Leon felt somewhat anxious when he woke up on the second proper day of the Knight Academy’s training cycle. It was going to be another morning of duels, he knew, and he wasn’t too keen on performing for the sake of the nobles. However, he knew that Valeria was going to be fighting, and he felt his heart begin to race in anticipation as he thought about fighting her.

He briefly wondered why she had so entranced him. She was a prodigious warrior, to be sure, and that certainly played no small role in his current fixation. In fact, out of all the nobles he’d seen fight so far, she was the only one of them who had managed to pique his interest. Maybe it was just arrogance, but he didn’t think he was going to be seriously challenged by any of the others in a straight one-on-one fight, but Valeria was the only exception.

Or maybe it was just because she was quite beautiful. He had to admit that her long silver hair and piercing blue eyes were quite attractive, and she seemed to be interested in enchanting just as he was…

He pushed those thoughts out of his head. First Elise, now Valeria. He’d been in the south for a little over a month, and already he was finding himself getting distracted by girls. That’s not what he was here for; he was here to perform well in the Knight Academy so that he could rise through the ranks of the Legion and start looking into the downfall of his family and the death of his father.

‘But surely… I don’t have to be focused on that at all times, do I? I mean, fighting Valeria and doing well wouldn’t just be an indulgence, it would also be a chance to get to know her better. Maybe she’d even be able to help me find my father’s killers later. Maybe some of these other nobles might even be able to help me, too…’

Leon scowled. He knew that it would be smart to try and take advantage of this chance to network with a good portion of the Kingdom’s next generation of nobles, but after spending his entire life alone with no one but his father around and only rare trips into Vale Town to break up that lifestyle, he found the prospect of prolonged interaction with other people to be unpleasant, to say the least.

But lying in bed stewing in dread, anticipation, and all other kinds of warring emotions in those veins wasn’t going to help him any. Instead, he got up and started getting ready for the day. As much as he tried to argue against it, by the time he’d finished cleaning himself up and getting dressed, he’d made the decision to challenge Valeria as soon as he could. He’d have to do it quickly because he doubted that people like Alcander or Gaius would refrain from challenging a woman as strong as her. Gaius, at the very least, seemed to crave her attention if he was trying to ward Leon off like an evil spirit.

For that matter, either of them might even challenge him rather than Valeria—Alcander had been staring at him like a hungry dog practically all of the previous day, so he knew that he wanted to fight, at least. If he didn’t challenge Valeria soon enough, then he might get tied down with other people and be forced to wait. He supposed he could just turn those duels down, of course, but after the previous day and everything that Gaius had said to him still fresh in his mind, Leon was in a mood to fight; he wouldn’t be turning down any challenges, so if he was to fight the person he wanted to fight, then he’d just have to make sure he was the one doing the challenging.

This determination pushed him on throughout the entire morning. He met up with Charles, Henry, and Alain, spent a few minutes giving them a few quick pointers and listening to them laugh and joke around, then joined Alphonsus and Castor—the other two third-tier nobles in the Snow Lions—in leading their unit over to the training field.

---

Leon finished up his stretches as the last of the nobles arrived. None of them were particularly late since the Academy Instructors made sure to keep them prompt and on time, but Leon and the Snow Lions had still arrived at the training field with enough time to spare for him to get in a little bit of stretching.

As he prepared himself, he felt the weight of more than a few eyeballs as the nobles registered what he was doing. It was clear enough that he was getting ready to fight, and for the most part, Leon didn’t think the nobles were all that enthused if their kind of sour and dismissive looks were anything to go by.

There were a few exceptions, of course. Alcander practically couldn’t keep his eyes off Leon once he arrived—and it was making Leon a little uncomfortable, if he were to be honest—his friend Marcus seemed only mildly amused at most, and the two ladies of the Crimson Tigresses—including Valeria—barely even acknowledged anyone else’s presence as they spent their time chatting with each other.

Gaius, Leon was somewhat amused to see, turned slightly pale when he noticed Leon getting set to right. He still felt a hint of killing intent in the young noble’s attention, but it wasn’t enough to make him concerned, despite everything that Gaius had said to him the day before. Gaius had made some vague threats against him, so Leon wanted to keep an eye on him, but as of yet, he hadn’t seen anything too concerning.

Leon’s attention was grabbed when the same Senior Instructor who’d run the ‘class’ the day before came forward and went into roughly the same spiel. These were friendly fights meant to encourage networking among the nobles, don’t cause serious damage, et cetera; Leon mostly tuned it out when he realized that there wasn’t going to be anything new.

