The sand of the athletic field still bore the gouge marks where Carameleine had been sent flying.
Kyoya Hibari stood at the center of the field. His tonfa were dusted with ash — Minami's flames had scorched the surface plating — but they were fully functional. He wiped the gray smudges away with his thumb, the way someone might clean a precision instrument.
Twenty meters away, Shuriya stood on the white line of the running track.
Her stance was almost identical to the first time they'd met — feet shoulder-width apart, fists half-clenched, body angled slightly forward. Her qipao swayed in the night breeze, but her body was a spike driven into the earth. Not a tremor.
The difference was in her eyes.
Back at the Occult Research Club, her gaze had been the cold neutrality of someone following orders. Now — after thirty-five rounds cut short by Grayfia's interruption — there was something else layered in.
Not fear.
Focus.
"…We meet again." Shuriya's voice was low, like stone grinding against stone.
"Obviously."
Hibari rotated one tonfa a half-turn and leveled it at her.
"Last time was unfinished. This time no one's coming to stop it."
Above the athletic field. The roof of the old school building.
A magic circle bloomed and dissolved without a sound, and Ravel Phoenix materialized at the edge of the rooftop.
She wore the Phoenix family's formal dress — a deep crimson gown with the family crest embroidered in gold at the collar. The wind lifted her golden hair, and in the moonlight it moved like liquid amber. She walked to the railing, folded her hands over her chest, and looked down.
On the field below, two figures stood facing each other.
"Shuriya," Ravel murmured, a faint smile at the corner of her mouth. "Do your best."
Her tone was the kind you'd use to encourage a favored pet.
But her eyes weren't on Shuriya.
"Before we start." Shuriya spoke abruptly. "There's something I need to say."
She tilted her head slightly, glancing toward the rooftop.
"The person on the roof is Lady Ravel. Lord Riser's younger sister. The daughter of the Phoenix family."
"Not my concern."
"She's also Lord Riser's Bishop piece."
"Also not my concern."
Shuriya was quiet for a second. Then she said something that made Hibari pause.
"Lord Riser has said — his sister is also a member of his harem."
"Of course, Lord Riser would never touch Lady Ravel. His exact words were — 'My sister is a flower in the harem. For display. Not to be picked.' So Lady Ravel's position is —"
"Stop."
Hibari raised a hand and cut her off.
His expression was peculiar. Not anger, not disgust — a pure, genuine bewilderment. The look of someone who had just been presented with a statement that violated basic physical law.
"…Harem?"
"Yes."
"A flower for display?"
"Yes. Lord Riser's exact words."
Three seconds of silence.
"Is that man an idiot."
Not a question. Delivered as a flat declarative. Cold, stripped of any emotional coloring. The clinical objectivity of a doctor writing a chart entry.
On the rooftop, Ravel's shoulders gave a small shudder.
Not from anger.
She was suppressing a laugh.
No one had ever evaluated her brother in that tone of voice. Riser Phoenix — third son of the Phoenix family, heir to the immortal bloodline, undefeated genius of the Rating Game. Every young devil in the Underworld measured themselves against him. Female devils considered him the ideal match.
And this human-born Rook piece had taken three seconds of consideration and arrived at the conclusion of "idiot."
"…Interesting," Ravel said under her breath, pressing the curve at the corner of her mouth back down.
Shuriya's fists tightened.
She didn't argue with Hibari's assessment of Riser. Her expression didn't change — but Hibari caught a detail.
The way she tightened her fists.
Not anger. Habit. The muscle memory of someone who had heard similar remarks too many times and had long since learned not to react.
"Whatever you think of Lord Riser." Shuriya's voice returned to its flat calm. "He is my King. I fight for him."
"Fight for him."
Hibari repeated the four words. His tone was that of someone tasting an unfamiliar phrase.
"Your King entered you in this match."
"Yes."
"Your King put you in front of me."
"Yes."
"Your King put his own sister on a harem roster and then sent you to protect her."
"…Yes."
Hibari tilted his head slightly.
"What about you."
"…What?"
"You fight for him. You take hits for him. You protect his sister for him." Hibari's voice was level, like reading from a list. "So why do you fight?"
Shuriya didn't answer.
Not because she didn't want to. Because she had no answer.
