The Strongest Student of the Weakest Academy-Chapter 470: The Heavens Shall Fall (XI)

I looked up.

She descended slowly through the upper air of the arena, her long golden hair falling loosely around her, catching the arena light and holding it in a way that made it look like it belonged to her rather than to the arena.

Her golden eyes were already on the platform below, sharp and calm.

She was beautiful.

Genuinely, unfairly beautiful.

Tall, with a figure that her white ceremonial robes did very little to downplay, the fabric following every curve of her body with a faithfulness that drew the eye whether you intended it to or not.

Deep gold trim ran along her collar and sleeves, catching the light the same way her hair did.

Her chest pressed generously against the front of her robes, the fabric straining slightly with each slow breath she took as she descended.

Her waist pulled inward before her hips flared back out beneath the ceremonial belt cinched at her middle, the whole silhouette something that the arena crowd had collectively noticed and collectively decided to say nothing about.

Her expression was pleasant.

Completely, dangerously pleasant.

The pressure she was generating, the thing that had driven Emyria flat against the platform like a hand pressing down on something small, was coming off her passively.

She touched down at the platform edge without sound.

Looked at Emyria, pinned against the stone beneath the weight of her passive authority, and tilted her head slightly.

"Competition rules prohibit permanent injury to opponents."

Her golden eyes moved to the man wrapped in vines, suspended, several bones making their displeasure known.

"He's still breathing," Emyria said from the platform floor, somewhat flatly given her current position.

"Barely," Olivia stated.

Rustle...

Emyria's vines slowly retracted.

The suspended man dropped, caught by the boundary field before he hit the ground.

Olivia watched this happen with her calm yet authoritative expression fully intact.

Then she looked back down at Emyria, still pressed against the platform stone, and crouched to her level.

"I'll give you one opportunity," she mumbled, "to stand up properly and finish this match within the rules."

Emyria's golden eyes met hers from the floor.

Something passed between them that the arena couldn't hear.

Emyria's jaw tightened.

"...The rules don't specify the degree of—"

PAAAAAK!!!

Olivia slapped her.

FWOOM!

Emyria's body was sent flying, almost like a damn cannonball, the force carrying her sideways off the edge and into the catch zone, where she hit the boundary field and slid down it with her silver hair across her face and her golden eyes wide with something that was not anger.

It was shock...

Pure, unprocessed shock.

The arena was absolutely silent.

Olivia straightened up.

Smoothed the front of her ceremonial robes with one hand.

Then she turned to face the arena.

Every student and representative, and official, currently sitting in complete silence, looking down at her on the platform with the man who had been wrapped in vines now sitting in the catch zone on the opposite side, trying to remember how breathing worked.

Her golden eyes moved across the crowd slowly.

Her divine authority was released.

THRUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUM!

It came off her body in a single expanding wave that pressed against every surface in the arena simultaneously, the seats, the walls, the boundary fields, the divine-treated stone of the platform beneath her feet.

Several students in the lower tiers grabbed their armrests without meaning to. Two officials at the scoring table put their hands flat against its surface as if confirming it was still there.

The Divine Concord section went very still.

Even the empty Primordial Court seats seemed, somehow, to become emptier.

Olivia's expression didn't change.

"As everyone know I'm the Goddess of Light, Olivia."

Her voice carried without effort, without projection, without any particular intention to fill the space. It simply did, the way light fills a room when a door opens.

"Overseer of this competition. Appointed by the Divine Academy's head council."

She looked across the full arena one more time.

"The rules of this competition exist for a reason," she codly stated.

"Permanent injury. Torture. Deliberate disfigurement. These are not gray areas, and certainly not subject to interpretation."

Her golden eyes stopped moving.

Just settled on the arena at large, warm and steady and carrying something underneath the warmth that everyone present registered without needing it explained.

"The next person who mistakes this stage for somewhere that rules don't apply," she spoke in a pleasant tone, "will not be removed by the boundary field..."

"They will be removed by me."

She let that sit for exactly three seconds.

Then her authority pulled back inward, the pressure lifting off the arena the way a held breath releases, and her expression returned to its polite smile as she turned and stepped off the platform.

The arena remained silent for a long moment after she left the platform.

Then, slowly, the noise returned.

And almost immediately, the next match was announced.

I was already looking elsewhere.

Olivia had stepped off the platform and was moving along the lower walkway that ran beneath the first tier, her ceremonial robes trailing slightly behind her, golden hair catching the light with every step.

She didn't look up immediately.

She was speaking to one of the academy officials who had materialized beside her with a clipboard and the expression of someone who had several administrative questions and was trying to find the right moment to ask them.

She answered whatever he said without breaking stride.

Then, just before she rounded the corner of the lower walkway and passed out of my sightline entirely, she looked up.

Found me in the third tier immediately, without searching, without scanning the crowd.

"Chu~"

She winked at me, then she rounded the corner and was gone.

I looked back at the platform.

Kael was staring at me.

I could feel it without turning.

"...She winked at you," he narrowed his eyes.

"You imagined it," I instantly retorted.

After all, my relationship with her was a secret!

Kael blinked.

