The Winner

As the finals approached, a woman walked towards the ring. Her aura is powerful and she gives off an indomitable spirit.

The man walks towards the ring. He has a majestic temperament and he gives off an intimidating aura.

Both of them stared at each other, there was no extra emotion in their eyes. Just two opponents who want to defeat each other and win.

"Please excuse me Your Highness" Fiona says with a slight bow

"Don't be polite, Ms. Flamor" Jason says in a respectful tone.

Both their eyes immediately flash cold and the referee signals the match to start.

Jason immediately puts his hand on the floor and spreads smoke all around the ring. He then dashes forward within the smoke and aims for Fiona.

Fiona puts her hand on the floor and a massive air wave shoots out and gets rid of the smoke. The smoke disappears and Jason is right in front of Fiona with a punch heading towards her face.

Fiona puts her hand in the opposite direction of the punch and ignites a small explosion right when the punch connects. She also channeled mana in her eyes and shot it out right on Jason's face. 

The mini explosion reduced the impact of the punch and the eye attack gave her a good counterattack.

Channeling magic from your eyes is not only incredibly inefficient but the power and range are drastically reduced. It's normally a useless skill but it is still better than nothing, Fiona is quite dangerous.

Jason jumps back and puts his hand on his eye. His vision was terrible now but he could heal it just a little bit to make it bearable.

Fiona wiped the blood from her lips and saw his eyes slowly get better.

"healing magic huh? Let's see how much mana you'll have left after I make you heal a million more times" She says as she dashes towards Jason.

Fiona flicks her fingers while she runs and small magic balls spread out and explode on Jason's shield.

The explosion made a little smoke and by the time it disappeared, Fiona's fist already crashed into it. A huge crack appeared on the shield before Fiona jumped away.

"Dang, so close," She said as she started breathing heavily. 

Jason then made mirage clones all over the ring and then had his illusory birds make pre-recorded sounds.

The sounds and the images overlapped which confused Fiona heavily.

Fiona took a deep breath and then put both hands on the floor. She started spinning her entire body quickly and elegantly, almost like a majestic dance. Her feet were flailing in the air and then sharp wind blades started shooting out from her feet. 

The air blades shot everywhere and landed on almost every mirage clone in the field. Jason, who was hiding well, was forced to pop up a barrier and the wind blade cut deep into it.

It was only an inch away from surpassing Maria's cut.

A cold sweat dripped from Jason's back, This woman is very powerful.

Fiona gets up and starts panting even heavier, She knows that as the daughter of a marquis, her bloodline isn't as strong as those from a ducal house. But that has never stopped her, she wants to aim for the very top and stomp everyone who comes in her way. Even, if it's a prince!

She dashed forward once more and Jason put his hands together and then shone very bright and blinding light. 

Fiona quickly closes her eyes but her eyes still stung. 

Jason smiled and then punched Fiona with all his might. A huge force of air approaches her but she quickly puts up her barrier.

Jason's eyes bulged out in disbelief, he then shot small beams toward her legs but she jumped out of the way.

As a genius in magic, Fiona naturally had a high sensitivity to mana. Jason's abilities can be sensed to a certain degree even if she can't use her eyes.

Jason gritted his teeth and put his hands on his body once more. He raised his adrenaline with magic and then dashed towards Fiona.

Fiona quickly shoots out a fire blast right at Jason.

Jason quickly dodges and realizes that Fiona's senses are much higher than he originally thought. He then uses magic to lower the sound of his footsteps.

He approached Fiona and right when he was about to punch her blind spot, Fiona stuck her arms around her and circulated a violent wind and expanded it outward. 

Jason put up his barrier but was pushed back. 

"Did she guess? Or was it her intuition?" Jason said in his head as he questioned the scene in front of him.

Fiona's vision came back and she started panting even more heavily. It took a lot out of her to focus her concentration to this extent. 

"His Highness has too many tricks and my mana is getting lower, it seems like fighting a mix of both Selena and Ivory," Fiona thought to herself as anger started to build up.

"Is this where I will fall? I refuse" Fiona said as a trace of determination flooded her eyes.

She takes a deep breath and dashes towards Jason.

Jason smiles, he has never had so much fun while fighting in his life. He enters a battle stance and watches Fiona punch out a huge air wave towards him.

The air wave was smaller and more compact so Jason simply tilts his head and dodges it after finding the flaw in its trajectory. 

Fiona then slams her foot on the floor and an Ice wall emerges right behind Jaosn. 

Jason didn't notice in time and Fiona's earlier attack blasted the ice wall into pieces which exploded everywhere.

The pieces of the ice wall also blast toward the back of Jason with tremendous force and crash into him.

The sharp pain left Jason confused and he quickly turned around, he realized what happened, and when he turned back, a fist already crashed into his jaw.

Jason was left on the floor, his consciousness blurry but due to the many years of being poisoned and living a state of near-death, he was quite used to how to remedy these kinds of scenarios.

Fiona was panting even heavier, she had to use so much mana in order to deter Jason from relying on his barrier. It ended up working but she is beyond tired. She is unsure how much energy she has left.

She tries to walk towards Jason but he gets up groggily, his state is also very terrible. 

Despite his attainments in magic, he has never fought a proper master of magic in a frontal battle before. Especially one named as the genius of her generation. Most people would underestimate him but Fiona was respectful from the beginning and was always on guard.

