POW!

Reina’s world spun.

Her body slammed backward like a fired cannonball, crashing into a thick tree trunk with such force the entire thing cracked cleanly down the middle.

The upper half tipped slowly before splitting apart and crashing into the ground with a dull heavy thud that shook the soil beneath her feet.

She slid down what remained of the trunk, hit the dirt, and exhaled sharply. Coppery warmth filled her mouth immediately and she wiped the blood from her lip with the back of her hand.

"What the fuck?" she snapped, glaring across the clearing.

The voice changing rune was still active on her chest so her words came out in the flat, irritated tone of a young nobleman who had completely run out of patience. "It’s a simple search... so why are you trying to kill me?"

The attacker stepped through the clearing with their boots crunching deliberately over leaves and broken bark like he wanted her to hear every single step.

It was Jerry Morcant.

A brown-haired, blue-eyed, and muscular which suggested he spent considerably more time lifting heavy things than thinking about anything of substance.

In Reina’s honest opinion, he was handsome in a "rich boy with unresolved emotional issues" kind of way, not that she had ever been interested in him and he was exactly as stupid as he looked.

His glare carried pure concentrated venom.

"I just don’t like how you look," Jerry hissed, rolling his shoulders as mana began gathering visibly around both fists. "And besides, Sir Rowan did say we could attack each other. I’ll just break your legs, nothing personal."

Reina blinked once, slowly in the way someone did when they were deciding whether the person in front of them deserved a real response or simply silence.

"...I didn’t know people attacked others because of their looks, Jerry."

She rose to her feet steadily, her long silver hair slipping loose from its tie and cascading over both shoulders as she straightened to her full height.

’I love my hair...’ The thought arrived automatically, followed immediately by the considerably less pleasant sight of Jerry’s expression curdling into something uglier.

"Or," she continued in the same dry tone. "Is it actually because your crush is now engaged to me?"

Jerry’s pupils shrank to pinpoints.

A vein surfaced on his forehead with alarming speed. His jaw locked shut and his mana spiked explosively outward as wind began spiraling violently around his arm like a miniature cyclone that flattened every blade of grass around his boots in a perfect circle.

"How was I supposed to know she liked guys with long hair better?!" he shouted, the cyclone tightening further around his forearm with a sound like rushing water.

"I don’t know," Reina deadpanned. "Maybe because she said it like three times, out loud to your face."

These guys never listened to what a girl actually wanted and then acted genuinely baffled when she chose someone else.

Reina was tired of it... so deeply, fundamentally, and bone-achingly tired of the entire pattern.

He raised his arm higher and the wind intensified, making the ground tremble beneath them both and sending loose leaves spiraling upward around his legs.

"I’m gonna beat you until I get tired," Jerry snarled as his voice dropped low. "I don’t give a fuck about the Unique Item. I just want to cave your face in!"

Reina inhaled slowly and let it out through her nose in a thin stream of cold mist.

The temperature around her dropped instantly.

Frost formed in thin crystalline patterns along the bark of the nearest trees, creeping outward from where she stood like the ground itself was exhaling winter.

Cold mana condensed in her palms as well.

"I guess we’ll just have to fight then."

Internally, her thoughts were considerably less composed.

’I swear guys do too much,’ she groaned inside her own head. ’Jerry... Ren... all of them. Fighting each other because a girl didn’t pick them. Do they not have shame? Self-respect? Hobbies? Literally anything else going on in their lives at all?’

Her annoyance crystallized neatly into the ice gathering in her palms.

WHOOM!

"Bang."

Jerry fired first.

A compressed bullet of wind exploded from his fingertips and shredded through the air between them with a sound like tearing fabric followed by rushing pressure.

Reina shifted just slightly to the right... barely moving at all, like a ghost stepping half a step out of a photograph.

The projectile slammed into the remnants of the tree behind her with a BOOM that tore it apart completely with wood fragments scattering violently across the clearing in every direction.

’His wind control is still unmatched,’ she noted with clinical detachment.

