Chapter 32: Conflict
Nicholas looked at the cracked wall.
Then at Alden.
"I actually wanted to believe you this time."
His voice had dropped. The edge was gone from it, replaced by something that was somehow worse.
"After the attack. What you did for the injured students, helping us find the Core bearer, staying behind when you didn’t have to." He paused. "I thought maybe I’d been wrong about you."
His eyes moved back to the wall.
"But then you turn around and do this."
He looked at Alden directly.
"Are you actually trying to change? Or have you just learned how to look like it?"
Sierra pushed herself upright behind them with a soft sound.
Nicholas turned immediately. "Sierra, are you—"
Alden laughed. It came out short and quiet, barely anything, but Nicholas caught it.
He turned back. "What’s funny?"
The amusement stayed in Alden’s eyes even after the sound left. "Just thinking."
"About what?"
"How blind you are."
Nicholas’s expression stiffened. "What?"
Alden stepped out of his grip and fixed his collar. "Open your eyes, Nico."
The nickname landed wrong. Nicholas’s jaw tightened. "What exactly are you—"
"Look at what’s happening right in front of you." Alden gestured toward Sierra with his chin.
Nicholas glanced at her, then back. "I don’t understand what you’re—"
"I know you don’t. She’s trying to get your attention, and you’re falling right into it."
Sierra’s voice came in fast.
"A-attention?" She sounded like the word had caught her off guard, fragile at the edges. "No. That’s not what I was doing. I would never—"
Alden’s eyes didn’t move to her.
Nicholas took a step toward him.
"Why would you say something like that? I heard what the students were saying about you after the attack. I heard what you did. For the first time I thought, maybe there really is another side to you." His expression tightened. "But now I’m looking at this."
"It’s not about changing," Alden said.
"Then what is it about?"
"It’s about seeing clearly." He looked at Nicholas steadily. "Go ahead. Give her all the attention she wants."
A beat.
"After all, you’re already engaged to Roselle. What’s one more person following you around?"
Sierra’s face went pink. "N-no, that’s not—"
Nicholas’s hand moved to his sword.
SHING!
Nicholas’s sword was already flying before the sound even faded.
CLANG!
A scythe appeared from nowhere and caught the blade mid-arc, the impact ringing through the corridor.
Nicholas’s arm stopped. His eyes went wide.
Seris stood between them.
Her scythe pressed against Nicholas’s sword, holding it exactly where it had been stopped, her expression was calm as always.
"What exactly are you doing, Nicholas?" Her voice was quiet and firm.
"Senior Seris—" Nicholas stepped back immediately. "I wasn’t trying to hurt him. I just—"
"You drew your sword against another student in an academy corridor."
"I was trying to—" He hesitated. "I was trying to make him understand. But instead of listening, he said something he shouldn’t have."
"Because he said something that angered you?"
Seris lowered the scythe slowly. Her eyes moved to him with the patient attention of someone who intends to say something important and is deciding on the exact words.
"Your friend attacked Alden first in the meeting room. When Alden defended himself, you sided with the person who threw the first punch. And now, because Alden said something you didn’t like, your first response was your sword." She tilted her head slightly. "You’re on the Student Council, Nicholas. You should have better control over yourself than this. Especially with someone you already distrust."
Nicholas looked at the floor.
The sword went back into the sheath without another word.
"You’re right." He exhaled. "I let my emotions take over. I’m sorry."
He looked at Alden. "I shouldn’t have drawn it."
Alden said nothing.
Nicholas turned. "If you’ll excuse me, Senior."
Roselle had arrived somewhere in the middle of all of it and was standing a short distance away with an expression that was doing several things at once and couldn’t settle on one. She fell into step beside Nicholas without speaking.
Sierra glanced back at Alden before following.
Their eyes met for half a second.
Alden’s face had nothing in it.
She looked away first and walked faster.
Seris dismissed her scythe in a shimmer of crimson and stood in the now-empty corridor.
Alden turned toward her.
"Why are you here?"
"How rude." Her lips curved. One finger reached out and traced lightly along his jaw. "Instead of asking why I’m here, shouldn’t you be thanking me for saving you?"
He stepped back from the touch. "Saving me?"
"Mmhm~"
"I didn’t ask for your help, why would you do that?"
"Aww~" She tilted her head with the expression of someone enjoying this more than the situation warranted. "Why wouldn’t I? You’re my dear junior, after all."
Alden’s eyebrow twitched.
"Liar." The word came out before he fully decided to say it. "If you actually cared, you wouldn’t have just stood there watching while the rest of us nearly got killed by that dragon."
Seris’s eyes wandered to the ceiling.
"Oh, that~?" Her smile brightened like the question was charming. "I had complete faith in my junior. I knew you could handle it. I was letting you prove yourself."
The other eyebrow joined the first.
’This woman.’
The playful expression faded on its own, settling into something else. She folded her arms and looked at him directly.
"That’s not why I came."
Alden waited.
"What happened in that meeting bothered me." She kept her voice even. "You let their words get to you. I’ve been watching you since the incident started, and you’re usually someone who thinks before he moves. Today you let your anger do the thinking instead."
He didn’t answer.
"People will say whatever they want about you, Alden. Some of them will do it deliberately to see what happens. Others will just follow along without asking questions. If you react every time—" She held his gaze. "You give them exactly what they wanted. And you end up doing things you’ll regret."
He looked at her.
’She’s right.’
The meeting room came back to him in pieces. Nathan’s voice. Daniel’s hand on his shoulder. The point where he’d stopped thinking and just gotten angry. The dark mana that had started leaking out of him without him noticing it, the room stepping back without him understanding why.
’I let my own characters ragedbait me.’
He pressed two fingers to his forehead.
’I wrote these people. I designed their personalities. And I still sat in that room getting progressively more furious while the situation got worse because of it.’
’What was I actually doing?’
The dark aura surfaced in his mind again. Black mana. Curling outward without him activating anything.
’Was that Soul Rendering? Soul Extraction activates when I make contact with something alive.’
’Maybe it was Soul Extraction.’ He sighed, decided not to overthink about it.
Seris kept going.
"There won’t always be someone standing next to you. For every person who supports you, someone else will be working against you. That’s just what it is." Her eyes stayed on his face. "So regardless of what gets thrown at you, stay composed. Think first. The moment you lose control, you hand them everything they were after."
Alden looked at her for a moment.
’Of all the people in this academy.’
His expression went somewhere complicated.
’A mere Antagonist I designed for a few arcs is giving me better advice than the protagonist I spent a year building.’
He rubbed his forehead.
"Ahem."
Both of them turned.
A small group of students stood at the end of the corridor. First-years with bandages still visible from the earlier fighting were easily recognizable by their uniforms. They looked like they’d been working up to this for a minute.
One of them stepped forward.
"Senior Alden..." The student’s voice was careful. "Do you have a minute?"