The Crown Prince In Hiding

Chapter 28

Black Moon Rising

The combat tournament had begun today.

Allianz Stadium, packed with 70,000 spectators, roared with thunderous cheers. Senior officials, academy directors, wealthy merchants, and people from every continent had traveled to this hallowed ground of Allianz to witness the clash between the finest students from the world's top academies.

It was a colossal event. Even the nation's own leader never missed a chance to attend.

"Look over there, Mr. Fury... President Fofana, again."

Amid the general admission seats, Princess Nora pointed up toward the VIP lounge section. They spotted the woman in the yellow Fofana Steelers suit, also here to watch the competition.

"Typical of an attention seeker. She's been like that since way back."

Casca answered.

"I have a question."

Dan, seated between Nora and his fiancée, raised his hand.

"You two have the authority to get better seats than this... someone... why are we sitting in the middle of the cheering section like this?"

"I don't want to run into Fofana. That woman would recognize me."

"Aren't we supposed to be in disguise, Mr. Fury?"

"Tying my hair back and putting on a hat isn't a disguise. How many times do I have to say it, Nora?"

"It's Nadia."

"That again..."

"You're underestimating this art form. Ms. Casca just threw on a brown headscarf and no one recognized her at all."

"That's because it covers her face."

"Fury, why didn't you disguise yourself?"

"See these dark glasses?"

"Be a little more creative, come on."

"How is your dumb headscarf any different!"

"Greetings, honored guests!!!!"

At the center of the white-and-gold arena, the emcee moved about like a striking black dot against a white canvas.

He greeted the crowd formally, brimming with energy. This was the hype the entire city had waited a full year for, rivaling the Olympic Games. Everyone was electrified by the lights and sound. Talent scouts were present here as well.

Scanning the crowd, including the VIP lounge, Prince Fury could roughly identify who among them were the scouts.

And he knew for certain they'd each have a list, dozens of pages long, of names they wanted to lock down as sponsors.

However, Dan knew one name every single one of them would have without exception: the sole daughter of the Saint Pauli family.

When the emcee announced all five academies and their representative teams stepped out from the tunnel, the crowd erupted with roars accompanied by billowing white mist.

"And finally, the team from Artheris! Host of this year's tournament!"

An especially thunderous cheer erupted from one section of the stadium, immediately recognizable as predominantly Luminus spectators, growing even louder as the competitors were introduced.

The intensity from over 70,000 people surged toward the Knight Division's stars: Chiesa, Aaron, Jenny, Gronk, Helena, and especially the last one, who was more than just a superstar of the dueling world: Rafinya.

The sheer number of people never made her nervous. On the contrary, she had grown used to it since childhood. Rafinya's eyes swept across the sea of tens of thousands, including the VIP section where high-ranking Luminus military officers sat. She breathed in deeply and closed her eyes.

Every sound was swallowed into her ears. The scene narrowed to a close-up of both of Rafinya's ruby-red eyes, fully shut.

The image slowly darkened, external noise fading away entirely, until those ruby eyes opened once more.

What stood before her was the silver, gold-adorned curved blade of an opponent from a rival academy, lunging straight at her face with extraordinary speed.

In the split second she caught sight of that blade, Rafinya found herself thinking it was a rather beautiful sword. The old her would have thought a sword this fine had no business in the hands of someone unworthy of it, before setting out to claim it for herself... but today, the image of Fury's spear, nothing more than a crumbling, rust-eaten iron rod, had replaced that thought entirely.

An unblemished sword. Spotless armor.

Gemstones added purely to feed the owner's ego.

All of it was nothing but "the shadow on the cave wall."

"What's wrong, sweetheart? Struck speechless by its beauty?"

Aisel, a knight student from Mill Wall Academy who had risen through the dueling circuit alongside Rafinya and was considered one of her fiercest rivals, threw her a flirtatious wink, likely with the real intent of throwing her off balance, trash-talking, or provoking her temper, since that was a well-known weakness her opponents were eager to exploit.

Emotion had no place in dueling. Letting emotion take over made swordplay far more difficult, and countless brilliant swordsmen had been cut down by lesser opponents simply because they let their emotions rule them.

Throughout her dueling career, Rafinya had always known this. But in practice, it had proven so difficult that everyone had learned exactly how to exploit her outsized ego. This was meant to be another chance for Aisel to close the gap in their head-to-head record, hoping to bring their win rates closer together.

But...

As he lunged in close, their eyes locked, right before Rafinya's plain, slender silver blade, devoid of any decorative gems, swept up diagonally to his right and swung horizontally to his left. What he saw were the empty, hollow eyes of his fiercest rival.

Rafinya's mind, her awareness, was not here. It was somewhere else entirely, far away, a place that had shattered her ceiling and elevated her to an entirely new level as a duelist.

Red blood splattered across the white stage. The seniors on her team rose from their seats at the edge of the field, watching intently.

And in the moment Aisel floated, about to collapse... a magic circle bearing the pattern of a rose locked him in place, light bursting from four directions.

There it was! Rafinya's finishing move!

The hype from the entire stadium erupted so loudly it caused a faint tremor, a sound that reached all the way to the maritime security control tower far in the distance.

Rafinya lunged in to close out the match.

Just as Nora had once been struck.

This spell was incredibly powerful.

The finishing sequence was capped at three out of four directions.

Because completing all four carried far too high a risk of killing the opponent in front of the entire city.

Rafinya turned as Aisel's sword clattered against the granite-paved floor. His body slumped and fell to one side, his eyes rolled back white.