There was a legitimate reason this particular musclehead was considered a prodigy of wind magic despite everything else about his personality. ’He can blast my ice apart at range... so I need to close the distance and end this fast. I genuinely hate wind mages.’

Jerry wasn’t done.

He fired again and again.

"Bang... Bang... Bang..."

Wind bullets tore through the forest from multiple angles turning into streaks of violent compressed pressure that shredded bark, split trunks down the middle, and sent soil erupting upward in deep ragged pits.

Leaves whipped in violent spirals overhead as the entire clearing transformed into a battlefield within the span of a few seconds.

Reina sprinted forward, her feet barely skimming the ground with ice mana flickering around her limbs in thin controlled wisps as she wove between each shot with precision.

Jerry stepped forward with his arm outstretched and the mana condensing differently this time.

"Wind whip."

It snapped outward from his hand like a crack of lightning.

CRACK!

The whip of pure slicing wind extended several meters and carved a long, deep trench through the earth itself as it swept sideways across the clearing floor.

Reina flipped away from it, landing lightly on both feet at the very edge of the scar it left carved into the ground.

’He’s getting stronger,’ She thought and gritted her teeth. ’Fine then.’

She arched high into the air above him, deliberately exposing herself as an obvious target, making her silhouette against the bright sky impossible to ignore. Jerry’s lips twisted into a slow smirk as he tracked her upward arc.

"Foo—"

He never finished the word.

Because in that precise instant, Reina released the fully condensed wave of ice magic she had been quietly storing in her core throughout the entire fight.

SHOOOOOOOM!

A beam of pale blue energy blasted downward and engulfed Jerry entirely from above. The temperature in the clearing plummeted in a single instant.

Frost blanketed everything within several meters, coating leaves, soil, bark, and stone in a layer of pale white that crackled as it spread.

CRACK-CRACK-CRACK... FOOM.

A colossal block of solid ice formed around Jerry’s entire body. His limbs locked completely in place with his torso immobilized from the waist up, only his head remaining free above the surface and the expression on that head was absolutely furious.

’I... can’t feel the wind,’ Jerry realized, panic cutting cleanly through the fury as the cold seeped inward and severed his connection to his mana. ’My magic—’

Reina descended from the air like a falling star.

She twisted her body mid-drop, concentrated mana into her heel until it hummed with dense pressure, and slammed downward with a kick that could have split stone.

KRAAAAACK!

The ice block fractured violently on impact. Jerry’s head snapped sideways and consciousness began slipping from him rapidly, the lights behind his eyes dimming fast but the last ember of his overinflated ego refused to go quietly.

He dragged the final reserves of his wind magic up from somewhere deep and desperate inside himself.

"RRRAAAAAAAHH—!"

BOOOOOOOM!

A massive burst of wind exploded outward in every direction simultaneously with nothing controlled about it at all and Reina had zero time to react.

The force caught her completely and launched her backward through the clearing like she weighed nothing, thrown hard enough to strip leaves from branches as she passed them and hard enough to blur the trees into streaks of brown and green.

Consciousness left her cleanly before she hit anything solid and then she was caught.

Reina’s limp body dropped directly into Ren’s arms at the edge of the clearing, where he had apparently been casually stretching with both hands raised above his head when something came flying at him through the trees.

He looked down at the silver-haired figure in his arms then at the completely devastated clearing in front of him.

’The fuck?’ Ren blinked once.

Time passed quietly after that.

Reina woke gradually on a soft bed of moss and grass with warm sunlight filtering down through the forest canopy above her in thin golden bars.

Her head throbbed with an unpleasant ache then she groaned, pressing a hand against her temple, and slowly pushed herself upright.

’Did I land here after Jerry’s last attack?’ she wondered, rubbing at her eyes.

Then she focused properly because sitting directly in front of her was Ren Crowhurst, staring at her curiously.

Reina’s heart dropped straight through the ground beneath her and Ren leaned forward slightly with his elbows resting easy on his knees.

"Listen..." he said quietly.

Reina went completely still an he looked her directly in the eyes without blinking once.

"I know you’re a girl."

Her entire world cracked apart at the seams.