Her fists — the same fists that had blocked Hibari's second strike — trembled once in the night wind. Briefly. So briefly that no one present would have seen it.
Except Hibari.
"…I don't know."
Her voice was so low she wasn't sure she'd said it aloud.
"Then don't waste my time."
Hibari raised his tonfa.
"Until you figure out why you fight — you'll serve as my sparring partner."
## Fifty Rounds
Round one.
Shuriya shattered the white line beneath her foot and launched herself at Hibari, her silhouette blurring into an afterimage. A Rook's speed wasn't a Knight's quickness, but it carried a distinct pressure — like a wall being shoved toward you. Not fast. Heavy.
Hibari stepped aside and let the first punch pass. The wind off her fist grazed his cheek. He caught her scent — metal, sweat, and something like scorched stone. The smell of a Rook. Seventy percent the same as his own.
His tonfa cut upward from below, angled at her ribs. Shuriya blocked with her left elbow, and the collision of metal against flesh produced a dense, muffled thud. She didn't give ground. A Rook's defensive rating at this range was absolute — ordinary attacks couldn't penetrate it.
But Hibari's tonfa were not ordinary attacks.
A sharp, numbing vibration traveled up Shuriya's arm. Not pain — concussion. The force of the tonfa punched through her defensive layer and landed directly on bone. Her eyes narrowed to slits —
Same piece type. Different quality of impact.
Rounds two through ten.
Two Rook pieces clashing on the athletic field threw up ring after ring of dust. Every exchange of fist against tonfa was like two iron hooks tearing at each other; the sand was blasted outward by the shockwaves, and the track's painted lines were ground to nothing underfoot.
Hibari was moving. Not reactive evasion — he was circling. A predator cataloguing the patterns in its prey's movement.
Shuriya's combat technique was elite. Her punching angles were precise, her body rotation flowed without gaps, her weight distribution was perfect. Every strike carried the intent to kill.
But by round seven, Hibari had found the problem.
Her intent wasn't enough.
Not a technical problem. A problem of the heart. Every punch she threw was executing an instruction — *stop him, protect Lady Ravel, win this match.* The directives were clear. The execution was exact.
But there was no her in any of it.
Like a blade with no handle. The edge was sharp. It just didn't know where to cut.
Rounds eleven through thirty.
Hibari went on offense.
His attack pattern shifted at round eleven — no longer probing, now dissecting. Each strike landed precisely in the gaps of Shuriya's defense. The inner crease of the elbow. The back of the knee. The edge of the shoulder blade. The junction of collarbone and neck.
Not to kill. To make her body remember — your defense has holes.
Shuriya began to retreat.
Not a rout. She was being walked back, one step at a time. With each step, her expression tightened another degree. Her punches came faster — but faster wasn't stronger. She was using speed to fill a gap that existed in her mind, and speed couldn't fill that kind of gap.
"You're fighting for someone else."
In the pause between rounds twenty-five and twenty-six, Hibari said it.
No mockery. No contempt. Just the conclusion of an observation.
Shuriya's fist stuttered by half a beat.
Only half a beat. But at the level of two Rooks, half a beat was a fatal opening.
Hibari's tonfa slipped through it and struck her right shoulder.
"—Ngh—"
Shuriya stumbled back three steps. Fierce pain flared from her right shoulder. Not a fracture — a Rook's skeleton didn't break that easily — but the muscle had been partially torn. Her right arm's punching speed dropped by at least twenty percent.
"Your technique is strong enough. Your body is hard enough. Your experience is deep enough." Hibari rotated his tonfa, as if scoring a rubric. "But there's nothing of you in your punches. All of it is someone else's orders, someone else's expectations, someone else's war."
"…Shut up."
"You're not fighting. You're completing a task."
"I said shut up—!"
Rounds thirty-one through fifty.
Shuriya erupted.
Not the uncontrolled kind. Her combat instincts ran too deep — even furious, her body continued to move along optimal paths. But her punches changed. No longer the precise, task-oriented strikes. These were heavy blows carrying emotion. Each one hit harder than the last, each one trailed a pressure wave.
The ground began to crack. The sand was blasted upward by the force of her fists; the chain-link fence around the track swayed in the displaced air.
Hibari gave two steps.
Not retreat. Adjustment — Shuriya's attacks had actually grown stronger after the anger broke through. No. Not stronger. More real.
