[POV Liselotte]

  I descended the coliseum stairs with a deliberate calm that seemed to irritate the Church’s envaries. With every step, the echo of my boots against the stone rang out in the sepulchral silence of the stands. I could feel Leah’s gaze fixed on my back—a mix of pride and restrained worry—and Chloé’s wild pulse vibrating from her seat. When I reached the arena, the cold emanating from my body began to condense the moisture in the air, creating a thin whitish mist that curled around my ankles.

  Ulric awaited me at the center, his golden sword gleaming beneath the midday sun. There was no trace of doubt on his face—only an infuriating sense of superiority, the same one Edward remembered from the school hallways, now amplified by a sacred power that did not belong to him.

  “So the little guardian has decided to py,” Ulric said, twirling his sword with impeccable technical skill. “Prepare yourself, because fifty years of divine training are unlike anything you’ve seen in this backward world.”

  “Less talk and more action, Ulric,” I replied. My voice came out icy, stripped of any emotion.

  “Begin!” the professor shouted.

  Ulric didn’t waste a second. He surged forward with explosive speed, leaving a trail of golden light in his wake. His first attack was a vertical ssh, loaded with mana pressure meant to split both the ground and me in two. With a subtle shift of my feet, I slid to the left. The golden steel passed millimeters from my shoulder, smming into the floor and sending fragments of stone flying.

  Without giving him time to recover, I drew my sword in a fluid motion. I didn’t use brute force; I used the momentum of his own mistake. My bde collided with his, deflecting it even farther. Ulric growled, surprised by my agility, and attempted a quick thrust at my chest. In that instant, I let my mana flow.

  A small patch of bck, extremely slick ice materialized right beneath his supporting foot. It was a minuscule detail, invisible from the stands. Ulric lost his bance for a fraction of a second. It was all I needed.

  I spun on my axis, striking the hilt of my sword against his wrist. The sound of bone meeting metal rang out across the arena. Ulric let out a choked cry, and his golden sword flew through the air, embedding itself in the sand several meters away. Before he could react, the tip of my practice sword was brushing against his Adam’s apple.

  “End of the first round,” I said, staring straight into his eyes.

  Silence fell over the coliseum. The first-year students stared with mouths agape; the nobles in the upper stands had risen to their feet. Ulric was on his knees, panting, his eyes bloodshot with rage and humiliation. Less than thirty seconds had passed.

  “ENOUGH!” High Priest Machias’s voice thundered from the box seats, heavy with feigned indignation. “That is sufficient!”

  Machias hurried down into the arena, followed by his retinue. He positioned himself beside a trembling Ulric, pcing a hand on his shoulder as he addressed the crowd with a forced smile meant to salvage the situation.

  “You must forgive this outcome,” Machias announced, his voice dripping with syrupy condescension. “Our dear Hero Ulric has been under extreme fatigue. The journey from the Holy Kingdom was long, and as you know, his soul has been fighting constant spiritual battles against the darkness that lurks in this realm. Furthermore, the power of a Hero of Gaia is not designed for trivial individual duels. The true strength of our saviors lies in the unbreakable bond of friendship and coordination. Alone they are powerful, but together they are an unstoppable force that reflects the unity of the heavens.”

  I looked at Ulric, who avoided my gaze, teeth clenched. Machias’s speech was a string of lies crafted to keep the reputation of his “pawns” from colpsing before the war even began.

  “If the young guardian wishes to witness the Goddess’s true potential,” Machias continued, fixing me with venomous eyes, “I propose a second encounter. But this time, Ulric will fight alongside his four companions. A five-against-five battle, as dictated by the rules of the holy war.”

  “I don’t need anyone else,” I interrupted, making the priest tense. “I accept the fight—but against the five heroes at once. I don’t need allies to defeat them.”

  A murmur of disbelief rippled through the stands. Even the academy professors exchanged worried looks at the arrogance of my decration. But it wasn’t arrogance—it was a tactical assessment. If I fought alongside other students, I would have to worry about protecting them. Alone, I could unleash winter without restraint.

  “What audacity!” Machias ughed, though I caught a flicker of doubt in his eyes. “If humiliation is what you desire, so be it. Heroes, form up!”

  Isolde, Conrad, and the other two heroes descended into the arena, taking their pces beside Ulric. The tension shifted instantly. This was no longer a duel; it was a pnned execution. The five moved with astonishing synchrony, surrounding me in a perfect semicircle. Their movements were fluid and calcuted; despite their ck of real combat-to-the-death experience, the coordination Gaia had imbued in them over those fifty years was exceptional.