"...I imagined it...?"

"The light in here does things to your eyes."

"Aestrea. She looked directly at you. From the lower walkway. And winked."

"You were probably looking at someone in our general direction."

"There's nobody interesting in our general direction," Kael stated flatly. "There's me, you, and Tyrian. She winked at you specifically."

"Kael... there's a whole crowd around us as well. And..."

"AND WHAT!!?"

"You've been excited since before the first match. Your perception is compromised."

He stared at me.

"My perception is compromised...?! How is it compromised!?!?!?"

"You ran into a pillar this morning."

"THAT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH—" He stopped speaking, and suddenly looked at Tyrian. "Tyrian. You saw it too. Tell him."

Tyrian, who had been watching this exchange from my other side with the expression of someone watching a very small but committed fire, considered his options briefly.

"I was looking at the platform," he replied.

"YOU WERE NOT LOOKING AT THE PLATFORM—"

"The match was very engaging."

"THERE WAS NO MATCH HAPPENING AT THAT EXACT MOMENT—"

"The platform itself was engaging. The stone. The craftsmanship."

Kael looked at Tyrian for a long moment.

Then, at me before going back to Tyrian.

"You're both doing something..." his eyes narrowed in complete suspicion.

"Watching the competition," I nodded.

"Something specific," he continued, ignoring me.

"Kael," Tyrian called out patiently.

"The Goddess of Light is the appointed overseer of this competition. She was looking at the general crowd. You were excited and misread a polite glance."

Kael's eyes narrowed further.

"A polite glance...?"

"Mm."

"That's what you're going with."

"It's what happened."

Kael looked at me one more time with the specific expression of someone doing arithmetic they don't yet have all the numbers for.

I looked at the platform.

Completely unbothered.

Completely, carefully, deliberately unbothered, in the practiced way of someone who had been keeping something under a very flat surface for long enough that the flatness had become natural.

"...Fine," Kael finally gave up.

He leaned back into his seat and crossed his arms, directing his full attention at the platform below with the energy of someone who had decided to be normal about things.

The match currently running was between a Divine Concord representative and a fourth-year academy student, the student putting up a genuinely decent fight before the representative found her footing in the third exchange and started making the rank gap felt in practical terms.

We watched it in relative peace.

Relative being the operative word.

"That guy looks slow," Kael noted, nodding toward the Divine Concord representative.

"He's winning," Tyrian added.

"Slowly."

"Winning is winning."

"Sure, but if I were his opponent, I'd just run circles around him until he got tired."

"You would not."

"I would. He moves like he's thinking about each step individually. Like he's reading instructions."

"He's a 7✯ True God." Tyrian looked at him.

"A slow one."

"Kael."

"I'm just saying. Some people have power, and some people have power AND speed, and that guy clearly chose the first one and left the second one on the shelf."

The representative on the platform executed a clean combination that ended the match in two strikes.

Kael watched this.

"...Okay, he's fast," he admitted.

"Mm," Tyrian said.

The match concluded, and the crowd responded, and the official's voice filled the arena again with the next set of names.

Kael stretched his arms above his head and looked at the bracket board visible from our tier.

"Next elite is from the Primordial Court," he said, reading the board.

"Never heard of him. Probably some mid-rank nobody they sent to fill a slot." He snorted.

"Imagine being the guy the Primordial Court looks at and goes, yeah, send him, we don't need anyone good for this one."

I looked at the bracket board.

Tyrian looked at the bracket board.

Then we both looked at Kael.

Kael looked back at us.

"...What...?"

"Read the name again," I said.

He turned back to the board.

His eyes moved across it slowly.

Found the name in the next slot. 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝐰𝚎𝕓𝐧𝚘𝘃𝗲𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝕞

Read it.

The color left his face in a single, clean motion, like someone had pulled a plug somewhere.

"Kael," the official's voice filled the arena, "representing the Divine Academy. Rank Eleven."

The arena crowd reacted with its usual noise.

Tyrian and I looked at each other.

Then back at Kael.

Kael was sitting completely still, staring at the bracket board with both hands flat on his knees and his mouth slightly open.

"...Mid-rank nobody," Tyrian said quietly.

"Shut up," Kael said, with no energy behind it whatsoever.

"Imagine being the guy they sent to fill a slot."

"Tyrian I am begging you—"

"You don't need anyone good for this one."

"TYRIAN."

"Pftt...!"

I laughed loudly.

Tyrian followed, his shoulders shaking, one hand coming up to cover his mouth with the composure of someone trying to maintain dignity while failing at a fundamental level.

Kael looked at both of us.

At me laughing.

At Tyrian's shaking shoulders.

At the arena waiting below him.

At the bracket board with his own name on it, sitting directly across from the Primordial Court representative he had just described as a mid-rank nobody sent to fill a slot.

He stood up slowly and adjusted his uniform with both hands, and then looked back at the platform, swallowing hard.

"Gulp...!"

Then, he looked back at us one more time with the expression of a man walking toward something he had personally arranged to be worse than it needed to be.

"...I hate both of you," he said quietly.

Then he walked toward the arena entrance with his shoulders slightly lower than they'd been all morning.