The first fifty punches had been Shuriya fighting for Riser.
Every punch after that was Shuriya fighting for herself.
The corner of Hibari's mouth rose by one degree.
"There it is."
He said it.
"You're angry. Because I was right."
Shuriya didn't answer. Her next punch drove straight at Hibari's center — full force, no reserve, every ounce of a Rook piece's offensive power concentrated into a single strike.
Hibari didn't dodge.
He raised his tonfa and met it with the flat of the shaft.
The collision landed like a muffled thunderclap. The air between them detonated; a sandstorm of displaced grit and debris expanded in every direction. Hibari's shoes skidded five meters across the sand, carving two deep furrows.
The web of skin between his thumb and forefinger split open. Blood dripped from the grip of his tonfa, staining the silver metal red.
But he held his ground.
Shuriya's right fist — that full-force, nothing-held-back strike — had stopped against the surface of the tonfa.
The two of them looked at each other.
Shuriya was breathing hard. Her qipao was soaked through with sweat, and the injury to her right shoulder had pulled her posture slightly off-center. But her eyes —
For the first time, her eyes held something of her own.
Not Riser's orders. Not the Phoenix family's honor. Not the duty of a Rook piece.
She wanted to win. For herself.
"…There it is," Hibari said again.
Then he moved.
The finishing strike was simple. After a full-force punch, Shuriya's right arm had a 0.3-second window while it pulled back. Hibari's tonfa came in from below, threading through the arc of her retracting fist, and struck her temple with exact precision.
Not full force. Just enough to put her under.
Shuriya's body locked for one second. Then her knees buckled, and she pitched forward.
Hibari extended his left hand and caught her by the shoulder.
Not gently. Just — not letting her hit the ground face-first. An opponent who had lasted fifty rounds was worth at least that much.
He lowered her to the ground, confirmed she was still breathing.
Then he stood.
The system's voice sounded —
**"Lord Riser's Rook — retired."**
And simultaneously —
**"Lady Rias's Queen — retired."**
Hibari's movement stopped for one second.
Akeno.
He didn't look back. His expression didn't change. He simply recorded the fact.
On the rooftop, Ravel Phoenix stood where she was.
Her fingers were still folded over her chest, but the tension in her fingertips had shifted. Her lips parted slightly, then closed. In her blue eyes, the reflection of the figure on the field below — standing beside Shuriya, blood dripping from his tonfa, expression as blank as someone who had just finished a tedious household chore.
But Ravel had seen something else.
He caught Shuriya.
Not out of kindness. Not out of sympathy. He didn't even seem to register it as something requiring explanation. He had simply — done it.
"Fifty rounds," Ravel murmured to herself. "No magic power, no Sacred Gear, just a pair of tonfa — and he pushed Shuriya until she was actually fighting, then beat her."
The curve at the corner of her mouth surfaced.
Not a smile. Something deeper. The expression of a chess player who, for the first time, watches a piece move in defiance of the rules — and land on the perfect square anyway.
"And he asked Shuriya a question." She lowered her hands and rested them on the railing, leaning forward slightly. "Why do you fight."
"You know," she said to the night wind, as if speaking to someone. "In the Phoenix family, no one has ever asked a peerage member that question."
The wind pushed her hair across her cheek.
"No one's ever asked me, either."
On the far side of the athletic field.
Hibari followed the scent forward. The traces of combat energy from the direction of the Occult Research Club were converging — Rias, Issei, Asia, the three of them tangled together. And the scorching, flame-like presence facing them —
Riser Phoenix.
They were on the roof.
But Hibari didn't move toward the roof.
Because another presence had stepped into his path.
The gymnasium entrance. The double doors stood half-open, the interior dark. But there were eyes in that darkness. Violet. Amused.
A woman stepped out of the shadows.
She wore a deep violet dress, a silver cape draped over her shoulders. Her hair was long, dark violet, and curled; her makeup was precise enough to belong on a porcelain doll. Her figure was full without being heavy, her posture languid without being loose.
What drew the eye most was what she held.
A small, round, faintly glowing sphere.
Hibari's instincts screamed.
Not the scream of *danger.* The scream of *this thing's destructive capacity is nowhere near what it looks like.*
"Oh my~" The woman tilted her head, her voice carrying a teasing sweetness. "You're the one who sent Shuriya flying?"
