Chapter 147. Pure Ego the Moment the Stakes Become Artificial
Kaela and Lia exchanged a brief, startled glance. For a split second, the animosity vanished, replaced by a raw, uncomfortable recognition.
The memory of that battlefield—the blood, the screams, and the desperate rhythm of their survival—flashed behind their eyes.
Kaela broke the silence first, crossing her arms and looking away with a defensive huff. "Well..."
"That’s different," she muttered, though her bravado sounded hollow even to her own ears. "That was survival."
"Actual monsters and actual danger!"
"My instincts were on autopilot because I didn’t want to die."
Lia sat up slowly, wincing as she brushed the dirt from her robes, her expression equally defensive.
"That’s different for me too," she added, almost at the exact same moment as Kaela, their voices overlapping in a perfect, ironic echo. "Because that was about the stakes being real."
"This is just rivalry."
The silence that followed their synchronized outburst was deafening. For three heartbeats, neither girl moved.
The only sound was the distant whistle of wind through the training grounds and the ragged, pained breathing of Kaela, whose ribs still throbbed with a dull, wet heat where William’s boot had connected.
Then, slowly, their heads turned in perfect unison. Their eyes locked.
The dawning realization that they had just delivered the exact same rehearsed excuse hit them like a physical blow.
"Did you just agree with me?" Kaela asked, her voice dripping with genuine offense.
Her face flushed crimson, partly from anger, partly from the exertion that still made her vision swim.
Lia bristled immediately, her shoulders squaring despite the dried mud caking her collar. "I did not agree with you."
"I made a completely separate point that merely happened to share a similar linguistic structure! Don’t flatter yourself!"
"It sounded exactly the same, Lia." Kaela’s hands clenched into fists, the knuckles white. "You literally said the same words... In the same fuck ass tone!"
"I absolutely did not! My cadence was completely different!" Lia shot back, her voice rising an octave. "You’re just hearing what you want to hear because your ego needs validation!"
"MY EGO needs validation?! You’re the one who—"
"Oh, please."
The interjection came from the sidelines. Olivia had been leaning against a wooden post, arms crossed, watching the spectacle with the detached amusement of someone watching a particularly entertaining puppet show.
A slow, dry smirk tugged at the corner of her mouth as she pushed off the post and sauntered toward the center of the chaos.
"For what it’s worth," Olivia said, her voice cutting through their bickering with effortless cool, "you two are considerably more alike than either of you seems willing to admit..."
"It’s almost impressive."
Kaela and Lia both snapped their heads toward her.
"What’s that supposed to mean?" they demanded in unison.
Olivia raised an eyebrow. "It means you’re predictable."
"You both default to pure, unfiltered instinct when the stakes are real when blood is actually on the line and the alternative is death."
"But the moment the pressure becomes artificial, the moment it becomes about pride rather than survival, you both default to pure, unadulterated ego." She shrugged nonchalantly. "That’s not an insult, by the way... It’s just an observation."
"I don’t have an ego problem," Kaela declared, though the way she immediately crossed her arms defensively suggested otherwise.
"You very much have an ego problem," Lia interjected without missing a beat, shooting Kaela a venomous look.
"Says the person who once refused to eat dinner until she’d perfected a single stance rotation!" Kaela fired back, her eyes narrowing into slits. "Remember that? Three weeks ago?"
"We were starving, the rations were cold, and you sat there like some stubborn statue for two hours because your left pivot was ’off by three degrees’!"
"That was discipline, Kaela! Not ego!" Lia shouted, her face turning a shade of red that rivaled Kaela’s flames. "A warrior must be precise!"
"Every degree matters when you’re facing a demon lord!"
"It was absolutely ego," Kaela deadpanned, shaking her head. "You just wanted to prove you could do it perfectly."
"At least I try to be perfect!" Lia screamed. "Unlike some people who think ’close enough’ is a valid combat strategy!"
William pinched the bridge of his nose, feeling a headache forming behind his eyes that had nothing to do with the magical exertion of the fight and everything to do with the two stubborn headaches currently screaming at each other in front of him.
He felt caught in a bizarre limbo between genuine exasperation and a reluctant, fond amusement. These girls were brilliant, deadly, and utterly infuriating.
