Fortunately, she had inhaled a large gulp of air before completely getting cut off, though it did nothing to help her break through the ice.

  Aida thought fast, probing experimentally at Lara’s mana - though she was starting to understand why Lara used her mana so selectively.

  The longer Lara held control over the ice, the more her mana control flagged. She had a very strong initial burst, making her Mana Penetration exceptionally powerful, but she couldn’t retain the control, making her Mana Resistance taper off over time.

  Lucky! As soon as the icy prison impacted the ground, a crack formed, which jolted Lara’s control. Seizing her opportunity, Aida jammed her own mana into Lara’s weakened flow, fully shattering the ice.

  Aida fell out onto the ground, gulping in sweet air.

  "Why won't you just give up?" Lara demanded, her anger beginning to take on a slightly more demented hysteria as Aida pushed herself painstakingly to her knees.

  "Why don't you just finish it if you're that annoyed?" Aida gritted out. She really couldn't understand why Lara was demanding that Aida be the one to forfeit; what difference did it make?

  Lara scoffed, striding across the arena towards Aida. She knelt down, grabbing Aida's chin to look her in the eyes.

  Aida squirmed at the aggressive gesture as she tried futilely to pull her face away, wondering if Professor Havi was going to step in to end this match. Whatever gripe Lara had with her, it had clearly extended beyond simple class rankings.

  "What is your real goal?" Lara spat out. Her fingernails dug into Aida's chin, making her grimace at the sharp stabs. "What are you fighting so hard for?"

  "Why do you care?" Aida snapped, mildly pleased that flecks of her spittle managed to land on Lara’s cheek, though the girl didn’t seem to notice.

  Lara actually had the gall to look aghast at Aida's reverse questioning. "Why do I care?" She slapped Aida across the cheek with her fingertips, Aida's head whipping to the side with the speed of the strike. She felt her eyeballs shake, as if they had only just realized they needed to snap back into position in their sockets.

  "I care because who are you to think you have the standing to challenge me?" Lara roared, though the words were a bit muffled due to the ringing in her ears.

  "Sorry...what?" Aida mumbled. She still couldn't understand Lara's logic; maybe the concussion she had was more severe than she thought.

  "You think just because you're amicable with most of the top half of the class, that you are deserving of competing for the same opportunities as me?" Lara's rant was starting to sound downright unhinged, if it weren't for her ability to maintain a steady, sedate speech. Despite her control, the waver in the air made it clear Lara was anything but steady.

  Aida was getting more and more confused. "Did you want to be a Healer?"

  "No!" Lara's shouts were getting more jarring than the hits Aida was shielding herself from. With her mana at a critically low level, all Aida could do was curl into an unwilling fetal position, protecting her soft bits and head as much as she could as Lara whaled on Aida.

  "You should know better than to indulge in the fantasy that you can climb higher than your station allows!"

  That's what this is about? Aida was flabbergasted. With everything else that was happening, with everyone's life in danger, with Ezra in some unknown state, she couldn't believe Lara was still clinging to such silly concepts as class hierarchy.

  The anger at being unjustly used as a punching bag for Lara's own insecurities was the spark that lit the emotions she had kept carefully stored away, to be examined and absorbed at a later, safer time: the annoyance, and subsequently pointless anger at having her choice taken away from her when Ezra decided to unilaterally send her off with a heroic wish for her to be happy; Professor Bruce's (and the rest of the adults, honestly) refusal to communicate with a student who had obviously become traumatized by her exboyfriend becoming a vegetable; the inherent nature of her whole life, where she already had to acquiesce to factors out of her control, situations not of her own making.

  And getting sent to a world where she theoretically should have been the main protagonist with the overpowered abilities and powerful allies, fearless in the face of adversity. But instead, she was dumped into a useless body, forced to claw her way up to a tenuously modest life - I actually got something taken away from me, and you don't hear me complaining about it.

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  "GROW UP," Aida bellowed as she tackled Lara, the less tired girl moving quickly to counter Aida's tackle by slipping an arm underneath Aida's exhausted bear hug, the two girls in a standoff as they pushed against each other.

  "I'm just trying to live my life," Aida bit out.

  "You can live your life just fine if you forfeit," Lara breathed, her hot breath rolling over Aida's ear.

  "No," Aida grunted. It was stupid, the way she kept fighting back. She was at her limit, she had put up enough of a fight that the teachers might be willing to grant her a point by now, if she ever had a chance to. If she decided to collapse in exhaustion, everyone would believe that she did her best.

