*Championship Match: Raven Zeus vs Unknown (Riyan)**
The arena had been given an hour to recover between the semifinals and finals. Repair crews had worked frantically to smooth over craters, replace shattered stone, and reinforce the protective barriers that kept spectators safe from stray techniques. Now the battlefield gleamed pristine once more, a blank canvas waiting for its final masterpiece of violence.
I stood at the entrance tunnel, listening to the crowd's roar wash over me like a physical force. This was it—the moment I'd been building toward since the entrance exam began. One more victory, one perfectly timed reveal, and I'd cement my position at the top of the first-year hierarchy.
My body ached from the fight with Noha. The healers had done what they could in the limited time available, but exhaustion still weighed on my limbs. My mana reserves were only about sixty percent replenished, and several muscle groups screamed protest with every movement.
Across the arena, Raven emerged from the opposite tunnel.
She looked completely fresh—no signs of fatigue, no visible injuries, her posture radiating the same casual confidence she'd displayed all day. The fights against Livia and Alex hadn't even winded her. She'd been conserving her strength, holding back against every opponent, waiting for this moment.
*She knew,* I realized. *She's known from the start who the real competition would be.*
Our eyes met across the distance, and something electric passed between us. Recognition. Challenge. The unspoken acknowledgment that everything before this had been prologue.
"LADIES AND GENTLEMEN!" The announcer's voice boomed through amplification enchantments. "THE MOMENT YOU'VE ALL BEEN WAITING FOR! OUR CHAMPIONSHIP MATCH TO DETERMINE FIRST PLACE IN THIS YEAR'S RANKING BATTLE!"
The crowd's energy spiked to almost painful levels.
"IN THE WEST CORNER—DAUGHTER OF OUR ESTEEMED PRINCIPAL, UNDEFEATED TODAY WITH TWO DOMINANT VICTORIES—RAVEN ZEUS!"
Cheers erupted, her name chanted by thousands of voices.
"AND IN THE EAST CORNER—THE MYSTERIOUS NEWCOMER WHO'S SHATTERED RECORDS AND DEFEATED THE ASURA PRINCESS—UNKNOWN!"
A different kind of roar—curiosity, excitement, the hunger to see whether I was truly worthy of the hype.
The referee stepped forward, a senior instructor whose aura alone suggested he could probably defeat most of the students watching. "This match will determine first and second place rankings. Standard rules apply—fight continues until one combatant surrenders, is knocked unconscious, or I judge them unable to continue safely. Killing techniques are forbidden. Permanent maiming is forbidden. Everything else..." He smiled grimly. "Is fair game. Combatants, take your positions!"
I walked to the center of the arena, spear held loosely in my right hand. Raven approached from the opposite side, her sword still sheathed, that infuriating confidence radiating from every step.
We stopped three meters apart.
"So," Raven said quietly, her voice carrying only to me despite the crowd's noise. "Ready to show me what you've really got?"
"Could ask you the same question," I replied. "You've been holding back all day."
Her smile was sharp as her blade. "So have you. Let's see who's been hiding more."
The referee raised his hand. "COMBATANTS READY?"
I settled into my stance, spear angling forward, weight balanced between my feet. Every muscle in my body sang with tension, ready to explode into motion.
Raven's hand moved to her sword's hilt, but she didn't draw yet. Just that simple motion made the air feel heavier, charged with impending violence.
"BEGIN!"
---
Raven moved first, but not with the explosive speed I'd expected. She drew her blade in a single smooth motion—beautiful economy of movement that somehow made the simple act look like poetry—and settled into a ready stance.
"Demonic Sword Formation Art—Second Formation: Attacking Form!"
Her aura flared, and suddenly I understood. The Formation Arts weren't just techniques—they were *states of being*, fundamental shifts in how she approached combat. The defensive form I'd seen her use against Alex had made her an immovable wall. This attacking form transformed her into a predator.
She closed the distance in two steps, faster than she'd moved in any previous fight, and her blade came at me in a diagonal slash that hummed with concentrated energy.
