After a day of training and planning, everyone headed home as normal and the night passed by normally. Patience even went to bed feeling rather optimistic about tomorrow. Though come the following morning, she wished she had never gotten out of bed.

Walking around her dorm, she was immediately greeted with intense stares and murmurs. It seemed that all of her dormmates had heard of the fight happening later today. Everywhere she went inside the place she was being watched. It made sense. A pretty low-level noble challenging one of the ducal house's members was bound to attract gossip and attention.

Patience just wished that it wasn't that early in the morning. It didn't help that both Reynard and Bryson were being mentioned as staunch supporters of Patience, leading to more gossip of some sort of power play being done using her as a proxy.

Elsewhere at The Academy grounds, Anna was receiving similar treatment. Though while she, like Patience, wasn't the biggest fan of the extra attention, unlike Patience she wasn't wishing to crawl into a hole and die right now.

Still the nerves of the fight later today plagued the back of her mind. This was going to be her first real fight against another person, or at least helping someone in a fight. She was supposed to just sit back and help with a bit of magic. The main fight would be between Morrigan and Patience.

But she would do her part, especially since both Bryson and Anna stuck their necks out by joining in on the fight. She couldn't be a letdown. The good news was that she at least didn't have to be the one to fight Morrigan, from what she's heard in just the last couple of days, Morrigan was ravenous for the fight.

Frans and the other two seemed ready to help, and Anna was excited to try some more of her spells in a real application this time, without the risk of some smoke monster trying to kill them.

Bryson on the other hand, was largely unaffected by the gossip around him. It helped that he made himself relatively unapproachable, a single grumpy glare would send most other students turning and moving the other way. Though that didn't mean that Bryson was taking things easy at all.

He had spent some time last night thinking about what the best approach should be to help Patience in her fight. No doubt the simplest way would be to do what Anna did in the sparring match against Patience, shoot projectiles at the opponent to make it hard for them to catch their breath.

That was likely the plan that the three spellcasters he would be facing would do. But Anna was also likely going to do that, too. Granted, two hands were better than one, but without proper synergy and against a single human-sized target in a relatively limited amount of space it would be difficult to do. They simply didn't have enough time to properly figure out how to work as a cohesive unit.

So Bryson needed to do something other than that. But what would work? He could put up barriers to protect Patience, but that was a double-edged sword. Patience would also be unable to fight back with a barrier erected.

Then maybe he could do something that could help Patience directly. Bryson found his support magic to be one of his worst subjects. He never needed to worry about learning the basics, like gaining the ability to see in the dark. As his naturally unnatural ability gave him the ability to do so.

He was regretting not studying much on the subject now. Still that didn't mean he didn't know how to cast them. All he needed was to figure out one decent spell that would be useful in this fight.

So that's what Bryson focused on. Figuring out one spell that would give Patience the edge in this fight. Bryson figured out one, though there were risks with casting it. Well, Patience seemed capable enough, it shouldn't be too bad if he uses it. Besides, she'll likely need the edge.

Though Bryson hadn't told her about it yet, and it seemed unlikely that Patience would have much time to prepare for it. As Bryson made his way to the cafeteria for breakfast and continued to think of what spells he should rely on in this fight he was joined by Reynard.

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"Hey, Bryson!" Reynard greeted, "You ready?"

"I suppose. Though most of this is going to be on Pylet." Bryson said with a grunt as they entered the cafeteria and grabbed their trays.

"How dangerous are the mages going to be?"

"Snowfield is going to be a problem. Atwik and Westbrook aren't as good, smart enough mages just not top tier. But there are two of them." Bryson said.

"That's on you isn't it?"

"I never said it wasn't." Bryson grumbled as his tray was being filled with different breakfast foods, "Besides it's better having two of them than one extremely talented one."

"Really? A single person can only cast so many spells at once and unless you're saying you're that good." Reynard joked.

"Of course not. But in a situation like this, having more bodies tends to be an issue." Bryson said as they made their way over open seats.

"In what way?"

"Supporter duels tend not to have multiple combatants for a reason, gets messy. When you have limited space like the ring they're fighting in, it limits the spells you can cast." Bryson explained.

"Right, I guess fireballs are harder to use safely when your ally is nose to nose with the enemy." Reynard said nodding his head as they began to eat their meals.

"That and the lack of cohesion will force Snowfield to have to spend time ordering the other two on what to do."

"What do you think about Patience's odds of beating Morrigan?"

"I don't know, never seen Hayes fight. Though even if she were, which she likely is considering Hayes is in a special class and Pylet isn't. A spellcaster will be able to swing it to Pylet's favour."

"Have you made any plans with Anna yet?"

"No, I'm planning on letting her do what she wants for the most part."

"Is that smart? Won't you two clash?"

"I also don't really know Cherrywood and have no idea how well we can work together. I'll worry about it when the time comes."

"You're pretty nonchalant with everything, you realize that your family's name is kind of at stake here right?"

"Don't worry, I'll make sure that my name isn't besmirched no matter the results."

"You know you say some really off-putting things right?"

"Shut up Alvidor." Bryson grunted.

"Hi guys." Anna said, taking a seat next to them, "Where's Patience?" She asked as she sat down.

"Probably nervous. She only just figured out how to control her berserker rage. There's a chance she might not be able to replicate it." Reynard said.

"Right now, focus on your own food and make sure that you're ready for the fight at noon." Bryson said as he quickly looked around the cafeteria, "Be ready to show off in front of a crowd."

Anna nodded her head and took a small bite of her food. The nerves were getting to her a bit, but she knew that she would need her energy to fight. She also wanted to talk with Bryson about strategy. She wanted to figure out more spells that would help Patience aside from projectile-based ones. She too had figured out the limitations the situation placed on simple attack spells.

***

An hour after the group neared the combat stage they found Patience nervously walking back and forth. Looking around as she saw more and more people gather around. Still around an hour away, the place was fairly empty, but every single person who wandered near the place caused Patience to be nervous.

"Hey Patience!" Anna called out to her.

"Huh? Oh, hi guys." Patience greeted the group as she saw them.

"You don't look so well, did you have breakfast?" Reynard asked as they met up with her.

"No, I'm uh, not hungry." Patience said quickly.

"You should eat." Reynard advised.

"Better she not if she's that nervous. It'll be bad if she threw up in the fight." Bryson said.

"Good point." Reynard said agreeing, "But just to check, you are alright with this?"

"Yeah, just a bit nervous." Patience said taking a deep breath.

"Don't worry, get some water. You still have an hour before…" Bryson paused as he saw someone approach. With a frown he asked, "What are you doing here, and where are the other idiots?"

Patience turned around to see Morrigan standing before her and her eyes widened, "What are you doing here?" Patience said on alert, "You shouldn't be here for another hour."

"Relax, I'm just put here for the same reason as you, I'm excited." Morrigan said with a happy wink.

"I don't think excited is the right word." Patience mumbled.

"Either way, you're here and that works for me. Tell me, are you ready to show the demon to me?" Morrigan asked leaning towards Patience.

"You don't want the demon, but yes. I'm going to beat you." Patience said, for the first time today showing confidence, "You won't bother me after this."

"Of course!" Morrigan said smile widening, "Just make sure you actually put up a fight for me, wouldn't want to disappoint anyone." Morrigan said quickly glancing over to Bryson before looking back at Patience, "Because if the demon doesn't come out, you'll be dragged into hell." She warned before heading off elsewhere.

"She's overconfident." Anna said, "You'll beat her with that."

"Get ready to take her down." Reynard, "No mercy, she won't give you any."

"I know." Patience said as she took a deep breath, "I'll beat her."

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