Alex turned and left the hall with Zara walking beside him.
The heavy doors closed behind them with a solid, final sound.
The noise of the training floor faded as they stepped back into the quieter stretch of palace corridor.
For a few moments neither of them spoke.
Once they had put enough distance between themselves and the hall, Zara glanced sideways at him.
"You are in a more serious mood than usual." she said.
Alex did not slow his pace.
"I do not mind having an audience," he answered.
"That part was always going to happen eventually."
"People were going to talk no matter when I did this."
"The problem is the timing."
"I am forced to wait until tomorrow."
"By then the people who were only going to hear about the results will actually be present in the hall."
"They will not be receiving second-hand reports or watered-down stories."
"They will be standing there watching with their own eyes."
"I wanted credibility, a clear, clean proof of what I can do."
"What I am getting instead is the risk of a performance in front of a crowd whose intentions I cannot fully read yet."
"Some will come to measure me, some will come hoping I fail, some will come simply because they refuse to be the last to know."
"That is the difference, Zara, today would have been cleaner, tomorrow is louder."
Zara listened without interrupting.
When he finished she gave a nod.
"You are right, tomorrow changes the shape of it, the fight itself stays the same, but the eyes watching it will not remain the same."
The two of them continued walking back toward their room through the long palace corridors.
The weight of the delayed confrontation settled between them.
The word that Alexander Abyss was openly challenging the Level 10 recruits spread through the palace like wildfire.
It had already been rare enough for someone to awaken at the age of twelve.
But challenging fighters who were years older, at the age of twelve at that! Ten full levels, and standing on the edge of being deployed to actual battlefields was something else entirely.
Silence became impossible.
Servants carried the news between kitchens and laundry rooms in quick, low voices.
Guards mentioned it at their posts while pretending to focus on the corridors.
Junior officers repeated it in the side halls and then argued about what it meant.
By midday the story had reached every major wing of the palace and had already begun leaking outward.
Alex’s earlier feat of defeating a new Level 9 recruits had already been a hot topic.
Those stories had grown out of proportion until they reached the streets of the Winterfang capital, turning into half-true legends about the Third Prince who kept winning without ever leveling up, some said he was secretly leveling up behind the scenes, some said that the rumors might be fabricated, there were all kinds of theories going around.
The main reason was because Alex had never actually made a public appearance, not yet at least, so people did not know what to actually think about him, other than just speculate things on their own.
And now this new challenge was even more exceptional.
The boy had suddenly vanished from the training hall where he used to appear every single day.
For weeks there had been no public spars, no visible progress, no explanation.
Now he had reappeared with a direct challenge aimed at the strongest recruits the hall currently held.
Every person, from the highest-ranking nobles to the lowest servants, wanted to know what had changed.
The boy was an anomaly.
He had awakened at five years old.
He continued to grow stronger without ever crossing into Level 1, if that was even true.
Many quietly considered him a potential threat to the throne, or at least a piece that could no longer be ignored in the long-term calculations of the court.
No one wanted to be the last to learn how he would fare against the Level 10 recruits.
Information of that kind had value.
Being late to it had a cost that some households were unwilling to pay.
Previously, by the time news of his fights reached the rest of the palace, the matches had already ended.
Most people had also avoided lingering near that Abyss-sponsored training hall out of simple caution.
No one wanted to risk annoying or offending Vespera Abyss by treating her son’s training ground like a public theatre.
That restraint had kept the earlier fights relatively contained and quiet.
This time was different.
The advance notice created a rare opportunity.
Anyone who wanted to watch the Third Prince in action now had a clear window and a clear date.
Crowds began gathering near the training hall long before the next day’s scheduled return of the Level 10 group.
Some came out of genuine curiosity.
Some came because their households had ordered them to observe and report back in detail.
Some came simply because they refused to be the only ones left without a first-hand account when the results started circulating.
Instructor Theron, who was responsible for managing the facility, found himself dealing with an unexpected and rapidly growing headache.
The usual rhythm of the hall broke down under the pressure of so many extra bodies.
He had to post additional staff at the doors to keep the space from being completely overrun.
He had to answer the same questions from junior officers and minor nobles more times than he cared to count.
He had to keep the actual recruits focused on their training while half the capital’s attention pressed in from outside the walls.
The quiet, controlled environment he preferred for serious sparring was gone.
In its place was a growing public event he had never asked to supervise and could not easily shut down.
By late afternoon the corridors around the training complex were no longer quiet.
Speculation moved freely.
Some claimed the Third Prince had finally awakened a proper class in secret during his absence.
Others insisted he was still Level 0 and that the challenge was pure arrogance.
A few of the older guards who had watched him train for years simply shook their heads and repeated the same line they always used when the boy’s name came up: wait and see.
The Third Prince had a habit of making people revise their assumptions after the fact.
None of that noise reached Alex and Zara directly as they walked back to their rooms.
They moved through quieter routes, avoiding the main arteries of the palace where the talk was thickest.
Even so, the shift in atmosphere was impossible to miss completely.
The palace had taken notice.
The delay until tomorrow had given that notice time to mature into something larger and more complicated than a simple private challenge issued in an empty hall.
Alex walked with the same steady pace as before.
The serious mood Zara had noticed earlier had not lifted.
It had simply settled into a colder, more practical focus.
Tomorrow the Level 10 recruits would return.
Tomorrow the audience would be present.
Tomorrow he would have to deliver results under eyes that would not be forgiving of failure or half-measures.
He adjusted his plans accordingly and kept walking.
🌿 ─ ❦ ─ 🌿
End of Chapter 132: Word Spreads
🌿 ── ❦ ── 🌿