Januar sneaked a look inside the gym, and immediately froze.
A lot of people were gathered inside.
A few classes at least, there was also a group of teachers standing and talking together.
Among them, Professor Bellator who would be acting as the referee and Professor Sotra.
Professor Sotra actually didn't usually attend duels, he admitted himself that he thought of them as a waste of time for students. There was rarely anything worth watching as students only possessed an average of two Soul-Realm Cards.
But here he was.
Januar's anxiety and nervousness instantly skyrocketed. Starting to feel light-headed, he leaned against the door and slid down slowly.
His head was hanging low while he breathed heavily and his whole body was shaking.
"Are you alright, Jan?"
Kay's worried voice only hazily reached Januar's ears, but nonetheless, Januar raised a trembling finger indicating for the other to give him a moment.
The silence was only brief though, soon it was broken by an indignant 'Hey!' by Kay. And Januar felt a warm hand patting his hand on the ground.
He glanced up and found Cast looking at him with a serious expression.
"It'll be fin-"
Suddenly the door was slid open and Januar had to scramble backward just to not fall face-first to the ground.
The teacher who had practically blackmailed Januar into accepting yesterday, stood in front of him and looked down with slight contempt in his eyes.
"Mr. Stolz get inside now, or this will count as you forfeiting the duel, and every teacher will be forced to deduct a certain amount of points from your grades due to your act of cowardice."
Januar swallowed down the tears of helplessness that were threatening to spill and stepped into the gym.
As if to make sure that he wouldn't back out at the last moment, the teacher walked behind Januar, watching him with eagle eyes.
Like this, Januar was driven onto the designated duel arena, which was just a slightly alleviated square in the gym.
Looking around, Januar's eyes were only met with gazes full of schadenfreude, satisfaction and disappointment.
He really hated this.
What was so fun about torturing him?
And humiliating him like this?
He had never done anything to them.
But Januar already knew the answer, it was something he had told himself countless times.
He was undeserving.
Undeserving of any attention his own family gave him, undeserving of the silver spoon he had been born with, undeserving of any happiness in his life.
The funny thing was, the last point, he realized only after entering his 'Realms', he always died just when he decided to pursue his own happiness.
If that wasn't some kind of punishment, what else could it be?
"Choose your weapons!", shouted Professor Bellator.
Soon after, shelves filled with weapons emerged from the ground. These were special weapons only reserved for official duels. As they were merely projections that interacted with the duel badge fastened to the duelists' chest.
Of course, thanks to the badge they felt unbelievably real to the touch, same with the hypothetical injuries they left.
Frederic, who stood opposite Januar, walked up to choose first.
He settled on a mid-sized shield and halberd.
Swinging them, to get a feeling for their weight, speed and range, he returned to his spot in the duel arena.
But his eyes never left Januar.
The latter was also slowly walking towards shelves filled with weapons.
But he seemed rather unusual today, neither panicky nor afraid, not even resigned to his fate.
Finally, he simply grabbed a long bow and a quiver with arrows and returned to his side of the arena.
A few observers were frowning, others were sneering and another group chuckled quietly.
What was he thinking? Actually choosing a bow again, did he think the same trick that worked on Sophie would work on Frederic?
Professor Bellator was also pretty dissatisfied. This student was really a fool, choosing the hard-to-master and ultimately useless weapon over a beginner-friendly ax or hammer.
Again.
Nonetheless, he faithfully abided by his duty as referee and continued.
"Ready?"
After receiving a nod from both students, Professor Bellator pressed a button on the side of the arena.
Immediately the space before the crowd became dark as if covered by a black veil, before lighting up again and revealing big screens on which different terrain choices spun quickly.
This was the unique feature of official duels, the participants would be thrown into a virtual reality, with a randomly chosen terrain, so that they would start on equal footing.
Like in this case, a bow was at a clear disadvantage against a melee fighter in close range, so this mechanic would make the outcome a lot fairer.
Finally, the venue had been decided.
This time it was a rainforest area.
Which put Frederic at a slight disadvantage, especially with his long weapon that could get stuck on some kind of flora during attacks.
But nobody doubted that he would still wipe the floor with his opponent.
After the terrain had been chosen, the screens changed to their actual function.
The screens on the side of either duelist showed real-time footage of their current actions, while the other two kept track of their current standpoint and physical condition respectively.
This setup allowed viewers to freely choose how they would like to observe the duel and made any chance of cheating obsolete.
Most students instantly chose Frederic's screen, if they had to watch a duel already decided from the very beginning, they could at least observe the other's technique and maybe even learn something.
The few that stayed on Januar's side were mostly boys and girls that liked Sophie and wanted to watch Januar get beaten to a pulp.
To them, it almost felt like an act of indirect revenge.
Meanwhile, most teachers went to watch Januar's screen, curious to see just what kind of skill he was hiding.
Except for Professor Sotra and Bellator, they both stood in front of the screen that showed their current distance from each other and the time they had left before the match would end automatically.
In that case, the winner would be the one in better physical condition than the other.
50 km. 3:59:98.
Man, some of these people really need to chill.
Thank you for the chapter.