4.07 – Competition

Dueling was the most popular extracurricular at Tenet for obvious reasons. While delving was the fundamental building block for gaining power—and thus status and wealth—fighting monsters, even the most clever of them, fundamentally wasn’t the same as fighting humans. And since humans were always in conflict in one way or another, small-scale or large, there was great interest in honing one’s abilities in one-on-one fights.

Beyond that, it held appeal purely as a sport. Naturally, there weren’t many people who attended Tenet who weren’t interested in combat for the sheer art of it. With infinite variance in weapon choice, styles, and skills, no two duels were the same—even in instances where the same two combatants were on stage.

Natalie herself hadn’t picked up dueling as an extracurricular, but it had been on her list of possibilities. Maybe she would even change her schedule at some point. Just, with her current priorities, learning how to take down opponents in a one-on-one appealed to her ego, but not her sense of practicality. For Sofia, at least, the duelist-style fighter of the group, this sort of practice was more than a functional use of her time.

Tenet had world-class facilities in every category, and that was even more true for the dueling arena. As the most popular sport in the delving world, and with Tenet as the eminent academy in the country, no expenses were spared. The main arena could seat tens of thousands—for the big events of the year—and dozens of smaller ones could host hundreds each. The arena was even used occasionally for the larger dueling circuit, not just the collegiate one. Seeing how certain global political matters were settled through the use of dueling as a sport—as a display of military strength—that made the building political in nature, too. It was perhaps the single most extravagant structure across campus. Though not gaudy. That wasn’t Tenet’s style.

Of course, the first-year’s initial miniature dueling competition—more of an event to seed the freshmen talent than anything—wouldn’t be drawing any impressive numbers like the ‘real events’ would. Only friends, family, and a few interested people would be attending. Sofia had asked her team to come watch, and so, of course they had. It was a small waste of time, since they could easily pick up a temporary fighter and get a few hours of delving in after classes, but Natalie recognized perfect efficiency would drive a person insane. A few hours spent watching duels would be both interesting and practical too—studying the styles of her classmates was hardly a complete waste of time.

As the competition progressed, Sofia dominated the opposition. In the combat rankings that faculty put together, many factors were taken into account, not just one’s ability to face down a single opponent. Sofia’s style had many flaws, especially in a group setting, because she had few to no syngeristic abilities or tendencies, was weak to swarming enemies, and generally offered little to the team beyond her raw offensive output. The thing was—she provided a lot of offensive output, and needed very little support to do so.

And in the dueling ring, none of those downsides mattered. Natalie had spent her life watching this woman fight, but seeing her wreak havoc on even students of Tenet’s caliber recontextualized a few things. She felt slightly less bad about her own failures to handle Sofia over the years. She was an aberrant talent even by the standards of the premier academy in the country.

There were, of course, exceptions. Sofia wasn’t the best duelist of the year, only high up there. One such contender was the unfortunate obvious one: Elida, who had also chosen dueling as an extracurricular. Many of the other big names had as well.

Natalie, Jordan, Liz, and Ana watched from the sidelines as Sofia went about her matches. This wasn’t an official event as other dueling competitions might be, but there were still a decent amount of spectators—one or two hundred—and the convenience stands were open, selling snacks and drinks. Natalie was used to being one of the combatants in these kinds of events—she’d grown up attending them—so being on the sidelines felt a bit odd.

Something strange was happening between each of Sofia’s matches, too. With each of her inevitable victories, Sofia’s eyes would find their way to Natalie and her group. That wasn’t the odd part itself, of course, but rather—how they seemed to always land on Natalie first, before she gave a reluctant roll of her eyes and a thumbs up. That would bring a smile Sofia would try to hide, and her eyes would carry along to the rest of her team, nodding and playing humble.

Natalie saw through it. Sofia wanted attention from Natalie so she could rub it in. ‘Look how good I am’. Still, Natalie continued encouraging her after each victory. In the dueling ring, the woman was really something else. And Sofia seemed so pleased by the thumbs-up each time that Natalie supposed she didn’t mind feeding her ego. She had an annoyingly cute smile. But more annoying than cute. It agitated Natalie in a way hard to describe.

An evening spent chatting with her team and watching spars was a nice break from the frantic pace of Tenet daily life. Even better, an unexpected guest showed up—Sammy. Accompanying her were her two friends, Evie and Dag, which Natalie had met at the party. Apparently Dag had a little brother who was a freshmen and was participating in today’s event. Their groups ended up mingling and watching the fights together, though Dag split off when his brother had a match in a different ring coming up. Sofia wasn’t always active, either, of course—there were a lot of dueling students, and Tenet was getting a wide spread of match ups to properly seed the students for future events. Hundreds or more matches were taking place, and there were only so many rings.

To Natalie’s bafflement, Sofia’s demeanor changed when she came out—again—the victor of her next round. She looked over, saw Natalie sitting next to Sammy, and rather than smiling at Natalie’s thumbs-up, she frowned. When the match finished, Sofia exited the ring and their group came up to properly congratulate her, but the shift in attitude held. She chatted perfectly normally with the rest of the group, but seemed to ignore Natalie. It wasn’t outright hostility or anything, and rather subdued—Sofia was hardly running to Natalie to chat with her to begin with—so Natalie wondered whether she was imagining it.

It continued that way for the rest of the event, even after their two separate groups split off, and Sammy said her goodbyes. Jordan noticed it too, and asked Natalie if she’d done something. If Natalie had, she had no clue what. It had started when Sammy arrived, but as far as Natalie knew, the two of them didn’t even know each other, so she couldn’t come up with a reason why Sammy sitting next to Natalie would matter in the slightest.

The irritable demeanor only grew. By the time all of Sofia’s matches came to a wrap, Sofia was all but glaring at Natalie, to Natalie’s complete confusion. Natalie and the rest of the group came up to Sofia, but Sofia made a few brief pleasantries and said she was going to get changed. Her shortness had carried over even to talking with Liz and Jordan by that point.

Jordan watched her go, then turned to Natalie. “You should go talk to her.”

“I didn’t do anything.”

“Still,” Jordan said. “You should go. Find out what’s happening.” Even Jordan seemed a bit perplexed by the situation.

Natalie considered whether she wanted to do that—a confrontation with Sofia was sure to be a disaster—but considering how Sofia had seemed almost friendly at the start of the event, she made her mind up.

“Okay, fine,” Natalie said. “I’ll go see what’s up.”