CH38 (168), Combat Tournaments (2)

The fifth round had 11 participants, so a lucky person would once more advance without having to fight. A girl from the Knight Academy got the free pass, while the other 10 people had to fight each other.

Unfortunately, Björn and Weiss got pit against each other. I would like to say it was an epic fight, but I can't.

After looking in the direction of Mr. Koetsuji, and surprisingly mine as well, Björn gave up without a fight citing that Weiss had a higher chance of winning and that he did not want to tire her out before her other fights.

Once all fights of the fifth round were over 6 participants were left, with Weiss being the last member of our academy. The 6 participants fought another round and the winners of the 6th round automatically made it into the top 3. Weiss had to fight the girl that had previously advanced with a free pass and won without much trouble.

Her ability to create and use ice was a major advantage against these knight students, and they had yet to force her to go all out. Anyway, the 3 losers had to fight each other for fourth place, and a boy from the Knight Academy obtained fourth place after beating the other two losers of the 6th round.

Weiss and the other two winners of the 6th round had to fight each other once to determine who would receive the first place, and who would get second as well as third place.

The first ones to fight were Maria, a girl from the Knight Academy, and Weiss. Maria used a spear as her weapon and she was pretty good with it from what I could see with my fake-professional eyes.

Until now Weiss had avoided using her ice powers in major ways. She had just used minor tricks like freezing the feet or making her foes slip, but Maria's agile offensive forced her to pull out the big guns.

Maria maintained her awareness of the surroundings while using the long reach of her spear to attack. She dodged Weiss's ice and gave her no chance to attack her with her rapiers.

Seeing the situation Weiss just stopped using her ice in a small way. She simply froze the whole ground around. Then she made ice spikes grow from the ground, forcing Maria to dodge. She actually managed to avoid slipping thrice but still slipped in the end.

Once she fell down Weiss surrounded her with ice spikes and was declared the winner. After she was declared the winner Weiss allowed her ice to melt. Seeing the muddy state of the field, the referee called out a Rapidash who used what I assumed to be a weak Heat Wave to dry the field.

While that was happening the students of our academy cheered for Weiss's victory and to be honest I expected the spectating knight students to start booing at that point, complaining about her usage of ice powers instead of facing her opponents directly.

However, nothing like that happened. While they were visibly not happy about losing they didn't moan about it. Well, the majority didn't. I could hear a few of them complaining among themselves about her being cowardly, but even the other Knight Academy students threw them disdainful looks.

Unsurprisingly, the idiot I met during the hunting competition was part of the complaining group, so I dubbed them the young master's faction. Next up Maria had to fight against the other Knight Academy student, a boy called Harold, who used a sword and shield combo.

The fight was intense with Maria using her spear to attack him while keeping Harold at length without giving him the chance to attack her. Meanwhile, Harold was either dodging or blocking her spear attacks using mostly his shield and sometimes his sword.

This back and forth went on for a few minutes before Harold managed to make use of Maria slightly overextending her attack. He used his shield to deflect her spear upwards, quickly slid close under her spear, and pointed his sword at her jugular before she could recover her stance.

He was declared the winner and everyone, myself included cheered, due to it being an exciting battle. Since Maria lost both battles, she directly obtained third place. Next up, Weiss and Harold had to battle to decide who would come in first and who second.

Weiss changed her weapon for the final fight. Instead of using a rapier as she had before this, she chose a spear, and it became obvious why she did so once the battle began.

It looked like she decided to go all out right from the start because she used her ice powers to create 4 ice chains that she manipulated to entangle Harold, who was forced to block and dodge the ice chains.

Still, that was not all, Weiss also used her spear to attack Harold while he was busy blocking the chains, forcing him to split his focus between the chains and Weiss's spear attacks.

It was like fighting two or more opponents at once, and the guy managed to keep that state of blocking and dodging on two fronts for more than two minutes. That might not sound like much but believe me, in such a situation it was a long time.

Nonetheless, he was forced to act because he understood that he would tire out pretty soon, which would result in him getting caught or hit. So, he had to mount an offensive even if the chances of winning were low.

After dodging another spear strike Harold actually threw his shield at Weiss forcing her to block it, while he himself jumped at her, sword at the front aiming right at her throat.

Still, Weiss quickly created an ice wall blocking the shield. The impact of the shield cracked the hastily formed wall, but the wall still managed to delay Harold's desperate sword strike long enough for her to catch him in her chains before it broke.

Once that happened, the fight was practically over. As expected, Weiss pointed her spear at Harold's chest and was declared the winner, and this time everyone cheered as well, not only our students. The battle between the two was impressive enough for everyone to cheer due to appreciation.

