Math Is Magic

Carmen's eyes were fixed on Vincent. Her gaze, cold and impenetrable, burned with a rage that seemed to slither beneath the surface, contained but lethal. Her presence dominated the air, wrapping it in an aura of absolute control, as if everything were part of a design already traced in her mind.

With the arrival of the red-haired servant, the atmosphere changed. The very air seemed to grow denser, charged with a palpable tension, almost suffocating.

Vincent, panting, still had one hand on his injured eye, trying in vain to hide even half of his face. His gaze was fixed on her, incredulous, as if he were facing an impossible apparition.

"Y-You…" his lips trembled, the words barely escaping, muddled with confusion. "But how…?"

Carmen did not answer immediately. Her gaze moved slowly over to Mirac, assessing his state, then quickly returned to Vincent.

When she spoke, her voice was sharp as a blade:

"I had already warned you, Klark... didn't I?"

The silence that followed was so heavy it felt like the prelude to an explosion.

Even Mirac, despite the searing pain that tormented him, was frozen, his eyes wide open, unable to absorb or process what was happening in front of him.

'Klark? Is that his real name?' he wondered, as confusion seeped into his mind like a haunting shadow. 'But how does Carmen know? Was she already aware of it? For how long?! And, most importantly... how the hell did she find us?!'

Questions piled on top of each other, but Mirac, overwhelmed by fatigue, decided to look for answers later.

In the meantime, in the blink of an eye, almost in sync with his thoughts, Carmen vanished.

Vincent—or rather, Klark—barely had time to widen his eyes in astonishment before she reappeared in front of him, like a lightning bolt cutting through the sky.

In that brief interval, in a span of time too thin to measure, Carmen had closed the distance between them, moving without making the slightest sound.

Thus, caught off guard, Klark had no time to react.

With a fluid and devastating movement, Carmen drove the palm of her left hand—the one not holding the sword—into Klark's stomach.

The force of the impact sent him flying backward with brutal violence.

His body flew like a puppet without strings, crashing through trees along the way. Each broken trunk sent up a cloud of dust and splinters, until Klark vanished among the debris and the shattered vegetation.

Mirac was breathless, his eyes locked on the spot where Klark had been hurled. His mouth opened in an expression of sheer astonishment, unable to comprehend what he had just witnessed.

The speed, the strength, the precision of Carmen left him completely disoriented.

"But… wha-?" he tried to speak, but a gush of blood rose in his throat, forcing him to silence himself with a muffled groan.

Carmen, with lethal grace, rose from the position she had assumed to strike Klark: her torso, slightly tilted, straightened, while her bent and spread legs extended, returning to their natural posture.

Slowly, the servant turned towards Mirac.

When she had first arrived, giving him a quick glance, Carmen had noticed with relief the magical gauze around the young Prince's severed arm.

However, as she turned back towards him, the intimidation she had exuded up until then faded, revealing a flicker of genuine concern.

"Young Prince, are you all right?" she asked, her voice firm yet laced with a touch of warmth.

Mirac hesitated. He tried to formulate a response, but the words tangled in his mind, blocked by the confusion and emotion of the moment.

When he finally spoke, what he said was not at all the answer to Carmen's question.

"C-Carmen... h-how did you...?"

She gently interrupted him, not allowing room for a reply.

"I would love to answer you now, young Prince, but there's no time for explanations!" She immediately turned her gaze away from him, already focused on the spot where Klark had been thrown. "I will explain everything later. But for now, please rest."

As soon as Carmen finished speaking, a distant sound, the crackling of broken branches, signaled Klark's return.

He emerged from the dust, advancing furiously towards them. Veins throbbed on his forehead, and his face, contorted with rage, looked like a mask of pure malevolence.

His walk was heavy, threatening, and each step seemed to shake the environment like a war drum.

"You fucking bitch…" Klark murmured, his teeth clenched in a fierce grimace. "You never mind your own business, do you?!"

The atmosphere grew unbearable, dense as an oppressive fog.

Carmen and Klark's gazes were locked on each other, ignoring everything around them.

They remained that way for an endless moment, silent, staring at each other with the precision of two predators about to strike.

Then, suddenly, Carmen broke the silence first.

"Carmen Veloth…" said the red-haired woman, her voice firm, a solemn intonation in her words. Her hands tightened around the hilt of her sword, preparing for what was to come.

Klark halted his steps, his eyes burning with rage. With an angry gesture, he grabbed what remained of his glasses and threw them away.