"You know," William interrupted, his voice carrying that particular tone of authority that demanded silence, "if you two channeled half of this aggressive energy into actually reading each other’s movements instead of reading each other’s flaws, you’d be unstoppable."
"I read her movements fine!" Kaela shouted, though she winced as the motion pulled at her bruised ribs. "I just didn’t expect her to be so... dramatic about it!"
"Dramatic? I was being tactical!" Lia shot back. "There is a difference between theatrics and precise magical execution, something you clearly wouldn’t understand since your primary combat strategy is ’hit it until it stops moving’!"
"Hey! That strategy has worked perfectly fine for three years!"
"Because you’re lucky, not because you’re skilled!"
William let out a long, controlled exhale.
’Gods, give me strength,’ he thought, imagining himself retreating to a quiet tavern far away from teenage magical ego battles. ’ They have more potential than any squad I’ve trained, yet they’re currently more interested in winning an argument than winning a war.’
"The point," William said, stepping forward to physically insert himself between the two girls like a human barrier, cutting through the escalating noise, "is that you two work beautifully together when it actually matters when the air smells like sulfur and the alternative is a grave."
"You become a single entity, flawless and terrifying. But the second the stakes feel small enough to make room for your competing need for validation, you fall apart!"
"You stop being partners and start being rivals."
He locked eyes with each of them, making sure the lesson sank past their defensive layers. "That’s worth thinking about."
"Filing it away for later. Because the next time you’re in a real fight and you hesitate because you’re waiting for your partner to acknowledge your brilliance instead of covering your flank?"
"That’s when you die."
The silence that followed was heavy, charged with the sting of his words. The adrenaline from the fight was fading, leaving behind only the raw ache of their injuries and the uncomfortable truth of his assessment.
"Filed," Clara said quietly.
She was already scribbling in her journal with methodical precision, a faint, almost imperceptible smirk playing on her lips. She had predicted this entire breakdown hours ago; documenting it was simply a matter of professional courtesy to herself.
"Oh, great... Now we’re being archived like museum exhibits," Kaela muttered, though she finally slumped down onto a nearby bench, defeated by both William’s words and her own aching body.
"At least she’s documenting something useful for once," Lia added weakly, though she didn’t have the energy to follow up with her usual venom.
It was in the middle of this fragile, post-argument standoff where the only sounds were the scratching of Clara’s quill and the distant chirping of birds that the atmosphere shifted violently. A sudden change in pressure, a ripple in the ambient mana of the training grounds, made William’s instincts scream.
Every head present turned at once. The earlier bickering, the injuries, and the petty grievances—all of it evaporated instantly.
The training ground gate creaked open, and a familiar figure stepped through the threshold. The bickering was forgotten entirely, replaced by a sudden, sharp tension that made the air itself feel like it was holding its breath.
The atmosphere in the training yard didn’t just change; it crystallized. The residual heat from Kaela’s flames and the damp chill from Lia’s water magic seemed to freeze mid-air as a new presence swept across the threshold.
Catherine emerged from the shadow of the gate, walking toward them with an easy, unshakable confidence that commanded the space without her having to utter a single syllable. She wasn’t just walking; she was claiming the ground beneath her boots.
This time, she wasn’t wearing the practical leather and travel worn wool they were accustomed to. She was clad in her new armor, and the sight of it struck the assembled students like a physical blow to the chest.
The pale, silvery plating caught the morning light, refracting it in soft, shifting patterns that danced across the training grounds. It wasn’t the harsh, blinding glare of polished steel, but something deeper, a lunar luminescence that made her look less like a soldier and more like something torn from the pages of an ancient, half-remembered legend and breathed back into mortal life.
The craftsmanship was terrifyingly beautiful. Every inch of the silvery surface was etched with intricate, engraved patterns that spiraled along the edges of the pauldrons and greaves.
These engravings were subtle, almost hypnotic, echoing something primordial and divine without feeling weighed down by excessive ornamentation. As she moved, the metal seemed to flow with her body, catching the light in ways that suggested the armor itself was alive, breathing in rhythm with her.
’Gods,’ William thought, his own breath catching audibly in his throat.
His fingers instinctively twitched toward the hilt of his sword, not out of threat, but as a reflex to the sheer presence she now radiated. ’She doesn’t look like a vice-headmaster anymore...’
’She looks like an inevitability.’