The match started

I let him cast first. He was a fire elementalist, decent control for his rank, and he opened with a wide arc of flame meant to herd me into a corner.

I avoided it with some difficulty, it was a powerful attack, but I wasn’t weak either. We were both C-Rankers.

He had time to register the look on my face before I closed the distance.

I injured his arm at the elbow with the first strike.

The second strike took him in the gut hard enough to fold him forward into my knee, which came up to meet his face.

Ptui!

Blood sprayed from his cracked nose. He stayed standing on reflex, swaying. His good hand came up to call another spell.

Before he could cast, I grabbed him by the collar of his uniform, lifted him off the sand, and threw him several meters away.

Then, I activated my skill. "Buddha’s Palm."

The massive palm struck him under the watchful eyes of everyone present, sending him flying through the arena and clearing the boundary line by several metres and skidded some more before he stopped moving.

The referee raised his hand, ending the fight immediately before rushing to check on him.

"The winner: Ash Rowan"

The stands had gone quiet for the third time this week. I rolled my shoulder, brushed sand off the back of my hand, and let my eyes travel up to where the E-rank from yesterday was sitting in the second row.

His face had drained of colour.

He’d brought his master here to fix his pride, and he’d just watched him get pasted across an arena floor by the same F-rank he’d come to put in his place.

The kid’s mouth was hanging slightly open. His hands were clenched on the railing in front of him. Around him, the murmur of the watching students had started up again, and the murmur was not flattering.

"One-trick wonder, my ass."

"That’s two ranks above him. Two ranks."

"Did you guys see that palm attack? It was really powerful, it’s at least a C-Rank skill."

Ash’s reputation was starting to change. The Roman Vale fight had been written off as luck. The Lena Castille fight had been written off as the gap between F-rank and E-rank water mage being narrower than people thought.

This one was harder to write off. This one was a C-Ranker, a fire elementalist with a name that came with money, and I’d thrown him across the arena like he’d been a pebble I picked up from the street.

I walked over to where he’d landed.

The referee had checked up on him, deeming him lightly injured without any serious injuries that could prove dangerous.

He was on his back in the sand, breathing in short ragged hitches, his injured arm cradled against his chest.

Blood ran from his nose down the side of his face. His good hand twitched at his side. He saw me coming and tried to push himself up onto his elbow, which didn’t work because the elbow was on the injured side.

I crouched beside him before turning my palm up.

"Give it."

He grunted. The grunt turned into a wheeze. He coughed once, spat a small clot of blood into the sand, and managed a thin, defiant version of a smile.

"What. Who said I’d give it to you."

"We had a deal." I said, remaining calm.

"Where." His voice was a rasp. "Where’s your evidence. A contract. A witness statement. You have anything signed, F-rank? Because I don’t remember agreeing to anything. I’d say I lost the match, fair, but a verbal cafeteria bet between students isn’t enforceable under academy rules. So why don’t you, why don’t you crawl back to your seat and—"

I pulled my phone out of my pocket.

I tapped the screen twice, and a video file opened.

His own voice came out of the speaker, then his own: "Deal."

His eyes went wide.

"What. When did you. Who—"

I held the phone up so he could see his own face on the screen.

"Doesn’t matter who. What matters is that the file exists. And if I don’t have that ring on my hand in the next ten seconds, this video goes out to every group chat in the academy by the time I get back to class.

Everyone gets a clip of you welching on a public bet to an F-rank, and then I make the rest of your time at this academy an experience you’ll write a memoir about. Try me."

His jaw clenched in anger.

I watched him run the calculation. I watched the part of his brain that wanted to keep the ring lose to the part that did the math on his social capital. He stared at the phone screen for a long second.

Then he closed his eyes and gritted his teeth.

His good hand came up. He worked the silver band off his index finger with stiff, painful movements, the bones in his fingers shaking, and dropped it into my open palm.

I closed my hand and stood up.

He pushed himself upright with a grunt and started limping across the sand toward the arena exit. His three friends hadn’t come down from the stands. They were already getting up to leave by a different stairway.

The E-rank from yesterday came down to meet him at the exit tunnel.

He started to speak. "Boss, I’m so sorry, I didn’t know he was—"

The C-rank’s good hand came up and backhanded him across the face.

The slap was loud.

The E-rank’s head snapped sideways. His feet left the ground for a moment as the force of the blow carried him three metres back, and he hit the floor of the tunnel on his shoulder and rolled.

"It’s your fault, you trash." The C-rank’s voice was thick with blood and pain. "You brought me into this. You’d better pay me back for that ring. You hear me? Every coin."

He stormed off down the tunnel.

The E-rank scrambled to his feet, holding the side of his face, and rushed after him without looking back.