These Side Characters Have More Important Things To Do

That night, before the duel, King Augustus threw a grand feast, even more lavish than the previous night. All the Angian nobles currently in the Capital were invited to attend. Two extra long tables were set up in the main hall to accommodate everyone and the food was plentiful.

King Augustus was in a good mood, ignoring small slights that he would have otherwise not let slide.

Prince Rian was in a good mood, smiling as he talked.

Earl Rosewood seemed to be in a calm mood, with no particular worry on his face.

They were the outliers.

The servants were tense whenever they approached King Augustus—sometimes, they’ll get a static electric shock from being too close.

The Angians were very careful with their words and deeds, as they didn’t want to attract King Augutus’s attention.

The Sedaverians were worried about Prince Rian (and Earl Rosewood) and worried about what would happen afterwards. Prince Rian had laughed about the contingent having a lot of healers…but they were mostly researchers! Standard-practice-level healers! If they had known this would happen, then they would have asked Duke Schauss to come.

—Scratch that, if they had known this would happen, they wouldn’t have let Prince Rian leave the country!

King Augustus relished seeing all the worried Sedaverians. For the Angian nobles, the duel would be another reminder to them to stay in line.

The little thing that made the dinner imperfect was how Prince Rian was still smiling.

Well, King Augustus would enjoy wiping that smile off tomorrow.

 

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After dinner was over, Rian looked at Ren Xiyang as they walked out of the hall.

“Go to bed early,” Ren Xiyang preempted. “Unless you have any last-last minute things to talk about.”

Rian suddenly had a thought: maybe he could confess to Ren Xiyang tonight!

But if he did that, they wouldn’t be able to do much immediately afterwards because of the duel… Rian made a face. The timing was not on his side.

“Nothing that I can’t talk to you about tomorrow after the duel,” Rian said reluctantly.

Ren Xiyang nodded. “Good night.”

Count Aegean finally felt a bit of relief seeing Earl Rosewood and Prince Rian going their separate ways for the night. They knew to rest up before the duel!

 

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That night was both long and short.

Then, morning arrived.

Breakfast were small-room/small-group affairs. Count Aegean was torn between trying to tell Prince Rian everything that could possibly help him last-minute, versus pretending that everything was fine. He didn’t know if he needed to worry, or whether his worry would be helpful at all: Prince Rian still had the gall to grin at him that morning.

On the outside, Rian smiled. On the inside, he was nervous, a little apprehensive, and quite excited. This was going to be his most serious duel ever, against someone who wanted him dead. The thought of it pumped adrenalin through his blood.

On the other hand, Ren Xiyang felt a sense of relief, and couldn’t wait to get the duel over and done with. They had been preparing for two years, which was a long time for a non-farming-related matter.

After breakfast, they changed into their duelling clothes and headed out to the duelling field.

When they had first arrived at the Angian Capital, the skies had been clear. Now, on the day of the duel, dark storm clouds covered the sky. Occasionally, lightning would crackle and thunder would rumble.

Although it was daytime, the dark clouds made it feel like they were approaching night.

It also meant there was barely any sunlight for Ren Xiyang to harness.

The duelling field was a big open flat area. There was a wide moat-like clearance around it, separating the duelling field from the spectators’ areas.

Unlike the Sedaverian duelling fields, there was no spherical shield around the duelling field. Instead, the duelling field was completely open; the shields were localised around the watching areas.

The audience was in place first. There was the Sedaverian contingent and various Angio nobles, as well as many servants and guards. They all became quiet as the duellists approached.

King Augustus wore a white shirt with gold detailing.

On the other side, Prince Rian and Earl Rosewood were wearing matching duelling clothes: Prince Rian in blue, and Earl Rosewood in red.

With Princess Aurelia and Duke Mauveine as intermediaries, King Augustus, Crown Prince Rian, and Earl Rosewood signed the new magical contract in triplicate with drops of their blood. The contract magically created three clear spheres—the blood detection spell. If blood was spilled and subsequently detected, the sphere would go red, and the duel will be over. Princess Aurelia took one copy of the contract while Duke Mauveine kept hold of two copies of the contract.

The three duellists walked up the stairs on either side and got into position.

Princess Aurelia and Duke Mauveine were co-referees too. They went to stand on either side of the centre field, on raised platforms overseeing the duelling field.

Princess Aurelia spoke: “Crown Prince Rian of Sedaveria and Earl Rosewood of Sedaveria have challenged His Majesty King Augustus to a duel. The condition of victory is first blood. As part of the duel, all three duellists have signed a magically binding contract, thus agreeing to its terms and conditions.”

Duke Mauveine repeated the words in Sedaverian.

Princess Aurelia’s gaze swept from one end of the field to the other. “Duellists, prepare.”

King Augustus rolled back his shoulders. Electricity crackled briefly around his head.

Earl Rosewood and Prince Rian glanced at each other and then looked forward.

The air was tight with tension.

“Duellists, begin!”

Lightning flashed across the field faster than the speed of sound. It split into two and struck Earl Rosewood and Prince Rian!

The blinding lightning faded and thunder crashed with a CRACK CRACK BOOM!!!

Count Aegean’s chest tightened and blinked and strained his eyes.

The after-image of the lightning faded.

Prince Rian and Earl Rosewood were still standing.

The lightning had blinded the audience, but in the fraction of a second before, Rian and Ren Xiyang had combined their magic to divert the lightning.

They had practised direct-lightning-magic manipulation, and they knew King Augustus’s favoured opening move.

The ‘start’ of a duel was a trick. Start meant the release of a spell. There was no prohibition of gathering magic before the start.  King Augustus had been fast, but they were just as fast.

