The hall of the academy was full of girls, and every one of them was looking at Lux Arcadia.
He stood where the headmaster had told him to stand, hands at his sides, two swords at his hip, and let the woman explain his position to the students. He was an ordinary boy, or that was what most people thought, and he had spent five years working very hard to keep them thinking it. Once he had been a prince of the mighty Arcadia Empire. Then the empire had been overthrown and he had lost everything, and now he lived as a commoner, spending his days inside an elite academy for girls and saying nothing at all about the fact that he was known, in certain circles and under another name, as the strongest Drag Knight in the world.
Most of the girls did not seem very pleased about the idea of allowing him there. He could hear it in the way the room murmured, the way heads bent together as the headmaster spoke.
The headmaster, unbothered, pointed toward the two swords Lux carried and asked with a smile whether they were only decorations.
Before Lux could answer, the doors at the back of the hall banged open.
A girl came through them at speed, furious, and demanded that everyone stop for a moment. She said that the headmaster might have approved him, but she herself had not accepted him, and that was not a small difference. She wanted to know how an academy like this one could allow such a shameless boy to work here.
Lux looked at her closely, and recognized her at once. She was the same girl from before.
The tension in the hall climbed. Watching it climb, Lux quietly understood that the situation had become a great deal more serious than he had expected when he walked in.
The headmaster only tilted her head. Since the girl was technically the victim in all this, she said, she was welcome to punish Lux however she wished.
Hearing that, the girl smiled with enormous confidence and challenged him to a duel.
The hall came alive. The girls around them were delighted at the announcement, leaning forward, already arguing over where they would sit and what they would see. The headmaster raised a hand and reminded them that defeating Lux would not be easy. She told them that he had once won the tournament in the Imperial Capital without ever losing a single match, and that because of this achievement people had given him a name. They called him the weakest undefeated.
Everyone else in the room seemed thrilled at the prospect. Lux did not. He looked, if anything, tired.
The girl drew her sword and laid the flat of it against his neck. If he wanted to remain at this academy, she said, he had to win. If he failed, he would lose his place here completely.
Lux stared back at her and said nothing.
Around them the students were already talking. It would be a battle between the prince of the old empire and the princess of the new kingdom, they said, and the words ran through the hall like a spark down a fuse. Some of them remembered aloud how the old empire had been destroyed five years earlier, and what it had looked like when it fell.
Later, in another room, a girl asked Lux what exactly he thought he had been doing.
Lux apologized politely and said he hoped he had not caused too much trouble. The girl was Airi, and the other girl standing near her was Noct. Airi did not look reassured. If he got himself arrested, she pointed out, then repaying her debt would become impossible, and she would like him to consider that before he made any more enemies inside a building full of them.
She reminded him of what everyone in the kingdom already knew. After the events of five years ago, members of the former royal family were considered criminals. Her hand went to the pendant at her neck while she said it, and she admitted quietly that the price of their freedom was not something she could bear alone.
Lux told her that he always tried his hardest, no matter the circumstances, and that this would be no different.
Airi said that in that case he absolutely had to defeat Lisha.
Noct added that Lisha had never once lost inside the academy.
Airi laughed at that and said the same thing could be said about her older brother.
Lux looked over at his two swords resting against the wall and thought about the fight coming toward him.
Soon afterward he changed his clothes and walked out onto the battlefield.
The arena was brightly lit under a hot sun. Around the stadium stood rows of machines, and as the hour came they combined their power and raised an enormous force field over the whole of the battle area, sealing it like a lid on a pot. The girls in the audience were overflowing. They had come to watch the old prince and the new princess try to break each other, and they were not going to be quiet about it.
Lisha came out onto the field and asked him whether he understood why she had challenged him in the first place.
Lux thought carefully about the question, but before he could put an answer together, she told him she would explain everything only if he managed to win.
He drew his black sword and summoned his Drag Knight armor.
The moment the audience saw the machine that formed around him, the noise changed. There was surprise in it, and something close to disappointment, because what stood on the sand was nothing more than an ordinary Wyvern-type Drag Ride.
Lisha mocked it immediately. His machine, she said, stood no chance against hers, because hers was a Divine Drag Ride, a thing of another order entirely. Her own armor unfolded around her, and as the students stared at the power and the shape of it, the air inside the arena grew heavier still. Lux stayed calm under the weight of it while the audience waited to see whether the former prince could survive against the academy's undefeated princess.
The tension between them carried more meaning than a simple duel. For the students watching, it was a clash between two eras. Lux stood for the fallen Arcadia Empire. Lisha stood for the kingdom that had risen in its place after the empire's destruction. That was why nobody in the stands could treat it as an ordinary academy challenge.
And Lux carried his past out onto the sand with him. He was polite and humble with everyone he met, and he understood perfectly well that a great many people still saw him as a criminal for no reason except the family he had been born into. He never complained about it. He put his effort instead into surviving inside these walls and protecting the few people who still trusted him.
Lisha's anger, meanwhile, clearly came from more than wounded pride. There was something personal underneath the way she spoke to him, some resentment aimed at him and at the old empire itself. Lux did not understand her reasons yet. He only understood that beating her might be the one way to learn them.
As the duel officially began, the spectators could hardly hold themselves still. Everyone expected the Divine Drag Ride to crush him where he stood. But Lux's expression stayed level, and that calm hinted at far more skill and experience than his weak-looking machine suggested. People might mock him as the weakest undefeated, but the second half of that name had never once been disproved.
They faced each other across the width of the arena, ringed by cheering students, sealed under the giant force field. Lisha believed her Divine Drag Ride guaranteed her the victory. Lux stood quietly and prepared himself for a difficult fight, knowing that the outcome of it would decide his future at the academy.
Sometime afterward, Lux was officially introduced to the class by one of the teachers.
Lisha kept staring at him throughout, suspicion plain on her face, and the whole classroom began whispering and passing his name around among themselves. Lux stood at the front and thought seriously about going home.
Then he heard a girl's voice he knew.
Startled, he asked whether it was really Philuffy. The girl confirmed it happily. Lux was left staring, because they had not seen each other for seven years.
The teacher asked whether he knew her, and Lux explained that the two of them were childhood friends.
Lisha, unfortunately, did not enjoy hearing that at all.
Lux asked Philuffy politely whether she would share her book with him. Philuffy ignored him completely. Confused, he asked what was wrong, and Philuffy told him to call her Phi-chan, the way he had when they were small.
Lux went red. He had not used that name in years.
The entire classroom burst out laughing at the two of them. Blushing, Lux asked softly whether Phi-chan would share her book with him, and Philuffy smiled and agreed, and under her breath she called him Lu-chan in return.
Watching all of this from a short distance away, Lisha grew steadily more jealous.