Once the cheering died down Ms. Striker declared the end of the personal combat tournament. Weiss was declared the winner and the 3 others got a mention as well. I took a look at my watch and saw that it was 5:12 p.m right now, which meant the personal combat tournament took a bit more than 7 hours, lunch break included.

Now, if we took the duration of the rounds as an example, the two other tournaments should take somewhere around four and a half hours combined.

If we added a dinner break to that, then it would be later than 10 p.m by the time we were done. I did not believe that the teachers planned to do that, so the other two combat tournaments would probably be shifted to tomorrow instead just like Mr. Koetsuji had told us on our first day.

A few moments after I considered the topic Mr. Koetsuji announced that the regular combat tournament and the mixed combat tournament would be held tomorrow. The regular combat tournament would begin at 10 a.m, and the mixed one would be after that.

After that everyone left the stands, and the teacher with the Sandslash had it level the place once more. Apparently, that was part of the protocol and they would make a fresh one tomorrow. We split from there and returned to our respective camps.

Once we were back, Mr. Koetsuji had us gather on the field before he addressed us.

"Weiss and Björn did a good job today, especially Weiss. I want those participating in the tournaments tomorrow to take them as an example. Don't disappoint me." He praised the performance of the two, before low-key warning the rest of us.

"Alright, I was actually planning to have you all exercise for a few hours before and after dinner, but I'll reduce that to just an hour of physical exercise due to Weiss and Björn's good performance. You can later thank them for that." He announced, and we directly had to start.

Once the hour was up those who had to cook went to the kitchen to prepare dinner. Thankfully we had the rest of the day off and everyone spent that time differently. Some just relaxed while others prepared for tomorrow. Ace and I belonged to the second group.

Ace called out his Pokemon and went over their battle strategies and moves with them, while I contemplated which one of my registered Pokemon to use for the tournament.

I decided that there was no need for my Pokemon to hold back their strength. I personally would show my Tier 2 Aura User abilities, and only refrain from using my psychic abilities.

While even this would get me a lot of attention, I was confident that I was safe enough to show this much. It wasn't like I was showing my complete hand, so dealing with the low-level people that decided to target me for any reason should be no problem.

As for strong people targeting me, I wasn't worried about that part. After so many months of assessing the academy, I was confident they would take care of those. They would only leave alone those they believed I could deal with myself.

Anyway, I finally settled on Horus/Xatu, Mothra/Butterfree, Luna/Clefairy, and Thor/Pikachu. I was going to switch between those four during the mixed combat tournament. Well, maybe I would use Mars/Ursaring as well, but I doubted it.

I was honestly planning to dominate the whole thing so there wouldn't be much fighting happening on our part. At least if it went the way I wanted it to, if not we would obviously still win, but we would have to do it the old school way, by whooping their collective asses.

While we were preparing for tomorrow, Weiss was relaxing beside us without a care in the world. She was humming a few melodies while creating a few figures with her ice.

We went to our respective barracks at around 9 p.m and I went to sleep an hour or so later. Ace was still mumbling plans to himself at that time, so I told him to go to sleep as well before I did so myself. No idea if he followed my advice or not.

Anyway, the next morning after our morning chores and breakfast we returned to the meeting point. The teachers set up another fighting ring, but this time the size of the battlefield was much larger due to the combatants being Pokemon, and the mixed battle having multiple individuals fighting at once.

The diameter of the ring was 50 meters, so the area was around 2000 m². The stands were ready as well, and thanks to their height everyone had a good view of the battlefield.

As previously announced the regular combat tournament was held first. They started the first round at exactly 10 a.m. There were 64 participants, 39 of them were from Aaron Academy, while 25 were from the Knight Academy.

So, 32 battles were held during the first round, and 16 battles ensued during the second round. Both rounds were 1-vs-1 battles. Ace used his Ninetales for both rounds and won them both. Ace's first opponent was a girl from our academy, and she used a (mid) bronze-stage Lopunny.

As for Ace's Ninetales, it broke through to the (low) silver stage roughly a week before the excursion. Predictably, Ninetales managed to smoothly win the fight, not only because of its higher strength but also because the girl obviously lacked battle experience.

Ace's second opponent was a boy from the Knight Academy, with a (high) bronze-stage Zebstrika. This battle was harder because the guy had more experience than the girl, but they managed to win this one as well even if it was not as easy as the first fight.

Now it was time for the third round, which was also the round of 16. That meant that the battles would be 2-vs-2 from now on. As for the 16 participants, 10 of them were from Aaron Academy, while 6 were from the Knight Academy.

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