Chapter 285: Listening to The Crowd

“Three… Two… One… Begin!”

The moment the announcer said those words, Marina charged forward immediately. I loosely readied my stance, ready to dodge her more easily telegraphable attacks.

Even without Feyt’s ace-in-the-sleeve, I wasn’t a total sitting duck. I was still trained extensively in combat for months, and that wouldn’t amount to nothing. I could rely on those combat instincts to ensure I survived long enough while I figured out the puzzle that was Marina. Or at least I hoped it would.

Marina closed the distance and threw her first swing, her whole body erupting into that familiar, deafening chorus of screams.

I tuned my ears to her shoulders, trying to guess what she was planning to do. But no matter which part of her shoulder I tried to focus on, all I could hear was loud, echoing tension.

I didn't realize it was a massive, horizontal sweep until the wooden slab of death was already whistling through the air right at my chest.

“Whoa—?!”

I threw myself back; the air pressure from her swing blew my hair up as it passed. I hit the sand, scrambled to my feet, and barely had time to recover before she rode the momentum right into a heavy overhead strike.

I dove sideways. The hunk of wood cratered the sand right where my feet had been a moment ago. But before I could even think about throwing a counter-attack, Marina was already spinning on her heel, pulling the weapon back into a defensive guard with terrifyingly fluid physics.

So… I’m not the only one who’s trained.

This pattern continued to repeat as I kept trying and trying to read into any of her muscles just to gain any sort of advantage. Her wrists, her shoulders, her ankles, anything. Every time I tried to isolate a single point of focus, trying to see if I could hear anything worthwhile at all, it got completely drowned out by the rest of her body.

This is tough… I can’t read into her muscles at all!

No matter what I tried, I was hitting a dead end as my ears kept being assaulted by the screams, both from her muscles and the crowd.

The temptation to just have Carine drop Mirabelle's fan and peek at the fight from above was insanely strong.

No. I mustn’t!

If I cheated now, I’d just stay a fraud with a cool trick that could only work on certain opponents. There had to be a way to read her; I just hadn’t found it yet, so I steeled my mind and continued the match.

I ducked under another sweeping arc, but trying to solve a puzzle while dodging a weapon that was literally airing my hair with every swing wasn’t exactly easy.

I kept trying to find that one point where I could hear things clearly, be it in her spine, her neck, or even more unorthodox places like her fingers. But each time, I was met with only loud screaming, like an alarm that wouldn’t shut off.

That hesitation kept coming until it caught up to me.

Whilst I was dodging a strike, my mind was too focused on her right arm, enough for me not to realize what she was planning. Instead of riding the momentum like she always does, she let it drop and charged forward at me with her sword trailing behind her.

I couldn’t react in time when she threw a brutal shoulder-check right into the right side of my chest, knocking me back with the force of a bull.

A series of gasps echoed through the crowd, the loudest being Lionne’s, whose gasp echoed right beside Carine’s ears.

I landed on my back on the sand, air leaving my lungs from the impact.

My vision blurred for a moment as sand kicked up from my landing began to fall all around me.

“Round two belongs to Marina!” the announcer’s voice boomed across the arena. “What a wonderful showing by our two contestants! It all comes down to the final round!”

I lay there face-up, staring at the blinding sky, panting like a dying dog. My ribs were throbbing, but the pain was nothing compared to the sheer frustration I felt.

I lost, but I did so completely fair and square, so my frustration wasn’t from that. It was from my inability to find the solution to this infuriating puzzle.

Think, me. Think!

There has to be somewhere I could use as a focal point!

As I wracked my head for a solution, a shadow blocked out the sunlight above me. She rested the tip of her wooden slab on the sand, wiping the sweat from her forehead.

"Are you alright?" she asked. "You seem… pretty different from the first round. Your reactions are off. Was that counter earlier just a fluke?"

“I just… lost my nerves, haha…” I chuckled pathetically.

In truth, I lost my patience altogether. Marina was an unsolvable puzzle, a walking, breathing true direct counter to Feyt’s hearing. It was infuriating that my brand-new technique had hit a brick wall this quickly, but what really burned me the most was my complete inability to figure out how to fix it.

At this rate, Feyt’s run in this tournament was going to end right here, with me lying on the sand.

But I still had one more round to go through. I needed to calm down and give it everything I had, if only to go down fighting.

I tuned out Marina’s voice and took a long, steady breath to collect myself.

But as I did so, the voices of the crowd began to seep into me.

They’d been a major factor in my loss. If the stadium had just stayed dead silent, maybe I could have actually isolated her muscles. Maybe I would've stood a chance. But I knew for a fact that was unrealistic.

But then, as the crowd continued their chaotic cheers and shouts, I soon began to realize… they weren’t chaotic at all.

Even if there were thousands of them in number, each shouting different things… In a way, they were organized.

Up on the upper west stands roared shouts of encouragement and cheers. Some called out my name, telling me to get back up, prove my worth, and win the match. Those cheers came from commoners, be it from class A or class B; nearly all of them were cheering for me.

On the other end, a collection of a few dozen students were squealing and shouting praise and unintelligible yells as they cheered Marina’s name. They were most likely her classmates.