I met it with my spear. "Raging Fire Spear Art—Seventh Form: Flaming Dive!"
My weapon ignited, fire spiraling around the shaft as I drove forward. Our weapons met with a sound like thunder, the impact creating a shockwave that cracked the arena floor beneath us.
We separated, circling each other warily.
"Not bad," Raven acknowledged, her eyes gleaming. "But you're already tired from your previous match. How long can you keep up?"
"Long enough," I shot back, then attacked.
My spear became a blur, each strike flowing into the next, creating a continuous offensive that gave her no breathing room. Fire magic augmented each attack, flames dancing along the weapon's path and forcing her to defend against both physical and magical threats simultaneously.
Raven's blade met every strike, deflecting with minimal wasted motion. But I could see the calculation in her eyes—she was measuring me, analyzing my patterns, building a tactical model of how I fought.
*Can't let her adapt. Need to keep changing things up.*
I shifted techniques mid-combination. "Dark Spirit Spear Art—Third Form: Phantom Strike!"
My spear multiplied into afterimages, each one looking equally solid, all striking from different angles. Most were illusions created by darkness manipulation, but three were real attacks hidden among the fakes.
Raven's eyes narrowed, and for the first time I saw her really concentrate. Her blade moved in a complex pattern, and I realized with shock that she was blocking *all* of them—including the illusions.
"Soul perception," she explained, reading my surprise. "I don't need to see which attacks are real. I can feel them." Her counter came immediately, a rising slash that forced me back three steps. "Demonic Blood Sword Art—Fourth Form: Crimson Crescent!"
Blood-red energy erupted from her blade in a crescent wave. I barely got my spear up in time, channeling mana into a defensive barrier that shattered on impact but deflected the worst of the attack.
The crowd was going insane, unable to even track our movements anymore. We were fighting at speeds that pushed the limits of what C-rank fighters should be capable of, each exchange fast enough that spectators saw only blurs punctuated by explosions of light and force.
We clashed again and again, neither gaining clear advantage. My fire techniques met her blood magic, darkness met her thunder, our weapons creating a symphony of destruction that made the arena itself groan under the strain.
But I could feel it—the gradual erosion of my stamina. Each blocked attack cost me more than it cost her. Each technique drained reserves I couldn't fully replenish. The exhaustion from fighting Noha was catching up, my body starting to betray me with small delays, minor inaccuracies.
Raven felt it too. Her attacks came faster, pressing harder, exploiting the growing gaps in my defense.
*Need to change the game. Can't win a war of attrition.*
I took a calculated risk, dropping my guard for a split second to gather energy. Raven's eyes widened—she recognized the opening and *had* to take it, her instincts as a fighter overriding caution.
Her blade drove toward my chest with lethal precision.
"Dark Spirit Spear Art—Fifth Form: Void Counter!"
At the last instant, I twisted, letting her blade pass within millimeters of my body while my spear hooked her sword and redirected its momentum. The technique used her own force against her, pulling her off-balance and into range for my counter-strike.
My spear drove toward her exposed side—
She vanished.
Not literally disappeared, but moved so fast it looked like teleportation. When she reappeared, she was behind me, blade already descending toward my back.
"Corrupted Thunder Art—Preliminary Form: Lightning Step!"
*Shit!*
I threw myself forward into a roll, her blade cutting through the space I'd just occupied. When I came up, we were both breathing hard, circling each other with new respect in our eyes.
"You're better than I expected," Raven admitted. "Most people can't force me to use Corrupted Thunder techniques."
"And you're as terrifying as advertised," I replied. "Want to stop holding back now?"
Her smile was almost feral. "You asked for it. Don't blame me if you regret this."
She took a deep breath, and her entire aura *transformed*. What had been golden light became shot through with black lightning, crackling with barely contained power. The air itself seemed to darken around her, pressure building like a storm about to break.
This was it. The real Raven Zeus. The anti-villainess who could fight on equal terms with the protagonist's ultimate forms.
