Cassandra led the team out of the tunnel and onto the stage. As soon as they left the tunnel, the shouts of the spectators assaulted their ears, nearly jolting them out of their calm state.
However, they quickly recovered, and made their way onto the central stage. Here, the chants were even louder; the shape of the stadium made it so that the center of the stadium was also the loudest. Hence, each roar from the crowd threatened to shatter the eardrums of the participants on stage.
The two teams lined up on either side of the stage, and the referee floated down from his perch to greet them.
“Captains?”
Cassandra stepped forward, while a similarly aged young man with noble features stepped forward for the other team.
“Remember, the first team to either knock all of their enemies out of the arena or render them incapable of fighting is the victor. Please do try to not use lethal spells, as each of you is a genius that the Kingdom would like to see grow and flourish.
“Now, are your teams ready?”
The referee looked between the young man and Cassandra.
“Ready.”
Cassandra nonchalantly repeated his words. “Ready.”
“Alright. Settle into your beginning formations and start on my mark.”
The lineup from the Northeastern Elementary Institute of Magic’s settled into a unique formation, with 2 in the front, 4 in the middle, and 3 in the back. Wesley’s own team’s formation was very unique as well, something no other school had featured on stage yet. Spread across the entire width of their side of the stage, the nine mages of the Reiniad Elementary Institute of magic stood in a straight line, facing their opponents.
Headmaster Farhir had discussed with the team before the inter-school competition regarding their overarching strategy. The first step, was to establish their individual strength.
This battle would come to serve that purpose.
“3. 2. 1. Fight!”
As soon as the last word was uttered, the entirety of Wesley’s team rushed forward, drawing seals. The sudden burst of motion threw Northeastern’s team off guard. Their front two had been responsible for the team’s defense, as they had wanted to use the middle four for quick, basic seals, and the final three for larger-scale spells that would take longer to draw.
Against other teams that followed the norm, this would have been fine. But against their current opponents…
Nevertheless, the front two, who both happened to be close-combat mages, did their best to stop Reiniad Elementary Institute’s blitz. For the Reiniad Elementary Institute, if the two opposing close-combat mages were able to hold the team off, their initiative would be instantly lost, and the fight would devolve into a normal mage battle.
However… close-combat mages have a specific weakness: more than any other type of mage, they need to be properly positioned in the front lines in order to fight. So, even as the two plopped down their shields to block the Reiniad Elementary Institute’s advance, Luke smirked as he finished drawing his first seal.
Chapter 22
With a wave of his hand, Luke activated his seal. Suddenly, a portal opened up beneath the Northeastern team’s two close-combat mages, swallowing them whole. A brief moment later, they appeared at the back of the stage, next to the three who had been drawing advanced seals.
“You’re lucky I’m only so strong - otherwise, I would’ve been able to throw them off the stage.” Luke muttered.
Regardless, he had done his job. With the close-combat mages out of position, the rest of the team quickly swarmed forward and chose their opponents at will.
Wesley charged his way toward a teenager who looked to be almost twice his height. This teen, upon seeing a diminutive, chubby kid charge toward him with determination, almost laughed at the unusual sight. Despite this, however, he quickly gathered himself and concentrated. After all, this was the inter-school competition, and they were facing against the perennial favorites. One should not just a book by its cover.
Even as he was about to cast his spell, however, Wesley raised his two hands, a seal in each.
“Cast!”
The first seal froze his opponent in place, turning him into an icy statue. The second seal formed a long, icy javelin, which Wesley grasped and thrusted into his opponent’s abdomen.
Here, he didn’t need to worry about killing his opponent, as long as he didn’t aim for the heart or the head, as some of the continent’s best healing mages were present, on standby.
Even as his opponent fell to his knees, Wesley looked around the stage to determine the situation at hand.
Luke had unfortunately exhausted all of his mana to move the two close-combat mages earlier - space magic was incredibly mana intensive, and it was harder to move living people than inanimate objects, so their side was down to eight people.
He’d taken one down, and to his side, he saw Cassandra, Kate, and Jacob each finishing an opponent off as well.
That left six. As he looked around, he saw that Alex and May were having issues with their opponents, while Tony and Ryu were on the brink of losing their battles. Furthermore, Luke, without any mana to fight back with, was being chased by one of the close-combat mages.
For a team that had wanted to use the match to show off their individual prowess, the match was not going as well as they would have liked.
But, at least they were winning. Wesley, Cassandra, Kate, and Jacob each ran forward to help each of their teammates out.
