Malacañang Palace – Central Command Corridor
Imperial Bulletin Hall – 12:39 JST
The corridor was silent but humming with tension beneath the polished stone floor. Imperial officers passed through with precision, boots tapping like metronomes against marble. On one side of the hall, flanked by two automated guard terminals and watched by an unmoving sentinel in full dress uniform, hung a large digital bulletin board—backlit, trimmed in brass, and stamped with the Imperial Seal at the top.
It displayed no school crests. No academic banners.
Just black text on red background, listing the official events of the upcoming Imperial Southeast Asian Games.
At the center stood Gabriella Aurelia Mendez, clad in her crisp, tailored First High School uniform—blue coat pressed to regulation, black tie neatly pinned. Her arms were folded behind her back. Her expression unreadable.
She scanned the list without blinking:
---
IMPERIAL SEA GAMES – OFFICIAL MATCH LIST
Authorized by the Imperial Federal Republic, Office of Strategic Cadet Development
Imperial Warfare – National faction warfare simulation. Urban and rural sector control. Full elimination format.
Extraction – Loot-based elimination game. No respawns. Kill, collect, extract. Highest value determines winner.
Death Race – High-speed vehicle gunfighting. Multi-lane combat zones. Live munitions.
Outsnipe – Competitive precision sniping. One shot, one point. Ten confirmed hits to win.
Urban Warfare Trials – Team-based combat in simulated city block. Mixed loadouts, melee permitted.
Command Simulation – RTS-based battlefield command. Squad management, mana economy, target prioritization.
Imperial Duel - It's a Two against Two battle. Face the opposition with skills, everything, magic, physical combat, etc.
Battle Royale - Drops dozens of competitors into a shrinking map where they must scavenge for weapons and gear. The objective is survival—only one team can stand last. Victory means outlasting every other competitor, not just through combat, but strategy and timing.
---
Gabriella's gaze lingered at the top of the list: Imperial Conquest. The name alone stripped away any illusion she might have clung to—this was no exhibition, no sports competition dressed up with ceremony, and certainly no rite of passage meant to test personal growth.
It was training, it was war.
Behind her, a passing officer offered a crisp salute, the motion precise and automatic. She didn't return it. Her eyes remained locked on the list, her jaw clenched with quiet resolve as the truth settled cold in her chest. This wasn't about cultivating scholars, nurturing leaders, or honing the edge of fair competition.
This was about crafting instruments—refined, obedient, and devastating.
In the marble halls echoing with footsteps and protocol, beneath banners stitched with the sovereign flame, Gabriella understood with stark clarity: they were not being shaped to win games. They were being engineered to break nations.
Gabriella didn't turn when she heard the boots approach. The cadence was sharp—standard Imperial stride, no deviation. Whoever it was stopped exactly two paces behind her. She could feel the salute even before the voice followed.
"Lady Gabriella," the officer said crisply. "Final report from the Ministry of Cadet Operations."
She raised a hand without looking. A thick data tablet was placed firmly in her palm.
"Finalized candidate lists?" she asked, eyes still locked on the bulletin.
"Yes, Ma'am. All institutions have confirmed their top five combatants. Selection audits are complete. Clearance levels verified. Only Fourth High remains unfinished."
Gabriella's jaw shifted slightly. "Their quarterfinals?"
"Concluding within the hour. Their placement will be decided before curfew. Once complete, all rosters will be uploaded to the Games Command Net."
She finally turned, taking the officer in with a sharp glance.
"Status of logistics?"
"All regional transport is pre-positioned. Staging fields are locked. Live-feed drones calibrated for civilian broadcast. Combat zones are under final sweep for mana surges."
Gabriella studied the tablet. Names scrolled past—Torres from Seventh, Bañez from Second, the twins from Ninth, and Reyes and Kwon… Section One, Fourth High.
She spoke without looking up. "And the opening ceremony?"
"Scheduled for 0800, two days from now. Imperial broadcast will begin two hours prior. Emperor's speech finalized and approved. Global stream locked."
Gabriella lowered the tablet. Her tone cooled.
"And the kill protocols?"
"Reviewed. Restrictions removed on all elimination matches. Lethal force permitted under full consent clause."
A pause.
Gabriella handed the tablet back, gaze flicking once more toward the bulletin board.
"Then in forty-eight hours," she said flatly, "the world sees what we've built."
The officer saluted again. "Yes, Lady Gabriella."
Gabriella returned the salute with precision—brief, controlled, exact.
"Dismissed," she said.
The officer turned on her heel and departed, boots echoing down the polished corridor, fading into the background hum of palace operations.
Alone again, Gabriella turned back to the glowing bulletin.
The crimson-tinted screen pulsed softly as if breathing—each event name a signal, not to inspire pride, but to demand ruthlessness.
Her eyes moved again to Imperial Conquest, then down the list to Extraction, Urban Warfare, and finally Command Simulation.
A thin breath escaped her lips.
She murmured under it. "Not games."
Her gaze sharpened. She took a step closer, as if the board itself were alive.
"Proof of who can command, kill, deserves to lead."
She simply stood there, watching the list,
as the Empire's future loomed two days away.
___
Fourth High School – Marauoy Campus
Practice Arena – 15:59 JST
The overhead lights in the arena buzzed with energy, mana conduits pulsing along the ceiling beams as the crowd surged with noise. Bleachers packed with students from all eight sections leaned forward in anticipation, voices rising in chaotic waves.
Banners hung from the rails, but none more vocal than those bearing Section One's crimson sigil. Cheers erupted like a wall of sound the moment the announcer's voice echoed through the chamber.
"—Now entering the arena, representing Section One in the quarterfinals—Reyes Amon and Kwon Cassandra!"
The volume swelled.
Section One students jumped to their feet, clapping, whistling, some chanting names as if the outcome had already been written.
"They've never dropped a match!"
"Perfect combat record!"
"No one's touched Reyes in four rounds—four!"
The sealed gate on the far end of the arena slid open with a metallic hiss. Smoke vents triggered along the floor, releasing a low veil as two figures stepped out into the open.
Reyes Amon led first—dark combat uniform pressed tight, twin-sheathed CAD units mounted along his hips. His stride was deliberate, head high, eyes locked on the far side of the arena.
Kwon Cassandra followed, cloak drawn back, dual-mounted wrist CADs humming faintly with a ready charge. She wore a high-collared variant of the duelist uniform—modified for mobility and signal interference. Her hair tied tight, her gaze cold, scanning everything.
They didn't wave and do postures as they simply walked to the center like they belonged there.
Across the stands, Section Four students watched silently, tension building as they murmured among themselves.
"They're really USNA, aren't they…?"
"Do they even need to try?"
"Are we seriously putting Sallie and Celeste against them?"
The announcer's voice broke back in, sharper this time.
"Section One has arrived! Section Four—prepare to enter!"
The cheers didn't stop but the air had changed.
Now it wasn't just excitement, It was pressure. The kind that silences rooms and builds just before something breaks.
The gate on the opposite end groaned open—less dramatic, less smoke, just raw silence that gradually shifted as students realized who stepped through next.
"—Now entering, representing Section Four—Salcedo Celeste and Salcedo Sallie!"
The crowd's reaction was mixed. Section Four students cheered louder than the rest, but the noise was fractured—uncertain, caught between school pride and disbelief.
"Is that guy yawning?"
"Did he just wake up now?"
