It was hard not to feel conflicted, looking at the two kings side by side. The Mage King’s mysterious aura that silently, but surely dominated the room… and King Seth smilingly waving to the masses below, casually chatting with a beauty beside him. 

Endra, of course, did not presume to know anything about the two men, but he did know that appearances played a big role for public personalities. Kings and queens especially. And for most citizens, they wanted to serve a harsh, stoic master, instead of an easygoing, happy go lucky one.

‘Guess the letters were a scam, then,’ Endra sighed, thinking about the Helm’s Worthy again. Reading them, Endra felt that the king was naïve, but someone who was trying his best in his own way. But seeing him here now, the feeling faded away. ‘But he did invite Leanne over after reading her set of laws on divorce… Or was that just because he wanted to bed her?’

Frowning, Endra decided not to think too much about the king. The monarch’s actions weren’t so important to Endra’s daily life. 

“The yearly contest between the futures of our kingdom has come once again,” King Seth began. “A thrilling competition to witness the strength of our youth and to push them even further towards perfection. All of this possible thanks to our ancestors toiling for our sake. To create a future that’s safe, prosperous, and easy to live in.

“But I want us to remember one thing. A saying of the old. Hard times create hard men. Hard men create soft time. Soft times also create soft men. And soft men create hard times. We now live in the border of two times. A soft one we’re enjoying. And a hard one we’re awaiting.

“The endless warmongering of the South finally became loud enough to hear from all the way here. Even Duchess Klavd of the North has been preparing her duchy, hearing the drums of war.”

Endra was surprised by the content of the speech. Didn’t feel like something you’d talk about during a competition between students… but considering the things Evin had to go through in the Helm’s Worthy, perhaps a patriotic speech about war wasn’t so out of place among a gathering of students.

“We cannot go on, pretending that everything’s going to be okay…” the king continued, but the Mage King whispered something in his ear. A brief silence occurred, but King Seth abruptly ended his speech. “As always, I hope for an invigorating display of skill from our students.”

He nodded to the Mage King, who in turn nodded to Lilix Padeshi. 

“Every year, we test our students on their theoretical, practical, and combat mastery of magic. But this year, we’re taking a different approach. This year we will focus exclusively on practical and combat mastery.

“And, while the preliminaries were a knockout-style tourney, the real competition will have the qualifying nine academies vying for points in various different contests. The first of which, will be a series of single combat matches.”

Some murmurs rippled through the students.

“The classes will choose five strongest students, and will receive a point for each victory obtained by them. In twenty minutes, please have your fighters come to the stage.”

The class collectively looked at the Vice-Chair, who came as a replacement to the Chairman, but he only shook his head. “You can sort it out amongst yourselves.”

“In that case,” Arza spoke up, “it’ll be me, Evin, Bella, Dec, and… either Lopar, Dagan, or Theundel. Any three of you will be fine.”

“I’ll go,” Theundel spoke up. 

“Sure. Good luck out there,” Lopar patted the big noble on the back. 

“Unlucky you’ll get compared to these freaks of nature,” Dagan sighed, glancing at the previous four.

“With enough effort and dedication, you can achieve anything you desire,” Endra grinned.

“Shut up.”

With the line-up complete, the five went to the stage. The other classes also gathered round. Endra glanced at the Arcvallen class, but saw that their lineup consisted of only four students and also did not include the superstar Child of the Empress.

Endra searched the rest of the class for her, and found a blonde girl sitting on a makeshift chair, reading. He couldn’t make out her face, but she did seem to be the person he was searching for.

‘I guess they’re not sending out their ace in the hole so early in the tournament… or she’s just refusing to go?’

Endra was a bit disappointed he wouldn’t be able to see her in action, but shrugged and let it go. 

Twenty minutes passed, and the first fights of the tournament were ready to begin. The matches between the students were randomly decided, with Endra’s fight coming close to last. He was pitted against a student from Arcvallen, though, so he was looking forward to that.

The fights began soon enough, and it was mostly within Endra’s expectations. There was a lot of diversity in the student’s spells, but not much mastery. 

However, he was surprised by how vast the power differences were between the four duchies. So far, the strongest duchy was the South with three of the qualifying classes being from there. Then it was the East and the North with two classes and one class from the West.

Even for the other years, the qualifying classes had about the same distribution. 

And form a match between a western student and a southern one, Endra could tell how heavily the South focused on practical and combat knowledge. The western student tried his best to end the fight with grand, complex magic, but the opponent never allowed him the moment of breather he needed, ending the fight through overwhelming force. 

Then came Bella’s fight. The fight was against a student from the East, which ended in about 10 seconds. 

Endra didn’t know if it was because of him or not, but after Bella recovered from her suicide attempt, her spells started to focus greatly on the one hit one kill mentality. In a sense, she followed in his footsteps, with how tight and explosive her offense was. Endra’s go to method in a real fight was to ambush and kill them as fast as humanly possible. 

In her fight, Bella did exactly that. Instead of creating an armor of mud with the mindset of prolonging the fight, she simply struck her opponent with all her might. It wasn’t every day you saw a three-meter-high muddy landslide chasing some poor bloke through an open arena before finally swallowing him up.

Obviously, the surprise tactic couldn’t work a second time, since the enemies will be prepared, but Endra wasn’t worried about Bella’s ability to handle a normal fight.

Then came Decatur’s fight. It was against another northern student, who specialized in the Seyethe. Except, the opponent’s wind blades weren’t powerful enough to cut through Dec’s hardened skin. That was the problem with traditional wind magic, was that it was terribly hard to hurt someone who had tough defenses. 

Endra could make it work, because he mostly used compressed air explosions to make up for the lack of strength, but without Hard Air, it was definitely hard to cut someone with only air. 

The two played a game of cat and mouse before Dec finally caught up and knocked the enemy out. Compared to the times when Decatur would chase Evin around an arena in blind rage, this time, he was much more controlled and calculated. Perhaps those rage management classes with Sufia were helping.

Arza’s turn came next, but due to bad luck, he went up against a western student. Obviously, the fight ended in his victory, but he couldn’t really be satisfied with such a one-sided fight. He bothered the judge for a while to fight in Endra’s place, but of course, his plea was overruled.

Theundel fought against a southern opponent, and was the class’s only loss. In all honesty, he had a good chance in a straightforward fight, but the opponent happened to be the steady, ranged type. She used a system of ice projectiles to keep enemies at a distance, and they were simply too powerful for Theundel’s hardened skin to bear. 

But Endra felt like the projectiles were under the effect of another skill or rune, which allowed them to ignore defenses. If that was the case, then she was a very impressive opponent, who possessed the makings of an Absolute spell.

Theundel lost, but wasn’t so affected by it. The others gave him some encouragement and dispersed soon after.

Soon after, Endra’s turn to fight came.