"Klark Minet!" he shouted, the name pronounced like a roar of defiance.

Those words echoed in Mirac's mind like a call to an ancient tradition, a bloody challenge that was about to materialize before him.

In the continent of Armony, as Leonard had taught him long ago, when two challengers spoke their full names, it meant that a deadly duel was about to begin.

A battle destined to end only with the death of one of the combatants.

With the white moon just appearing on the horizon and the sky fading into a deep blue, gently transitioning from the orange of the sunset, the two of them sensed a signal that escaped Mirac's normal understanding.

It was just then that, all of a sudden, the battle between the two began.

Klark lunged forward, furiously swinging his stiff tie, which seemed to pulse with energy under his grip. With a furious shout, he attempted to strike Carmen, aiming to overwhelm her with a single, devastating slash.

But she, with the ethereal grace of a shadow, moved in an instant onto the branches above them. The movement was so fast and fluid that it seemed to almost vanish into the air.

Klark looked up, his eyes burning with frustration as he watched her leap from tree to tree.

"Tsk, damn monkey!"

But while Klark was cursing inwardly, Carmen acted with the speed of lightning.

Without hesitation, the red-haired woman grabbed a sturdy branch from a nearby tree and, with a decisive motion, hurled it at her opponent with surprising accuracy.

The piece of wood hissed through the air, but Klark reacted with lightning-fast reflexes: his tie-sword moved with precision, slicing the branch in two with a clean blow.

But before he could even hint at a smile of satisfaction, Carmen had already disappeared from his line of sight again, quickly sliding down from the branches and reappearing behind him.

With a powerful kick to his back, Carmen sent him flying forward.

Klark landed heavily on his knees, the metallic taste of blood filling his mouth. He spat a dark clump onto the ground, quickly rising back to his feet with a sudden jerk.

"It's pointless, Klark," Carmen declared firmly, looking down at him with the confidence of one who had already won. "You can't beat me."

"SHUT UP!" he roared, gripping the tie with such fury that it seemed almost alive.

The slight tremors in his hands betrayed a growing tension as he stood back up and got into position. In his eyes burned an immense determination to kill her.

"You lied to me!" Klark growled. "How dare you? Because of you, I've been stuck here this whole time! And for that… you'll pay dearly!"

With a primal scream, Klark charged at Carmen again, the tie stretching out like an extension of his fury.

The forest was filled with the sound of sparks and muffled strikes.

Carmen, cold and methodical, blocked every attack with surgical precision. Each movement was a perfect balance of defense and counterattack, her steps so light they seemed to float.

The servant's clothes she wore didn't hinder her: on the contrary, they seemed to accentuate her lethal elegance.

With his left eye still wounded, Klark continued to attack her with brute force, his strikes fueled more by rage than strategy. Carmen, on the other hand, moved with icy calm, her eyes like two pieces of ice staring at him without hesitation.

In a moment of pure instinct, Carmen switched the sword from her right hand to her left and, with her free hand, landed a right hook that struck Klark's face with a dull thud. He staggered, his body bent backward, and the tie fell limp between his hands, returning to being just a simple clothing accessory.

But Klark wasn't ready to give up.

With a guttural scream, he straightened up, his face twisted with fury.

"DAMN YOUUUUUU!" he roared.

From that moment on, with the intention of surpassing his opponent's speed with the unpredictability of his future strikes' trajectories, Klark abandoned the idea of using his tie as a sword.

Handling it in its primary form, Klark began to use it like a whip, making it lash through the air with wild trajectories.

With every blow, he tightened the tie forcefully, so that it would stiffen only at the moment of impact, in a mischievous attempt to catch Carmen off guard.

The fabric moved in rapid sinusoids, making the air whistle. Each oscillation was almost impossible to follow with the eye, an unpredictable dance that eluded control, yet Klark—although it was the first time he had adopted such a strategy—seemed to be managing to guide it with precision.

"What do you think, huh?!" he exclaimed, a twisted grin on his face as he watched Carmen step back for the first time. "You're not acting so tough anymore, are you?! You thought you were untouchable, but look at you now!"

Carmen stared into his eyes, her expression unchanged, but her movements became more cautious. She didn't respond to his taunts, but the shift in her posture indicated that it was no longer so simple to face Klark with his new strategy.

"Are you still so sure you can beat me?" the man asked. "I bet you're not! Yet, you were so confident THAT day..."