"His sister's serious—but he looks like he just rolled off a bench!"
Celeste Salcedo walked ahead with sharp, trained footing. Her posture didn't waver. Grimoire CAD strapped beneath her left arm, uniform flawless, eyes scanning across the crowd with practiced detachment. She gave no acknowledgement to cheers or whispers.
Composed. Focused.
Her steps echoed like marks on a grid.
Behind her—Sallie Salcedo strolled with a slight sway in his shoulders, wiping one eye with the sleeve of his coat, mouth opening into a long, full yawn. The briefcase CAD hung lazily from his right hand. He blinked twice under the bright arena lights and mumbled loud enough for no one in particular.
"Man… they really couldn't give us fifteen more minutes?"
Another yawn.
Celeste didn't even look back. Her focus stayed locked forward, straight toward the center.
Sallie raised one hand lazily toward the Section Four bleachers, offering a crooked half-wave with his eyes still half-lidded. A few students laughed. A few groaned.
But none of them moved.
Because despite the slouch, despite the naps, despite the yawn
___
Sallie was walking into the arena.
And so far, he hadn't lost.
As the Salcedo siblings reached center stage, the four duelists stood in line—two formations. Two nations' shadows looming behind them.
And between the thunder of cheers and silence of breathless tension—there was only the countdown now.
The countdown echoed overhead:
"Combatants will be given two minutes to calibrate CADs and finalize formations."
The moment the announcement faded, Celeste turned on her heel and smacked Sallie square on the back of the head with an open palm. A sharp, clean thwack echoed across the arena.
Sallie stumbled forward with a dramatic flinch. "Ow—hey!"
He turned, clutching the back of his head with both hands like he'd been mortally wounded. "I literally just woke up! You're gonna knock the only functional brain cell left loose!"
Celeste didn't answer. She adjusted the straps of her Grimoire CAD, lips pressed thin in restraint.
"That's for sleeping through half the walk here," she said flatly.
Sallie pouted, pointing at the imaginary bump on his head. "Assault. This is assault. In front of witnesses."
Laughter rang out from across the arena—not just from Section Four, but even from the opposite side. Reyes cracked a faint smirk; Kwon shook her head lightly, one corner of her mouth twitching upward.
Sallie caught it, squinting their way. "See? Even Stars-Bot One and Two find this funny."
Celeste ignored him entirely as she knelt, resting her Grimoire on one knee, sliding out two reinforcement plates from a concealed slot along its edge. Her eyes were locked on her CAD's interface, filtering mana sync rates with practiced precision.
Across from them, Reyes lowered into a crouch, slotting a cartridge into the back of his left hip CAD while muttering calculations under his breath. Kwon moved faster, already flipping through a prebuilt sequence via wrist swipe, setting up layered spell macros through her dual output channels.
Sallie finally dropped to one knee, briefcase between his legs, flipping it open with a clack. Dozens of thin blue lights activated inside as system prompts began scrolling.
"Alright, ImperialHaxor," he muttered, "let's do this. Loadout Three. Patch twelve-point-nine. Frontline disruption, mid-tier counters, and… tactical nonsense."
Celeste didn't glance at him. "No showboating."
Sallie rolled his neck, flicking the last toggle.
"Not unless they start it."
The countdown hit thirty seconds.
The joking stopped.
Four duelists. Two factions.
The arena was no longer laughing.
The CAD calibration prompts faded from Sallie's briefcase, locking in his Loadout with a final chime. He stood slowly, rotating his shoulders like he'd just rolled out of bed, then lazily pointed across the stage—straight at Reyes and Kwon.
"Just so we're clear," Sallie said, voice loud enough to carry across the arena, "we're supposed to believe you're just Section One students?"
Reyes' expression tightened. Kwon's hands paused over her interface.
Sallie tilted his head, finger still up. "Because you've got that 'we definitely weren't trained by a foreign military' look. Real subtle."
The crowd murmured. Section Four students held back nervous laughs. Section One's bleachers started to boo.
Celeste didn't even let him finish.
She turned and smacked his shoulder hard enough to make him stumble half a step sideways.
"Onii-sama." Her voice was sharp, clipped. "We don't antagonize before combat. You're not helping."
Sallie rubbed the spot she hit, shrugging. "Just warming them up. If they're really USNA, they can handle some light commentary."
Across the stage, Kwon's jaw clenched. "You don't know anything about us."
Reyes stepped forward, voice low and cold. "We'll let the match speak."
Sallie's grin widened, but his eyes didn't smile.
"Looking forward to it, Stars."
Celeste exhaled sharply and gave a polite bow to the opposing team. "Forgive my brother. He doesn't speak for both of us."
She turned without waiting for their response and whispered through gritted teeth.
"If we lose because you couldn't stop running your mouth—"
"We won't," Sallie muttered, eyes already watching Reyes' stance. He tapped his CAD once.
"Let's give them something to leak back to the Pentagon."
Ten seconds. The arena lights dimmed.
The match was about to begin.
Countdown: 10… 9… 8…
Celeste stood with her back straight, boots planted in the center-line divot of their half of the arena. Her Grimoire CAD floated just above her left palm—its layered plates unfolding one by one like surgical steel, locking into casting position with precise mechanical clicks. Mana sigils bloomed in sequence along its open face, runes cycling in real-time across her HUD visor.
Her eyes didn't blink. Her hands didn't shake.
This was routine. This was discipline.
7… 6…
Sallie stood three paces to her right, his briefcase still closed, held loosely by the handle in one hand. His stance was relaxed—no strain in the shoulders, no tension in the knees. But his eyes were fixed straight ahead.
He watched Reyes load a third cartridge into his left-side CAD with that same detached precision. Watched Kwon's fingers flick through layered tactical macros as her dual wrist-CADs aligned for dual-casting.
Sallie tilted his head slightly Just enough to mark their timing,
including their rhythm.
"Mm. Cadence offset. They're synced, but not mirrored."
5… 4…
Celeste didn't look away from her Grimoire. "Focus, Onii-sama."
"I am," Sallie replied. "They're fast, but that means they're used to finishing clean."
3…
He turned the briefcase once—horizontal. Thumb pressed against the biometric latch.
2…
A click. A sharp hum as the CAD came to life—edges glowing faint blue, loadout matrix initializing, ports hissing open.
1...
Mana surged through the arena floor.
"—Begin."
And just like that, the waiting was over, combat had started, the air snapped tight with spell tension.
The signal dropped—and no one held back.
The signal dropped—and no one held back.
Reyes surged forward with a burst-step, mana venting from the soles of his combat boots. His twin hip-mounted CADs snapped open—both firing a spread of suppression shells laced with kinetic disruption.
Kwon didn't move forward—she vanished sideways. Her body blinked hard left with a precision vector cast, reappearing ten meters away near the far pillar. Her dual wrist-CADs already traced angular glyphs into the air, lining up a predictive trap grid.
Sallie moved first, eyes sharp despite the slouch. His briefcase snapped open mid-spin—converting into a compact scythe with a counter-weighted hilt. He swung wide—not to strike, but to intercept Reyes' opening volley.
The kinetic rounds bent off the curved blade with a sharp crack-crack-crack, mana deflection lighting up like tracer sparks. Sallie landed on his back foot, grinning.
"Alright, I'm awake now."
Celeste, behind him, didn't speak.
Her Grimoire pulsed once.
"Field Frame: Directive Bind."
