Chapter 28 : Black Moon Rising (3)

Chapter 28

Black Moon Rising

The bell rang, signaling the end of class.

Dan headed back home to Anfield. Today, only Nora walked beside him.

"Rafinya isn't coming with us?"

"I heard the competition's coming up soon. She'll probably be training late into the night today."

"Then it's just the two of us heading back today. Casca said we're doing a barbecue tonight."

The Knight Division.

The training hall's lights blazed even as the sky had turned black outside.

The clash of blades mixed with magic against sparring partners rang out more fiercely than usual, with instructors and Professor Foden himself coaching intensively.

Despite being gone for a week, this level of intensity hadn't dulled Rafinya's skill in the slightest.

If anything, the opposite happened. Her mind had felt distant from the moment she stepped into the training hall.

Her eyes were rather empty. No matter how hard her opponent, Senior Aaron, struck at her, the feeling was nothing like the thrill she'd felt against Jaiba.

The academic version, where winning brought satisfaction and losing meant growth, was clean. Untainted.

Raw and savage.

Her pulse didn't race.

After encountering the real thing on Diablo island, Rafinya no longer trembled under any pressure from her seniors or instructors during sparring.

The fact that she had clashed with a Diablo soldier, one who had once "killed" humans on the battlefield, gave her something this place could never provide.

The thrill of a "real situation," where life itself was the stake.

She was beginning to understand now.

The survival instinct Mr. Fury had spoken of, the drive to do whatever it takes to stay alive.

The people Rafinya once looked down on back in Tampa Bay... they must have experienced something like this too.

That thrill could never be replicated on a playground.

Professor Foden, standing watch over the training, noticed the "hollowness" in the eyes of the Knight Division's number one student.

The whistle blew. Every student in the hall stopped.

"Rafinya."

The young woman turned toward the call.

"I'd like a word with you. Everyone else, keep training."

"Yes, sir/ma'am!"

Professor Foden's office.

The steady ticking of the clock in Professor Foden's office kept a consistent rhythm. The room was so quiet the sound of wind rustling leaves outside could be heard. On the wall hung an honorary sword and numerous decorated medals.

Once, Rafinya had looked upon such things with pride.

But now she found herself thinking of what she'd seen at Diablo. Fury's rusted, weathered old spear.

Something that, in a Luminus context, would have been enshrined in a museum for the public to file past and admire.

Poets would compose ballads about the tales it had lived through. Townspeople would exalt it as something sacred, as though it were another character in an epic poem.

It would have "honor" imagined onto it.

...But demons like the Diablo had no such customs.

It was just plain, dumb iron, hired out from a blacksmith in Tampa Bay.

When no longer needed, it was simply discarded or hung on a wall.

Seeing the world as it truly was, without embellishment or flattery.

"Your training looked half-hearted today, Rafinya."

Professor Foden said.

"What's going on?"

Rafinya met her instructor's gaze directly, her eyes flat, her tone remaining polite.

"Nothing's wrong, is there? I'm just fulfilling my duty as a scholarship student."

Professor Foden had not expected to hear those words come out of Rafinya's mouth.

"I never imagined I'd have to bring this up with you."

She said,

"What was that? It sounds like you're being sarcastic about the institution."

"I'm not being sarcastic."

Firm. Absolute.

Professor Foden sighed.

"This isn't the first time I've had to deal with a superstar's ego."

She rolled her eyes, staring straight at her.

"Are you thinking of them as children playing in a sandbox, on an entirely different level from you?"

"And aren't they?"

Rafinya shot back.

"Setting aside Senior Chiesa, who had 'a bit' of experience once, following his father to deal with border bandits... everyone else grew up entirely on the sparring grounds."

What she was implying was this:

Dueling on a stage, with a judge to decide the outcome, with an audience cheering loudly, that was "the shadow on the cave wall" in Rafinya's eyes.

None of these students had ever encountered the real thing.

For her, "what casts the shadow" was killing to survive. No judges, no rules to enforce it.

No audience. Only silence.

"This institution does not teach you to become a bloodthirsty beast."

Foden's voice dropped low.