Instead, he started pushing himself toward the front of the group of nobles, to the mild shock of many. He was going to get his fight, but he couldn’t just let it come to him.

Almost as soon as the Senior Instructor finished speaking and invited the first challenger to come forward, Leon had already taken his first steps out of the group.

“Ah!” the Senior Instructor said with some surprise. “I see we have our first challenger already! Good! So, ‘Leon Ursus’, was it?” Leon nodded. “Make your challenge, who do you wish to fight?”

Leon turned around and surveyed the group of nobles, his left hand resting on the hilt of the training sword he’d selected that morning. Some of the nobles seemed defiant, some seemed a little squeamish and refused to meet his gaze. Alcander was eager and had already taken a step forward as if sure without a shadow of a doubt that Leon was going to challenge him. Gaius seemed almost as eager, staring at Leon with such intent that Leon was momentarily concerned he was about to erupt into flame from the weight of Gaius’ gaze.

But none of them captured his gaze for long. Instead, his eyes slid off of them like water off a duck’s back, momentarily meeting the gazes of almost every noble present until they finally landed upon the sapphire-blue eyes of Valeria.

She stood there, her silver hair glittering in the light of the morning sun, a milky-white training spear lazily propped up against her shoulder. She seemed to be only paying cursory attention to what was going on, and only seemed to realize what was about to happen when Leon’s eyes landed upon her and lingered.

Their gazes met, gold and sapphire, and in that instant, they both knew what was about to happen. When Leon opened his mouth, Valeria’s lips were already curling upward as her right hand tightened on the haft of her spear.

“I would like to challenge you,” Leon said as he stared at Valeria, his gaze unwavering. His words were a total shock to everyone present. Clearly, out of everyone there, no one had thought that Valeria was going to be the barbarian’s first challenge. Alcander froze, his smile turning strange as his head turned in the silver-haired woman’s direction, his expression slowly turning into one more reminiscent in Leon’s eyes of a spurned puppy than a battle-hungry warrior. Gaius’ gaze, on the other hand, sharpened, and Leon felt a flicker of killing intent stronger than normal come from the young nobleman.

But he had nothing to fear right now. Gaius couldn’t do anything, and in fact, Leon kind of relished in deliberately challenging Valeria with him present. It was petty and spiteful, but Leon couldn’t honestly say that Gaius specifically telling him to leave Valeria alone had played no part in his decision to challenge her today.

Leon’s attention, however, even with all of this, remained fixed on Valeria. The other nobles didn’t matter. Only her answer to his challenge mattered, and he didn’t think she was going to turn him down.

Slowly, all eyes turned to Valeria.

Leon didn’t have to wait long. Valeria slowly pushed her way through the small crowd, her dusky-skinned friend—Asiya, Leon thought her name was—cheering her on with enthusiastic waving and declarations about how big of a mistake Leon had just made.

Everyone watched, Asiya’s cheering ringing in all of their ears, as she took a position only ten steps from Leon and said, “I accept your challenge.”

In that moment, everything and everyone else ceased to matter to Leon. His face broke out into a wide smile as his right hand went to his training sword and drew it. Valeria assumed a neutral stance with her spear, neither aggressive nor defensive, as a similar look of anticipation spread across her face.

Leon immediately saw that she knew what she was doing. Her stance was strong, yet didn’t reveal too much about her planned strategy. She could easily open the fight with a strong attack or wait for him to make his move, he couldn’t say.

He did not take the same approach. He knew that it would almost telegraph his opening moves to her, but he assumed a much more offensive stance than she did. His fighting style, much like the lightning magic of his family, was geared far more toward offensive fighting rather than more defensive styles. Lightning magic was almost entirely centered around extreme speed and explosive power, and the Raime family fighting style reflected that.

Leon barely heard the Senior Instructor declare the beginning of their duel; he was already lunging forward to cover the distance between himself and Valeria. His longsword was bigger than the standard one-handed swords that most in the Bull Kingdom used, with his third-tier strength making wielding it not an issue, but even then, it wasn’t going to be enough to make up for his range disadvantage; he was fighting an opponent with a polearm, he had to get inside her reach if he had any hope of winning.

Valeria expected this—it wasn’t as if he tried to hide, though—and started with a wide sweep aimed at Leon’s legs. She missed, but hitting him wasn’t her goal; instead, it got Leon to pause to avoid taking a stunning blow to his calves, and in doing so, lost him his momentum.