A hexagonal grid flared beneath Reyes' boots—binding glyphs attempting to lock movement vectors mid-charge.
He boosted straight up to break the hold—smart. Kwon took the opening to launch a flanking cast.
"Scatter Lance."
Four condensed mana spikes tore through the air toward Celeste from an angle—blunt, fast, and meant to stagger.
Sallie stepped in front, scythe rotating into a deflection shield as his briefcase clicked and reconfigured mid-swing.
"Form-5, Redirect Shell."
The spikes slammed against the barrier and scattered backward like rubber bullets snapping off plate steel.
Reyes landed hard, driving forward again with short-range burst movement.
Kwon blinked into another angle—this time on Sallie's exposed flank.
Celeste's eyes locked in.
"Hexbind Vector: Anchor Trace."
A field snapped open behind Kwon—binding her forward motion, anchoring her position mid-phase.
Sallie spun—swept his scythe CAD backward and dropped a buff round at Celeste's feet from a side-barrel launcher.
"Bushwhacker 500—support round, go."
The spell reinforced her mana channeling time—cutting her delay in half.
No words passed between them.
They didn't exchange glances, didn't signal or nod. One shifted slightly, and the other adjusted. A pivot. A sidestep. A tightening of grip. Their movements threaded together with quiet precision, the kind born not of drills or strategy briefings—but of years moving in the same rhythm, reacting to the same chaos.
They advanced like clock hands, not sharp or elegant, but exact. Efficient. Necessary.
Where Section One pushed harder—pressure mounting in volleys and flanks—Section Four simply absorbed it. No flourish. No dramatics. Just the grind of boots on stone, the hiss of air past blades, and the rhythm of breath between strikes.
And the siblings, at the center of it, moved as one—faultless not because they planned it, but because they didn't have to.
The crowd leaned forward as the pressure shifted.
Section Four was on the backfoot.
Reyes pressed the line hard—his movements were textbook Stars protocol: overwhelm, isolate, suppress. He didn't aim to overpower Sallie—he aimed to box him in, deny him space, and remove Celeste from casting angles.
Suppressive rounds chewed into the ground near Sallie's heels—tight groupings, methodical. Not a wild barrage. They didn't miss by accident. They missed on purpose, each shot nudging him left like a silent command.
Sallie moved with sharp economy—deflecting the first with a blade snap, sidestepping the second in a tight pivot, then rolling beneath the third as it cracked the air overhead. But the pattern was obvious now. Reyes wasn't probing.
He was executing.
From the left flank, Kwon blinked into position—no stutter, no wind-up. One instant she wasn't there, the next, she was already casting. Her dual CADs flared in sequence—left-hand low, dropping a distortion shell beneath Celeste's stance; right-hand high, hurling a stun spear wrapped tight in a spiraling dispel weave.
The shell hit first.
The ground beneath Celeste shimmered, then buckled—her balance slipped as if the floor had turned to oil. She caught herself with a half-step, but her grimoire stuttered mid-cast, the plates skipping alignment as the interference shell warped the mana sync. Runes flickered, glitching in and out like corrupted code.
The rhythm—broken. But not collapsed.
She growled low, eyes flashing.
"Onii-sama!"
"Already moving!" Sallie shouted.
He broke from Reyes' pressure—barely—spun wide, kicked off a reinforcement glyph he cast mid-stride, and bolted between Kwon and Celeste.
Clang!
He batted the stun spear out of the air with the flat of his CAD, then slammed a booster round at the ground beneath his sister.
"Uplift pulse!"
Celeste burst backward in a controlled retreat, boots skimming low across the stone as mana flared beneath her heels. Kwon adjusted instantly, CADs tracking, recalibrating her line of fire without pause.
But Reyes was already there.
A blur of dark motion—he cut off Sallie's escape path before it could form, shifting like a gate slamming shut. No pause. No breath wasted. His timing was flawless, movements paced to the rhythm of something honed, not rehearsed.
It was relentless.
No gaps. No wasted effort. No dramatic flares of mana or taunting blows. Just a constant, suffocating pressure—Stars discipline in pure form. The kind you didn't just train into muscle—you etched into bone.
Even the spectators felt it.
The Section Four bleachers, once full of quiet murmurs and subtle bets, fell completely silent. Eyes wide. Shoulders tense. Something cold settling in their stomachs. Across the arena, Section One's supporters erupted—voices rising in time with the rhythm of dominance. They weren't cheering for a flashy combo or a highlight moment.
They were cheering for precision. For control.
Kwon's expression didn't flicker—eyes locked, breath steady. Every movement calibrated.
Reyes didn't need to look—he knew where she'd be. His pacing didn't falter. It cut.
Sallie exhaled hard, spinning his CAD back into blade form.
"Okay," he muttered. "They're not tourists."
Celeste wiped the sweat from her brow, eyes locked forward.
"Good," she said sharply. "Because I'm tired of holding defensive posture."
The crowd saw it now—Section One wasn't unbeatable.
But they were trained to kill.
Section Four lashed back. It wasn't finesse—it was grit.
Sallie dashed hard left, blade-CAD scraping the floor mid-slide as he hurled a disruption round from his offhand launcher—angled upward to detonate above Kwon's flank.
BOOM.
Flash and kinetic burst tore through the left side. Kwon blinked back—force-evac spell activating reflexively to avoid full impact. Her stance broke—but not her focus.
Celeste slammed her grimoire shut and flipped a reinforcement plate forward.
"Grimoire Protocol: Mirror Spike!"
A spear of silver mana tore through the air, its edges crackling with arc-static. Mid-flight, it split—six gleaming fragments peeling outward, curving in with surgical precision to converge on Reyes from every angle.
He didn't dodge.
He stepped through it.
With a calm pivot, Reyes rotated both CADs mid-frame, hands a blur. The barrels locked into alignment, and he fired—one perfectly timed shell hurtling forward to meet the incoming mana storm. The detonation bloomed in a muted flash, like a breath held tight and then released. The air shimmered. All six spikes unraveled, dispelled mid-air in a precise, contained rupture.
He didn't even break stride.
Sallie was already closing the gap, his scythe drawn low, angled for a rising cut—fluid, fast.
Reyes met it like he'd read the motion five seconds ago.
He caught the scythe's handle with his forearm guard, let the momentum pull him in, then twisted into Sallie's guard and drove an elbow strike square into his sternum.
THUMP.
Sallie's breath left him in a ragged gasp as his boots skidded across the floor. The impact echoed, brutal and clean. His core clenched, lungs locked, body listing from the force.
Celeste raised a binding glyph, her Grimoire plates syncing fast—but it wasn't fast enough.
Kwon blinked into view mid-cast—no light, no warning. Her CADs surged with energy, a high-frequency hum that rattled through the arena's bones.
"Force Lance—Break Line."
She fired between them, not at them.
The spell cracked into the arena floor, and the resulting explosion ripped upward like a fault line snapping open.
BOOM.
Sallie was lifted off his feet, limbs loose in midair before crashing down hard, momentum sending him into a side roll. His briefcase CAD skidded several meters away, trailing sparks.
Celeste was thrown into the barrier with a sharp cry, her shoulder taking the brunt. Her Grimoire clattered beside her, one of its rings flickering, off-kilter.
The crowd detonated.
Section One's students surged to their feet, roaring like they'd already won. Their cheers were thunderous, swelling with pride, power, and inevitability. On the opposite side, Section Four's bleachers had gone eerily still—no whispers, no muttered plans. Just silence.