"We teach 'discipline' and 'honor' to control the sword in your hand, not to let the sword control us. Honor is the most valuable thing we have. It's what keeps us from becoming animals."

"If your life and mine were both hanging by a thread... do you think there'd really be that much difference between us, ma'am?"

When death stands right before you and every path is exhausted... aren't we all just living things equally willing to do whatever it takes to survive?

"Who put that idea in your head, Rafinya? What did you see out there?"

Professor Foden asked.

But the other side didn't answer.

So she continued,

"Surviving a monster doesn't make you superior to anyone else... it only strips away your humanity. Any wild beast knows how to kill. What separates us from wild beasts isn't about 'who kills better'... it's recognizing when to draw the sword, and when to hold it back."

Professor Foden clasped her hands together on the desk.

"If you see this institution as nothing more than a playground... remember this: the child who believes they've already survived hell and looks down on training is always among the first to become a corpse on the real battlefield."

"Professor Foden."

"?"

"I used to think that people who upheld honor were the ones worth fearing... now I think the more dangerous person is the one who never cared about the word 'honor' in the first place."

Professor Foden thought this was Rafinya's arrogance speaking. But hearing that sentence, the experience of a colonel of the Swan Battalion registered immediately that she had misjudged.

This wasn't arrogance.

This was a perspective that required deep life experience and profound crystallization of thought to arrive at, a conclusion that the very concept of "honor" that Luminus so exalted was, in essence, just a "tool" used to keep the populace unified under one will.

The question was... who had instilled this idea in her? Who had instilled this idea in the future heir of Luminus?

In Professor Foden's mind, the memory rewound. Who at this institution had spent the most time with Rafinya?

The answer was Princess Nora, and Dan Burn, the former scholarship student who had withdrawn.

And who had once said something similar, on his very last day in the Knight Division?

Dan Burn.

Though there was no proof to confirm it,

Professor Foden believed with complete certainty that whoever had instilled this idea in her diamond-crowned student... it had to be him.

Late at night. (Crickets chirping)

Everyone had gone their separate ways. Rafinya herself left the training hall, heading toward the student dormitory.

However, as she walked back, she came across a young man sitting casually on a public bench, tilting his head to gaze at the academy's lights with curious eyes. Notably, he seemed to have even more energy than during the day... and he was none other than

"Yildiz?"

She stopped.

"Hey there, Rafinya~ We meet again."

But he tilted his head, brow furrowed.

"What's wrong with you?"

.

.

.

"Whoaaa~ and you just said that, straight to her face?"

"What else was there left to say? Nothing."

"What if Professor Foden takes a dislike to you now?"

"Then she can pull my scholarship."

Not that it would matter for someone like Rafinya. The moment the news got out, sponsors would line up to claim her anyway.

"I heard you're competing against another academy soon?"

"And I heard you shouldn't be on academy grounds as an outsider."

"Just don't tell anyone."

Rafinya looked at him with an expression that clearly said she thought he was full of it.

"What are you doing out here this late?"

He held something out to her.

"While you were training, the Prince had a barbecue with everyone at home. I brought you some."

Food.

It didn't look particularly appetizing, rather homely, packed into a small basket.

"You brought this for me?"

"Mrs. Casca said it should be me."

She took it, still confused.

"Everyone's going to come watch on competition day, you know."

"What's there to see?"

"I want to see how humans fight for myself too. I've never seen the real thing my whole life."

"Shouldn't you be worried about passing your entrance exam first? Not just anyone gets into Artheris Academy."

"No need to worry about that~ I can read and write, you know."

He slapped her on the back with a loud smack! Rafinya was slightly shocked that he'd touched her without permission, but he was too oblivious to even register that.

How did someone this dense end up in intelligence work?

"Anyway, you should get some rest. I won't bother you anymore. Train hard, but don't snore so loud in your sleep that Mitchell gets annoyed. Bye-bye~"

Yildiz waved and bounced off with springy, energetic steps.

Rafinya watched him go, both hands cradling the basket in confusion.

Then she sighed and turned to head back to the dorm, but suddenly... she spun back around, eyes wide.

How did he know my roommate's name was Mitchell?

But the one who could answer that was already gone.