Unaware of how his name were being spoken out of others' mouth, Isaac took his usual position with Elara during the lunch—the stone bench near the dry ornamental fountain.
Isaac held Jax's wand, turning it over in his hands with the deliberate attention of someone conducting a materials assessment. A functional instrument, well-made, and standard.
He would use it carefully.
"You're remarkably steady," Elara said, watching the parade of students, "which is, again, remarkable. But… are you really fine? The skill that you awakened… I saw some others who are in similar positions as you, and they were panicking. Just yesterday… one of them attempted a rather… self-harming act."
"Panic is a luxury." Isaac said. "What happened has happened, and cannot be changed. Panicking is fine and normal, but dwelling in that sentiment is waste of time."
"Well…"
Then, a shadow came without announcement.
"You on a date or something, Isaac? With commoner girl of all things?"
"Huh?" Elara blinked.
Jax appeared in front of Isaac, standing at the edge of the path, without Kael by his side.
His silk tunic was slightly disheveled. His eyes were sharp with the particular quality of someone who had been humiliated publicly in the morning and had spent the lunch hour looking for a way to restore the others' opinions on him.
Isaac didn't stand up.
"Dating, no. Friends, yes. I too am a commoner now, Jax. And even if I were to be a noble as of now, nothing would change."
A few students nearby found reasons to become very interested. They paused and turned to observe the commotion.
Jax's jaw tightened. "You think you are clever? An F-rank skill and a bench with a commoner friend and you're acting like you've earned a seat at the table. Ten years of your life as a Valerius, Isaac. Ten years to manifest a drip."
"And?" Isaac raised an eyebrow, speaking in a way someone would when completely uninterested in the conversation. "I am a failure. Worthless. Why bother to mingle your prestigious self with the likes of me?"
Jax growled. His body trembled. As his hand hovered near his wand, not yet a threat, but as the posture of someone running out of patience with their own restraint, Isaac felt like sighing.
"If you are so confident of yourself, prove it." Jax said. "Let's make it simple. One E-rank: [Water Shot] each with wands. Highest velocity. Or are you worried you would prove your worthlessness again?"
"That's enough." Elara then stood angrily. "Everyone knows that you have a B-rank offensive skill. You are of Wason House, a noble. You already have a bright future ahead of you. There is no reason for you to unnecessarily pick on Isaac. That's not a competition. If you need this much effort to feel like you've won something, maybe the Rite gave you what you didn't deserve."
The garden's ambient conversation dropped a register. Calling a noble's Rite result into question in public was the kind of thing that had a social cost, and everyone in the immediate radius was silently calculating it.
"…A commoner girl, picked on me." Jax's face was initially flat. He then registered what Elara said, and said face reddened. He took a step forward, growling, "Know your place, girl. This is between me and—"
"Shut your mouth, Jax." Isaac interrupted, putting his tray down and standing up slowly. "This is between no one but you and your puny ego." He placed a hand in front of Elara and made a light and specific gesture that meant, I have this, thank you.
He looked at Jax with the flat attention he brought to problems that required solutions rather than responses.
"Nevertheless, if you need the shot that badly to prove yourself, take it. Frankly, I don't understand what your victory against the owner of F-rank skill like me would do, though."
The crowd quickly assembled, given how much entertainment they anticipated from the "F-rank Duel" and how Isaac was someone who failed the Mana Affinity Evaluation test just two days ago. They were curious whether the event will turn out to be confirmation of the test or an outcome that no one expected.
Among the onlookers, a pair of figures arrived. Those who recognized them immediately shifted over to make room for them; there was a social gravity that stemmed from the combined efforts of their status and skill-brought strength.
Caspian Valerius moved through the crowd with unhurried grace—the fourth-year who occupied space the way water occupied a vessel, completely and without effort.
Beside him, an elegant woman kept pace with the composed attention of someone observing a situation she had found mildly worth watching.
"A garden duel?" The woman said, her voice carrying the crystalline quality of someone whose skill ran cold even in speech. "How quaint. I didn't realize your former brother had become such a popular target for the lower year."
"Jax Wason is impulsive. It seems that he has fallen to his usual tendencies once more," Caspian said, his eyes moving across the assembled crowd with the patient interest of a man cataloguing variables. "But Seraphina, although I hate to say this… an officially disowned student no longer carries the protections of the name. That's simply how the institutional framework operates."
He found Isaac in the crowd and held the look for a moment. "Still, Isaac has the eye. It will be interesting to see what he does in this situation."
The woman—Seraphina's gaze had gone to the wand in Isaac's hand. It wasn't the crude assessment of someone looking for weakness, but something more precise. Her eyes tracked the specific way his grip rested on the handle, the angle of the wrist, and the quality of a person who held an instrument with full comprehension.
"We'll watch," was all she said.
Isaac now stepped to the line.