King Augustus’s upper lip curled up. Not bad. This put these two boys within the top 1% of his opponents. His hand moved down sharply, tracing out the path for the lightning to follow. Lightning struck down from the heavy storm clouds, following the path laid out for it—

BLINDING FLASH! CRACK CRACK BOOM!

Water exploded through the air.

The air was turbulent with plasma and ozone and white steam.

But King Augustus could tell that the lightning hadn’t reached them again. But that didn’t make sense, it had clearly struck a barrier of water! How could that be? Lightning went through water even better than air—

Rian met King Augustus’s gaze across the field. Electricity travelled through standard water with impurities, but distilled water was a natural non-conductive material. With a layered shield of plain water, distilled water, and ‘nothing’, i.e. a vacuum, that cut through King Augustus’ lightning path, and a little lightning magic to show an alternative path, the lightning naturally preferred their path to King Augustus’s.

Lightning was strong, but just like every other magical element, it came with its limitations.

Lightning strikes were made by first creating a path using lightning magic and then releasing the lightning. Given how fast lightning travelled—less than a millisecond to go from sky to ground—there was almost never enough time to change that path once it was released. And that lightning magic path was just a suggestion. The path was a highly conductive channel, but if that lightning were to encounter other conductive channels, it might choose a different route, making it somewhat unpredictable.

In the worse case, your opponent could make a second lightning path directing it back to the original caster.

There was a reason why many lightning mages preferred ball-lightning—while it was more energy intensive, it was real-time controllable.

The air started to become colder and colder, and drier and drier.

King Augustus didn’t know the purpose of the water, but it was obviously one of their tricks. Tch, but would it still work if there was more power? He had reduced his original lightning strikes’ strength so that he wouldn’t kill them. But since they could handle it, he’ll just use a bit more magic.

King Augustus called down lightning again.

FLASH! CRASH! BOOM!

Once again, there wasn’t a scratch on Prince Rian and Earl Rosewood.

King Augustus narrowed his eyes.

Lightning crashed down again and again.

Both Rian and Ren Xiyang were moving. It looked as though they were defending against the lightning together.

But in reality, Rian alone diverted the lightning. Plain water, distilled water, vacuum, lightning magic, even earth, he used all of these things to manipulate the path of the lightning.

If his task was to predict where natural lightning would strike, then that would be a difficult task.

Real natural lightning was unpredictable, carving its own path through the air in a near-instant.

But this wasn’t natural unpredictable lightning.

King Augustus had to create the lightning path with magic at a human speed. And the target was pretty obvious—them. They knew the end-point.

After a lot of practice, both Rian and Ren Xiyang were much more sensitive to multiple forms of magic. Despite not being lightning mages, they could sense the path King Augustus set ahead of time and handle it by creating their own lightning path that was preferable compared to King Augustus’s original path.

King Augustus’s casting style also helped them deflect the lightning. He favoured creating the lightning path as fast as possible and releasing the lightning immediately. In a split second of action, it was unavoidable that there was some sloppiness: the endpoint of the lightning path could be dozens of meters above his opponents at the point of lightning discharge.

Normally, the lightning would jump out of the path and onto his human target on this flat duelling field.

Historically, only one person was lucky enough that the lightning didn’t jump onto them. King Augustus dealt with them in the next lightning strike.

King Augustus gritted his teeth. It was taking him longer than expected to deal with Prince Rian and Earl Rosewood.

“It’s almost like lightning tribulation,” Ren Xiyang said idly as another lightning strike failed to hit them.

Rian glanced at him. “Oh, what’s that?”

“I’ll tell you later.”

Rian turned his head away from King Augustus and towards Ren Xiyang and pouted. “Why can’t you tell me now?”

“Aren’t you a bit distracted—”

ZZZZZZ-FLASH! CRACK! BOOM!

—Lightning fizzled into the ground a few meters away from them.

“It’s not as though he’s doing anything differently,” Rian said.

“It’s a long story though.”

Rian perked up. “Then you can tell me afterwards.”

“Hm.”

Meanwhile—

Count Aegean: …Did those two just chat casually to each other in the middle of a life-and-death duel??!!

He had been tense and nervous and anxious and worried, and yet those two decided to chat in the middle!

King Augustus: … These two brats. So, they were the top 0.1% of his opponents. Geniuses, but so was he! They were decades too young to be so cocky! He made the lightning strikes stronger and stronger, trying to find the point at which they’ll break.

The storm clouds flashed with lightning. Blinding lines of lightning traced out a rough bubble of protection around Prince Rian and Earl Rosewood.

Lord Marcus Celeste was a little stunned by all the lightning crashing down. Coming from a lightning-magic family, he had seen a range of lightning duels. This was on an entirely different level.

There was a pit in Prince Pollux’s stomach. The initial lightning strike had reminded him of when his father struck him. He had survived, barely. Prince Rian and Earl Rosewood were doing much more than surviving.

Prince Pollux had a sudden rush of envy. Why couldn’t he be like them?

Prince Pollux also had another thought: I want to talk to them.

He had underestimated them. Everyone had underestimated them.

Princess Aurelia’s breathing was light, as she silently watched the duel. Her father was holding back. At this lightning strength, she could still personally divert it.

But she was a lightning mage. Prince Rian and Earl Rosewood weren’t.

And she noticed that they hadn’t attacked yet. Defence was typically more energy intensive than offence.

She had a foreboding feeling as the air became colder and colder.

 

 

 

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Count Aegean: *sweat emoji* there it is, Prince Rian is happy in the middle of a duel again…

King Augustus: How dare he smile???? Does he think this is a game???

Rian: Haha!

 

 

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Slow motion lightning: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQKhIK4pvYo

Lightning is so cool hahaha I should have made Ren Xiyang a lightning mage instead 🤣