It was obvious—Lance’s wing‑shield was a glider, a crescent of steel catching wind like a hawk’s spread pinions.

A metal glider should be too heavy to lift, dead weight in the sky. But Sirius Sword was different, moon‑bright and stubborn against rules.

Its weight never changed with Battle Aura shaping—no matter what Lance made of Sirius Sword, it stayed as light as a short blade.

Which meant the glider born from Sirius Sword was feather‑light; Lance rode it, skimming the air like a red kite in winter wind.

In Nordland, a knight who flies hits the world like thunder over ice.

The announcer’s voice cracked and soared, “The Blazing Fire Knight’s airborne! Is he aiming to rule the sky?!”

“Impossible,” “no way”—the words rose and fell in the crowd like waves thudding against a shore.

The Frost Knight saw the anomaly. Panic pricked like frostbite; his teeth ground. “This bastard!”

With Lance closing hard like a storm‑front, the Frost Knight was forced to spend everything.

He hardened the snow underfoot into glassy ice, froze the earth itself into a slick mirrored path.

He switched from running to full glide, took the slope’s pull, and let it sling his speed higher, like dropping into a river’s rapid.

No exaggeration—he was wind and lightning, a spearhead cutting air.

“Astonishing speed!” the announcer shrieked, voice sharp as ice shards.

“Even so, he’s getting reeled in. In these last two kilometers, can the Frost Knight shake off the Blazing Fire Knight’s pressure?!”

The danger hung by a thread; hearts rose to throats, a flock startled by a hawk’s shadow.

Once Lance had enough drop, he dove along the line of fastest descent, a falcon’s stoop arrowing down.

“Damn you!” Hearing a whoosh swell behind him, the Frost Knight knew—he was being caught.

Gone was the earlier swagger; frost etched embarrassment across his face.

He refused to lose. Seeing Lance fly on borrowed gear, he chose to strike the glider itself—

“Get down!” he howled, and launched a Battle Aura ice bolt backward, a straight lance for the wing. It hit true. A collective “oh!” burst; the glider wobbled, then the frame burst like brittle glass. Lance had no choice—he fell.

“The Frost Knight had this in his pocket!” The announcer clutched his exploding afro, words tumbling. “They’re within a hundred meters—can he win like this, or—”

“Lance…” On the summit, Jasmine watched, heart dropping like a stone into a cold lake.

“Master…” Yuna, convalescing in the little house, shouldn’t have seen the field outside the Academy. But her mood tangled with the crowd’s, like threads pulled by one loom. She sat up, and prayed alone to the gray, snow‑thick sky.

Those who wanted Lance to win, and those who didn’t, held their breath together, minds sketching the likely scene—

Lance hits hard, sinks into a drift, watches the Frost Knight cross the line with snow‑blind eyes.

The sketch seemed to ink itself—the fall came true.

He went headfirst into the snowbank, a swallowed flame.

Sighs spilled out like steam in winter air.

One second passed—and the snowbank exploded.

A geyser of snow speared upward, skyward, white against gray.

In a blizzard hot yet freezing, a blazing figure punched free like a comet tearing a cloud.

Lance used the explosion of melting ice and snow as thrust, a furnace under frost; he triggered an enhanced Blazing Raid.

With the finish so close, spectators stopped borrowing the Vulture’s Eye. They could see the streak wrapped in flame with naked sight; the roar climbed, “It’s the Blazing Fire Knight!!”

“Impossible!!” The Frost Knight’s scream cracked like ice under boot.

The shock of Lance’s charge was a god‑axe splitting a mountain. Along his path, the snow heaved like a sea; banks to either side overturned in twin waves surging away.

“I can’t lose!!” The Frost Knight cried in despair. The tape was a hand’s breadth away; he flung his arm for it like a drowning man for a rope—

By the rules, any body part that hits the tape earns the finish.

As long as he beat that damned Blazing Fire Knight, as long as he beat that pup from nowhere—

No matter how many “as long as” haunted him, he couldn’t change what came next.

For a heartbeat the world froze; the outstretched hand hung, stopped mid‑air. He stared into that fixed world, helpless, while Lance moved through the stillness like fire through oil—one step sooner—

“I win!” Lance raised the torn tape high, fire trailing behind him for dozens of meters like a burning skidmark.

“Incredible…” The announcer and the crowd stood numb, snow‑pale and speechless.

A few seconds of silence, then the judges’ table found its voice. “Third mock bout—Blue Team wins!”

The cheers erupted, a boiling pot kicking its lid high.

“Lance, you absolute legend!” The apprentices of Battle Arts Class One shouted; a few boys hoisted him up, heat and laughter lifting him like smoke.

Hands stole him from hands; he surfed above heads like cargo on a slow conveyor, everyone reaching to touch, to brush a spark of victory onto their sleeves.

After a lap through the human sea, Lance was pushed onto the podium.

The Dean and staff picked the exact moment, descending by flight arts like drifting flakes.

The Dean floated to podium height, and solemnly brought out a medal sweet with ornament, a sun captured in gold.

“In the name of the God of Wisdom, and of the Royal Magic Academy, I award you, Lance Morrison, the Knight‑Mage Insignia.”

The Dean himself pinned it; the crowd’s roar returned like tide.

Then, a step below Lance, he turned to the Frost Knight. “Do not despair. The Light Deity grants every child the same chance.”

He offered a Knight‑Mage Insignia to him too—

Any recommended knight who finishes three mock bouts unhurt is granted the Knight‑Mage rank.

