An hour or two back, when everyone had gathered at the auditorium hall for the morning prayer, something else entirely was happening inside Principal Toren's office.
The office in itself was a large and imposing room, with a desk and two chairs at one end facing a single chair positioned at the other side of the desk, a wide window occupying another corner that let in pale morning light, bookshelves lined up along every wall crowded with thick and ancient books, and sofas arranged neatly around a low table at the other end of the room.
Alex's grandfather, Ragnar, was seated in one of the chairs and was looking straight at Principal Toren, who was slowly sipping tea from a delicate tea cup.
Toren looked exactly the same as Ragnar had always seen him since he himself was a child, the old man had not aged a single day despite how much Ragnar himself had changed over the decades, but the man simply did not age, not once, not ever. The old man's long white hair still had that glistening, youthful sheen completely unfazed by the passage of time, his pale white face was as beautiful as ever and perhaps even more so than Ragnar remembered from back then, and his white eyes held the same quiet depth that made even Ragnar, a paragon rank warrior, deeply uncomfortable.
"The tea is getting cold, child," Toren said, eyeing the untouched tea cup that sat in front of Ragnar.
Ragnar glanced at the tea cup but said nothing. He had no appetite and wanted only to speak about the matter for which he had travelled such a long distance. He had been containing his bubbling frustration and unanswered questions inside him this entire time, having initially wanted to arrive far earlier but having been delayed by the increasing number of demons attacking the border.
Ragnar lifted his head and met the gaze of his old teacher. "You allowed Alex to pass the final exam, didn't you?" He went directly to the point.
"Huh?" Toren feigned ignorance and took another unhurried sip of tea. "What are you talking about, boy?"
"Stop your bullshit, old man." Ragnar clenched his fist and brought it down toward the desk, stopping himself just inches before the wood, "I saw that Alex was wearing a shield that was at least rare rank or above, he had a sword of equally outstanding rank, and he even had daggers that were also at least rare rank, if my eyes did not mistake me."
"You are wrong about the daggers, they were only of enchanted rank, child." Toren rested his face in his palm and with a small smile added, "The sword and shield were of rare rank only, nothing higher than that."
"How in the world did he get all of that on the very first day, while the others barely manage to scrape together one or two weapons by the second or third day, save for a very select few?" Ragnar finally struck the desk this time, and the untouched tea cup in front of him before it could be turned and spilled the tea, it started floating in the air, along with Toren's own tea cup that had been placed just a few seconds ago on the desk, both of them rising in the air and floating peacefully in the air without spilling any tea.
"Perhaps luck," Toren smiled, his lips stretching slightly, and he seemed entirely unbothered by Ragnar's outburst.
"Luck, or your favoritism." Ragnar glared across the desk at him. "And for the entirety of the battle royale, he slept inside a cave that he was placed into far too conveniently after falling into the river, as though someone had deliberately carried him there, and the zone did not shrink that cave away but rather the entire zone shrank toward the centre of that very cave. How do you explain that?"
"Ahem, it may have been the will of the zone," Toren said, turning his eyes away from Ragnar's gaze for the first time and adding with a quietly sad smile, "You know, I have been getting older with time, so sometimes mistakes happen. Instead of placing that shield, those daggers and that sword in different locations, my old brain simply got confused and they may have all ended up in the same place."
Ragnar's blood boiled at the shamelessly theatrical performance of his old teacher. The man looked even more youthful than Ragnar's own son, Shane, yet here he was speaking as though his mind was rotting away from old age.
Toren did not stop and continued without missing a beat, "You know, the passage of time has had its effects on me too," he said, drawing a hand slowly across his forehead as small, shimmering tears formed at the corners of his eyes, "And the zone shrinking was managed with the help of a potion I had to take each time because of how much mana the process was consuming from me, so the direction of the shrink happened somewhat randomly and for some odd reason it simply chose to shrink toward the centre of the cave where Alex had fainted."
Ragnar stared at him, genuinely baffled by the sheer shamelessness of the old man, who was now acting with all the dignity of a pouting child. "And what about how Alex ended up inside that cave in the first place? Perhaps the river's current pushed him there on its own, is that right?"
Toren turned back toward Ragnar with moist, glistening eyes. "Yes, aren't you quite smart, child? You are smart, after all, I was the one who taught you." Then, almost immediately, a slight and barely concealed smile broke through his sobbing expression like a crack in a mask.
Ragnar wanted nothing more in that moment than to drive his fist straight into the old man's face.
"Old man, stop your nonsense." Ragnar growled, forcing himself to move past it. "And how in the world did Alex manage to take first position with zero kills to his name?"
Even though some part of him did not want to accept it, he could concede that perhaps everything before had simply been a streak of extraordinary luck, that Alex had stumbled into the right weapons and the right current that had carried him to the cave, and had somehow survived till the very end on fortune alone. But zero kills and first rank was another matter entirely.
"Oh, that," Toren said, wiping the last of his entirely fabricated tears from his eyes with the air of a man who had never been crying at all. "Even though he had zero kills, we came to the collective conclusion that despite that fact, he had survived until the very end, which is quite commendable in its own right. So we decided to place him in a tie with Lucian, because in real life it is the one who survives until the end who truly wins, not the one who racks up a long list of kills only to die before the sun rises the next morning. Is that not so, dear?"
Ragnar nodded slowly in agreement. In real battle, the fortunate ones were those who lived to see the next day, not those who died gloriously with ten enemies already at their feet.
"Haah." Ragnar sighed and rubbed the corner of his eyes, leaning back slightly in his chair. "Old man, I do not know why or for what reason you did all of that to let Alex into the academy." Slowly, Ragnar's red pupils began to glow with a low, burning faintness, as though some deep fire inside him were stirring back to life, and Toren too let go of his leisurely, theatrical appearance and met Ragnar's gaze directly with his white pupils, the two of them holding each other's eyes in a silence that was not quiet at all.
"But, know that if you place him in any danger, I will fight you to the death."
***
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