The Extra's Rise

The first day's chaos settled into something that vaguely resembled peace—if peace came with floating camera drones, silent reputation warfare, and aggressive handshakes from people who wanted to sell you their surname on business cards printed with nano-ink that changed color depending on how impressed they were with your response. The events were over, and the rankings were in.

Lucifer Windward. Jin Ashbluff. Aaron Meriot. Ava Peng. Clana Lopez.

And, really, those were the only names that mattered as only they would make it to the Crown Challenge and matter at the same time. The rest were just so much statistical background noise—the kind of names that would appear in tiny font in historical records that future students might be forced to memorize if they were particularly unlucky in their choice of professors.

Lucifer at the top was no surprise. He moved like the world owed him its best performance and was happy to deliver it on a silver platter with a side of "please sir, would you like some more?" Jin was close behind, having raised an army of corpses and calmly walked them through the field like he was taking them on a pleasant stroll to a graveyard picnic. Aaron, the quiet one from Gravehold, had shown up and sliced everything with his axe in the manner of someone who didn't so much cut things as suggest to the universe that being solid was an optional extra some materials might want to reconsider. Ava's fists had done enough talking that she didn't have to, her knuckles practically delivering full philosophical dissertations with each impact. And Clana—well, Clana was Clana. Probably took a nap halfway through and still made the cut, her unconscious body somehow outperforming half the fully awake competitors.

The holographic displays throughout the academy grounds continuously cycled through highlights from the day's events, snippets of spectacular moments replaying above the heads of passing students. Lucifer's perfect execution of Winter's Ascent flickered ten feet tall near the cafeteria entrance, his blade trailing frost particles that dissipated into the actual air beneath the projection. The academy's quantum display technology had improved since last year—now the holograms carried trace sensory outputs, so anyone walking under Jin's replay would feel the faint chill of death energy raising goosebumps on their skin.

Elemental Conquest was next. Rachel and Aria Gu would be there. So would Lucifer, because of course he would—the festival probably wouldn't allow events to start unless he'd signed up for them, just to maintain tradition. Tactical Siege, though—that would be the real spectacle. Jack, Ren, Ian, Seol-ah, and Aaron. A cocktail of ego, raw power, and repressed trauma, all shaken together and served in a goblet made of competitive violence.

That one would be fun to watch. The sort of fun that involves potential property damage and spectacular displays of magical one-upmanship that would leave the arena looking like it had been redecorated by a committee of exploding paintballs with artistic differences.

"Arthur, what are you thinking?" Rachel asked, her shoulder brushing against mine with the careful precision of someone who had calculated the exact pressure and duration that would seem accidental while being anything but.

I turned to her. Simple skirt, loose t-shirt, golden hair tied up in a braid. Casual. Comfortable. Beautiful. She was the only person I knew who could eat a cone of mango ice cream and still somehow look like she'd stepped out of a dream, the flavor indicator on the cone's wrapper pulsing a cheery orange that matched her nail polish exactly.

"I was wondering where the other girls are," I said, half to myself, scanning the crowded courtyard.

She coughed into her hand. Light. Suspiciously so.

I stared at her. Her eyes didn't quite meet mine, focusing instead on a point approximately three inches to the left of my ear, as if that particular patch of air had suddenly become fascinating.

She scratched her cheek. A little too quickly. Her fingernails left temporary white marks that faded with the pink flush rising to replace them.

'At this point she's not even pretending,' Luna muttered in my head, her mental voice carrying the exasperated tone of someone watching a particularly transparent magic trick. 'I swear, if she says they're "just busy", she probably vaporised them with a prayer. Left nothing behind but small piles of sanctified dust and those little tags that tell you not to remove them from pillows.'

I didn't disagree. Rachel's competitive streak was less a streak and more an entire paint factory dedicated to the production of victory in all its chromatic variations.

"You've got ice cream on your lips," I said as I leaned forward and wiped it off with my thumb, the nano-chilled dessert still cold against my skin.

