Ten days.
That was what stood between me and my first real trip into the Realm of the Evil, and somehow the number felt both impossibly far away and terrifyingly close at the same time.
Today, though, was not about the Realm. Today was Combat Fundamentals, and Draeus had decided, for reasons only he seemed to understand, that we were overdue for a proper sparring day. Non-spiritual swords only, the dull grey practice kind that could still break a nose if you were careless enough to let one hit you.
I was not sparring. Draeus had pulled me aside before class even started, taken one look at the state of my wrist from yesterday’s drills, and told me, in that dry, unbothered tone of his, that I would be watching today instead of participating.
’Lovely. Bench duty, at fifteen.’
Still, watching had its own kind of value, and I settled onto the bench along the edge of the mat with something close to genuine curiosity.
The dojo itself always smelled faintly of old wood and sweat, sunlight cutting through the high windows in long pale bars across the floor. Draeus sat near the front in his chair, cane resting across his lap, calling out names in that flat, unhurried voice of his.
"Ferguson. Desmond."
The two of them stepped onto the mat, and I already knew how this was going to go. Ferguson was built like something meant to move furniture, not swing a sword, but he closed distance fast and hit hard enough that Desmond spent the entire match backpedaling, parrying just enough to avoid disaster. It ended the way most of their matches ended, Ferguson eventually overpowering him through sheer weight, Desmond tapping out with a grimace and muttered complaints about physics being unfair.
"Next. Hans. Reyes."
Theo stepped forward first, unbothered as always, sword held with the kind of lazy confidence that made you want to punch him purely on principle. His opponent, a thin boy named Reyes I barely knew, lasted exactly four seconds before Theo’s blade found his throat and stopped a hair’s breadth short of actually connecting.
’Show-off.’
I clapped along with everyone else, because not clapping would have been its own kind of statement, and watched Theo strut back to the sidelines like he had just won a war rather than a training match against someone half his skill level.
Then Draeus called the name I had actually been waiting for.
"Mary. Whitlock."
A girl near the back rose from the bench, quiet, unremarkable in every way that mattered until the moment she actually moved. I did not know much about Mary beyond her name and the fact that she rarely spoke in class, kept to herself between lessons, and had somehow avoided being ranked anywhere near the top of Draeus’s board despite what I was about to watch.
Her opponent, a broad-shouldered boy named Whitlock, came at her hard and fast, clearly expecting an easy win.
He did not get one.
Mary moved like she already knew exactly where his blade was going to be before he did. She was not faster than him, not obviously, not in any way that jumped out at first glance. But every strike he threw met empty air or a perfectly placed block, and within seconds Whitlock looked less like he was fighting an opponent and more like he was fighting a wall that occasionally decided to hit back.
’What in the world.’
I leaned forward without meaning to.
The rest of the match lasted maybe ten more seconds before Mary’s sword found the gap in his guard and stopped, controlled and precise, right against his collarbone. Whitlock froze, chest heaving, clearly unsure how exactly he had lost.
Draeus, for once, actually looked mildly interested.
"Good," he said simply. "Next pair."
Mary returned to the bench without a word, without even the faintest hint of satisfaction on her face, and sat back down like nothing unusual had happened at all.
I found myself staring.
’That was not beginner technique. That was not even average technique. Where did she learn to move like that?’
I glanced around at the rest of my classmates, half expecting someone else to be equally stunned, but most of them had already moved on, chatting among themselves about the next match. Apparently I was the only one who had actually been paying attention.
’Interesting. Very interesting.’
I filed the thought away for later, the same way I filed away most things that did not quite fit the picture I remembered of this world. Mary was not a name I recognized from the two hundred Chapters I had read, which either meant she genuinely did not matter to the plot at all, or meant I simply had not reached her part of the story yet.
Either possibility bothered me more than I wanted to admit.
The rest of the matches blurred past in the usual fashion, wins and losses I barely registered, my attention still half caught on the quiet girl who had just dismantled her opponent without breaking a sweat.
Ten days until the Realm.
I had a feeling this was not the last surprise this Academy had waiting for me.