Chapter 72: Mud and Twists

"Everyone suddenly seems so mature. Why the hell couldn’t you guys have been this considerate before? You, Maigh, even... C-Cald. I don’t know what to make of it."

"Good one. Like the baldie’d ever allow himself to have some fun."

"Don’t repeat yourself! Is this really the stress?"

The redhead picked up the girl’s baton. He skimmed the clean appraisal that opened over it and turned back to Milo.

"You might wanna take that knife. When they call us for the second round, there’ll be no time to bend over for it."

Milo pulled the knife out of the ground.

Four pale grooves dented the wood where fingers had pressed for years. Milo’s own were too close together to fill them.

Below the grooves, a carved band ran two thirds of the way around the handle and ended in thin cuts.

Scritch-scritch!

[ Grade: Common ]

[ Name: A Diligent Carving Knife ]

[ Type: Arms ]

[ Longevity: Week ]

[ Description: Made for wood. Fitted to one hand. ] 𓂃🖋

Week.

Back when he was forcing sandals down his throat with a hook, a Week piece would have been a feast.

Milo was no longer on that level. Swallowed now, the knife would add 33.3% to the Column. Unless it happened to carry the Plague, and nothing on the page said it did, that would be all.

A blade that might buy him a phone could not be wasted on a single meal.

He zipped it into his right pocket. The tip of it went straight through the lining. The jacket was beyond saving anyway.

"Failes and Zeuqe!"

A female instructor beckoned them to a square two rows over.

They exchanged no more than a glance on the way. With the stone baton in his fist, Milo stepped inside of the box, where he came face to face with his next opponent.

Brown hair stuck up at the back of the boy’s head, as it did every morning.

"Ollie?!"

This time, the name made it out of his mouth.

"Sup, Milo." Ollie lifted a baton as gray as Milo’s in a small wave. "Heard you took Maigh down. That’s generational, bro. Type of things I was talking about..."

One of the two people at this academy who chose to sit with him now stood between him and his last chance at Field.

First he had gotten an innocent girl expelled, and now— Well, not all that innocent. She had certainly said disgusting. But Ollie had been a true friend the entire time.

SCREEEECH!

Neither of them moved.

"You’re not going to drop it, are you?" Milo asked.

"And go home with a zero? Nah, man. They watch how you lose." Ollie shuffled half a step to the side and planted his feet. "You wouldn’t do me like that anyway."

Minutes after hearing those exact words on the bench of the sick yard, Milo had tested the Ministry on none other than Ollie, with no idea what an off would do to a human.

At least the boy turned out to have been the first one cured, and the experiment hadn’t hurt him.

Strategically speaking, it was likely it had left him a carrier. One spasm, one tap on the knuckles, and this would be over without a bruise.

All it took was using his friend as a test subject a second time.

"Move, Studies boy!" Paul shouted. "You’re blocking my throw!"

Milo raised a hand at the redhead. "Give me a second."

"A second?!"

"Yeah, tell him to chill." Ollie stretched his neck out. "All right. Just come straight at me when you’re ready. I’m in no rush to get hit."

Come to think of it, for someone in no rush to get hit, Ollie had come through an entire match without a mark.

Scanning the boy’s body from top to bottom, he found no scrape and no split lip. His breathing was steady, slower than Milo’s.

The question, then, was inevitable. How had the physically weakest boy in their year, standing in the box as the fighter, gotten through the first round?

Ollie ducked

Behind the tuft of brown hair, at the far line, a bowstring was already—

"G-Gah!"

Every bit of air in Milo’s chest shot out through his teeth. The field tipped, the sky slid, and his lungs clenched on nothing, again and again.

He blinked at the clouds. His hand lay open in the grass, the baton out of reach.

Paul still had a brick aimed to throw.

"Yesss!!! I can’t believe it worked again!"

At the far line, a boy with bronze hair and an overjoyed smile was celebrating with a bow clutched in his hands. An arrow lay in the grass beside Milo’s elbow, its tip a blunt wooden knob.

"Told you, man," Ollie called back. "No one’s gonna notice before we’re down to single digits."

Paul’s brick thudded to the ground.

"I can’t..."

His own baton dropped after it, and the redhead walked off beyond the rim of Milo’s vision.

Defeated. By the weakest boy in the academy? Outsmarted. So embarrassingly, so humiliatingly, so degradingly outsmarted?!

At last, a smirk leaned in and covered half the sky.

"Man, you messed up."

"A relic?" Milo wheezed. "A thrower can have a relic?!"

"No rule forbids it. Bet you skimmed right through them on the Studies exam too."

"This can’t count. Has an instructor even—"

The figure that entered his sight from the corner only lifted a whistle.

SCREEEECH!

"Out of the box. Failes and Zeuqe, eliminated."

"Don’t make me feel bad." Ollie nudged Milo’s head with the tip of his shoe. "Guess I’m going home with a whole-ass album of astounded faces."

"Jesus. I was thinking about what to do... You’re my friend."

"Friends fight, all right? It’s not a life-or-death battle, either. Should’ve lunged straight at me there." He crouched. "Yo, man. Look at the bright side. Getting out early gives you time to fix that clock."

Milo’s mouth hung open.

After tilting his head back and rolling onto his front, he pushed himself up to sit in the grass.

"Clock? What do you mean?"

"Don’t want any more people falling victim to that trick." Ollie scooped the baton off the ground. "It clicked for me after I saw what happened to Eve."

"Ollie..."

"No worries. I understand." He lowered his voice. "I don’t want you thinking I’m telling you all this to slip in a demand."

"...You understand?"

"Just be careful, bro. That path’s got a lot of mud and twists in it."

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⋆˚࿔ Coming right up: "A Friend" ... ⤵︎ [!]