Together, there were a hundred individual voices, sure. But they weren’t screaming as individuals. They were screaming as a group, each driven by a single, collective purpose.

Once I noticed it, I started picking out the rest of the arena's sections.

The talent scouts near the front rows were murmuring in low, synchronized whispers as they frantically scratched their papers with notes.

The bettors scattered throughout the bleachers, screaming at the top of their lungs for either of us to win as if their life savings depended on the outcome.

Then, it finally clicked…

I had been taking this fight completely backwards.

I’d been trying to pick out a single voice in a roaring crowd, expecting one of them to stand out while the entire crowd was shouting. But a single person’s voice wasn’t working alone. They were working together, cheering together with others around them, all with the exact same goal.

In other words, I needed to stop listening for a single voice. I needed to start listening to the whole group.

After taking in one more deep breath, I pushed myself off the sand, ignoring the throbbing ache in my ribs as I returned to my spot in the ring. Marina was already waiting at hers, resting her massive weapon on the sand.

The crowd cheered once more as the final round was about to begin.

I lifted my wooden sword and readied my stance as Feyt. Up in the stands, I still sat in rigid silence behind my fan as Carine.

I turned my focus to Marina once more. But this time, I stopped trying to look for a specific cue. I stopped trying to single out a single muscle.

Instead, I listened to her entire body and treated it like its own crowd of people, complete with their own groups.

"Three…”

“Two…”

“One… Begin!!”

Marina exploded forward, kicking up sand as she closed the distance. Her body erupted into that same deafening wall of muscle tension, but this time, I didn't get overwhelmed.

Instead of hearing just pure screaming, I heard shifts in the tone of those screams.

Her calves dropped into a low bass. Her shoulders squealed a pitch higher. And her entire torso shifted weight in one distinct wave.

A diagonal slam from the right.

I took a gamble and trusted my reading. The second her full-body tension locked in, I ducked hard to the left, before the blade even moved.

The wooden slab whistled past my head, missing my hair by a single strand.

Both of our eyes widened in surprise, mine because it… actually worked. But that shock cost me the chance of a counterattack as Marina quickly backed off, throwing out a kick that I narrowly avoided, putting us at a distance once more.

Marina kept the offensive as she charged forward once more. Again, I listened to the crowd that was her muscles.

Her right thigh and calves tightened their octaves slightly, along with both of her shoulders and torso.

A low sweep!

I leaped backward, and the wooden slab passed my footprints in the sand long after I left it there. But Marina rode the physics of her momentum seamlessly, spinning on her heel to bring the heavy weapon to a sudden, dead stop directly in front of her chest as she assumed a defensive guard.

To the naked eye, it looked like a trap. It looked like she was baiting me into an opening, ready to unload a heavy horizontal strike the moment I stepped in. It was the same stance I hesitated to jump into whenever an “opening” presented itself.

But now? I could hear what her body was actually preparing to do.

Her shoulders were relaxed, but her hips, chest, and triceps were shouting linearly as they tightened together with heavy tension. She wasn't prepping a swing. She was holding a spring to unleash a straight thrust the second I stepped into her space.

So, instead of backing off to give her distance… I stepped in.

The moment I reached her range, her body uncoiled like a spring into a quick, explosive thrust. But because I knew it was coming, I didn't try to block it head-on or dodge it quickly.

As her heavy blade shot forward, I stepped inside her reach, caught the flat of her blade with Feyt's wooden sword, and snapped it outward. It didn’t take much force to shift her momentum from charging straight at me to away from me.

Her broadsword skittered wildly to the side, dragging her arms and balance with it, and throwing her entire chest wide open.

With her weight committed and her guard ruined, she couldn't recover in time.

Without wasting a breath, leaped forward and thrust my sword straight into her chest.

The wooden tip hit true with a sharp, heavy thud. The force of the impact drove the wind right out of her, sending her stumbling backward until her fingers slipped from her broadsword. The wooden slab crashed onto the sand, and Marina followed right after, landing flat on her back with a look of pure shock and awe.

For a moment, the entire arena fell completely silent.

No cheers, no shouts.

Then, the arena erupted.

"UNBELIEVABLE!" the announcer shrieked, cracking from pure excitement. "IN A SHOCKING TURN OF EVENTS, FEYT TAKES THE MATCH! THE WINNER OF THE FIRST DUEL OF THE DAY IS FEYT OF CLASS A!"

The crowd went absolutely feral. Shouts, whistles, and chaotic cheers washed over the ring in a wave of noise so loud it shook the sand beneath my boots.

I stood there panting, holding my sword loosely as I stared at the defeated Marina slowly getting up.

I… I did it.

I solved the puzzle.

All without cheating.

But as soon as the adrenaline washed out of my system… both of my bodies went limp.

“L-Lady Carine?!” Lionne gasped beside Carine as I nearly slipped out of my seat.

I quickly adjusted my balance and straightened up again as I shut my fan with trembling fingers.

“Lady Carine? Are you alright?!” Lionne said with a worried look.

“I-I’m fine, Lionne. I just… fell asleep for a moment.”

“R-Right…”

So… even adrenaline can affect me between bodies…

I learn something new every day.