The word “freak” that Ivan used was clearly meant as an insult.
Shuren belonged to a branch family among branch families, and because he wielded the power of the vanished Fire Dragon, Ivan had used the derogatory term against him.
‘What does he gain by provoking me?’
Shuren silently stared at Ivan.
The other trainees also watched the situation with their mouths shut.
The atmosphere was tense.
If Shuren responded poorly here, a fight could break out at any moment.
“Ivan! Are you planning to cause trouble from the very first day?!”
Instructor Baran raised his voice.
‘Of all people, that bastard had to fail.’
Even from an instructor's perspective, Ivan was troublesome to deal with.
It would have been one thing if he had no ability.
But he was a skilled child of the direct line, which meant he could not be handled carelessly.
Yet even after the instructor's warning, Ivan ignored him and glared at Shuren.
“So you're the one, huh? The bastard who earned the Family Head's recognition.”
Ivan looked Shuren up and down as he spoke.
He wanted to catch the Family Head's eye himself.
Yet some branch-family brat had received that attention instead.
Ivan did not like Shuren.
“I wonder how the Family Head would react if I destroyed your Mana Circuit. Would he get angry because I ruined the child he had expectations for? Or would he reward me?”
‘He's completely insane.’
That was Shuren's assessment of him.
When Shuren did not react, Ivan narrowed one eye and spoke again.
“Did they cut out your vocal cords when you lost your family name too? Or are you too scared to move your mouth?”
Shuren merely frowned at Ivan's crude words.
“Why aren't you saying anything? If you've got a problem with me, fight me.”
Ivan crooked a finger at him provocatively.
Watching the scene, the instructor dragged a hand down his face.
‘Here he goes again.’
This was the method Ivan always used when starting trouble.
Children in their early teens could see red from provocation this cheap.
Unable to suppress their anger, they would charge at Ivan.
Then, under the pretext of fighting back against someone who attacked him first, Ivan would turn it into a full-blown brawl.
Since Ivan could claim justification by saying he had merely retaliated after being physically attacked first, even the instructors found it difficult to stop the fight.
It would have been one thing if he ended those fights at a reasonable point, but Ivan never did.
If he disliked someone, he beat them until they were nearly dead.
‘I can't believe I'm going to have to submit a report on the very first day…….’
The thought of the same thing happening again made the instructor's head spin.
But the situation did not unfold as Ivan or the instructor expected.
Shuren simply stared at Ivan calmly.
Not a single emotion showed on his face.
‘What the hell is with this bastard?’
Ivan was bewildered.
Until now, his provocations had always worked.
No matter how talented they were or how prestigious their families, they were still children.
But Shuren's emotions were as firm as Mount Tai.
‘I can't back down here.’
Even so, Ivan could not attack first.
He had already been held back a class for destroying a fellow trainee's Mana Circuit.
If he gave them even more grounds to punish him, he could end up expelled from the training center entirely.
Hoping Shuren would finally fall for the provocation, Ivan spoke again.
“Tsk, tsk. Seeing as you can't even answer properly, I guess they didn't teach you basic manners at home. Well, I suppose that's to be expected from lowly Flamer blood.”
Even after Ivan poured everything into provoking him, Shuren gave him no reaction.
‘The way he keeps yapping, he's just like a day-old puppy.’
If this had been Shuren's personality in his previous life, he would never have let Ivan get away with it.
He would have answered immediately and beaten Ivan down.
But in this life, he needed to be cautious.
Besides, Shuren was still in the process of building his strength.
At his current level, the only place where he had been able to judge someone's strength at a glance was the previous training center.
The children there had all been around the same general level.
But this training center was different.
Everyone here possessed considerable ability, which made it difficult for Shuren to estimate their strength so easily.
Until he was certain how strong Ivan was, recklessly using force was out of the question.
‘I can't ruin my goal by getting swept up in a moment of emotion.’
And while Shuren looked like a child on the outside, inside he was an adult as wily as an old snake.
He had lived far too long to fall for cheap provocation like this.
‘Of course, that doesn't mean I'm going to let it slide.’
Once Shuren had finished gauging Ivan's strength, he planned to deal with him properly.
‘Whew. Thank goodness Shuren handled that so calmly.’
The instructor was also relieved that the incident had not escalated into a fight.
