The Tournament (Part 1)

The day of the tournament for the Arbren National Academy's initial rankings had finally come.

All of the students were currently sitting in the seats of the arena as they waited for further instruction from the instructors who all sat together in their own section of the arena seats.

Eventually Alfyr came out to the center of the arena where 4 stages were set up for the torunament.

"Good morning as you all know I am Alfyr Stormbreeze the weapons instructor for our academy and the coordinator of today's tournament. We will begin the tournament by drawing names for each of these stages that will all fight at the same time. We will slowly take away stages as more students get eliminated, the top 10 students will all be given prizes so be sure to fight your hardest. Lastly this tournament will use real weapons not wooden training once, there will be judges watching to make sure the fights don't go too far but be sure not to take things to far if you see that your opponent has already lost. Without further ado let us begin the tournament."

As he said this Alfyr reached into a large box and pulled out two sheets of paper.

"Arena 1 will be Ulfrid Regos from class 5 vs Dursy Canton from class 3."

As he said this their names appeared on glass sheets above one of the arenas and the two students made their way down from the seats onto the arena before they stepped onto the stage.

Alfyr did not stop calling names until all 4 arenas were filled and the student's names were displayed.

"Fighters prepare yourselves...Begin!"

Some of the fights charged forwards while some stayed back, some of the fighters used mana while some did not, some of the fights were against evenly matched students and some were not.

Caxon made sure to at least watch each fighter briefly to see if anyone stood out to him but so far it was fairly normal. None of the students who had made it past the academy's harsh entrance exam were pushovers and all of the could be considered talented but there were still levels.

A few of the students even surprised Caxon since from the way the teachers talked about them, he thought that there wouldn't be many impressive students here but there were some true monsters. Caxon was disappointed in himself, he had already seen Will and yet he assumed that there would not be any more threats within the national side of the academy.

For the past few days Caxon had been trying to catch glimpses of the Royal side to see if he could find any suspicious students but since he wasn't allowed inside it was useless.

Now that he was seeing students from every class go all out against each other it opened his eyes that he had to be more vigilant against those he couldn't see versus those right in front of him.

He noticed from the names on the screens that for almost every impressive fighter he had seen he had heard their names before but thinking it was useless gossip he ignored. Maybe if he had paid attention to the whispers of the other students, he wouldn't be so surprised by the amount of talent at this school.

The fights continued as students got eliminated and 2 more were called up to replace them on the stage while both the winner and loser returned to their seats.

"Arena 3 William Ravilot Class 1 vs Petrus Ruom Class 3"

William stood up from his seat next to Caxon as he looked at him and smiled.

"Yeah, yeah go on good luck."

Before Will could say anything he simply waved him off so the tournament could go a little faster. Having gotten use to the way he thought Caxon showed affection Will smiled and ran towards the arena.

"Fighters prepare yourselves...Begin!"

Until the very second before the judge said begin Will was still smiling before he instantly turned serious and locked eyes with his opponent.

This did not surprise Caxon or make him any more suspicious of Will, after he had his little speech, his roommate trained much hard and he showed no mercy during spars anymore.

A wave appeared before Will before it rushed towards his opponent. Surprised at the amount of mana used in the very first attack the other student used his spear to jump over the wave.

However as soon as he landed behind the wave, he found Will who had been following right behind the attack. With barley enough time to block the first attack the spear user was thrown back by the surprisingly strong much younger boy he was facing.

Will did not let up the attack as he sent a leaping swing downwards towards the bore student, who barely dodged the potentially life-threatening attack. When Will's sword missed and hit the arena a large amount of dust was thrown into the air as a large crater also appeared.

When he collected himself and swatted away the dust that had been raised by the attack the other student was shocked to see Will standing directly in front of him with a sword already to his neck.

This fight had been quite the show and attracted a lot of attention as every student clapped for Will, however instead of feeling joy from this Will just looked at one particular student. When he saw that Caxon was also smiling he was finally able to smile and celebrate his victory.

Caxon however was sitting in the stands with a bitter smile on his face as he had just watched ever move Will had made as closely as he could.

'What have I created?'

Looking at the absolute monster that even he wouldn't want to face without his real strength, part of him wished he had never told the naive kid from 2 weeks ago that he could be a good fighter and just left him scared to attack anyone for the rest of his life.