As a follow-up, she brought her spear back up in a guarded pose, keeping Leon out of range as her smile grew wider. Leon kept his own weapon up and ready, making sure that she kept her distance even as her eyes narrowed with intent. If he let his guard down, he knew he’d be punished.

Artorias had never trained Leon to accept passivity, though, so there was only so long Leon was going to allow that situation to persist. Besides, he didn’t want to concede the initiative of the fight to Valeria; if he did, he’d have already lost. Leon lunged forward, using all the speed of his magic-enhanced muscles to lower his blade and then bring it up in a wide upward slash aimed at the head of Valeria’s spear. Her grip was solid and her attention unwavering, but his sudden movement still caught her by surprise, and his blow sent her weapon reeling into the air.

Leon then moved to take advantage, lunging forward while bringing his blade back down in a terrifying slash. It almost seemed like Valeria was going to try and dodge, as she spun around and took a step backward, but Leon realized just as he got into sword range that that wasn’t her plan. Instead, she’d danced just out of reach as she used the momentum of his attack to bring the butt of her spear up, spinning the weapon like a baton.

Leon felt the round pommel of the weapon crash into the right side of his ribs, sending a lance of pain running through his body, but he didn’t let it stop him. She’d avoided his strike and landed a blow of her own, but now her weapon was in reach. Leon, in an instant, dropped his weapon into his left hand and trapped her spear with his right.

For a moment, Valeria’s eyes went wide as Leon began to fight her for control of her weapon, which then turned to panic as Leon roughly pulled her toward him and stabbed with his blade toward her center of mass.

His dull-white blade slammed into the side of her ribs, almost exactly in the spot where she’d gotten him. But instead of the unenchanted pommel, Leon got her with the stunning blade, and he saw her body momentarily seize up.

The stunning effects of their weapons were fairly mild, all things considered, and Leon’s hit was a glancing blow at best. Still, it left him in an undeniable position as Valeria barely managed not to fall to her knees. Her spear did, however, slip from her grasp as her muscles slowly loosened.

“I concede defeat,” she said quietly, recognizing her loss. Leon hadn’t followed through to knock her out completely, but he’d still won, nonetheless.

However, that wasn’t for lack of skill on her part, in Leon’s opinion, but more of a result of her mentality. The blow she’d landed on him had been hard, but it wasn’t quite what he knew a mage of her power to be capable of—assuming he could use himself as a baseline. She’d held back, giving him a solid, but not truly injuring blow despite being capable of doing so, and it left her open.

“Well fought,” Leon said as he sheathed his weapon and gave Valeria a smile of respect.

“You too,” she replied as she leaned her spear against her shoulder and started rubbing the spot where Leon had stabbed her. “You won’t win next time…”

Leon’s smile grew wider as he thought about fighting her again. He didn’t think she’d make the same mistake she just did and hold back, and now she knew that he could take a hit—he could feel his ribs already starting to bruise, and he hoped that she hadn’t cracked his ribs. At the very least, he felt like he’d need to use a healing spell or two later.

The rest of the nobles, meanwhile, could only stare in awe. The fight had only lasted a few seconds, but it had still put Leon and Valeria’s skill on full display. Neither were combatants that could be ignored.

Somewhat concerningly, as Leon and Valeria returned to the crowd not quite walking at each other’s side and neither speaking another word to the other, Leon felt the weight of the rest of the nobles staring at the two of them, and in those stares, he could feel a hint of killing intent slowly starting to grow stronger.

---

Gaius glared at Leon as the barbarian returned to the group, the smile on his face an insult to everything the Knight Academy and the Bull Kingdom stood for. He thought that he could just waltz down into the Bull Kingdom and get everyone to kneel before him just because he was a good fighter.

At the very least, Gaius had to acknowledge that much. The savage could fight. But now that he’d specifically defied Gaius’ order to stay clear of Valeria, there had to be a response.

Gaius tuned out almost all the rest of the fights as his thoughts turned to the conversation he and his brother had the night before. He couldn’t fight Leon head-on, that much was certain. But Gaius had other options, and he didn’t necessarily have to hit the barbarian himself to cause him harm.

The young nobleman took a deep breath as he decided on a course of action. The barbarian had to be punished for his insolence, and he had to be shown that simply being good with a blade was not the be-all and end-all of civilized men, even if it was in the desolate north.

‘This weekend… yes, that should work…’ Gaius silently said to himself as his thoughts turned toward the commoners in Leon’s unit that seemed to think that hanging around a savage like him was a good idea. ‘I’ll start with them, impress upon them the magnitude of their mistake, and leave the barbarian with no friends at all…’