Reyes didn't gloat.
He just kept walking—each step measured, exact, as if this was just another drill. No emotion. No ego.
Kwon moved in parallel, her footfalls sharp and crisp, closing the gap without hesitation.
The Salcedo siblings were down.
Sallie coughed, dragging himself up to one knee. His coat was torn at the side. Blood at the lip. He wiped it with the back of his glove.
Celeste gritted her teeth, one eye narrowed from the impact. She reached out, gripping her grimoire and yanking it back into her lap.
Reyes raised his left CAD again.
"Stay down," he said coldly.
Sallie's laugh came low, rasped. "Can't."
He stood.
Celeste rose beside him. "Won't."
Their stance was ragged. But their eyes didn't waver.
The arena lights pulsed harder now—overhead glyphs beginning to overheat as four separate CADs dumped maximum output into the field. The floor beneath the duelists bore new scorch marks, mana streaks, and shattered tiles from spell impact.
Section Four was cornered.
Reyes moved with machine rhythm—closing angles, controlling space. His twin hip-CADs rotated on servo tracks, feeding burst rounds and precise barriers mid-motion. Every step was covered. Every move calculated.
Kwon blinked between vectors, never stopping. Her dual-casting style wasn't flashy—but relentless. Mute shock shells, flash bursts, and stun-flicker beams swarmed Celeste's perimeter like drones looking for a weak point.
Celeste bled from the temple now. Her left lens cracked. Her grimoire's outer plate was splintered at the edge. She stayed low, casting quickbinds and forced counters just to hold position.
Sallie was cut at the eyebrow, his coat scorched at the sleeve. His breath was shallow, stance broken—but his eyes weren't foggy anymore.
They were awake.
He watched Reyes angle left again—cutting the lane, not for damage, but control.
Sallie muttered. "Boxing. Positioning. Tag-teaming shifts—pinning us like they're herding training targets."
Celeste growled. "They're not cadets. Not full ones."
Sallie stepped back into cover, eyes scanning Kwon's latest blink angle.
"No," he said quietly. "They're Stars."
Celeste looked over sharply.
Sallie's hand flexed on his briefcase handle.
"They're running USNA attack doctrines. Marks-Disrupt-Echelon-Four. You don't learn that from books. You drill that. In blood."
He wiped a streak of red from his cheek.
"This isn't a match. This is a field test."
Reyes fired a shell that ricocheted near Sallie's left boot. The blast knocked him back, leg buckling as he skidded along the tiles.
Kwon launched a counter-cast toward Celeste that detonated near her ribs, sending her flying sideways into the barrier wall with a brutal thud.
The crowd gasped.
Section Four students leaned forward, silent. Some clutched the railings. Some didn't breathe.
Section One? Already cheering. Chanting.
Reyes and Kwon began to slow.
Their steps lost the urgency of pursuit. No more blitzes. No sudden strikes. They didn't need them anymore. The field was quiet, their momentum absolute—and they knew it. You could feel it in the air: the confidence, the control. The gap wasn't just tactical now.
It was psychological.
But Sallie... hadn't gotten back up.
Still down on one knee, his body hunched, breath shallow and uneven. Dust clung to his coat. Mana residue flickered weakly at his fingertips.
And yet—
His hand curled tighter around the latch of his briefcase CAD.
A whisper escaped his lips—too low for the crowd, maybe even for Celeste. A bitter breath.
"…so that's how far they'll go to test us…"
Then quieter. Slower. Like someone deciding something final.
"…fine."
He lifted his head.
And something in him had shifted.
No more glint in the eye. No casual precision. His gaze was locked, sharp and cold—like steel pulled from ice.
"No more jokes," he said, voice flat as cut stone.
The briefcase clicked open with a deliberate snap, not with flare or ceremony, but with intention. Plates unfolded. Mana lines activated in perfect sync. This wasn't a flourish.
Section One was closing in for the finish.
Kwon circled wide, spell arrays forming across both wrists—mirror-tracking arcs meant to collapse any barrier Celeste threw up. Reyes advanced in textbook Stars formation: right flank angled, lead foot tight to the centerline, twin CADs raised, zero wasted motion.
The gap was gone. Section Four's sync was breaking—no clean lines, no room to reset. Every cast Celeste made was preempted. Every motion Sallie tried to cover got interrupted.
Their synergy—so seamless in earlier matches—was collapsing.
"Stars Directive, Echelon Collapse Variant."
Reyes muttered something under his breath—not loud, not for show. Just part of the process. Measured. Clinical.
The next strike would end it.
Across the field, Celeste was low to the ground, bracing herself with one bleeding hand pressed against the jagged edge of her Grimoire. Her breathing came in shallow pulls, shoulder heaving. Her spell lines glitched and flickered, but her eyes stayed on Sallie.
He hadn't moved.
He didn't blink. Didn't twitch.
For a moment, there was nothing.
Then—
Click.
The sound was soft. Subtle.
But it changed everything.
The briefcase CAD unfolded again—but this time, the sequence was different. The outer plating pulled back without the flare of a blade, the snap of a shield, or the spiraling glyphs of his buff launcher.
Instead, the core retracted—collapsed inward, then reformed.
What emerged was something else entirely.
A long, sleek rifle-frame—compact, coiled with potential. The glyph cores were exposed along the spine, glowing with a quiet hum. The barrel was short. Dense. Engineered not for suppression or setup.
It was built to return fire.
Celeste blinked, her lips parting. "Onii—"
Too late.
Sallie rose.
Not scrambled. Not stumbled. He stood—spine straight, eyes locked forward. His body moved with absolute control, no wasted effort. The lazy lean was gone. The casual tilt. The half-smirk and irreverence he always wore like armor—gone.
What was left was silence. Focus. A machine stripped to its purpose.
He raised the CAD with one hand—fluid, practiced, surgical—and leveled it at Reyes.
Then pulled the trigger.
BOOM.
The discharge cracked like thunder—compressed mana erupting in a blinding flash. The shot didn't arc. Didn't scatter. It slammed forward, a single vector of destructive force.
Not meant to disable. Not meant to control.
It was damage. Pure and absolute.
Reyes' barrier flared a heartbeat too late. The spell caught him full in the chest, detonating in a pressure blast that blew him off his feet. His body sailed backward six meters before he slammed into the floor, skidding hard, shoulder crunching into tile. His teeth clenched as his aura pulsed, flaring against the impact.
Across the field, Kwon's casting staggered. Her hands jerked mid-channel, rhythm broken.
Sallie was already rotating the CAD—seamless, no pause.
He fired again.
This shot tracked her blink angle—not where she was, but where she would be. She blinked left, as expected.
Predictable.
The shot tore through the blink trail, rupturing the mana mid-transit. The collision triggered a sudden flare of unstable energy.
Impact.
Kwon was knocked out of blink phase, her form dropping into a rough roll. She hit the floor hard, skidding across the arena with a sharp hiss of friction. Sparks flew from her left CAD—the wrist bracer misfiring, lines of light cascading along the feedback loop.
Celeste was on her feet now—slow, unsteady, eyes wide with disbelief.
She stared at her brother.
He didn't look at her.
Didn't speak, didn't smirk, he just advanced one step, then another.
The CAD lowered slightly, held with confident ease.
No slouch or pause.
