faint awareness of impact that was hard to describe.
His heartbeat was low, a warm thrum in his chest. The fight was over, but of course the adrenaline of winning against a real opponent, and the frustration he'd carried for 27 years as a low-ranking logistics officer in his past life, had finally boiled over.
And that was... satisfying.
Ehm... of course he tried to calm down this adrenaline rush and overjoyed emotions.
After all, he had just beaten a kid. Ehm... how shameful. Yet despite thinking this, his smile kept spreading until it froze on his face.
His widening eyes narrowed as he caught it: a faint, thin, sweet chemical note of lavender oil. The same scent he had noticed in his room after first unlocking the Predator's Scent passive skill.
Now it was here, which meant...
That rat is here... His narrowed eyes scanned the area until he frowned.
The scent worked on him the way a hound's nose would, like that game he'd played back in his old life, The Mitcher. It was pulling him toward the 3rd pillar on the east side, right in front of him.
Without hesitation, Lucian stepped forward, walking straight toward it, following the scent as it grew stronger until... he found nothing.
But the smell was strong here, which meant...
They already left. Lucian's eyebrows furrowed. He scanned the surroundings and kept his face neutral, since who knew if the spy was still watching.
He pretended to wander around the stone pillar, then finally stepped out into the junction.
Let's go back first.
He cut through the maintenance yard toward the rear fence, but then…
SWOSH!
A rough hand closed around his collar and hauled him sideways behind one of the rusted iron sheds.
"Pssst!" The scent hit first: wood smoke, dried iron, and clean sweat.
Once Lucian got a look at whoever was doing the grabbing, he saw the familiar untamed wolf-grey hair and vivid amber-gold eyes watching him, lips pulling into a wide, foolish grin.
Karin Blake.
"You bastard, Croft!" She smacked his shoulder with a fist, then jarred her own knuckles against his dense frame. "You flattened a 2nd-year Committee Vice-Captain?! With bare palm strikes! Same move you used against that rat, isn't it!"
Looking at her figure, lean and wiry, muscled but not bulky, in her usual standard cadet uniform, blazer worn open over a plain undershirt, the top button missing and never replaced , Lucian sighed.
"Oww oww!" Just as he sighed, Karin immediately shook out her hand, pulled her knuckles back, and looked at him. "What the hell is with your shoulder?"
"You just surprised me," Lucian said, ignoring her question completely, and then just as he was about to ask why she had pulled him in...
"Tell me!" She shook his arm and grabbed his cuff. "Tell me how you did it?" Her eyes were practically sparkling now, like there were stars in them as she gazed at him, and she was close enough that her scent was hitting him directly, caught by his passive skill.
"Ehm," and of course Lucian pushed her back, only then properly looked at her, his eyes half-bored, his lips twitching at her expression.
Of course the muscle-head was excited. Honestly, it was a miracle she hadn't asked the first time he used this on the rat.
"You watched the whole match?" Lucian asked, already knowing the answer. He just wanted to change the subject.
"Of course!" And exactly as he expected, she just nodded. "Everyone watched the whole match! There was a line to get in!" She threw her hands up and nearly clipped the shed.
"Half of Class 1-B is still on the bleachers arguing about whether you used a ward, and the other half is arguing about whether Cole just had a bad day."
When Lucian heard the word ward, he went quiet, or rather, he fell into thought.
A ward, huh.
Based on the original story, a ward was a protective enchantment, something like an artifact. It was a general term for any magical item or inscription designed to block, absorb, deflect, or detect.
In short, defensive magic that someone could carry on them.
"I had to leave early because I wanted to catch you before..." Karin continued, then stopped.
Which broke Lucian's concentration. He raised his eyebrows. "Before what?"
Karin's jaw worked. She looked away, at the stacked crates, at the wall, at anything that wasn't his face.
"...Before anyone else did."
She said it fast, fast enough that it came out before she'd finished deciding whether to say it at all. Then her ears went faintly pink, and she stared very hard at a stack of crates.
Lucian said nothing.
"You're thinking something." Karin glared at him.
"I'm thinking you skipped the rest of the match to stand behind a shed for twenty minutes." Lucian shrugged. "Which means you want something."
Karin's mouth opened. Closed. Opened again.
"...I hate you."
Ignoring her look, Lucian glanced at her again. "So?"
"I..." She opened her mouth, closed it, and jabbed a finger at his chest without touching it. "You're doing it on purpose."
"Doing what." This time he was genuinely confused. What's wrong with this muscle-head?
"That!"
"That?"
"That, that thing where you don't answer and I get angry!" She was pacing in a tight circle behind the shed now, one hand waving, the other still clenched from the bruised knuckles.
"You've been doing it for days. You do it every time. You answer the question with a question and then I'm the one who's loud and you're the one who..."
She stopped, spun, and pointed at him.
"Fine. Fine! Keep your secret. I don't care. I don't need to know how you do it. I need to know whether you're still hungry, because I've got something."
Lucian frowned, turning her words over, but then he looked at her sulking face and the word something she had dropped... and just stared at her helplessly.
Sigh.