Knocked out, sending confusion and shock rippling through the crowd... including the scouts, the seniors of the division... and Professor Foden.

Since when had Rafinya's skill developed to this level?

The analysts themselves noted that Rafinya's fighting style had changed.

She no longer flaunted flashy techniques to proclaim her superiority to her enemies. In fact, it had been visible the moment she walked into the stadium: she had abandoned her favorite sword, the one with the red gemstone set into a rose-patterned hilt... entirely unlike a superstar.

It was as if she had stripped herself down, cutting the flashiness, focusing more on "time" spent in the arena.

Ignoring the scouts. Ignoring the audience's opinions. As though she desperately wanted to leave this place, this world of shadows on the cave wall.

For Casca Saint Maximin, watching from afar,

she understood immediately.

Rafinya hadn't gotten any better. She had always been this skilled. What made everyone feel that way wasn't a matter of physical technique on display, but something "internal," specifically something "in Rafinya's head" that had changed her enough to make people believe she had improved.

Casca glanced at the young man beside her.

Is this... your handiwork?

This pattern held throughout the entire tournament, until it finally concluded. The results made clear that each competitor had accumulated a record across the five matches this tournament, with the team's combined total determining the winner.

Aaron: 3-1-1 Jenny: 3-1-1 Gronk: 2-0-3 Helena: 4-0-1 Chiesa: 4-1-0

And

Rafinya: 5-0-0. The first unbeaten individual record in thirty years at Artheris Academy.

Cheers erupted alongside rose petals showering down from above. Rafinya stepped up to receive the bouquet and the solid gold medal along with her team, presented by President Fofana, who had been invited as this year's award presenter.

She stood still, offering a ceremonial bow of respect. Her eyes swept the crowd... and she found them. Mr. Fury's group, seated in the upper corner, slightly to the right.

Though she knew he probably couldn't see her, Casca, if present, would certainly have spotted her, since her far-sight senses were just as sharp as Rafinya's own.

So she did something she had never done before.

She raised her hand and waved it toward them.

"Hooray~~~!"

After the competition concluded, the grand trophy stood proudly in the athletes' locker room. Artheris's knight scholarship students celebrated in full swing. Senior Aaron popped open a bottle of champagne, and the usually stern instructors relaxed their guard, savoring the achievement of securing the championship title for the fourth consecutive year.

"Not bad for a rookie."

Senior Jenny bumped shoulders with Gronk and winked, champagne glass in hand, singing along cheerfully with Senior Helena.

"Everyone did amazing today. Artheris has always been known for the strength of its Knight Division, and it always will be... that said, there's one thing we can't overlook."

The moment Senior Aaron finished speaking, everyone turned toward the same direction... Rafinya, who was sitting and changing her shoes.

"An unbeaten record! Not even the seniors from other academies could touch her! MVP of the tournament!"

The room erupted with cheers. Rafinya nodded politely in acknowledgment but offered nothing more, even as Jenny came over and shook her by the shoulders.

Professor Foden, standing watch, kept glancing over at Rafinya periodically. She observed her student's behavior quietly.

Chiesa, too, sensed that something had shifted within her.

Rafinya rose to her feet, slinging her gear over her back.

"Wait, hold on? Where are you going? Aren't you staying for the after-party? Professor Foden's treating everyone!"

"I have urgent business to attend to."

"Oh... is that so?"

The mood dampened slightly before picking back up with Jenny and Aaron's enthusiasm. Their voices gradually faded as Rafinya drew the curtain of the changing room shut and walked away, heading out toward the rear of the stadium.

There she found both of her older brothers waiting.

"Congratulations, little sister."

"Thank you."

"Father is waiting for you."

"Where?"

"In the automobile."

"What's an automobile?"

Rafinya got her answer when she laid eyes on the four-wheeled mechanical vehicle, powered by mana crystal energy, where her father, General Shearer of Luminus, sat waiting.

"Rafinya."

"Father."

She bowed in the proper noble manner.

"Excellent performance up there. You've brought great honor to our family's name."

"Thank you."

Rafinya's eyes scanned the strange four-wheeled vehicle, and then she spotted a watermark printed on the hood.

Produced under the license of Goodison Inc.

Goodison Inc? Mr. Everton's company?

"Come, get in. We're going to celebrate."

Rafinya climbed into the seat of the open-top automobile. It pulled away, moving at roughly the speed of a courier carriage. She turned.

"Father, what is this thing? How does it move without a horse?"

"Fascinating, isn't it?"

Shearer said,

"I bought it secondhand from a friend in Mathema. It's called an automobile, and it never needs to stop for water, not a single drop. We just refill the crystal into the back axle when its energy runs low."

Only the wealthy could afford such a thing.

The scene shifted to the celebration at the Pauli family estate.

Everyone celebrated for Rafinya. An abundance of dishes had been beautifully arranged for the feast.

Rafinya was the star of this gathering. Whenever a member of the Pauli family shone brightly, the relatives would shower her with praise, and of course, the envy in the eyes of cousins who hadn't reached that same level was just as visible.

And by "relatives," this didn't just mean the children of paternal uncles or maternal siblings, but half-siblings born of Shearer's other wives as well.

The CIS faith held no doctrine limiting a man to a single wife, and so the Saint Pauli household was perpetually surrounded by Shearer's extended family, with everyone competing to produce achievements to please their father.

Though Shearer never forced it, whoever stood out naturally earned the rewards. That was simply how the system worked. So even those born into privilege without lifting a finger had to be prepared to withstand the family's pressure whenever the relatives gathered.