Chapter 16: Chapter 16. Everyone’s Reaction
The hour between classes belonged to the students, lunch, fresh air, a chance to decompress before the afternoon began.
Necrotize walked out of the training ground with his hands in his pockets, and every pair of eyes followed him.
"Did Lord Necrotize just... lose? To Professor Ronald?" The voice was genuinely baffled. "But he’s the God of Destruction."
"I know. I can’t make sense of it either. Is he actually who he says he is, or is this some kind of elaborate impersonation?"
"He lost." Arthur’s voice cut through the murmuring, flat and certain. "But he didn’t use his full strength. He barely used his sword skill either. Anyone paying attention could see that."
A noble boy rounded on him immediately, face flushed.
"You, commoner. How dare you speak Lord Necrotize’s name so casually. People like you never learn any manners."
Arthur turned to look at him.
He didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to. The look in his eyes was sufficient, something cold and absolute that had no business being in the face of a first-year student, something that suggested the concept of consequences had never particularly concerned him.
The noble boy’s skin went several shades paler. A thin line of sweat appeared at his temple. He turned and walked away without another word.
Elizabeth had watched the whole exchange from a few steps away. She hadn’t seen any reason to involve herself. Her attention drifted forward, settling on the figure ahead of her, Necrotize, both hands in his pockets, moving through the Academy grounds with the unhurried ease of someone who had nowhere to be and all the time in existence to get there.
What is the actual ceiling of your sword skill, she thought, watching him. And is there any version of the future where I reach it?
Necrotize caught the shape of the thought and smiled quietly to himself.
***
With break time declared, his destination had been decided well in advance.
The Academy cafeteria. He had read about it, specifically about the desserts, which by all accounts were worth investigating. He had formed opinions about this before ever setting foot inside, and he intended to test them.
He found the place full.
Students packed every table, talking, laughing, eating, running through the full ordinary range of what young people did when no one was asking anything of them. The noise was considerable. The energy was warm and directionless and entirely human.
Necrotize stood at the entrance for a moment and simply took it in.
Strange, he thought. Something this chaotic shouldn’t feel this peaceful.
But it did.
Heads began turning. First a few, then most of the room, the recognition spreading outward from the entrance in a slow ripple. The students who had been mid-laugh went quiet. Several found reasons to study the surface of their tables very carefully. Others, a smaller number, registered his presence and returned to their meals without particular disruption, which Necrotize noted with approval.
He approached the counter.
The staff member behind it looked up, made eye contact, and visibly lost feeling in his extremities.
"H-hello, sir. How can I help you?"
Necrotize pointed at several items in the display case. "I’d like those desserts."
"...Of course."
The order was assembled and delivered with impressive efficiency, motivated primarily by the employee’s profound desire for this interaction to conclude. Necrotize collected his tray and turned to find a table.
That was when he saw her.
Lyra was sitting alone at a table near the middle of the room, working quietly through her lunch with the focused attention of someone who had successfully achieved invisibility and intended to maintain it. She hadn’t noticed the shift in the room’s atmosphere. She hadn’t noticed the new arrival. She was, by all appearances, blissfully unaware that Necrotize was standing directly behind her holding a tray of desserts.
"Hello, Miss Lyra."
She startled badly enough that her fork moved.
"Hello, Lord Necrotize." She turned, recovered, and attempted a normal expression with mixed results. "What are you doing here?"
He held up the tray by way of answer.
Then he sat down beside her.
***
Necrotize took the first bite.
He paused.
"Exceptional."
He had expected something good. What he received was better than expected, which was, in his considerable experience, a genuinely rare outcome. He settled into the experience with his full attention, working through the dessert at a pace that suggested he had no intention of being rushed.
The conversation he had vaguely planned could wait.
***
Lyra watched him from across the table.
There was something deeply disorienting about it, the absolute focus he was giving to a plate of dessert, the complete absence of any performance or self-consciousness, the way he looked, in this particular moment, like any other student who had found something on the cafeteria menu that made their afternoon significantly better.
If you didn’t know, she thought, you genuinely wouldn’t know that he is the God of Destruction.
She pulled her attention away from him and scanned the room. Something was off about the expressions around them. Most students who found themselves in proximity to Necrotize defaulted to anxiety, that much she had already come to understand as a kind of baseline. But what she was reading on the faces nearby wasn’t fear.
It was shock.
She couldn’t work out why. Everyone had known he was enrolling. His presence at the Academy shouldn’t have been surprising to anyone.
She wanted to ask him directly. She prepared the question twice and abandoned it twice. Her courage had not yet reached the level required for casual conversation with the God of Destruction, and she was beginning to suspect it might never get there.
Then the table beside them solved her problem for her.
"Did you hear what happened in the Combat Department today?"
"What?"
"Lord Necrotize apparently lost. To Professor Ronald."
"What! That’s ridiculous. You’re telling me the God of Destruction was beaten by a mortal?"
"I’m serious. I heard it directly from someone who was there."
Silence at that table. And at several others within earshot.
Lyra turned back to Necrotize.
The question came out before she could stop it.
"My lord. Did you lose to Professor Ronald?"
Necrotize looked up from his dessert.
"Yes," he said simply. "I lost today."
"To Professor Ronald."
"Yes." He considered this for a moment with the same expression he had been giving the dessert, genuine and uncomplicated. "It was a tremendously enjoyable experience, actually."
He set his spoon down briefly.
"I haven’t had that much fun in a very long time. Sparring with Ronald was like quenching a thirst that had gone without water for a long time."
Then he returned to his dessert with complete serenity.
Lyra sat with this information and tried, in good faith, to build it into something that made structural sense.
A mortal had beaten a god.
The god was describing the experience as satisfying.
And he was eating a small cake with the quiet contentment of someone whose afternoon had gone exactly right.
She gave up trying to process it and returned to her lunch.