But the hand and the medal hung in winter air. The Frost Knight’s face went dark as a storm; he wouldn’t take it.

“Sir Knight?”

“By what right—!!” The Frost Knight threw his head back and roared at the sky. He shoved the Dean, whirled, and drove his sword straight for Lance’s heart like a black needle.

“What are you doing?” Lance’s body sketched flame as he leaped back. Light footwork carried him clean past the cheap strike.

“Take him down!” The Dean spun and dropped, sensed the threat, and ordered the Combat Mages to seize. A rush of spells pressed the Frost Knight flat like weights on a wild beast.

Even bound by Binding Arts, the Frost Knight thrashed, a chained wolf biting the air.

In his eyes, this loss was nonsense—

He and his house had poured out coin and blood. How could a no‑name brat steal it for nothing?

And yet, shame flowered black in his skull like mold.

He had been bright once. Then the title of genius knight went to the Rose Knight. Next his honor was smeared by the Blazing Fire Knight. His house’s rich tomorrow was stripped bare.

Failure and humiliation hammered him, two blows ringing. His mind bent; darkness seeped and pooled.

He fixed Lance with a rabid glare. “How could I lose to trash like you!”

“Dean, something’s riding his power—we can’t hold him!” A binder’s voice broke like brittle ice.

“What is it?” The words sounded absurd to the crowd. The Dean frowned and stepped in, snow crunching under boot. “Let me see…”

He was a high‑tier mage, mana deep, horizons wide.

“Don’t tell me…” he muttered, and pointed lightly at the knight’s chest, a touch like a snowflake.

The layered cuirass peeled like an orange under an invisible hand. A young, hard chest bared—and with it, another sight—

Stain on skin.

On his chest, black lines crawled, slow as little snakes, knitting a sigil like frost growing backward.

Gasps cut the cold air. The worldly whispered, “He’s a Night Disciple mid‑fall!”

A Night Disciple during darkfall is deadly. One danger is how the fall infects, a rot that spreads like damp.

A Night Disciple’s birth is the Night God’s miracle. A miracle is sovereign might. If your spirit quails at that sight, you may fall with the fallen.

“Ahhh!” The stands shattered into flight, people scattering like sparrows from a hawk.

“Finish him, now!” The Dean jerked back five paces and shouted orders—but it was already late!

Casting straight at the Frost Knight let the darkfall wave gnaw their mana. Purplish‑black light wound round their limbs. Their eyes went glassy; their minds wandered. “Dean… we’re still children of the Light Deity… we’re still…”

Like junkies past their limit, they slid from haze into mania. “We’re… children of the Earth Mother! Hee‑ha! This feels too good!!”

“Has everyone gone mad…” The Dean backed off with a tired sigh, regrouped with the few still clear, raised shields against Night Disciples, and began clearing the field in ripples.

“Lance!” At the exit toward the Dome Ridge, before the crowd swept them away, Jasmine and the others called, “Come with us!”

“No…” Lance shook his head, calm and steady as a stone under snow. “They’re after me. You go.”

The scene overlapped with Jasmine’s past like two sheets of frost—the day she parted from her birth father.

Snow then, snow now; crowd white and chaotic as blown ash.

A premonition gripped her—

If she split from Lance here, this flamboyant yet earnest young knight—would she never see him again?

The thought swallowed her light.

Her features crumpled; her clean, pretty face turned to wet petals, pear blossoms in rain.

Her round frames, worn always, knocked free and dropped to the cold ground.

Jasmine sobbed, voice ragged, “Lance, if you die, what do I do?”

Lance looked at her, held the sight like a flame in his palm for a few seconds.

“Don’t worry. I won’t die.”

“Why?”

He didn’t answer. Silence settled over him like snow.

In his heart, Fulin spoke softly: “Because I will live a quiet life.”

Lance turned away.

He didn’t look back.

He let the leaving crowd carry Jasmine off like a winter river pulling reeds.

He let the clamor thin to a hush. He let enemies step into his path like shadows gathering—

The Combat Mages, fallen into Night Disciples, swelled with power. Murky aura leaked off them like smoke from damp wood; bliss slicked their faces into evil smiles.

The Frost Knight changed too. His pure white frost turned wine‑dark violet; his expression eased, as if strength had washed his grief clean.

He laughed, full‑throated, “So this is a Night Disciple’s power… heh‑heh… hahahaha!”

“Nine stones… no, thirteen. Impressive.” Lance’s tone was calm, a measuring blade against that wild laugh.

The count of Battle Aura stones marks a knight’s strength. One stone makes a Charge Knight. Ten stones—an Earth Knight, power enough to break ranks like a rolling boulder.

Plain as noon sun, the fall had spiked the Frost Knight’s might.

And skewed his soul. “I was ridiculous before. All that fretting over house, honor, merit—because I had no power. Fool’s worry… Now I have power. I can do anything. No one can stop me… heh‑heh… hahahaha!!”

His face snapped from manic to sharp. “But—Blazing Fire Knight, why aren’t you running? With the Dean’s cover, even if some die, you’d get away. Why stay here and die?”

“Don’t tell me you still want to play hero at the end?”

“As if.” Lance’s face went cold, his usual swagger gone like smoke in wind. “I stayed to end you.”

The shift made the Frost Knight shiver, a quick chill over hot skin. He laughed anyway. “End me? You alone? How arrogant—hahaha!”

“Enough talk. Die.”