*Well,* I thought, gathering my own power in response, *if she's going all out, I'd better match her.*
Fire and darkness swirled around my spear, the two elements merging in a way that shouldn't have been possible—destruction and void, creation and negation, dancing together in harmony.
"Come at me with everything!" I shouted. "No more holding back!"
Raven's eyes blazed with determination. "Corrupted Thunder Art—First Form: Dread of Heaven!"
She launched herself into the sky, black lightning gathering around her body until she looked like a descending storm given human form. The technique was apocalyptic—thunder that didn't just destroy but *corrupted*, turning everything it touched into ash and ruin.
The entire sky above the arena darkened, clouds boiling into existence despite the clear weather moments before. Lightning tore through the heavens, each bolt carrying enough force to vaporize steel.
The crowd's cheering had stopped. This had gone beyond competition—this was *real* combat between two fighters who'd stopped caring about rankings and were purely focused on defeating each other.
I planted my spear into the arena floor and channeled *everything*. All my remaining mana, my fire affinity pushed to its absolute limit, and the darkness I'd been carefully conserving throughout every previous fight.
"Dark Spirit Spear Art—Sixth Form: Rise of Feras!"
The arena floor cracked and shattered as darkness erupted from beneath, taking the forms of spectral warriors—ancient Asura soldiers from forgotten battles, their forms made of pure shadow and malice. They rose around me like an army, each one wielding phantom weapons, all focused upward toward the descending storm.
Our techniques collided.
Heaven and earth, thunder and darkness, one fighter descending like divine judgment while another stood like the defiant guardian of the underworld itself.
The explosion was blinding. Every protective barrier in the Colosseum activated simultaneously, straining to contain the sheer magnitude of energy being unleashed. The noise was deafening—thunder and the screams of shadow warriors merging into a sound that felt like reality breaking.
For three eternal seconds, neither technique gave ground.
Then mine began to crack.
Raven's power was overwhelming, her mastery of Corrupted Thunder Art pushing through my defense like a spear through paper. I could feel my technique failing, the spectral warriors dissipating, darkness burning away under the assault of corrupted lightning.
*I'm going to lose.*
The realization was bitter but undeniable. I'd given everything, pushed myself to absolute limits, and it wasn't quite enough. Raven was just too strong, too skilled, too perfectly trained.
But I wasn't going down without one final gesture.
As her technique broke through mine, as the black lightning descended toward me with apocalyptic force, I channeled the last dregs of my power into one action.
I leaped upward, using my darkness affinity to propel myself into the sky. Not to attack—I had nothing left to attack with. But to catch Raven as her technique exhausted itself, as the backlash from using such overwhelming power left her momentarily vulnerable.
My arms wrapped around her as we both fell, my body positioned beneath hers to take the impact. The landing drove the air from my lungs and sent fresh spikes of pain through already-abused muscles.
We hit the ground together, Raven in my arms in what could only be described as a princess carry, both of us too exhausted to immediately move.
*CRACK*
My mask, already damaged from previous impacts, finally shattered completely. Pieces fell away, revealing my face to the entire Colosseum.
Silence fell like a blanket.
Then someone in the crowd gasped. "That's... that's Riyan Descartes!"
The name rippled through the spectators like wildfire. Shock, disbelief, recognition spreading as thousands of people processed what they were seeing.
The mysterious "Unknown" who'd dominated the entrance exam and ranking battle wasn't some foreign prodigy. It was the "dog-licker" villain, the disgraced young master, the infamous simp who'd embarrassed himself for years.
Except that person was gone. In his place was someone who'd just fought the Principal's daughter to a standstill, who'd revolutionized the continental modeling industry, who carried himself with confidence and skill that made his past behavior seem like it belonged to a completely different person.
From her position in my arms, Raven looked up at me with wide golden eyes. Her cheeks flushed slightly—whether from exertion or something else, I couldn't tell.
[Ding!]
[Raven's affection increasing...]
[Raven's affection increasing...]
The system notifications chimed in my mind, but I ignored them.
The referee's voice finally broke the silence: "Winner... Riyan Descartes!"