Wesley ran to help Luke, as they, as the young geniuses of the group, had hit it off better than with the rest of the team. Actually, Wesley, Luke, Alex, and May, had all been born within two years of each other, with Wesley being the youngest, but Alex and May had always been together, and nobody had wanted to be a third wheel.
Hence, other than Kate, Luke was his best friend on the team.
As he sped towards Luke, the first seal he drew was a simple ice wall, between Luke and the close-combat mage.
Seeing the ice wall, the close-combat mage simply tried to crash his way through - with his strong armor, he should be able to crash through the wall of any elementary mage. However, expectations did not turn into reality. After crashing into the ice wall, he made a small dent as some shards of ice fell off of the wall, but he was unable to break through.
Rebounding off the wall, he fell backwards onto the stage floor, but quickly picked himself up to face Wesley.
Wesley had been drawing a second seal with his other hand, but at this point, an unfortunate series of events happened.
Cassandra had rushed over to help Alex and May with their opponents, but upon seeing that they were now in a disadvantageous numbers situation, one of the Northeastern mages had drawn and cast a strong wind spell in an effort to drag Cassandra and the other Reiniad Elementary Institute mages off the stage with them.
To sacrifice the two of themselves to take out three from the enemy team. This had been the mage’s goal, and he had succeeded perfectly. Even as Cassandra had rushed over, she had been picked up with the hundred mile per hour winds and thrown off the stage with Alex, May, and the two Northeastern Mages.
Although Wesley hadn’t been directly caught up in the effects of the spell, he had, however, been knocked to the ground. The seal that he had been so painstakingly concentrating on shattered, and he face-planted onto the ground.
In this moment of weakness, the close-combat mage whom Wesley had just stopped rushed over, ready to pummel Wesley into submission. Thankfully, just before he reached Wesley, he was blocked yet again, but this time by a shield of light.
In short order, Wesley picked himself up, and with Kate’s help, quickly dispatched the close-combat mage. At this point, Jacob, Kate, Luke, and Wesley were the only ones remaining on the stage. Clearly, they had won.
As the referee announced their victory, the feverish cheering in the stadium reached it peak.
Yet, for Wesley and his team, the victory felt hollow - although they had won, half of the team had
been disadvantaged against their opponents, and this had only been the second round of the competition.
The team’s struggles had not gone unnoticed by others, either. Many of the competing teams from other academies had been observing the match, and many of these had garnered a very different type of satisfaction than that of the general audience.
Two headmasters, sitting next to each other, chuckled softly. “It looks like Farhir’s team isn’t so strong this year either. Do you think you’ll be able to win again?”
“If that’s the level they’re at, I’d say our chances of winning are at 70%. They may not even make it to the finals unless they improve, and quickly at it.”
“Right.”
“Speaking of, isn’t your team facing them next round?”
Chapter 23
Patriarch Lumient had been watching the fight as well, and had been rather pleased with the results. After all, both Kate and Wesley had performed admirably, besting their opponents in a single exchange. The part where Wesley had been knocked into the ground notwithstanding, his two great-grandchildren had performed adequately.
Sitting in some seats only a short distance away from the central stage were two people that Wesley would have recognized, if only he’d had time to look out for them.
During the battle, the team hadn’t received any heavy injuries, but when Cassandra, Alex, and May had been blown off the stage, they’d been slammed heavily into the ground, so the doctors had needed to hold them for a while to check them for concussions and the like. Also, just to be prevent infections and the like, even the scabs on Wesley’s forearms and face from when he’d face-planted into the stage floor were treated as well. It looks as if the fight had never happened.
After an hour, the process was finished, and the team reconvened in their VIP room.
“Hey, why is everyone so gloomy?” Headmaster Farhir had been discussing competition logistics with the competition organizers, so he’d arrived late. Upon arrival, he’d expected the team to be pleased with their victory, yet...
“Come on, cheer up! Today was a solid win. Sure, it wasn’t perfect and some mistakes were made, but we got the win, and that’s what matters. As for what went wrong, we have two days to analyze and fix that.”
Looking around, he saw that his team still wasn’t convinced.
“I bought victory cake for everyone, too.”
He could see some eyes starting to shift towards the door in anticipation, and smiled. Today, they would be allowed to relax, but the day after, they would have some real work to do. He sat down and started talking about how the weather, how some of the other teams had performed, anything to get their mind off of their earlier fight.
He wanted a clean slate to work with tomorrow.
After a bit of waiting, their victory cake arrived. A twenty-eight layer chocolate cake, complete with sprinkles and smooth frosting, was wheeled into the room atop a decorative cart. As the team watched the cake being carted in, what remained of the uncomfortable atmosphere in the room disappeared as everyone rushed towards the cake, salivating.