Sallie walked forward, slow and deliberate, the damaged arena floor crunching under his boots. The rifle-CAD in his hand pulsed with live heat, core still glowing from the last discharge. He didn't look at his sister. He didn't look at the crowd.
He looked straight at Reyes and Kwon—expression flat, eyes sharp, voice suddenly devoid of anything lazy or casual.
But it wasn't empty. It was awake.
"I'll give it to you," he said, finally breaking the silence. His tone wasn't sarcastic—it was clean. Controlled. Measured.
"You two? You're good. No—better than good. You press like a hammer, move like you've been trained to calculate people, not just beat them."
Reyes was getting to his feet now, breath sharp. Kwon staggered up, her shoulder twitching from feedback.
Sallie's tone didn't change.
"That sync style you're using? That's Stars material. Straight out of USNA doctrine. Tactical aggression. Pressure layering. Predictive sync traps. We've seen the footage—you just turned it into instinct."
He raised his CAD slightly. Not firing. Just acknowledging.
"That's why I'm excited."
He took one more step forward, shadows from the overhead mana lights dragging behind his coat.
"Because finally—finally—i'm not playing against cadets who copy playbooks. I'm not circling around kids aiming for grades. You two…?"
He gestured with the barrel.
"You're not here for a trophy. You're here to evaluate.
To test. To measure."
His eyes locked on Reyes.
"You want to see if the Imperial cadets are ready to fight a real war."
He smiled then—not lazy. Not mocking.
It was sharp. Focused.
"Well." He raised the CAD to ready stance. "Here I am."
Celeste's eyes widened slightly—but she didn't interrupt. She saw it too now.
The mask had dropped and Sallie wasn't talking for show.
"I've been waiting for this. For something real. I don't want sports. I don't want placement points. I don't want to play chess with padded weapons and pretend it matters."
He rolled his shoulders, and his voice dropped low.
"I want the ones who trained to kill, not win. The Stars, the USNA, the Europeans best, Japan's monsters. I want all of them just because I'm not here to graduate."
His feet planted. CAD locked.
"I'm here to erase the ones who think we can't bite back."
The arena was silent.
The silence held, heavy and loaded, as Sallie raised his left hand—briefcase CAD now linked through a secondary subroutine. A soft hum vibrated through the floor.
Celeste, still breathing hard, blood at her temple, glanced sideways.
"Onii-sama—"
"Stand still," Sallie said, voice low.
Sallie stepped behind her in silence.
His palm pressed gently between her shoulder blades, fingers sliding with eerie precision across the subtle contours of her armor until they locked onto a recessed glyph channel at the base of her spine. The moment his touch met the inlet, her Grimoire CAD pulsed—a sharp, almost instinctive recognition as their systems synced.
Then he spoke.
No chant. No spell structure. Just a single, quiet word.
"Restore."
What followed didn't explode. It unfolded.
A pulse of light—clear, clinical, impossible in its exactness—flared out from his hand. It washed across Celeste's body like water cutting through ash, seamless and intentional. The effect wasn't dramatic. It was precise. Surgical.
Beneath the surface, fractures snapped back into alignment. Hairline breaks sealed without a sound. Burned skin cooled and knit itself whole. Muscle fibers, overtaxed and frayed, realigned with a crisp, almost mechanical clarity. The haze clouding her eyes dissolved, and in its place came sharpness—focused, piercing, hers.
The surge hit all at once.
Her body responded like a recalibrated weapon, snapping into peak condition. But it wasn't just physical. Her mana stream stabilized, then surged—clean, uninterrupted, amplified. Her core didn't just refill; it pulsed with momentum, as though his spell had rewound the damage and added something new in its place.
The Grimoire CAD responded instantly.
The plates unlocked in rapid succession, every component spinning into full configuration without delay. Glyphs ignited into high-speed rotation, no longer waiting on conscious command. They moved with her, not just at her will, but because of her will—refined, empowered, restored.
Celeste blinked.
For the first time since the match started, she had no words. Her mouth opened slightly, breath catching in disbelief. The pain was gone. The fatigue was gone. And her spell output—judging by the immediate pulse through the Grimoire's spine—had nearly doubled.
Even she hadn't seen that before.
Across the arena, Reyes' cadence faltered, the confidence in his stance dimming by a fraction. Kwon's feet stilled, her spell channels quieting as her gaze snapped to the now-glowing duo.
They didn't speak.
But both of them recognized it.
That wasn't theory. That wasn't staged tech. That was Regrowth.
Field-deployed, Flawless. And it changed everything.
Kwon whispered, "That's not… That's not a copy. That's native output."
Reyes clenched his jaw. "It's the same as him. The same as Shiba."
The crowd erupted. Not in cheers—in disbelief.
Fourth High students stood from the bleachers. Some gasped. Some covered their mouths.
"Did he just—"
"Wait, was that Regrowth?"
"No one outside the Yotsuba—what even was that?"
Even the staff on the sidelines exchanged stunned looks. A handful of instructors leaned forward to verify what they'd just witnessed.
Celeste stepped forward—standing fully now, no limp, no wince. Her Grimoire flared like a blade drawn clean from fire.
She didn't ask questions.
She didn't hesitate.
Because for once, she felt exactly what her brother was—
Fully committed.
Sallie stepped beside her. His voice sharpened. Final.
"I told you I wanted a real fight," he said. "Now you're getting one."
He raised the CAD again, stance squared.
"You're not walking out of this with a win.
You're walking out knowing who we really are."
Sallie rolled his shoulder once, briefcase CAD humming louder now, heat vents cycling open along the seams. His stance was squared. No more tilt in the spine. No more lazy sway in his arms.
His voice was low, direct, sharp enough to cut.
"So that's it then," he said, eyes locked on Reyes and Kwon. "You proved it. USNA protocol. Stars tactics. Full tempo. You didn't come here to pretend. You came here to measure us."
Reyes didn't respond. His silence confirmed it.
Sallie lifted his CAD, rested it against his shoulder like a war axe.
"Then let me return the favor."
He pointed to the ground between them. "To step on this stage means you don't get to hold back. You don't get to limit yourselves."
He thumbed the CAD's second configuration.
"Neither do we."
Celeste stood next to him, completely restored, her Grimoire CAD glowing with sustained sync pulses. Her presence had shifted too—no longer just composed. Ready.
Sallie took a single step forward.
"You wanted the Empire's best? You wanted to see how far we've come?"
He locked eyes with both of them.
"Then watch closely. Because starting now—" He swung the briefcase down, blade-form locking into place with a resonant click. "—we're not students."
He looked to his sister. She gave the smallest nod.
"We're Salcedo."
His tone dropped to a razor's edge.
"And we're not holding back either."
The arena trembled.
Not from ceremony, not from crowd noise—but from raw, unfiltered mana flooding the battlefield. There was no formal reset, no referee's countdown or whistle this time. Just a rupture in rhythm. A shift. The second half hadn't begun with structure.
It had begun with escalation.
Mid-fight. No warning. No breath to catch.
Sallie surged forward—not with the frantic pace of someone trying to catch up, but with the slow, deliberate stride of a predator. His body was coiled, spine straight, every step grounded with intent. He wasn't charging.
He was hunting.
Above his shoulder, the briefcase CAD lifted and snapped open midair. But this time, it didn't choose a form.
It became all of them.
