1. The Rematch with Finn

  The next day of combat training started fast. I was immediately paired up against Finn.

  He stepped onto the arena wearing a wide, overwhelmingly confident grin.

  "Today," Finn announced, rolling his shoulders, "I am absolutely getting my revenge."

  The instructor gave the signal, and Finn moved first. He didn't just charge blindly anymore. He used rapid dashes, erratic bursts of fire, and blinding short-range flashes to force me to keep moving, denying me the chance to plant my feet and cast heavy defensive magic.

  I stuck to my usual "struggling novice" routine: a thin layer of water over my body for defense, and short bursts of wind to accelerate my evasions.

  But the moment I dashed through a cloud of steam generated by his flames... the ground beneath my feet suddenly froze. Narrow, jagged spears of ice erupted from the floor, aiming for my legs, while a localized hail of heavy icicles rained down from above.

  Ah. He set a trap using the ambient moisture. He had prepared for my exact evasion route.

  I quickly threw up a dense water dome, absorbing the falling icicles and snapping the spears below.

  But Finn completely vanished from my line of sight.

  A fraction of a second later, he reappeared directly in front of my dome. He channeled a blast of freezing air to rapidly solidify a section of my water shield into brittle ice, shattered it with a physical punch, shoved his arm right through the gap, and unleashed a concentrated blast of fire.

  I materialized a thick ice wall in the blink of an eye and jumped backward to create distance—but Finn was already anticipating that, too.

  I threw up another wall. He vaulted completely over it. A tongue of superheated flame was already coiling around his arm, ready for a devastating downward strike.

  I rapidly began forming another water dome to absorb the heat...

  ...and suddenly, the fire from above stopped.

  I glanced up.

  Falling silently from the ceiling, directly above my dome, was a massive, heavy icicle. It wasn't mine. He had deliberately formed it using the steam from our previous clash and left it hanging there as a delayed trap.

  My hasty water dome wouldn't have withstood the physical kinetic impact.

  I threw myself to the side just in time as the massive spike shattered against the arena floor.

  But as I dodged, Finn blasted me with a wave of compressed wind, perfectly disrupting my center of gravity. He immediately followed it up with an air spear, calculating exactly where I would try to place my next ice wall.

  He's actually reading my movements, I realized, genuinely impressed.

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  I dodged the spear, but he had already closed the gap. A rapid dash. A burst of flame to blind me. And a heavy, physical punch directly to my solar plexus.

  I instantly formed a microscopic, hyper-dense layer of ice beneath my uniform exactly at the point of impact, absorbing 99% of the kinetic force. It barely felt like a tap.

  But I threw myself backward anyway, hitting the dirt and sliding across the arena floor, making it look like a devastating blow.

  The instructor immediately raised his hand. "Winner: Finn."

  Finn was panting heavily, drenched in sweat, but he was positively glowing. He looked so fiercely proud of his tactical victory that I actually felt a faint, annoying warmth in my chest.

  I lay on the ground for an extra few seconds, playing the role of the thoroughly exhausted, defeated student.

  2. Tara: Cunning Over Strength

  Twenty minutes later, I was called back to the arena.

  Tara stood across from me. She offered a crisp, perfectly respectful bow.

  "I will not hold back," she stated flatly. "Even though you just had an exhausting bout."

  She opened with a sweeping blade of wind, forcing me to throw up an ice wall to deflect it.

  But simultaneously, she launched a concentrated wind spear and a high-pressure stream of water at my flanks, forcing me to abandon my cover and retreat backward.

  It took only a fraction of a second. The moment I moved, she was already behind me.

  I quickly manifested a thick layer of water armor across my back, bracing for the inevitable strike of her wooden sword.

  But the strike never came.

  Instead of attacking my torso, she dropped low and swept a vicious current of wind directly under my boots, completely cutting off my footing.

  I lost my balance and crashed hard onto my back.

  Before I could even blink, Tara's wooden sword was hovering a millimeter from my throat. She raised her chin slightly, claiming her victory.

  I let out a breathless chuckle. "Are you all just actively reading my mind now?"

  Tara offered a faint, incredibly rare smile.

  I made a show of groaning as I prepared to push myself up, but Siren called out from the sidelines.

  "Hey, Helvard! You look completely drained today. Just sit the rest of the period out and rest."

  I gladly accepted the offer. I needed to maintain the illusion that I was just as mortal and prone to fatigue as the rest of them.

  3. Evening: The Hacked Secret

  When I finally returned to my dormitory room that evening, I immediately froze in the doorway.

  I felt a foreign mana signature.

  And, naturally, it was her.

  Princess Elinia was sitting casually on the edge of my bed. She was leisurely flipping through a book of my encrypted notes, acting as if she owned the place.

  The moment I stepped inside, she snapped the book shut and looked up at me.

  "Zen."

  Her voice was unusually calm. Far too calm.

  "I have a question for you."

  I closed the door behind me, keeping my expression entirely neutral. "What is it?"

  "What exactly do you know about the Elves?"

  I didn't miss a beat. "Absolutely nothing. I've never even seen one in my life."

  She smiled. It was the slow, predatory smile of a cat that had just cornered a very fat mouse.

  "Is that so?" she murmured. "How strange. Because the magical message you received yesterday... originated directly from the heart of the Forest Kingdom."

  I stopped breathing for a fraction of a second.

  I literally put a biometric password on the communication orb... I thought frantically.

  "How..." I started, my voice tight. "How did you read that?"

  Elinia stood up. She walked over to me, stopping much closer than she usually did, invading my personal space entirely.

  "You are brilliant, Helvard, but you have a massive blind spot," she whispered softly. "You put a flawless, impenetrable password lock on the physical communication orb itself. But... you didn't encrypt the ambient mana signal as it was traveling through the air. You left the transmission wave completely exposed."

  She tilted her head. "If one were to intercept the signal mid-flight, before it reached your locked device... one could simply read it."

  I mentally cursed myself in every demonic language I knew.

  I encrypted the hardware, but I forgot to encrypt the damn Wi-Fi! How could I be so unbelievably stupid?!

  She looked directly into my eyes. There was no anger. There were no royal threats of treason or inquisition. There was only cold, razor-sharp, surgical curiosity.

  "So," she repeated, her voice barely a breath. "Why exactly are the Elves writing to you?"