Shadowfang disappeared from his hands before Sylvia could get a proper look at them.
Lucas laughed. It came out wrong. Too high, too fast, the laugh of someone who has absolutely nothing to hide and is very relaxed about that. "Haha. Hey! It's you! Great to see you out here, what are the odds."
"Stop." Sylvia stepped closer. "What are you doing in the forest. At this hour. Alone. Without permission."
The laugh died.
His brain started working very fast and producing nothing useful. Every excuse that formed fell apart before it reached his mouth. 'I was training- no she saw the spider... I was just passing through? but through what, a restricted forest at midnight. I got lost? No, not in a place I've clearly been to many times based on how comfortable I look.'
"I..." He pointed at nothing in particular. "Actually I..."
Sylvia raised one eyebrow. Just one. Somehow that was worse than two.
"You 'actually' what, Lucas."
"I couldn't sleep," he said, the words arriving with the desperate energy of someone grabbing a lifeline. "So I came out here. For a walk. And then did a little warm-up. You know how it is."
Sylvia looked at him.
"...The gardens are right next to the dorms," she said.
"I like it more natural out here."
"The gardens have trees."
"These trees are bigger."
"Lucas."
"The air is different out here. Fresher. Very good for the lungs."
Sylvia turned her head and looked directly at the massive dead spider behind him. The one with Shadowfang's slash marks across three of its legs. The one that was very large and very obviously not killed by someone on a casual midnight stroll.
She looked back at him.
He smiled with every part of his face except his eyes.
"Okay," she said finally, exhaling through her nose. "Fine. I'll let it go." She crossed her arms. "I won't report it. But Lucas, don't come out here at this hour again. If the academy finds out, I'm the one who knew and said nothing, which means I'm also in trouble." She looked at him with the specific expression of someone who knows they're going to regret this. "Understood?"
Lucas let out the longest breath of his life. "Yeah- Understood. Thank you! Genuinely."
"Don't thank me. Just don't get caught."
The tension in his shoulders dropped about six inches.
He was about to suggest they head back when the trees behind Sylvia went quiet in the specific way that means something large is nearby and hasn't decided what to do yet.
Both of them turned at the same time.
The boar stood at the treeline. Massive. Tusks the length of Lucas's forearm, hooves sunk slightly into the dirt from its own weight, steam rising from its nostrils into the cold night air. It looked between the two of them like it was personally offended by their presence.
Sylvia rubbed her forehead with two fingers. "One problem after another," she muttered, with the energy of someone who has had a very long day and this is simply the latest item on a list that won't end.
[Beast: Boar -- Rank C+]
Lucas looked at the notification. Looked at the boar. Looked at the twin daggers appearing in his hands, green runes catching the moonlight along their curved blades.
He grinned.
Perfect timing actually.
"So," he said, turning to Sylvia. "We just take it down quick and head back?"
He didn't wait for an answer. He was already running.
The boar decided immediately that this was unacceptable and charged. Hooves hitting the ground like hammer strikes, small trees snapping at the edges of its path, tusks leveled at Lucas with the focused intent of something that has committed entirely to a decision.
Lucas slid sideways at the last second, dirt scattering under his feet, the tusk passing close enough that he felt the air move. He pivoted around the boar's legs, kept moving, forced it to turn, turn again, each rotation making the massive body work harder than it wanted to.
The boar was strong. It was also not smart. Every charge was telegraphed three steps early. The weight shift, the head drop, the moment before the hooves committed. Lucas read it the second time. Third time he was already moving before the boar had decided to.
From the treeline Sylvia watched with her arms still crossed.
'So that's how he does it,' she thought, following the movement. No magic, no element, just reading the thing in front of him and being somewhere else when it arrived. He turns the fight into something the beast can't win before it realizes that's what's happening.
She decided to keep watching.
Lucas had already clocked the pattern. The boar's left tusk led every charge, which meant its right flank was exposed for exactly one second after each overextension. One second was enough.
He went up.
Both daggers out but only one swinging. A single arc, clean and fast, the green aura thickening around the blade as it came down, brighter and heavier than Whisperfang ever managed. The slash connected with the boar's right flank and the sound it made was not what Lucas expected.
The boar dropped.
Just dropped. Full weight, straight down, hitting the forest floor hard enough that Lucas felt it through his feet when he landed.
He stood there crouching in the dust.
'One hit,' he thought. 'One.'
He straightened up slowly, looking at the fallen boar with an expression caught between stunned and extremely pleased. The green trails from the swing were still fading in the air behind him.
Sylvia blinked once. 'Not bad at all,' she thought.
Lucas turned back toward her, brushing dirt off his sleeve. "Alright. Shall we head"
The boar's head lifted.
Eyes open. Fury reignited. Apparently it had opinions about being one-shotted and was prepared to share them.
"Lucas." Sylvia's voice came sharp.
He spun back just in time to see it rising. Fully, fast, tusks already aimed, the wounded fury of something large and extremely unhappy driving it forward. His foot caught loose soil. His weight shifted wrong.
He went down.
Hit the ground on his back, looked up, and saw tusk coming toward him with a very clear intent and absolutely no interest in stopping.
Then the sky cracked open.
"Thunderbolt!"
The word left Sylvia's mouth and the forest turned white.
Blue lightning came down in jagged streaks, multiple bolts converging on the same point with a sound.
The boar took all of it simultaneously. The impact threw it backward, sparks racing across its body, the heat of it igniting what the lightning left behind. Fire and electricity mixed in the night air and the beast hit the ground fifteen feet away and did not get up this time.
The forest went quiet.
Smoke drifted upward from where the boar used to be standing. Lingering sparks crawled across the ground and died. The trees around the impact were scorched in a perfect radius.
Lucas lay on his back on the forest floor and stared up at the sky.
'She is an absolute monster.'
He'd known Sylvia was strong. He had her stats memorized from the day he scanned her in the courtyard before the exam. Mana one-ten, strength seventy-one, lightning magic. He knew it intellectually the same way you know a stove is hot.
Watching the actual action was different than just the stats.
A hand appeared in his vision.
He looked up. Sylvia was standing over him, hand extended, a small wry smile on her face that she wasn't quite hiding. "Let's go back," she said. "Before someone sees the smoke. Or us. Or both." She glanced at the scorched clearing. "If anyone comes out here right now, we'll end up cooked like that boar."