Multiple components exploded outward like a mechanical blossom unfurling at high speed—rotating spheres locking into hover-rigs, jagged blade frames unfolding like skeletal wings, rifle cores sliding beneath channel conduits. Emitters sparked to life, releasing brief arcs of charged mana. Glyph circuits flared in sequence, etching glowing code into the space around him like a ritual in motion.
It didn't stop at one transformation. It combined them.
Spears retracted into scythe mounts, the hafts converting into curved extensions with rapid, overlapping shifts. Rifle cores slotted cleanly beneath blade channels, cross-synced to both projectile and slash patterns. Launcher tubes folded inward, reinforcing the stabilizers beneath his arms and spine—compact, precise, brutal.
It wasn't a loadout.
It was an arsenal.
Layered. Modular. Unorthodox in a way that would've sent Academy instructors scrambling for a rulebook.
It didn't look like a sanctioned student build.
It looked like something out of a JRPG's final boss phase—an endgame configuration forged not in labs or training halls, but in pressure. In resistance. In refusal to lose.
And Sallie—now fully armed, no trace of slouch or smirk remaining—was done waiting.
"Combat Mode: Unified Output—Ragnarok Bloom."
He hurled the combined form forward—not for range, not for distance—for effect.
Sallie didn't keep the weapon.
He hurled it.
Not for distance. Not for style. For effect.
The combined CAD spun through the air like a breaching drill, every component rotating in perfect synchronicity. Mana flared along its edges, trailing silver arcs as it tore through space, each rotation humming with contained violence. It didn't target Reyes. It didn't even lock onto Kwon.
It struck the ground between them.
BOOM.
The floor cracked under the impact. For a heartbeat, nothing—then the CAD released its payload.
A concussive pulse detonated outward in a dome of chaos—thick smoke, rolling pressure, and mana-static interference bursting out in every direction. Glyphs fizzled. Visual clarity fractured. The air itself shimmered, like reality had been briefly detuned.
Reyes instinctively blinked back two steps, arm shielding his mouth as he coughed into the haze.
Kwon's lock broke. Her CAD twitched in her hands, spell rings snapping out of sync.
And by the time the dust began to settle—
Sallie was gone.
Not retreated.
Repositioned.
Clang—
The blunt end of his polearm slammed into Kwon's backplate, the strike reverberating through her armor in a burst of kinetic shock. She staggered forward with a grunt, barely catching herself.
Boom—
A second motion followed without pause.
The scythe blade, now fully extended and glowing with edge-channel mana, sliced in a horizontal arc—a counter-sweep angled low and wide. Reyes snapped his hand up, conjuring a mana barrier just in time to intercept the strike. The blade met the shield with a thunderous crash, sending shock ripples across its surface.
Reyes slid half a step from the force, eyes narrowing.
Kwon recovered fast—but not fast enough to hide the jolt of surprise in her breath.
Sallie didn't give them time to regroup.
Not anymore.
Celeste didn't even flinch.
She stood still—Grimoire fully open now, every plate rotating at full sync. Her left hand hovered midair, controlling the auto-cast queue.
"Vector Anchor: Echo Path."
"Mirror Recursion: Fourfold."
The spells came like artillery, precise and relentless.
Celeste's binding glyphs erupted around Reyes' position in perfect tandem with her brother's every movement—each cast calculated not just for effect, but to control. When Sallie feinted high, her glyphs snapped into place low. When he struck from the flank, she sealed the retreat. There was no lag between them, no hesitation. It wasn't just coordination—it was symphonic, each action interlocking with the next in a rhythm too fast to follow.
There was no wasted motion.
No redundant coverage.
No misfire.
Reyes' jaw had tightened, the careful neutrality in his expression cracking at the edges. A thin sheen of sweat lined his brow, blinking into his eyes. His counters were still sharp—but they were no longer clean. Each movement had begun to cost more. Each defense was a fraction late.
Across from him, Kwon's breath came quicker now. She was compensating—trying to reestablish the pattern, but her left arm lagged behind, the damaged CAD flickering with residual feedback. The synchronicity that had defined their earlier assault had fractured.
USNA formation was faltering.
And with it, their timing—the very tempo that had given them control—was slipping from their grasp.
In the heart of it, Sallie moved like a shadow unbound, blurring through arcs of motion with surgical grace. Mid-spin, his CAD snapped apart and reformed again—components shifting in synchronized automation. The blade channels folded back. The glyph cores rotated into new positions. By the time he came out of the rotation, the weapon was already in rifle mode, humming with loaded tension.
High-speed mana cartridges glowed in the chamber, ready—no delay, no recalibration.
Just purpose.
And this time, he wasn't the one reacting.
He was leading.
"Let's see Stars tank this."
He fired a burst round at Kwon's heels—non-lethal but concussive. Then immediately shifted stance—slamming a blade-conjure into Reyes' projected intercept field.
Celeste's enhancement still held. Her mana reserves were high, cooldowns reduced, and targeting speeds refined.
She never raised her voice.
"Don't waste it," she whispered.
And she didn't.
The Salcedo siblings weren't just fighting back. They were turning the entire tempo inside out.
Section One fought back. They had to.
Reyes pushed forward again, launching two layered spells mid-stride—first a kinetic piercer, then a delay burst to chain the opening. Kwon blinked to the opposite flank, CADs glowing red-hot, launching suppression flares and soft-lock pulses to break casting flow.
But it didn't matter.
The Salcedo siblings were already moving.
Sallie dropped low into a slide—his briefcase reconfigured mid-move. The rifle barrel snapped back, replaced instantly by a compact dual-barrel shotgun module, vents glowing white from overcharge.
Kwon blinked into melee range—wrong move.
The spell round hit her barrier at near-zero distance, shattering the outer layer and forcing her into rollback recovery. Before she even landed—Sallie was gone again.
He rotated backward, shot across the field with a glyph dash, and swapped the CAD mid-air back to scythe form just in time to meet Reyes head-on.
Blade met mana-blade. Sparks flew. Neither one let up.
But Sallie was faster. Sharper. Not just trained—adapted.
He ducked a horizontal slash, reversed grip, pivoted inside Reyes' guard—and fired a support round point-blank into Reyes' hip. It didn't kill—it just made him stagger.
And that's all he needed.
"Now, Celeste!"
She was already casting.
"Mirror Path: Closed Loop!"
Reyes' movement was choked. Binding glyphs closed his footwork lanes. Celeste followed with a mid-air recast—grimoire spinning vertical now, pages unfolding like a mechanical bloom.
She fired off three chained blasts—the final one angled low, meant to push, not damage.
Reyes stumbled right—
—into Sallie's reloaded rifle.
CRACK.
A non-lethal impact round knocked him back full-body.
Kwon tried to re-engage, blinking in behind Celeste—
—but Sallie already turned. His CAD rotated to wrist-mounted support launcher, firing a zone scatterfield around Celeste's position.
Kwon landed in it.
Her blink system faltered. Movement slowed.
Celeste reacted instantly. No hesitation.
"Vector Field Reversal!"
The force spike caught Kwon mid-step, slamming into her with the weight of a battering ram. Her body lifted off the ground before crashing back down in a jarring roll, momentum skidding her across the polished floor. The moment she landed, the field shifted.
Sallie and Celeste moved in tandem, back to back—no calls, no cues, just instinct honed into action. Sallie's rifle was raised and ready, his frame low and rotating with sharp footwork; Celeste's grimoire hovered just behind her shoulder, glyph rings spinning at full sync, casting layers already preloaded and glowing.
They didn't trade blows.
