Millennium Witch

Book 3: Chapter 215: A Fury for a Beauty

“What just happened?!”“I didn’t see—damn it, I didn’t see!”

“Regan went down in a single instant? He didn’t even make a move!”

“What was that technique just now? Some hidden secret art? Who is she, really?”

The fight ended so fast—nothing like the fierce back-and-forth everyone expected—that the stands fell silent for a heartbeat. Several seconds passed before waves of exclamations erupted.

But top students are still top students year after year; yet to fell a peer from the same class in a single move, winning so easily—this had never happened in previous years.

The attending instructor hurried onto the stage to treat Regan. After several healing spell-forms, they realized the kid hadn’t fainted at all; the blow was just too much. He lay prone, too ashamed to lift his head, still unwilling to believe this was real.

At the same time, once it was clear nothing serious had happened, Conrad Dean, up in the tower grandstand, finally looked to Ignatius Zackley beside him and said, “Dean, this move—this is the very combat art I had questions about and wanted you to see!”

He finally exhaled. When the dean had questioned him earlier, he’d broken into a bit of a cold sweat. Now he could at least clear his name.

Ignatius said nothing, even showing a gravity Conrad rarely saw on him. He glanced at the red-haired girl stepping off the stage in high spirits; after a moment he shook his head. “I’ve never seen that combat art.”

Conrad froze. What was that supposed to mean? Even the well-traveled “Flame Demon’s Hand” couldn’t recognize the lineage?

There had to be a clue, right? There are countless combat arts in this world—who still creates something entirely original?

“This art borrows the shell of the ‘Hellfire Style,’ but it’s only a shell—maybe even a deliberate disguise.” Ignatius’s expression was uncharacteristically solemn. Thinking aloud, he said, “It could be something a few old fellows—or some scholarly faction—developed only recently. Their grasp of magic’s essence might be on par with mine—alright, perhaps above mine—

I’ll find time to ask them.”

Above the dean? Conrad’s heart lurched. After he digested that, he hesitated and asked, “Then… about taking her as a disciple, what do you think—”

“She already has a lineage; what disciple would I be taking?” Ignatius shot him a look. If it were an ordinary lineage, fine. But the problem was that even he couldn’t see through Lucia Sterling’s mysterious teacher, so there was no way to act rashly.

Besides, in that single sword just now were many unfamiliar permutations. Through his sense for mana, he’d glimpsed flows he’d never seen before, even rune combinations he’d never encountered.

That was something he himself could savor and study.

Not that he’d be telling anyone.

Down in the arena, with the battle drawing to a close in such an unbelievable way, the mood hadn’t yet recovered from shock when many saw the unfathomable prodigy Lucia suddenly hop off the ring in a rush, heading straight for a section of the stands that had nothing to do with the rest area.

With the strength she’d shown, she likely wouldn’t have any more fights today. That didn’t stop most people from keeping their eyes glued to her.

Then they saw Lucia jog to a corner of the stands, stop before a plain-looking, chestnut-haired girl, and pull her into a tight hug.

A friend, probably?

Plenty of boys and girls who had just developed a newfound admiration for Lucia because of that one sword looked over, guessing at the relationship while feeling a pang of envy toward the chestnut-haired girl.

After all, given today’s display, everyone could see Lucia would become a pillar of the Academy, her future boundless. Who wouldn’t want to be friends with her? And she was so pretty besides; not just the boys—many girls, too—found themselves unexpectedly smitten by her dashing poise.

“I knew you wouldn’t skip it!” Lucia squeezed Yvette Loxivia into a big, tight hug.

From morning till noon she’d watched other examinees with their parents or with friends. At lunch in the school cafeteria they were all in twos and threes; only she was alone the whole time—alone in the morning queue, alone at noon in a corner, solitary as could be.

Now that Yvette was finally here, her heart surged like an elementary schooler who’d waited after class until dusk for a parent to finally show up.

“I came at noon, but I still don’t have a student ID. Your cafeteria wouldn’t let me in,” Yvette said.

“You could’ve called me!” Lucia let go and raised her voice.

“Kidding. I just got here.”

“”

Lucia puffed her cheeks, then quickly started to suspect Yvette had said that just to avoid explaining. With her temperament, it wasn’t impossible.

She added, “I took first place—mission accomplished, right?”

“Mm.”

“Didn’t let you down, did I!”

“Mm.”

Seeing Yvette nod again and again, Lucia hummed a little tune, all pleased with herself.

Half an hour later, with the rankings all but sealed, the entrance assessment ended amid a mix of joy and disappointment.

At dusk, the two headed for the gate. Just as they were about to step out, a few young female students stopped them. One said, “Sterling, hello—we’re from the News Club. We’d like to interview you. Could you spare us a little time—”

Lucia started, glanced at the eager faces of the News Club girls, hesitated, then turned to Yvette.

Yvette shook her head and gave her a look that said, “I’m hungry.”

Lucia got it at once and told the News Club girls, “Sorry, not today. It’s late—I still have to go home and cook dinner.”

With that, the two skirted around the News Club girls, walked straight out the gate, and headed for the subway.

The News Club girls looked at one another. They’d paid no attention at all to the chestnut-haired girl at Lucia’s side, assuming she was just some ordinary friend tagging along—a nobody once she left Lucia. Who would’ve thought the top genius of this intake would take her word like law? She even turned down a chance to be featured in the news. Odd, and, frankly, not giving the News Club much face.

The girls frowned slightly and looked a few more times at the chestnut-haired girl’s back, wondering what on earth their relationship was.

In the days that followed, through newspaper write-ups, campus bulletins, and word of mouth, Lucia’s astonishing feat in the Battle Arts College entrance exam spread through the Academy of Truth like wildfire, cementing her as this year’s number-one freshman talent.

Of course, the chatter among the general student body happens every year. What was truly unusual was the attention from the upper echelon.

After Ignatius reported the matter of Lucia’s mysterious master to the Academy Council, the leadership exchanged a few words, but nothing useful came of it.

And that was that. After all, a mysterious expert—likely above the Saint Realm—was willing to let his disciple attend the Academy of Truth and even let her display her strength without much concealment. That was, in its own way, an open, aboveboard stance.

So long as no bad signs appeared, the Academy leadership didn’t mind treating Lucia as a normal outstanding student.

As for Yvette, who had come with Lucia, she wasn’t entirely ignored either—perhaps because she’d prompted Lucia to refuse the interview, the campus paper put out by the News Club singled her out for a mention.

In it, the editor insinuated that Lucia, formerly a rural commoner girl from a small country, had made some not-so-good friends who now had too strong a hold over her, causing this prodigy to gradually lose her own judgment and become someone else’s appendage. At the end the editor recommended that, for her mental and physical well-being, the now-celebrated Lucia Sterling should rip off the band-aid, leave her old circle at once, and enter a social sphere befitting her future status.

It should’ve been a minor episode that no one cared about. Yvette never heard about it—and even if she had, she wouldn’t have cared.

Lucia, however, was furious. On the very first day of classes she marched to the Battle Arts College News Club to protest, frightening the club’s female members into printing, in the next issue, a tiny boxed apology addressed to the two of them.

And so, after a bit of back and forth, a few days later—when Yvette went to the College of General Studies to keep listening to the Continental Humanities lectures on a historical incident she was fascinated by—she learned from the classmate next to her, belatedly, that she’d somehow become the “beauty for whom Lucia flew into a rage”—the object of the number-one freshman genius’s chivalrous fury—and had even gained a bit of name recognition herself.