Zhao Chen's having ignored them earlier had already put Zhang Haoran badly out of sorts, and so he'd seized the chance to pick a quarrel outright, trotting out the matter of his own dealings with Jiang Shasha into the bargain.
Off to the side, Jiang Shasha's brows drew together a fraction. She'd only agreed to spend some time getting to know Zhang Haoran, and here he was flatly announcing that the two of them were an item — which rather displeased her.
Only now did Zhao Chen deign to lift his head. He gave Zhang Haoran a light, offhand glance, and one word left his mouth: "Oh."
Zhang Haoran's mouth twitched. What was with this kid? Hadn't the rumor been that he was head over heels for Jiang Shasha? So how was it that, provoked like this, he sat there utterly unmoved?
Jiang Shasha, too, looked at Zhao Chen in surprise. She also had the sense that he wasn't quite the same as before.
"Heh, heh, heh. A good-for-nothing baron, right enough — a heap of trash who's never amounted to a thing." Zhang Haoran pressed the attack again.
Li Wei could bear it no longer, and jabbed a finger straight at Zhang Haoran. "Zhang Haoran, don't push your luck."
"And what exactly are you supposed to be? If I'm a good-for-nothing baron, then you don't even rise to good-for-nothing. If I remember right, you failed the end-of-term exams all three years running — and if your father hadn't pulled a few strings, you'd have been thrown out of school long ago." Zhao Chen slid Zhang Haoran a glance, delivering the most devastating words in the flattest possible tone.
"You—!" Zhang Haoran flushed with rage and shame. This was his reverse scale[1] — the one thing he could least stand to have brought up in front of him.
"So what if I've got connections! My dad's already got a T2 starship lined up for me next term! You, though — I'll bet the best you'll manage to scrape together is a T1. And there's live combat drills coming up, mind you; that T1 of yours is going to end up target practice, hahaha!" Zhang Haoran doubled over laughing.
"Random Mission" triggered: Issue a starship duel to Zhang Haoran, and defeat Zhang Haoran in the duel.
Claim it? [Y/N]
Zhao Chen's expression jolted. He'd never expected to trigger a "Random Mission" just now.
Defeat Zhang Haoran… that carried a fair bit of difficulty.
But compared with that earlier Quarterly Mission, it was a good deal simpler.
And the most important point of all was this: completing a mission earned, on top of the reward — still undetermined for now — a task point.
For though Zhao Chen had System points now, the goods in the system store couldn't just be redeemed at will. Redeeming an item required a corresponding number of task points.
For a T1 first-rung item, say, it took one task point plus the matching System points.
And task points were exactly the thing Zhao Chen was so badly short of.
"Don't take it hard, my talking straight — facts are facts. My advice: rather than waste your time here inviting your own humiliation, you'd do better to scurry back early to that backwater fief of yours." Seeing Zhao Chen stunned into silence by his words, Zhang Haoran—
—assumed he'd struck Zhao Chen right where it hurt.
Off to the side, Jiang Shasha looked on at it all with indifference. Zhang Haoran might be a touch excessive, but if this was what it took to make Zhao Chen see clearly the gulf between them and back off while he still could — well, that wasn't a bad thing either.
At that, the corners of Zhao Chen's mouth curved upward.
"We'll see yet who's inviting whose humiliation." Zhao Chen raised his head and, for the first time, looked Zhang Haoran dead in the eye — his gaze carrying both a challenge and a note of mockery.
At the same instant, a thought stirred in Zhao Chen's mind.
Confirm — claim the mission.
Random Mission claimed.
Mission: Issue a starship duel to Zhang Haoran, and defeat him in the duel.
Difficulty: D-rank
Reward: one task point and 300 points
Failure penalty: 300 points deducted
So there was a failure penalty into the bargain — a straight deduction of 300 points.
And Zhao Chen's account held all of 100 points at the moment. Fail the mission, and wouldn't the figure drop clean into the negative?
