Chapter 6: Forging a Rivalry

Chapter 6: Forging a Rivalry

News in Aethelgard moved faster than shadows. By the time Kael entered the cavernous dining hall for the evening meal, his status had undergone a seismic shift. The invisible wall that had separated him and the other Neophytes from the rest of the student body had developed a crack, and that crack was shaped exactly like him.

He was no longer directed to the wall to receive his bowl of grey sludge. A silent, uniformed attendant pointed him towards one of the lower-tier tables, where the food was a marginally better stew with discernible chunks of root vegetables. It was a small step up, but in Aethelgard’s brutal meritocracy, it was a leap across a chasm.

Whispers followed him as he sat down. Eyes watched him from across the hall, from the mid-rank tables all the way up to the ornate dais where the academy’s elite dined. He was no longer an anonymous survivor. He was “the one who disarmed Voronova.”

“Don’t let it go to your head,” a familiar voice murmured. The girl with the pink hair, whose name he’d learned was Elara, slid onto the bench opposite him. “You’ve just traded being invisible for being a target.”

“I’m starting to get that,” Kael said, stirring the stew with his spoon. The stares felt like physical things, crawling on his skin.

“You don’t understand,” Elara said, her voice low and urgent. “Seraphina is more than an instructor. She’s a legend, a benchmark of power. You landing a blow on her, even in training… it’s like a rat spitting in a dragon’s eye. Some are impressed. Most are insulted.”

Her words proved prophetic almost immediately. A shadow fell over their table, chilling the air. Kael looked up to see a trio of upperclassmen standing over him. They wore immaculate, tailored uniforms, richly embroidered with silver thread that marked them as high-rankers.

The one in the center was their obvious leader. He was handsome in a severe, aristocratic way, with sharp cheekbones and dark hair so perfectly styled it seemed sculpted from obsidian. But it was his eyes that held Kael’s attention. They were a pale, predatory grey, and they dissected Kael with an unnerving mixture of curiosity and utter contempt.

“So,” the student said, his voice a smooth, condescending drawl. “This is the mundane-born fluke who got lucky with the Wolf Queen.”

Kael’s grip tightened on his spoon. The word ‘mundane-born’ was spat like an epithet. It was clear what he was—an outsider, someone without a storied lineage in this strange, terrifying world.

“My name is Kaelen Vance,” Kael replied, keeping his voice steady despite the cold knot forming in his stomach. This was a new kind of threat, not a monster in the dark, but a predator in a social jungle.

The student gave a dismissive laugh. “I did not ask for your name, filth. I am Valerius of House Corvus, and you are an affront to this institution. Our power is a birthright, honed over generations. It is a sacred art, not a toy for some gutter rat who stumbled upon a System.”

As Valerius spoke, Kael felt a subtle pressure build in his mind. It was a cold, insidious feeling, a whisper of doubt and inadequacy that coiled around his thoughts. It felt horribly familiar, an external echo of his own deepest anxieties.

His Phobos System flickered.

[External Fear Input Detected. Terror Points Acquired: 10]

Kael’s eyes widened slightly. Valerius wasn’t just arrogant; he was actively projecting an aura of fear. It was his ability. He was a psychological predator.

“Rumor has it you possess some trick of foresight,” Valerius continued, his smile widening as he sensed Kael’s discomfort. “A parlor trick. True power isn't in dodging blows, mundane. It's in breaking the will of your opponent before they can even fight. It’s in making them drown in their own terror.”

The pressure intensified. The whispers in Kael’s mind grew louder, feeding him images of his own failure—the Nyctomorph tearing him apart, Seraphina sneering over his broken body, the entire hall laughing at his pathetic attempt to belong.

[External Fear Input Detected. Terror Points Acquired: 25]

The irony was dizzying. Valerius’s primary weapon was the very thing that fueled Kael’s power. But it was a dangerous game. Valerius was an expert at instilling fear, at overloading his victims until they were paralyzed by it. If Kael couldn’t control the deluge, he would break long before he could use the points Valerius was inadvertently feeding him. This was the core of Valerius’s strategy: psychological warfare.

“You have sullied the honor of this academy with your fluke performance,” Valerius declared, his voice rising to capture the attention of the entire hall. “I am offering you a chance to prove it was more than luck. I, Valerius of House Corvus, ranked 34th, challenge you, the unranked Neophyte, to an official duel on the Nexus.”

A collective gasp went through the dining hall. A ranked duel was a formal, binding contest. The winner’s rank soared, while the loser’s plummeted, often stripped of resources and privileges. For an unranked Neophyte to be challenged by someone in the top 50 was unprecedented. It wasn’t a duel; it was a public execution.

Kael felt a hundred different fears crashing down on him. The fear of humiliation, the fear of pain, the fear of being exposed as the fraud Seraphina had called him. But beneath it all, his primary fear, his Atychiphobia, blazed with a white-hot intensity.

To refuse the challenge would be the ultimate admission of failure. It would be accepting Valerius’s narrative, proving to everyone, and most importantly to himself, that he was nothing more than a fluke who was terrified of a real fight.

Failure was not an option.

He pushed his chair back and stood up, meeting the high-ranker’s cold gaze. "I accept."

The words hung in the stunned silence of the hall. Elara was staring at him, her face a mask of disbelief. Valerius looked momentarily surprised, before his expression settled back into a mask of smug certainty.

“Excellent,” Valerius purred. “Then let the Nexus bear witness.”

A beam of silver light shot down from the massive ranking crystal hanging in the center of the hall, illuminating the two of them. A cold, resonant voice, the voice of the academy’s system, echoed through the chamber.

[Ranked Duel Sanctioned. Valerius of House Corvus (Rank 34) versus Kaelen Vance (Unranked). Victor claims 500 Rank Value Points. Time: Tomorrow, Mid-day Bell. Arena: The Obsidian Ring.]

The light faded. Valerius gave Kael one last look, a predator savoring the fear of its cornered prey. “Enjoy your last decent meal, mundane. Tomorrow, you’ll be back on sludge—if you’re lucky enough to be able to eat at all.”

He and his cronies turned and swept away, leaving Kael standing alone in the center of the hall, the weight of his decision settling upon him. He had just agreed to fight an opponent whose entire combat style was designed to exploit his greatest weakness.

He sat back down, his appetite gone. His hands were trembling slightly, but a strange, fierce resolve was solidifying within him. He looked at the Phobos System interface in his vision, at the rising count of his Terror Points. Valerius thought he was a sheep to be mentally slaughtered. He had no idea he was facing a wolf that fed on the very fear he wielded as a weapon.

The duel would be a battle of wills fought on a razor’s edge. He would have to endure a direct assault on his psyche, wade through an ocean of weaponized failure, and find the one perfect moment to strike. He would have to control his fear, not just overcome it, but master it.