---
**Fera Starlight's POV**
I stood in the competitor viewing area, hands gripping the railing so tight my knuckles had gone white.
The fight had been spectacular—two fighters operating at levels that shouldn't have been possible for first-years, techniques that veteran hunters would struggle to execute, power that made the arena itself seem fragile.
But more than the spectacle, more than the display of skill, what held my attention was *him*.
When the unknown fighter had first appeared in the tournament, I'd been curious like everyone else. When he'd defeated Ava—proud, powerful Ava who I'd trained alongside—I'd been shocked. When he'd survived Noha's assault and emerged victorious, I'd been impressed.
But now, watching his mask shatter and reveal features I'd seen countless times before, I felt something else entirely.
Pride.
Not the romantic kind—gods, no. Despite our engagement, I'd never felt that way about Riyan. His previous behavior had been too pathetic, too desperate, too utterly beneath the dignity of both our families.
But this? This version of Riyan Descartes who stood in the arena, exhausted but unbowed, who'd pushed Raven Zeus to her absolute limits, who carried himself with the confidence of someone who'd earned his place through merit rather than family name?
This was someone worthy of respect.
I'd watched his transformation over the past months—the way he'd stopped his embarrassing pursuit, how he'd thrown himself into training, his success in the modeling industry that had nothing to do with family connections and everything to do with dedication and natural talent.
Part of me had wondered if it was an act, if the old Riyan was lurking beneath the surface waiting to emerge and humiliate himself again.
But watching him fight, seeing the skill and determination and sheer *will* that had carried him through this tournament...
*He really has changed. Completely.*
The thought brought a smile to my face. Not of attraction, but of genuine satisfaction. We were still engaged, still bound by family arrangements neither of us had chosen. But at least now I could look at my fiancé without feeling secondhand embarrassment.
At least now he was someone who might actually be worthy of standing beside a Starlight.
As Riyan looked up at the crowd, his face fully revealed, I saw exhaustion in his eyes but also satisfaction. He'd proven what he'd set out to prove, established himself as a force to be reckoned with.
*Good,* I thought. *About time you started acting like the person everyone expected you to be.*
The crowd's reaction was shifting from shock to excitement as people processed the reveal. The disgraced young master had returned triumphant, transformed from joke into genuine powerhouse.
The story would spread across the continent within days. "Riyan Descartes, once the embarrassment of two great families, now stands as First Rank of this year's Academy class."
I could already imagine my father's reaction when he heard the news. Probably grudging approval mixed with skepticism that it would last.
But I had a feeling this wasn't a temporary change. Something fundamental had shifted in Riyan Descartes.
And for the first time since our engagement had been announced, I didn't feel resentment about it.
Just... possibility.
---
**Riyan's POV**
[Ding!]
[Task completed!]
[Would Host like to redeem rewards?]
"Not now," I thought, too exhausted to deal with system notifications.
Raven had finally recovered enough to stand on her own. She looked at me with an expression I couldn't quite read—respect, certainly, maybe frustration at not achieving complete victory, and something else I didn't have energy to analyze.
"That was..." she started, then paused. "You're much stronger than anyone expected, Riyan Descartes."
"Could say the same about you," I replied. "That Corrupted Thunder Art is terrifying."
"And your Dark Spirit Spear Art isn't?" She shook her head, a smile tugging at her lips. "We'll have to fight again sometime. When we're both fresh."
"Looking forward to it."
The medical staff was approaching, probably to check us both for serious injuries. The crowd was still processing the revelation, conversations buzzing with speculation and excitement.
I'd done it. First place in the Ranking Battle. My identity revealed at the perfect moment of triumph. The foundation for everything else I needed to accomplish at this Academy firmly established.
But as I looked around the Colosseum—at Livia watching with possessive pride, at the spot where Syra was probably hidden in the crowd, at Raven standing beside me with new respect in her eyes, at Fera's complicated expression in the viewing area—I realized something.
The easy part was over.
Now came navigating the consequences.
The Academy Entrance Exam Arc was complete.
But the real story was only just beginning.