With the tension gone just like that, I let out a small breath—one I hadn't even realized I was holding.
Honestly, I couldn't care less about the people who'd been seconds away from tearing into each other. Aside from Deandra and Ceres, I barely knew any of them well enough to bother—at least until Macho Derrick stepped in.
And somehow, in his own twisted way, he managed to make it worse. Bigger.
Instead of a couple of pissed-off Rankers throwing hands because they didn't like each other's faces, Derrick went ahead and publicly pitched all top ten cadets against each other in some overblown, Ranker-exclusive spectacle.
"That's insane. Can he even do that? Like, officially? Sure, he's an Instructor and can referee duels between cadets, but an entire event like this—just the top ten? Does he even have the authority?" a guy next to me muttered to his friend.
I held back the urge to roll my eyes—scratch that. No, I didn't.