Eventually, everyone returned to their old selves, and they calmly watched the proceeding matches on the central stage.
That night, however, once the members of the team had retreated to their residences, each of them replayed the fight from their perspective in their minds, over and over again.
Headmaster Farhir sat in his office, surrounded by panes of glass that showed inter-school competition fight from earlier in the day.
He looked at each action that the team had taken in the fight, and analyzed it. To start off the fight, Luke had used the majority of his mana in order to allow the rest of his team to advance forward.
This had been correct, no faults there. The placement of the close-combat mages would have been better if they’d been sent out of the stage, but given Luke’s mana pool size, what he did was already very impressive.
No issues there.
Cassandra had almost been hit by a flurry of earthen spears from her opponent, but she had had the wherewithal to use a spell to create an ice wall to block the spears instead of dodging them.
While the latter would have had a decent chance of success, the ice wall guaranteed that her teammates, who would not have had their full attention on the earthen spears, would not be hit by them either.
Headmaster Farhir rubbed his temple, then moved onto the others, until he finally got to Tony, Ryu, Alex, and May.
These four had been on the losing end of their fights, until they’d received assistance from the others.
For Ryu, it was understable, as he was a defensive light mage, and his repertoire of offensive spells was rather low, and were less practiced than his defensive ones.
For Tony, Alex, and May, though…
Headmaster Farhir reached into a cabinet behind his desk and pulled out a bottle of wine. After pouring himself a healthy half-glass, he downed the contents in one gulp, then looked at the bottle, and downed that too.
Running his fingers through his hair, he thought back to the fallout last year that had resulted from his Reiniad Elementary Institute losing in the inter-school competition finals.
After their loss, last year’s school representative team had broken apart rather violently. Everyone had pinned the blame on each other, and although they had all graduated to the Lumient Intermediate Academy of Magic, it had been as enemies.
That hadn’t even been the worst part of it all. The Reiniad Elementary Institute was the “official” elementary institute of magic of the Reiniad Kingdom, sponsored by the crown itself. When they had lost… the King himself had been beside himself with fury, as he’d felt that the school had let him down.
Afterwards, Headmaster Farhir himself had almost been fired from his post, and had only been able to keep it when Christopher Lumient had vouched for him.
He sighed, then stood up and stretched. It wasn’t as if their teams for the last two years had been weak… it was just that the other schools were improving, and catching up to their level. Last year, they’d only lost by an extremely small margin, and this year, they had a strong enough team to compete for the title as well.
But, as to whether they would win, that depended on how well the “bottom” half of the team could perform. He looked back toward the panes of glass, and set his eyes on Tony.
Earth mages were extremely adept, more so than any other type of mage, at changing the landscape of the battlefield, and Tony was definitely one who tried to focus on the bigger picture.
Alex and May, however… there was simply no excuse for them. Lightning and Fire mages were amongst the best for offense, and from that, individual battles. Despite that, they had both lost.
Headmaster Farhir narrowed his eyes as he watched the couple’s actions. There was something wrong with their movements, their choices in battle. Furrowing his brow, he thought back to when he’d seen them competing for their spot on the team.
Something wasn’t quite right.
Chapter 24
At the competition to make the school’s representative team, both Alex and May had performed incredibly - they had overcome tens of their peers, and then fought their way through the 1 vs 1 tournament that had been specially held for the Rank 8 Elementary mages.
At each phase of the competition, they had shown their domineering attitude by dominating and overcoming all who stood in their path. Yet, as he watched the scenes depicted by the various glass panes, he could see hesitation in the couple’s every action.
Why was this?
Headmaster Farhir thought back to what had happened during the training camp. Even at the training camp, the two had fought together extremely well, with the rare kind of synergy that could only be expected from those who had spent their entire lives with each other.
Yet, on the glass panes, they looked to be very out of sync, to the point where they almost looked to be fighting each other, while trying to fight their enemies at the same time.
&nb
sp; Little wonder that they were having issues.
But then, why were they fighting so poorly? Headmaster Farhir scratched his chin, trying to see why through the glass panes. After half an hour, he sighed, then stood up and stumbled out of his office. He’d think about it more in the morning.
…
Early, the next morning.
The team was gathered yet again in Headmaster Farhir’s office, waiting for him to show up. Finally, after waiting for over an hour, their venerable headmaster finally stumbled into the room while scratching his head and yawning.
Memory Seal- Volume 2 Page 10