WHOOSH—!
But then Ivan suddenly acted.
He kicked off the ground and closed the distance between himself and Shuren.
“I-Ivan!”
The instructor shouted in alarm.
After provoking Shuren over and over, Ivan had finally lost patience and charged in himself.
FWOOSH—!
Ivan's fist shot toward Shuren's face with considerable speed.
TAP—!
But his fist was easily stopped by Shuren's palm.
SWISH—!
Then Shuren twisted his wrist, throwing Ivan's fist off course.
THUD—!
In the end, Ivan was the one who went crashing down.
‘……What kind of idiot is this?’
Shuren could hardly believe the disgraceful display Ivan had just put on.
He had been the one provoking Shuren, yet when Shuren refused to react, he threw a punch first.
“Instructor. Isn't it against the rules to attack another trainee like this without a formal duel?”
“……It is.”
The instructor composed himself and answered Shuren's complaint.
Truthfully, he had not expected Shuren to stop Ivan's attack.
“Ivan. I will not tolerate any further insubordination. Conduct yourself properly before I formally submit this incident for disciplinary review.”
Ivan silently got back to his feet.
He only bit his lip as he looked at Shuren, then returned to his place.
‘Damn it!’
Ivan cursed inwardly.
The reason he caused trouble like this was none other than to flaunt his strength.
Once he created enough chaos, the weaker children learned to crawl before him on their own.
But Shuren was different.
‘That bastard…… blocked my attack like it was nothing.’
Ivan glanced at his right hand.
The spot he had struck still tingled.
‘Is he strong?’
Ivan's anger toward Shuren gradually began turning into interest.
‘He must be that strong if the Family Head recognized him.’
In the end, Ivan acknowledged that much inwardly.
And that only made his desire to defeat Shuren grow stronger.
He wanted to crush Shuren with his own hands.
So Ivan quietly waited until class ended, then approached Shuren the moment it was over.
“Shuren. Fight me in a formal duel.”
“No. Why would I?”
Ivan had no answer to that.
When he said nothing else, Shuren left him there and resumed training.
Meanwhile, Jake, who had been watching the two of them, thought to himself.
‘Shuren actually blocked Ivan's attack…….’
Jake decided that Shuren's skill was something he could not even begin to measure.
It felt as deep as a lake.
***
‘Aaargh!’
Ivan felt like he was going insane.
He desperately wanted to fight Shuren as soon as possible.
But because he was a failed trainee, he could not recklessly attack Shuren.
One wrong move and he would be expelled.
On top of that, the instructor was monitoring Ivan's every move.
‘There's absolutely no excuse I can use to pick a fight with Shuren!’
Ivan was frustrated.
All he could do was observe Shuren.
‘Damn it! That bastard's a battle maniac just like me!’
Ivan knew it instinctively.
Shuren enjoyed battle just as much as he did.
In particular, Ivan could sense that Shuren also possessed the fighting spirit that made him want to test himself whenever he saw someone stronger than himself.
‘You want to fight me too! So why the hell are you avoiding me?!’
Ivan could not understand it at all.
Every time he challenged Shuren to a duel, Shuren refused.
‘Damn it! If it weren't for these stupid training center rules, I'd have charged him already!’
He hated how Shuren kept avoiding the fight like a coward.
‘Ugh…… You're going to burn a hole through my face. Stop staring already.’
Shuren found Ivan's intense gaze burdensome.
Of course, Shuren had not been rejecting and pushing Ivan away without thinking.
While doing so, he had continued observing Ivan and had finished assessing his strength.
‘If I fight that bastard, I'll win.’
But Shuren did not want to fight him yet.
He needed more than a simple victory.
‘He has to pay for insulting me and my family.’
And above all, the duel needed to benefit Shuren.
He needed to firmly imprint his ability on the instructors who were evaluating them in real time.
‘I need a little more time.’
The time had not yet come to crush Ivan completely.
Shuren needed a little more time to train.
‘It's fortunate that bastard has restrictions on him.’
Ivan was a failed trainee.
If he recklessly charged at Shuren without restraint, the rules said he would be expelled.
Ivan was not stupid enough to overlook even that.
That meant there were only two ways a fight could happen.