  Yet, she didn't want to. She came into this match knowing she couldn't feasibly beat Lara, yet she still was trying so hard. Why?

  "You are a fool," Lara growled as her body tensed. Aida felt Lara begin collecting mana, and with one last, desperate attempt, she gathered the final bits of her own mana to form a needle.

  As Lara unleashed her attack, Aida forced her comparatively tiny needle into the thinnest layer of mana membrane on Lara's back, where her hand was gripping Lara's track jacket. Aida knew she was too weak and too late for the needle to matter, but she pushed it into Lara's body anyway, driven by vengeance from ten years' worth of uncalled-for abuse.

  She knew Lara was technically innocent, compared to everyone - everything - else that directly affected her life. But she didn’t care.

  The mana blast hit Aida precisely in the gut, feeling just as painful as Lara's Mana Surged punches. Aida collapsed, wanting to scream from the pain but unable to, unable to even draw breath.

  She was pretty sure her eyes were open. She could feel her eyelids fluttering as she blinked, but she couldn't see anything...

  ~ * ~ * ~ * ~

  "Ah, good afternoon, Miss Loreh." Professor Bruce's calm voice convinced Aida to turn her head painstakingly to the side. “How are you doing?”

  “Could be better,” Aida muttered, breathing deeply as she took quick stock of her body. Healer Luk had taken care of all of the major injuries she had suffered, leaving Aida with mild soreness throughout her body. “Did Lara win?” she asked grudgingly as she kept her attention on her toes.

  Bruce’s silence made her peek over at him.

  “We haven’t decided yet,” he said diplomatically when she met his gaze. “That was some very impressive mana work you whipped up, Miss Loreh.”

  Aida grimaced. “I didn’t mean to.” She blinked as his words caught up to her brain. “Wait, does that mean we might have a draw?”

  “That wouldn’t be out of the question,” Bruce said cautiously. He suddenly looked shifty-eyed. “However, I am not the final authority on the match points, so I am afraid I will not be able to comment further.”

  Professor Bruce continued to sit patiently on the stool beside her, his body completely still and in right angles: heels planted on the floor, knees bent, back ramrod straight, hands clasped gently in his lap.

  Realizing he was following through on her request to Healer Luk earlier this morning, Aida pushed herself upright so she could face him more seriously.

  She was in the corner bed, and Healer Luk had cordoned off her corner with a curtain, through which she could still vaguely feel Ezra’s breathing. Bruce caught Aida’s glance, and seemed to steel himself for the upcoming conversation.

  “So…Luk said you wished to speak to me?”

  The reluctance in Bruce’s voice was heavy enough to dampen Aida’s own excitement to finally get answers. And maybe it was because she was still riding on the disgruntlement from Lara trying to shove Aida back into whatever hierarchical order she so vehemently believed in, but Aida didn’t bow down to Bruce’s desire.

  “Yes. Were you able to find out what happened to Ezra?”

  Bruce’s eyes flickered, resignation beginning to leak through his serene expression. “I have a hypothesis.”

  At Aida’s unblinking stare, Bruce dropped his gaze, his voice dropping into a soft, monotonous admission. “He is still alive. But I have been unable to bring him back to his vessel.”

  He’s still alive. Aida felt her arms shake as they propped her body up. “He’s alive?” she repeated, whispering.

  “Yes, I have been able to sense his soul. However, the only known, safe, ritual to return his spirit back to his body has…been a failure.” Bruce raised his eyes to meet Aida’s. “I had been considering performing the ritual to send him onwards, if there were no other methods to bring him back.”

  “You can’t!” Bruce raised his eyebrow at Aida’s outburst, though it seemed to be more of an invitation for her to speak instead of a judgment. “I…I had a dream about him. With him,” Aida faltered. Bruce nodded at her encouragingly.

  “He seemed real. And it didn’t seem like he was saying goodbye.” Aida bit her lip, feeling her brows furrow as she tried to remember the faded details from her dream this morning. Why was it that she couldn’t remember the specifics of such a vivid dream? “I…is there a way to speak to him? In your meditation?”

  “I have tried to communicate with Mister Riolt,” Bruce said slowly. “Unfortunately, I was unable to glean much from him; only basic, raw emotions, no complex information.”

  At Aida’s forlorn look, Bruce decided to take pity on her. “My hypothesis is that he wishes to remain in his current state, detached from mortal coils.”