  “You’re going to regret this, Liselotte,” Ulric whispered as he retrieved his golden sword. “Now you’ll see what true coordination looks like.”

  “Go ahead,” I replied, lowering my center of gravity.

  The battle erupted in a burst of light and frost.

  All five charged at once. Ulric and Conrad led the front; Conrad was a hulking mass of muscle, swinging a mace capable of demolishing walls, while Ulric searched for openings with his speed. From the rear, Isolde began conjuring bursts of sacred light meant to blind me. The other two heroes moved along the fnks with spears, trying to trap me in a cage of steel.

  My mind entered a state of absolute calm. I saw the threads of mana connecting them. Their coordination was their greatest strength—and also their greatest weakness: they depended on every piece being exactly where it belonged.

  First, I dealt with the fnks. I sshed the air, and before the spears could reach me, I created a series of thin, razor-sharp ice pilrs that burst from the ground at bullet speed. The spearmen had to halt abruptly to avoid impaling themselves.

  “Too slow!” Conrad roared, bringing his mace crashing down on me.

  I didn’t block. Instead, I struck the ground with my free hand. A wave of absolute cold spread across the arena. The ground beneath Conrad didn’t just become slippery—it turned into a swamp of deep frost that trapped his heavy boots. His mace smashed into the ice, but I was already behind him.

  Isolde fired a sphere of light. I used Conrad as a shield, forcing her to divert her attack to avoid hitting her ally. In that second of distraction, I maniputed the moisture in the mist surrounding me. I created five exact ice replicas of myself, infusing them with a small spark of mana so they would reflect my magical signature.

  The heroes scattered, confused by the six Liselottes moving across the arena. Ulric attacked one, only to watch his sword pass through a solid ice sculpture that exploded into sharp shards, slicing his face.

  “Damn it! Where is she?!” Isolde shouted, trying to clear the air with her magic.

  “Here,” I whispered in her ear.

  I had used the confusion to slide along the ground, creating an invisible path of ice that multiplied my speed tenfold. In a swift motion, I reached the rear line and froze the air around Isolde’s hands, locking her ability to gesture and cast spells. She screamed as the cold burned her skin.

  Ulric and the spearmen tried to regroup, but it was too te. I had strategically divided the arena. Using ice fragments, I created a byrinth of mirrors that refracted the light from the spheres Isolde had previously conjured, blinding everyone but me. I could see their thermal silhouettes through my connection with Tiara.

  Moving through the shadows of ice, I disarmed them one by one. A strike to a spearman’s arm nerve, a sweep of frost to trip the other. Conrad attempted to spin his mace in an area attack, but I froze the joints of his armor, leaving him a motionless metal statue in the middle of the arena.

  Finally, only Ulric remained. He stood alone at the center of the mirror maze, spinning in pce, sshing at the air in sheer panic.

  “Come out and fight like a warrior!” Ulric shouted, his voice fractured by fear.

  With a snap of my fingers, I dispelled the mirrors. I stood before him, my sword wrapped in a yer of ice so dense it emitted a dark blue glow.

  “Friendship is useless if the leader can’t keep a cool head, Ulric,” I said.

  He charged with a desperate scream, burning all his remaining mana in one final attack. But my strategy was already complete. I had been steadily lowering the arena’s temperature. The very air was on the verge of reaching absolute zero within a five-meter radius.

  When our swords collided, there was no thunderous crash—only instant crystallization. Ulric’s golden steel turned brittle under the extreme cold, and with a slight twist of my wrist, it shattered into a thousand pieces. The shockwave of my mana sent him flying backward, sliding across the arena until he came to a stop at Machias’s feet, utterly defeated and covered in frost.

  The other four heroes y scattered across the arena, immobilized by ice or disarmed. I remained at the center, wrapped in my mist, not a single drop of sweat staining my uniform.

  The coliseum sank into a deafening silence. It wasn’t just the victory—it was the way a single third-year student had dismantled the five “saviors of humanity” as if they were beginners.

  I looked toward the honor box. King William wore a restrained smile, but his eyes gleamed with fierce pride. Leah stood with her hands pressed to her chest, watching me with a devotion that made every ounce of effort feel worth it.

  “It seems your gift needs a bit more preparation, Priest,” I said, sheathing my sword with a sharp sound that echoed throughout the arena.

  Machias was pale, his hands trembling on his staff. The narrative of the Church of Orestia had fractured before the entire kingdom. But I knew this wouldn’t end here. When I looked at Ulric, I saw something in his eyes that worried me more than his power: a deep hatred, born from the seed the Church had pnted in his traumatized mind. The game of the goddesses had become personal—and the true war was only just beginning.