Unless Shuren fell for Ivan's provocation or accepted a formal duel, there would be no fight between them.
‘And Jake really is useful. Recruiting him was the right choice.’
In preparation for Ivan challenging him to a duel, Shuren had asked Jake for a detailed explanation of the training center's rules.
Perhaps because Jake himself had a history of using the rules to bully other trainees, he knew them inside and out.
‘Using the rules however I please like this makes me feel too much like those Pellantz bastards, which isn't exactly pleasant…….’
But if he wanted to achieve his goal, it could not be helped.
In his previous life, he had suffered many losses while living in pursuit of justice.
This time, he intended to use everything he could to his own advantage.
‘Just endure it a little longer. I don't need that much more time anyway.’
With that thought, Shuren devoted himself to training.
***
Even today, Ivan was deeply pondering whether there was some way to fight Shuren.
‘Damn it, this is frustrating!’
But thinking deeply did not suit his nature.
Just as he was wishing Shuren would suddenly change his mind and agree to fight—
Ivan felt someone staring at him and turned his head.
A trainee was watching him.
“What? What are you looking at?”
The boy had a sly-looking face, the type Ivan disliked.
“My name's Neville.”
“I don't care what your name is. What do you want?”
“You want to fight Shuren, don't you? I know a way.”
Neville brought up exactly the kind of thing that would catch Ivan's interest.
“Is that true? But…… why are you telling me?”
“Why else? I'm trying to get on your side. You're the strongest one among the kids here.”
Neville had once been one of Jake's lackeys.
But after Jake was defeated by Shuren and was now acting like Shuren's closest follower, Neville decided Jake was a rotten rope no longer worth clinging to.
So this time, he intended to attach himself to Ivan.
“I don't dislike honest bastards. Go on. Tell me.”
Ivan looked at Neville with interest.
“How about using a Special Duel Request?”
“A Special Duel Request? What's that?”
“It's a training center rule. If a trainee suffers an insult that crosses the line, they can force a duel even without the other person's consent.”
“There was a rule like that?”
Ivan's face brightened at first, but soon darkened again.
‘But…… I'm the one who insulted him, aren't I?’
If anything, Shuren was the one in a position to file a Special Duel Request.
Of course, Shuren would never do that.
“I don't think that'll work.”
“Don't worry. I'll testify that you were the one who was insulted.”
Ivan thought for a moment after hearing that, then broke into a broad grin.
“Neville, you're pretty smart!”
Ivan said that while patting Neville's shoulder with his palm.
‘You've had a good run wriggling away like a loach, haven't you?’
The thought that Shuren would no longer be able to escape filled Ivan with excitement.
***
The next day.
Ivan entered the training hall with a spring in his step.
He happened to run into Shuren and shouted confidently.
“Shuren! Are you planning to tuck your tail and run away again today? You coward!”
Shuren ignored him.
The instructor was there anyway, so Shuren assumed he would deal with it properly.
“Ivan! Return to your place!”
The instructor immediately tried to stop him.
But Ivan simply stood there without moving.
“Instructor. I intend to file a Special Duel Request against Shuren.”
For a moment, the instructor wondered whether such a rule even existed.
‘Ah, right. It does. No one uses it, so it's practically a dead rule……!’
And of all times, it had to be used now.
This was bad.
If Ivan invoked the rules like that, even the instructor could not casually stop him.
“This bastard insulted me.”
“That is correct. I witnessed it.”
Ivan and Neville began performing the story they had rehearsed together.
Shuren stared at them for a moment before speaking.
“Sorry, but I can't fight you.”
“What? It's a rule! The same rules you keep throwing in everyone's face!”
Ivan's face blossomed into a grin at the thought that he could finally fight Shuren.
“That's exactly why I can't fight you. Because of the rules.”
“……What?”
“I'm already in a duel.”
Ivan looked as though he had no idea what Shuren was talking about.
“So what?”
“I've been in a duel with Jake for several days already. But it still hasn't been decided. We both still have the will to fight…….”
Shuren looked at Jake.
Jake silently nodded.
“So I can't accept your duel.”
“What?! How does that make any sense?”
“It's the rules.”
Shuren said that and looked at the instructor.
“Right, Instructor?”
“Sh-Shuren is correct. If a duel is already in progress, you cannot accept another duel.”