"A fellow who doesn't even have a ship to his name — what standing have you to talk here! Were I in your place I'd have packed my bags and cleared off ages ago. You don't so much as deserve a place at Northstar!" Zhang Haoran jabbed a finger right at the tip of Zhao Chen's nose, thoroughly annoyed.
A down-at-heel noble ought to accept his humiliation nice and meek — so how did this fellow keep, time and again, refusing to follow the script?
"Since you're so very confident, then what do you say the two of us settle it with a starship duel?" Zhao Chen drew a card from the collar of his cadet uniform.
It was the academy cadet ID card, used for study, daily life, and every other sort of activity within the academy.
Starship duels included.
"A starship duel? You, with me?" Zhang Haoran was taken aback for a beat, then doubled over laughing. He stood and walked straight up to Zhao Chen's table. "A fellow who doesn't even own a ship — what are you going to fight me with? Are you even fit to?"
"The time, of course, won't be now. There's a month left before this term ends. Let's set it for sometime before the end of June; I'll tell you the hour of the duel when it comes. If I lose, I withdraw from the academy next term of my own accord. And if you lose…" Zhao Chen fixed him with a narrowed gaze.
"Then I withdraw!" Zhang Haoran said, riding the momentum.
By now the turn events had taken was well past anything Jiang Shasha or Li Wei had foreseen.
Li Wei shot to his feet, shoved Zhang Haoran back, and planted himself in front of Zhao Chen. "Zhang Haoran, if you've got the nerve, duel me!"
Zhang Haoran cut Li Wei a glance, spread his hands, and gave a light laugh. "Everyone here saw it — this starship duel was Zhao Chen's own proposal." Behind Li Wei stood a father of no small clout, and Zhang Haoran had no wish to court trouble he didn't need.
"Li Wei — let me handle this one myself." Zhao Chen laid a hand on Li Wei's shoulder.
"But—"
"If you still count me a friend, then trust me," Zhao Chen said in earnest.
Li Wei clenched his teeth, and could do no more than shoot Zhang Haoran a resentful glare.
And at that moment, a holographic box materialized in the air between Zhao Chen and Zhang Haoran.
Third-year cadet Zhao Chen has proposed a starship duel to third-year cadet Zhang Haoran; time provisionally set within one month. Confirm? [Y/N]
By now the stir over here had already drawn no small crowd.
Starship duels, after all, were a rare sight — combat business, plainly, and a starship duel could hardly avoid hull damage, or even injuries and deaths. So the Northstar Starship Military Academy saw, over the course of a month, no more than four or five such ship-on-ship contests.
"I don't know where you've dredged up your confidence, but I'll see to it you regret today's decision." Contemptuously, Zhang Haoran produced his own ID card and accepted Zhao Chen's starship challenge.
With that, the two men's duel was logged into the academy database — only the final hour left to be fixed.
"Li Wei, finished eating? If you're finished, let's be off." Zhao Chen wiped his mouth, his expression light and unclouded, for all the world as though nothing whatever had happened.
"Huh?… oh, yeah, I'm done…" What appetite did Li Wei have left now? He got up and followed Zhao Chen out of the cafeteria.
Zhang Haoran watched Zhao Chen's retreating back and let a cold sneer show. A fellow without so much as a ship, and he dared duel him?
The one left with egg on his face would be Zhao Chen himself.
"Shasha, don't you fret. Once I've beaten him and driven him out of the academy, he won't have any chance left to keep pestering you!" Zhang Haoran looked to Jiang Shasha, already carrying himself with a victor's air.
"Mm…" Jiang Shasha, too, was watching Zhao Chen's departing figure. For some reason she felt that the Zhao Chen before her had changed a very great deal.
And most of all — only now did it dawn on her that, right up to this very moment, from first to last, Zhao Chen had not once looked her square in the face.
Had he truly put her from his mind?
Or was he only pretending?
For reasons she couldn't name, Jiang Shasha found there was something in her that would not sit still for it.