Chapter 113

Dueling was the most popular extracurricular at Tenet for obvious reasons. While delving was the fundamental building block for gaining power—and thus status and wealth—fighting monsters, even the most clever of them, fundamentally wasn’t the same as fighting humans. And since humans were always in conflict in one way or another, small-scale or large, there was great interest in honing one’s abilities in one-on-one fights.

Beyond that, it held appeal purely as a sport. Naturally, there weren’t many people who attended Tenet who weren’t interested in combat for the sheer art of it. With infinite variance in weapon choice, styles, and skills, no two duels were the same—even in instances where the same two combatants were on stage.

Natalie herself hadn’t picked up dueling as an extracurricular, but it had been on her list of possibilities. Maybe she would even change her schedule at some point. Just, with her current priorities, learning how to take down opponents in a one-on-one appealed to her ego, but not her sense of practicality. For Sofia, at least, the duelist-style fighter of the group, this sort of practice was more than a functional use of her time.

Tenet had world-class facilities in every category, and that was even more true for the dueling arena. As the most popular sport in the delving world, and with Tenet as the eminent academy in the country, no expenses were spared. The main arena could seat tens of thousands—for the big events of the year—and dozens of smaller ones could host hundreds each. The arena was even used occasionally for the larger dueling circuit, not just the collegiate one. Seeing how certain global political matters were settled through the use of dueling as a sport—as a display of military strength—that made the building political in nature, too. It was perhaps the single most extravagant structure across campus. Though not gaudy. That wasn’t Tenet’s style.

Of course, the first-year’s initial miniature dueling competition—more of an event to seed the freshmen talent than anything—wouldn’t be drawing any impressive numbers like the ‘real events’ would. Only friends, family, and a few interested people would be attending. Sofia had asked her team to come watch, and so, of course they had. It was a small waste of time, since they could easily pick up a temporary fighter and get a few hours of delving in after classes, but Natalie recognized perfect efficiency would drive a person insane. A few hours spent watching duels would be both interesting and practical too—studying the styles of her classmates was hardly a complete waste of time.

As the competition progressed, Sofia dominated the opposition. In the combat rankings that faculty put together, many factors were taken into account, not just one’s ability to face down a single opponent. Sofia’s style had many flaws, especially in a group setting, because she had few to no syngeristic abilities or tendencies, was weak to swarming enemies, and generally offered little to the team beyond her raw offensive output. The thing was—she provided a lot of offensive output, and needed very little support to do so.

And in the dueling ring, none of those downsides mattered. Natalie had spent her life watching this woman fight, but seeing her wreak havoc on even students of Tenet’s caliber recontextualized a few things. She felt slightly less bad about her own failures to handle Sofia over the years. She was an aberrant talent even by the standards of the premier academy in the country.

There were, of course, exceptions. Sofia wasn’t the best duelist of the year, only high up there. One such contender was the unfortunate obvious one: Elida, who had also chosen dueling as an extracurricular. Many of the other big names had as well.

Natalie, Jordan, Liz, and Ana watched from the sidelines as Sofia went about her matches. This wasn’t an official event as other dueling competitions might be, but there were still a decent amount of spectators—one or two hundred—and the convenience stands were open, selling snacks and drinks. Natalie was used to being one of the combatants in these kinds of events—she’d grown up attending them—so being on the sidelines felt a bit odd.