The wand in his hand was, again, Jax's, which Jax didn't know. It was completely functional and normal wand that had the skill, E-rank: [Water Shot], engraved in its system. Inject the mana output and the skill automatically launches.
It was ironic how he was using Jax's own wand for a diagnostic duel against him. He also found it rather amusing how it was Jax who brought all this calamity unto himself; should he decided not to pick on him, none of this would have happened and he still would've been contemplating about the faulty wand.
Gather. Transfer. Discharge.
The wand didn't groan. It didn't spike. It produced the output it was designed to produce with the specific completeness of a system that had no waste to spare and wasn't spending any. It was unlike the assessment the day before the Rite.
E-rank: [Water Shot].
A bolt of water left the tip and hit the stone wall of the dry fountain with a clean, average splash. Not spectacular, but sufficient enough.
"Water Shot," a student in the crowd said. "Average. As expected… but not expected, at the same time."
Ironically, people were surprised of the "average" result.
Jax's eyes had widened for a fraction of a second—the specific response of someone who had anticipated failure and received competence instead.
"Well… it looks like you improved. But that's about it."
As Isaac backed, he stomped his way to the line with the energy of someone about to prove a point.
He didn't want to match it. He wanted to obliterate it.
He took out his wand. He poured everything available into it.
Jax's turbulent mana responded to his demand—vigorous and wild. The mana flooded into the E-rank skill structure of the wand the way it always did in the past.
The wand began to exhibit that of the sickly violet, which was the sign of an overcharge building past the threshold where the safety dampeners could compensate.
Its safety system had been compromised at the specific junction where an overcharge would be most likely to result in a more… undesired outcome.
Isaac knew this because the wand Jax was holding was the one Isaac had arrived with, this morning.
"Jax—" Elara at a closer proximity than the others noticed this abnormality. However, by the time she spoke up, it was too late.
BOOM.
The crack of mana-pressure was sharp enough to scatter the front row of the crowd. The wand shattered. A piece of the wood sliced through Jax's palm. The backfire sent him reeling backward, his hand singed and smoking, and the smell of overcharged mana and scorched wood filled the garden.
"My hand!" Jax clutched the wound. Then, his bloodshot eyes found Isaac with the specific accusation of someone whose cause-and-effect reasoning had arrived at the most convenient available conclusion. "You did something. What did you do?!"
"What did you do?" Isaac narrowed his eyes. "I haven't been within three feet of your wand since the lecture hall."
"Liar!" Jax lunged forward, his undamaged hand already crackling—which signified the activation of his B-rank: [Bolt Streak].
However, Jax's sudden assault never connected.
Caspian appeared between them—his hand closing around Jax's wrist with the effortless grip of someone who was trained for a combat.
Simultaneously, a biting chill swept through the clearing from behind him. Frost bloomed across the gravel in a thin, rapid spread. The crackling from Jax's hand was extinguished instantly—encased in a brittle shell of ice that Caspian shattered with a single squeeze.
A-rank: [Winter Wind].
It was the skill of Seraphina, just as famous as Caspian's skill, S-rank: [Great Deluge].
"That is enough, Jax," Caspian then said, his voice being the cool and authoritative. "Discharging an active skill on Academy grounds falls under the disciplinary code you were briefed on during orientation. Now get to the infirmary. I'll handle the report."
Jax breathed hard, his eyes burning with the specific mixture of pain and humiliation of someone whose plan had produced the wrong result in front of the wrong audience. He looked at Isaac, then at Caspian, before storming out of the scene.
What a pain, Thought Isaac.
Caspian turned.
He looked the way he always looked—composed and nonchalant.
"A solid result, Isaac. Great work." He gave a light clap. "It's a pity that consistency wasn't visible earlier, when it might have mattered to the people who were watching. After all, it isn't every day when the Patriarchs visit to observe the outcome."
Seraphina had not moved her eyes from the shattered wand.
"A shame," she said, and her tone was not the tone of someone expressing sympathy. "A mediocre shot from one wand and then this, from another." Her gaze moved to Isaac with the calculating attention she had shown in the lecture hall. "My hunch says there is more to this, but I will leave the matter here. You're an odd variable, Isaac, previously Valerius."
A pause.
"I heard that the second-years will initiate their first Mana Quality Assessment this afternoon. I wish you a good luck."
She turned and followed Caspian.
The crowd dispersed.
Elara grabbed Isaac's arm the moment the audience had thinned enough that the conversation wouldn't carry. Her face was pale, and her eyes moved between the shattered wood on the gravel and the retreating line of Caspian's shoulders.
"The wand," she said, her voice low and tight. "It wasn't functional. That wood fractured immediately, and that meant that the safety system wasn't working."
"Someone must have had grievances with Jax. I wonder how he'll deal with it."
Replying, Isaac looked at the shards catching light in the gravel path.
The fracture pattern was specific—almost exactly the same as when the wand broke in his hand.
"Isn't that interesting," Isaac said quietly.