The man with the pipe looked towards Nero once more. He was crawling on the ground, his ears and eyes bleeding, his body covered in his signature blue flames. This was the worst he’d been wounded since arriving in KMA, yet there was a mad grin on his face.

It was not because he was a masochist - no, Nero was indifferent to pain. He was grinning because this is what let him know the true level of KMA. Simple, hand-to-hand fights without innate abilities or cards was very deceptive about the true combat quality of the cadets. Only in a genuine fight, without anything held back, would he come to know just how much he could improve here, and how skilled the cadets were.

The fact that Nero had been nearly crippled in the very first encounter against that white-gowned girl revealed just how devastatingly lethal her strength was. That lethality reassured him that, indeed, he was in the right place.

When he reached outside the house, he felt tremors in the ground, causing him to quickly look around. He could not hear, but the sight of a massive, red fire in the distance erupting into the dark sky, as well as numerous fights going on, let him know the situation. Well, it was more or less impossible to avoid punishment now.

In that case...

Nero grabbed onto a street light and used its aid to lift himself upright, revealing just how gravely wounded he was. His clothes were covered in blood, meaning that even his extremely durable body had suffered countless ruptures just from the sound of that woman’s screams.

He turned around and looked back at the house, taking mental notes about just how debilitating deafness could be in combat. Unless he laid eyes on a target, he would never know it was coming. Only sight, and the faint tremors in the ground beneath his feet, could let him know what was happening around him.

Within that house, he could sense that his flames were still burning, but they were being weakened at a drastic pace, despite the fact that he kept supplying them with aether. Only a few seconds later, the flames went out entirely. Nero didn’t react - he only waited.

Five seconds, ten, thirty...

It was a whole minute later that the door to the house slammed open, revealing the badly wounded woman. Nero was not looking at the signs of frost burn across the woman’s face and arms - as long as she received medical aid quick enough, she wouldn’t need to amputate. Most likely, even if the treatment was delayed, the academy would have ways to treat her without having to resort to amputations.

Nero also wasn’t looking at her mismatched clothes, showing that her previous white gown had been frozen solid, and then likely shattered later on, causing her to throw on whatever she could find on short notice. No, Nero was looking at the massive bald patch on the woman’s head.

His flames had likely frozen her hair off. While compared to everything else, such an injury was insignificant, he had a feeling that this would result in an unforgivable vendetta. Well, he wasn’t concerned about it.

After all, she had tried to kill him. Besides, if anyone should receive the blame, it should be Ben, Roland, and their friends.

Nero let go of the street lamp, forcing himself to stand even with his sense of balance compromised, and raised his right hand forward.

"Come," he said loudly - since he couldn’t really hear his own voice - as he pulled his fingers back, as if summoning her.

Something snapped, and it wasn’t the girl’s frozen hair. No, her fury had caused her to go crazy as she screamed at him once more, this time aiming at him properly.

Nero did not try to dodge - sound was not something that could be dodged so easily without relevant cards on hand. Instead, he attacked.

From his pocket Nero produced a deck of cards - not Eldrim cards, but just a regular set of playing cards. He grabbed the top card in his fingers, lit it aflame with Frostburn, and flung the card in the air, seemingly aiming to the left of the woman.

By the time he threw the first card, the woman had unleashed her first scream, slamming into Nero with an impact akin to a sledgehammer. He felt his organs tremble, his body shake. As if the shockwave of her scream wasn’t enough, the weights padded to his body amplified the vibrations from her screams, acting as focal points for the damage caused. That explained why even his body was covered in blood.

Yet Nero ignored the impact. Having already braced himself for it, Nero waited. The flaming card flew through the sky, and as it flew its angle slowly changed, aiming instead towards the woman’s neck!

The woman stopped screaming as she took a quick step back, but it was too slow. Not only did the razor thin card leave a small cut on her neck, the flames latched onto her skin again!

The woman immediately used some card to put out the fire, but this small gap was exactly what Nero had been waiting for.

The moment he was free from the scream, he began throwing more cards, each one aimed precisely for vital parts on the woman’s body. In fact, some of the cards were even aimed for the area around her, to prevent her from dodging in certain directions. The only path he left open for her was the path of direct retreat into the house!

The woman was severely injured from the flames which compromised her movement, but she was no amateur. After suffering from the attack of the card once, she never let the cards touch her again, even going as far as screaming up in the sky to throw the cards off course.

But Nero was quick. He kept throwing burning cards without moving, slowly turning the area in front of the woman into a field of flames.

He had suffered, yes, but he was not about to accept defeat. The woman, too, did her best to avoid entering the house. It was as if the two had established some kind of tacit agreement or understanding, indicating that retreating into the house would mean the woman’s defeat. 𝐟𝗿𝐞𝚎𝚠𝐞𝚋𝕟𝐨𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝕔𝕠𝚖

She tried again and again to knock the flaming cards out of the sky as she aimed at the fire in front of her, attempting to extinguish it using some unknown card.

Far away, the two men watched with interest. Compared to all other ongoing fights, this was the most interesting one just because of how far both combatants were willing to go. They were not holding back at all, treating this as if it were a life or death duel, while all others reserved their attacks, aiming to main instead of kill.

"You have to admit, the kid does look cool," said the man without the pipe, looking at Nero standing surrounded by the frozen ground and roaring flames. His deep blue hair seemed to ripple in the wind, dancing just like the flames all around him, despite the fact that it had been cut short.

There was a madness in his eyes that greatly complemented the scene. If this were a painting, the observers would never know that this was a fight taking place inside an academy. Instead, they would take it as a scene from the battlefield.

"Cool? Was that an attempt at a pun?" the man with the pipe asked with a hint of disdain in his voice. "Rather than his appearance, I’m more focused on the fact that his heart hasn’t stopped beating even after all those screams. He might be the first one to ever achieve such a thing in the Initiate rank."

The other man nodded as well.

"Too bad we won’t be able to see how the fight ends," he said with disappointment in his voice as he looked in another direction where a woman covered in deep red flames seemed intent on burning everything down.

A group of three male cadets were struggling to hold back the flames using water. Unfortunately they did not know that Hellfire cannot be contained by water. They would not survive long unless they received aid.

"I’ll take the left, you take the right," said the man with the pipe before leaping forward.

The man without the pipe seemed slightly irritated that he was being sent to deal with the Hellfire, but what could he do about it? The other guy had seniority.

"Alright, why don’t we all just... chill," the man with the pipe said as he appeared behind Nero, placing his hand on Nero’s shoulder to stop his body in place.

The blue flames seemed to go out with his arrival, and the girl also froze in place.

Unfortunately, Nero could not hear, which is why he missed the man’s own attempt at a pun as he unleashed his own powers, ending the fight in the entire region with merely his arrival.

"Medical aid is on the way, so just stay still," he said once more. Unfortunately, no one appreciated his sense of humour - mainly because they were busy dealing with the fact that they were frozen in place.