Rachel froze. Mid-bite, mid-blink, mid-breath. Completely still.

I looked at the smudge of mango on my thumb and, without much thought, licked it off. The flavor receptors in my tongue registered the precise balance of sweetness and acidity, alongside trace elements of the enhancement compounds designed to stimulate pleasurable neural responses.

Her face went red. Not blush red—emergency-level, system-failure red. The kind of red that suggested her internal cooling systems had just encountered a fatal error and were now venting excess heat through her skin in a desperate attempt to prevent complete shutdown.

"I thought a princess like you was supposed to be elegant," I said, tilting my head. The academy's ambient light sensors adjusted slightly to accommodate her sudden change in color temperature.

Her mouth opened. Closed. Opened again. She looked like a goldfish trying to load a response from a crashed neural network, her cognitive processes apparently stuck in an infinite boot cycle.

'Incredible,' Luna said in awe, the mental equivalent of slow clapping echoing through my consciousness. 'Truly. An art form. Weaponized flirtation with the precision targeting system of a military-grade drone. If they taught this at the academy, you'd be the professor emeritus.'

"A-Arthur," she finally stammered, fingers twisting into her hair like she was trying to strangle the embarrassment out of it, individual strands catching the afternoon sunlight and refracting it into tiny golden prisms. "When is your birthday? You never told me." The question emerged with all the smooth relevance of a submarine in a desert.

I tilted my head. "Don't worry about it." The dismissal was casual, designed to create more questions than it answered.

"Wha—" she started, but I leaned in again, close enough that I could see every flake of gold in her blue eyes, the heterochromatic patterns that gene therapists would charge small fortunes to replicate in less fortunate irises.

"You look really pretty today," I whispered, low and smooth, my voice calibrated to maximum disruptive potential. "Don't you think it's a little dangerous to be out here alone without the other three girls to keep you in check?" The words carried just enough suggestion to send her imagination racing.

Her ears turned pink. Then red. Then I swear I saw steam, as if her body had decided that conventional blood circulation was insufficient for the current crisis and had improvised an emergency pressure release valve.

She looked like she might explode.

"I-I didn't think today was the day," Rachel muttered, her voice dropping to a register that suggested confidential information was about to be exchanged, "But if it is, I will do my be-"

"We are not going that far," I interrupted her as I felt Luna's emotions filter through to me, a mixture of horrified amusement and secondhand embarrassment that threatened to overwhelm my own emotional processors.

'Arthur.. the Saintess..' Luna began again as I ignored her with the practiced ease of someone who had developed selective hearing as a survival mechanism. At this point, she should know better than to comment on situations that were already accelerating beyond advisory capacity.

"Come to my room," I said, the four words causing Rachel's pupils to dilate so rapidly that I briefly worried about retinal damage. The academy's medical AI probably flagged her vitals for monitoring at this point, her heart rate suggesting either intense physical activity or an imminent cardiac episode.

As we walked toward my dorms, Rachel's emotional state cycled through variations like a quantum particle refusing to settle on a fixed position. One moment she was smiling with the radiant certainty of someone who had just won a cosmic lottery, the next she was examining the ground with the intense focus of a person who had suddenly discovered that shoe design was their life's passion.

'Incredible, a person can change emotions so easily,' I thought as we reached my room in the Ophelia dorms.

By the time we entered, Rachel began giggling. Not the poised, controlled laugh of a Saintess, but the slightly manic giggle of someone whose brain had decided that if it couldn't process current events logically, it might as well enjoy the ride.

'She's even giggling like a pervert now,' Luna said in my mind, her tone suggesting she was mentally taking notes for future reference or possibly blackmail.

'Shut up,' I responded as I picked up Rachel—her weight registering as slightly less than expected, possibly due to the excitement causing her to unconsciously channel mana into passive levitation—and put her on my lap.

And I kissed her. Deeply.