Chapter 12: Chapter 12. Elizabeth Ashendra
The students had watched the entire exchange in stunned silence. That boy was no weakling. He was ranked twelfth in the Combat Department for this year’s intake, his combat ability well above most of his peers. And he had gone down in a single kick.
"Next."
Professor Ronald’s voice was perfectly calm. Unhurried. As though he had simply swatted a fly.
A ripple of visible hesitation passed through the remaining students. More than a few found their feet suddenly reluctant to move.
Ronald noticed. He always did.
"You came here to become knights." His voice didn’t rise, but it filled every corner of the training ground. "If this frightens you, what will you do on an actual battlefield? When you look to your left and see your friend, your companion, bleeding out in the dirt. When they’re dying in front of you. Will you just stand there? Will you watch?" He let the silence work for him. "If that’s the kind of soldier you are, this is not your place. Leave this Academy now. Because a knight needs courage. A knight needs resolve. Without those things, you will never hold your head up with pride, not in front of anyone who matters."
Something shifted.
It moved through the students like a current, starting somewhere in the chest and spreading outward. Spines straightened. Eyes sharpened. The hesitation didn’t disappear entirely, but it changed character, transforming from fear into something with more heat in it.
Necrotize watched all of this with quiet fascination.
So this is what a proper Combat Department class looks like.
Genuinely impressive.
***
One by one, the students stepped forward.
Each of them came with everything they had, footwork, timing, whatever technique their family or prior training had given them. None of it was enough. Ronald hadn’t moved from his original position. His hands remained clasped behind his back throughout, and each student who reached him found themselves briefly airborne before landing somewhere on the training ground, the exact location varying based on the angle of the kick that put them there.
Then a blond-haired boy stepped up.
He was the third son of House Aslan, and he walked toward Ronald with his chest out and his chin level, the posture of someone who had decided this moment mattered. His gaze flicked briefly toward Necrotize.
If I perform better than the others, if I stand out, then surely Lord Necrotize will take notice.
Necrotize caught the thought and felt a quiet, private amusement.
You really don’t need to go to all that trouble. You could just come and talk to me.
He kept this observation to himself.
The boy settled into his stance before Ronald, feet planted correctly, a curved wooden sword held in both hands, his form clean and deliberate. Ronald looked at him for a moment with something approaching genuine interest. The style was Asura Swordsmanship, the signature school of House Aslan, and by any measure, a tradition worth respecting.
The boy exhaled slowly. Then he advanced.
He wasn’t going in with raw force. His movement was technical, measured, a controlled horizontal swing aimed at Ronald’s midsection. Ronald stepped back to avoid it.
The moment he did, the swing changed.
Mid-arc, with a smoothness that suggested it was always meant to end this way, the curved sword transitioned from a sweep into a thrust, redirecting cleanly, the tip now driving straight at Ronald’s abdomen. The distance between them had closed considerably. There was almost no room left.
Around the training ground, students stopped breathing.
Ronald, for the first time since the assessment began, brought his hands forward from behind his back.
He had to,
several of them thought at once, and the realisation sent a murmur of collective surprise through the group.
Ronald caught the blade between two fingers, four inches from his stomach, and held it.
Then, in one fluid motion, he used the captured sword to simply hurl the boy sideways. The student tumbled across the ground, rolling twice before coming to rest in a graceless heap.
A beat of silence.
Ronald’s expression, when the boy looked up, carried something unexpected, the quiet approval of a man who had just seen something worth acknowledging.
"Your name."
The boy picked himself up. He dusted off his uniform with unhurried hands, then stood straight with the composure of someone who understood that how you rise matters as much as how you fall.
"Sir. Dominic Aslan. Third son of House Aslan." He said it with steady, uncomplicated pride.
"Good." Ronald gave a single nod. "Return to your position."
"Yes, sir."
Dominic returned to his place in line. The students around him took notice, quiet glances, a few nods of acknowledgment. But Dominic’s attention had already moved elsewhere. His thoughts circled back, as they kept doing, to Necrotize.
I have to impress him. Whatever it takes. I have to. Otherwise...
***
The assessment continued. Students stepped forward and were deposited back onto the ground, one after another, with the grim regularity of a metronome.
Then Elizabeth stepped up.
The energy on the training ground shifted almost imperceptibly. People who had been watching with detached curiosity straightened slightly. Conversations that had been murmured under breath went quiet.
Combat Department. Rank Second.
Elizabeth took her position across from Ronald, her sword held one-handed in the opening stance of Imperial Swordsmanship. Ronald’s eyes sharpened by a fraction, the first visible sign of anticipation he had shown all morning.
He had reason to be interested. Imperial Swordsmanship was his school too. The most powerful swordsmanship tradition the Empire had produced, refined across generations into something that had no wasted edges.
Elizabeth drew a slow breath.
Then she moved, but not toward him.
She began to circle.
Her footwork was quiet and deliberate, orbiting Ronald at a measured distance, her sword tracking him as she moved. She wasn’t committing to anything. She was reading, mapping the space around him, looking for the geometry of an opening that would actually hold.
Ronald tracked every movement with his hands still clasped behind his back, his expression neutral. Patient.
Elizabeth kept moving. Every angle she considered, she dismissed. The gaps she found were wrong. Attack any of them and she’d already be countered before the strike landed. Ronald’s defensive positioning wasn’t accidental. Every apparent opening was a shaped invitation, and she knew it.
There has to be something.
Then she found it.
Small. Brief. Almost too brief to be real.
But it was there.
She didn’t hesitate. Both hands locked onto the hilt and she drove forward, committing fully, the blade angled precisely toward the gap she’d identified.
Ronald smiled inwardly.
There it is.
The moment Elizabeth closed the distance, he pivoted, his entire body rotating with the compact efficiency of someone who had performed this motion ten thousand times, and his leg came around in a full roundhouse aimed squarely at her face.
Elizabeth saw it coming with roughly half a second to spare.
"Oh, no."
The words came out on instinct. But even as they did, something else crossed her face, something unexpected.
A smile.