She spun the sphere once on her fingertip.
"I'm Yubelluna. Lord Riser's Queen."
She smiled.
The temperature in the air dropped the instant she did.
"I'm not here to avenge Shuriya." She tossed the sphere into the air and caught it. Casual, like playing with a toy. "But if you want to get past here —"
Her finger flicked the sphere lightly.
It flew without a sound to a point ten meters behind Hibari. Landed.
Then detonated.
Not a fire explosion. Pure concussive force. The ground within a fifteen-meter radius was ripped up wholesale; chunks of asphalt and dirt scattered like shrapnel. Every mark left on the field from Hibari and Shuriya's exchange — footprints, cracks, bloodstains — was erased in an instant.
As if nothing had ever happened there.
The shockwave lifted Hibari's jacket and threw his hair back. He glanced over his shoulder — where the sphere had landed was now a circular crater thirty meters across and two meters deep.
He turned back and looked at Yubelluna.
"— you'll have to go through me first."
Three more spheres had appeared between her fingers. Different sizes. Different luminosity.
"My ability isn't complicated." She shrugged, the way someone might comment on pleasant weather. "Bombs. Big ones, small ones, tracking ones, delayed ones. Anything I've touched can become a bomb."
She looked down at her own fingers.
"Care to guess how many stones I touched along the path you just walked?"
Beneath his feet. Along the corridor. At the edge of the field. Every step he had taken on the way here.
Those ordinary-looking pieces of rubble —
Every single one was faintly glowing now.
"…Interesting."
Hibari rotated his tonfa. The blood on his grip had dried, congealed against the metal, making his hold more secure.
He looked at the minefield under his feet. Looked at the spheres in Yubelluna's hands. Looked at the thirty-meter crater behind him.
Then he smiled.
Very faint. Nearly invisible. The expression that only appeared when something genuinely caught his interest.
"Bombs."
He settled his tonfa into the grip that suited him best.
"More interesting than people who just throw punches."
The two of them faced each other.
The night wind moved through the gymnasium doors, lifting Yubelluna's cape and Hibari's jacket at the same moment.
At the same time. The rooftop.
Issei's left hand blazed with crimson light. The jewel of the Boosted Gear pulsed like a heartbeat — **"Boost! Boost! Boost!"**
He stood in front of Rias and Asia, facing Riser Phoenix, who sat in his chair with one leg crossed over the other.
The system's voice kept sounding.
**"Lord Riser's Knight — retired."**
**"Lord Riser's Pawn — retired."**
**"Lord Riser's Bishop — retired."**
Riser's expression changed for the first time.
He sat up straight.
"…What?"
His peerage was shrinking. Not because of Issei Hyoudou standing in front of him — Issei hadn't moved from his spot. Not because of Rias's other pieces — Kiba and Koneko had already been eliminated, and Akeno had just gone down.
Someone else.
Issei heard it too. His mouth twitched — not from nerves, but from something complicated, a feeling that mixed exasperation with a strange, inexplicable sense of relief.
"…It's Hibari," Asia said quietly. Her hands were pressed together, healing green light still flowing from her palms. "Those announcements… all of them are Lord Riser's people."
Rias's green eyes narrowed slightly.
She said nothing. But the corner of her mouth —
Almost imperceptibly — rose by one degree.
"That guy." Issei tightened his fist. "Said he wasn't joining the Rating Game. Said he wasn't fighting a war he didn't want to fight. And then what?"
He drew a breath.
"— And then he goes and clears out half the road for us down there!"
Riser stood.
His flames began to surge around his body. Not the lazy, performative fire from before. This was serious. Pressurized. The Phoenix bloodline burned beneath his skin, and the air heated until it warped.
"Interesting." Riser said. The smile was still on his face, but the light in his eyes had changed. "That biting Disciplinary Committee Chairman — didn't he say he wasn't participating?"
Issei raised the Boosted Gear.
"What he does is his call." Issei's voice carried a certainty he'd never had before. "What I do — I'll finish myself!"
**"Boost!!!!!"**
The Red Dragon Emperor's crimson light flooded the entire rooftop.
**— Episode 10: End —**
**Next time: Episode 11 — "The Temperature of the Immortal Bird"**