They didn't exchange flourishes.
They executed.
Every choice Reyes made was met with immediate consequence. When he pivoted for range, seeking space to cast—Sallie closed the gap, scythe-form engaging with a coiled sweep that left no room for setup. When he tried to press in for melee, the weapon shifted again, collapsing into a short-barreled buckshot configuration. The blast met him mid-charge, staggering his advance before he could land a strike.
Kwon blinked back into the field, trying to flank—but she materialized too close to Celeste. Her CAD barely began to charge when a vector snare detonated at her feet, glyph lines snapping up her legs like trap wires, halting her motion mid-cast.
And when they tried to split—when Reyes and Kwon fanned out to stretch the siblings' formation—Celeste reshaped the battlefield. Snare glyphs laced the ground with calibrated delay fields, while Sallie anticipated their pivot routes, cutting through the exposed channels before they could fully form.
This wasn't reaction.
It was control.
Control in every footfall. Every arc of a blade. Every flick of a glyph.
The rhythm wasn't theirs anymore—it belonged to the Salcedos.
And beneath the fading glow of the collapsing spell grid, with the arena dimming in charged haze and mana-scorched stone, Section One's formation had stopped advancing. Their tactics were no longer pressing forward.
They were being cornered.
By two students who had stopped holding back.
And started showing who they were.
The arena lights surged—brighter than before—as Section One activated their final protocol. Reyes' CAD locked into twin convergence mode, cores overcharged with high-density mana rounds. Kwon's dual wrist units aligned horizontally, locking into a joint-phase spell that flickered red across the projection grid.
Mana trembled.
They were preparing to fire a full-power suppression barrage—not to wound, not to subdue—to win.
But Section Four didn't back off.
Sallie stood beside Celeste, his CAD shifting into support bind mode, wrapping around her Grimoire with mechanical latches, syncing both units together through magnetic locks. Their mana signatures fused instantly.
Celeste stepped forward—calm, silent—her hair caught in the air current as the Grimoire glowed deep violet.
"Incantation Override: Divine Armament."
Mana surged upward in a vortex of controlled chaos, drawing in the ambient field like a tide pulled by the moon. From the heart of the whirlwind, a shape began to emerge—first a shimmer, then a structure, and finally, form.
A bow.
Massive. Seamless. Ancient in aesthetic but engineered with terrifying precision. It wasn't metaphor. It wasn't illusion. This was no symbolic conjuration—it was real, and it was ready.
Ten feet tall, forged entirely from raw, rotating mana, the bow took shape in layered segments, summoned piece by piece from Celeste's Grimoire. The plates spun at maximum velocity, casting hard light and spectral glyphs in every direction. The air vibrated with the force of its formation.
Celeste stepped forward and wrapped her hands around the base, her breath steady, her footing firm.
Then Sallie moved in beside her.
His briefcase CAD expanded mid-stride, not into any familiar configuration, but into something singular: an arrow, fused from reinforced javelin channels and compressed energy coils. It wasn't sleek. It was dense. Purpose-built. Designed for a single function—total output.
He placed one hand over hers on the grip, anchoring them. The other guided the arrow into place. As their CADs touched, glyphs flared between them—aligning, syncing, linking them in a perfect cross-cast formation.
Brother and sister.
Shoulder to shoulder.
No words.
His cheek close to hers. Her eyes narrowed in focus. Their breath steady. Unified.
Across the stage, Reyes saw it. So did Kwon.
They both knew what was coming.
Celeste and Sallie pulled.
The bow didn't creak under the strain—it screamed, a high-pitched whine of mana tension that seemed to tear at the edges of the air itself. The arrow thrummed with counterspin, its core glowing with layered enchantments, each one rotating in opposite directions.
They released.
The projectile shot forward like a rail round, erupting in a spiral of violet and blue. It split the air with a sonic snap, tearing through gravitational drag like it wasn't there. Every rotation, every layer of counterspin, pushed the energy inward, focusing it to a single, devastating point.
Half a heartbeat later, it collided mid-air with the incoming Stars-class barrage.
CRACK–BOOM.
A flash of white—so bright the arena seemed to vanish inside it.
Then silence.
Then—
Impact.
The arrow tore through the barrage like paper, chewing straight through the overlapping field of kinetic defense. The final glyph wall faltered, collapsed. It struck the ground between Reyes and Kwon with brutal precision.
The arena floor didn't just break—it detonated.
A vertical shockwave blasted upward from the point of contact, lifting both of them into the air like ragdolls caught in a storm. Their bodies hit the far barrier wall with thunderous force. Concrete cracked. Steel reinforcement behind the paneling bent inward, the support beams screeching from the pressure. Arcane shielding flared one last time—then failed with a pulse and a flicker.
Smoke curled outward in slow spirals. Dust hung in the air like mist.
And in the center of it, only two figures stood—
OUT OF BOUNDS.
The arena fell dead silent.
Then—
"MATCH END.
VICTORY: SECTION FOUR—SALCEDO CELSTE AND SALCEDO SALLIE."
The crowd erupted, the sound rushing outward in a tidal wave of disbelief and awe. It wasn't a cheer—it was a detonation, the kind of noise that collapsed in on itself before expanding again, louder, unrestrained. Some stood frozen, mouths open, unsure if they'd really seen what just happened. Others shouted until their voices cracked, the shock and thrill bleeding into every syllable.
Sallie exhaled sharply, a long breath pulled between his teeth, the tension still laced through his shoulders as he stepped back from the epicenter. His CAD hung loose at his side, steam rising in faint trails from the barrel. Celeste lowered her arms with practiced control, her Grimoire plates beginning to fold inward, collapsing one by one in seamless precision until the book sealed itself with a final whisper of motion.
Neither of them spoke.
Neither of them smiled.
They just stood there—side by side, grounded, unmoving—watching as the dust finally began to clear, revealing the shattered remnants of what had once been Section One's unshakable confidence.
The arena floor didn't tremble from mana this time.
It shook from them—from the crowd.
The noise slammed into the stadium like artillery, rolling across the stands and hammering against the walls in a layered, chaotic storm of roars, cheers, and screams. Voices overlapped in waves, ricocheting from the rafters and back again. Every stomp, every beat of a fist on a bench, added to the vibration crawling through the floor. It wasn't a reaction—it was a release.
In Section Four's corner, the bleachers exploded into motion. Students leapt from their seats, hands thrown into the air, mouths wide in ecstatic disbelief. Some chanted the siblings' names, voices rising ragged with pride. Others just screamed, as if their bodies didn't know how else to respond to what they'd just witnessed.
Because they weren't supposed to win.
Not against Section One.
Not against USNA-trained duelists.
Not in a match that had already been decided—at least, on paper.
And yet, here they were.
Not just standing.
Standing over the wreckage.
"They actually did it—!"
"He beat them! He beat them!"
"Section One's out? That's impossible!"
The silence from Section One's side of the arena was deafening.
Where cheers had once thundered, now only stunned stillness remained. Dozens of students stood motionless, hands half-raised in disbelief, mouths slightly open as if the cheers had been caught mid-breath and never finished. Expressions of confusion and denial carved their way across every face. Their champions—so disciplined, so precise, so sure—had fallen. And not in a narrow loss, not in a respectable stalemate.
They had been undone.
Kwon slumped against the back wall, her breath shallow and uneven. Her armor was scorched near the shoulder, and her left wrist-CAD sparked intermittently, each pulse dimmer than the last. Her gaze was unfocused, not from pain, but from the crushing clarity of understanding exactly when the tide had turned—and knowing she hadn't stopped it.
Reyes rose slower than the crowd had ever seen him move. His hand pressed to the ground, fingers curling against the fractured tile as he pushed himself upright. His jaw was locked tight, the line of his mouth rigid with tension. But when he finally lifted his head, he didn't look at the crowd. He didn't seek his team. He didn't even glance toward the Salcedo siblings.
He looked forward. At nothing.
His face didn't burn with fury. There was no tantrum, no snapped blade, no shouted protest. What showed in his eyes was colder—calculation tempered by disbelief, like a machine trying to process an outcome that had no precedent.
Because they hadn't lost to professionals.
They hadn't lost to Stars.
They had been dismantled by a slouched, half-awake student who yawned his way through sparring drills, who napped in classrooms, who walked in late with no explanation and rarely offered one.
And he'd done it without raising his voice. Without a catchphrase. Without needing to prove anything.
That was the part Reyes couldn't understand. Couldn't quite look away from.
Because for all his preparation, all the doctrine, all the strategy—
He had never accounted for that.—
And then tore through them like a combat algorithm that woke up mid-game.
Sallie stood still, unmoved at the center of the chaos he had helped unleash.
His CAD now rested casually over one shoulder, the metal still faintly steaming from its final discharge. His stance was relaxed, almost lazy again—but his eyes remained steady. Calm. Unreadable. There was no smirk, no swagger. Just presence. Quiet. Absolute.
Beside him, Celeste stood with her back straight, her breathing level, the edge of one lens in her glasses fractured but unacknowledged. Her Grimoire hovered obediently in standby mode, its plates folded, its energy dimmed. Her face betrayed nothing beyond focus—no glee, no vindication. Just composure, like she had known from the start how this would end.
Neither sibling said a word.
They didn't gloat, gesture to the crowd, didn't need to.
Because the arena had seen it.
Every spectator, every instructor, every squad leader who once thought Section Four was an afterthought—they saw it now.
And the USNA's elite hadn't just been defeated.
They had been sent flying.
Somewhere in the stunned quiet that followed, a voice broke through—small, almost reverent.
"Salcedo didn't just win… he dismantled them."
The words rippled through the silence like a spark across dry grass, and with it came a shift, deep and immediate. The perception that had shadowed Section Four—of being the overlooked team, the bottom-tier roster, the throwaway section—collapsed in real time.
They weren't an anomaly.
They were a problem.
And Sallie Mae Salcedo, the so-called underachiever with the lazy gait and the never-ending yawn, had become something far more dangerous.
The adrenaline still lingered in the air—raw, electric, humming through every student packed into the stands.
Section Four's row exploded into layered reactions. Some stood frozen. Others were shouting. A few still had their hands over their mouths, staring at the arena floor like it wasn't real.
"Bro… what did we just watch?"
"That was—no, that can't be—was that a Restore?"
"Not just a restore. That was like… Regrowth-level output."
"Since when did Sallie have that?!"
"He slept through half the quarterfinals!"
"Dude showed up like a side character and soloed Stars-level duelists. What the hell—?"
One student leaned back, eyes wide, still gripping the railing. "That wasn't just an upset. That was a full-on ambush. They outplayed, outgunned, outcast them—and then he healed her like nothing happened."
Another whispered, "You saw the way his CAD changed mid-fight, right? That wasn't textbook. That was designed. Like—custom tier, military-level fusion casting."
A third, near the back, arms crossed, said flatly, "They beat Stars… with no flair. Just precision."
From a few rows down, someone added, "Forget the outcome—Restore? That level of spellcasting shouldn't even be legal in school brackets."
Then one of them, watching the siblings silently walk off the stage, muttered:
"Who the hell is Sallie Salcedo really?"
---
The energy in Section One's corner was gone. The cheers had stopped before the match ended. What remained now was the stiff silence of disbelief and bitter acceptance.
No one spoke at first. A few students stared blankly at the arena, arms crossed, jaws tight. Others leaned forward, elbows on knees, eyes following the slow playback on the overhead display—watching their best get sent into the wall on loop.
One of the support tacticians—quiet until now—finally muttered, "...They walked through every formation. Every shift. Like they'd seen it before."
A younger student near the end of the row clenched his fist, voice low. "They weren't supposed to lose. They're from Stars. They're trained."
Another corrected him flatly, eyes still on the replay. "They were outplayed. Clean. No interference. No fluke." He turned, staring down toward the arena exit where Sallie and Celeste had already vanished into the hall.
"Outfought by a slouch who cracked open Stars field doctrine like he was reading patch notes."
Someone else snapped back bitterly, "You think he's just some gamer with a trick CAD?"
"Doesn't matter what he is," another said. "He hit harder, adapted faster, and outmaneuvered both of them. That wasn't luck. That was deliberate."
Kwon sat slouched at the far end, one arm cradled tight, still numb from feedback. Reyes stood nearby, silent, arms folded, head lowered.
No excuses or rage.
Just realization.
They'd executed Stars protocol perfectly. But it hadn't been enough.
And for the first time since arriving in Fourth High—
Section One wasn't feared.
Someone behind them finally said what no one else wanted to:
"…We got outclassed by a pair we barely trained to analyze."
The worst part? There were still rounds to go. And Section One no longer controlled the bracket.
Malacañang Palace – Imperial Command Chamber
16:34 JST
Screens lined the obsidian-paneled wall—rows of feeds displaying real-time data, match footage, and biometric breakdowns from all the duels in the Imperial Sea Games. The central screen, however, was paused on a single frame:
Sallie and Celeste Salcedo, locked together in mid-cast, arms drawn, launching the final mana-charged arrow that shattered the Stars barrage and sent Section One crashing into the wall.
Gabriella Aurelia Mendez stood alone before the feed, arms folded, expression unreadable. Her uniform coat was immaculate, First High crest glinting under the chamber lights.
The sound from the broadcast had been muted. She didn't need the noise.
She had seen what she needed to see.
A soft hum from the holopad at her wrist scrolled through data—spell sequences, impact readouts, output signatures.
Sallie's "Restore." Celeste's coordination under duress.
That last fusion technique.
She watched it again. Frame by frame.
Sallie's demeanor—disengaged one moment, surgical the next.
Celeste's precision under impossible pressure.
Their rhythm—natural. Trained. Unshakable.
She murmured under her breath, tone flat. Eyes never blinking.
"If they want to reach him..."
Her eyes traced the moment the arrow detonated, splitting the Stars offensive mid-air.
"…this is the one I was looking for."
A pause.
She didn't smile. She didn't move.
Just whispered—quiet enough that only the room heard it:
"Sallie Salcedo. The Empire's scalpel. And if he can break Stars…"
She turned away from the screen, her voice low, almost mechanical.
"Then he's the one we sharpen against Tatsuya Shiba."
Then silence.
The display behind her flickered once, then looped again—pausing just long enough to capture the moment of impact, the aftermath, the still-standing figures at the center of the wreckage. Reyes slumped near the barrier wall. Kwon still unmoving, her CAD dim and lifeless. Section One—shattered. Section Four—undeniably, unmistakably victorious.
She watched it unfold again in perfect clarity. Not with surprise. Not with hesitation.
With satisfaction.
Because this—this—was exactly the disruption she'd been waiting for.