"It seems tricks are useless, handling assassins is different from battle geniuses. I must use the only advantage I have", Jason thought to himself as he connected his thumbs and index fingers together on both hands.

He starts replicating the magic Fiona did in the semi-finals.

Fiona saw this and her expression darkened. "It seems this prince has truly been hiding deeply".

She hesitated for a bit and then started using the same magic as him.

The stadium froze and the two started glowing with bright colors. 

The mana on both Fiona and Jason's hands started cackling and growing unstable. After quite a long time, their hands started getting full of burnt marks.

Then a huge explosion was heard and the two beams crashed into each other.

The fluctuations in the air were heavy and the whole arena was shaking. They have never seen such violent magic before. As the two moves collided, they were going back and forth, making it difficult to see who had the advantage. 

The beam coming from Fiona's side seemed a little bit stronger, most likely due to her experience with the technique. As Jason was slowly getting overwhelmed, The audience thought the ending was already decided. Slowly, the mana from the attack coming from Fiona starts to lessen.

It kept lessening very quickly and then Jason eventually got the advantage. The beam then overwhelmed Fiona's attack and dwarfed it before hitting her.

Fiona was blasted and the arena turned quiet. The smoke slowly dissipated and Fiona was left on the floor while Jason crashed on the floor slowly after. Both sides completely lost all their mana.

"It seems I lost, Your Highness, who knew you were so strong," Fiona said very weakly.

"You're the strong one, without this Mandeline bloodline of mine, how could I compete with your attack" Jason said with a sigh of relief.

Fiona gave a wry smile but did not say anything. She knew that her Flamor bloodline was slightly weaker than the Mandeline's in terms of overall mana output. That was a key reason why she was very hostile towards Ivory. 

As she expected, one day, she ended up losing due to it.

It doesn't feel that bad, however, she knew at one point in time, she overpowered the prince based on her talents alone. She just didn't have the mana output to back it up and ended up losing.

She reached for the sky with her hand and then clenched it into a fist.

"Doesn't this mean that even if she gets a bit better, even with her bloodline, she will still be able to overpower the mandeline based on her talents alone?", She slowly thinks to herself.

She then gives another smile and then slowly closes her eyes and passes out.

Jason watched her carefully and then gave another sigh of relief.

He was unsure if she would suddenly do something and win just like she did against Selena.

With this win, he has now cemented his future and can protect all his loved ones. He knows that his win over Fiona will only give her more motivation to strive higher in the future. 

After fighting with her personally, he can be sure that he can use her to suppress Lance. No matter what Lance says or wants, Fiona is the best candidate for his empress. As long as I pull some strings from the back, I can make it quite easy for her to sit on that seat. 

Lance, a man without any magic, does not have the strength or the power to suppress or subdue Fiona. And with her father most likely taking over Duke Zenat as the head of the military faction in the future, Lance's strongest backer will now become more tied to Fiona than to him.

Jason smiles, everything is going very well.

The referee announces Jason as the winner and the whole stadium roared.

"The counterfeit prince is actually this good? What happened?"

"You're still calling him that? Have some shame. This is one of the brightest stars of our empire!"

"Prince Jason! Prince Jason!"

The crowd completely shifted their view of Jason. No one really knew him and even though they saw some sparks during the hunting competition, it was not to the point of favoring him over Lance. 

But this win was simply too incredible, some are even wondering if Lance could beat him. Lance was not even here!

The members of the military faction who were watching the entire scene turned gloomy.

"What does the prince mean? Was he hiding this entire time so he could secretly take the throne from Lance?"

"What do we do now? We have to have someone stop him from getting the throne. Don't forget he's backed by the empress. It is not easy to do"

As the murmurs kept coming the medical team eventually took Fiona and Jason to get healed.

After their healing, the ending ceremony took place.

Everyone who placed well recieved medals.

Selena also got a medal for being the crowd's favorite simply because if they didn't vote for her, she would receive nothing and everyone felt like it was unfair. Selena was far too entertaining to have zero medals due to dropping out in the first round.

Selena smiled as she looked at her medal.

"Seems like we couldn't do it" a familiar voice rang in Selena's ears.

"Don't worry, We always knew that women are powerful. At least we know we improved as well" Selena said to Ivory

"Can't believe my cousin almost lost" Ivory said with a bit of a shocked look.

"Fiona seems to hide a lot of cards as well, it's almost a blessing to be her classmate of 5 years. It seems like she doesn't talk to anyone else but us" Selena says right as Fiona pulls up.

"I actually wanted to see one of you in the finals," Fiona said abruptly.

Ivory and Selena were a little shocked. What did they just hear?

"But too bad both of you ran into a woman far superior to you, it's quite unfortunate," Fiona said while shaking her head in grief.

Ivory and Selena started getting angry, "Far superior? Says who!" They said in unison.

"And you still lost just like we did!" They argued.

"You're right, I won't lose next time though but you guys will still lose next time. That's the difference between us" Fiona says with a smile while looking at her silver medal.

"Another second place to a Mandeline, I don't like getting used to this feeling" Fiona muttered.

Ivory snorted, if she wasn't slightly smarter than Fiona, she wouldn't even be able to hold her head around this woman.

"My cousin isn't too bad but you didn't do bad either. I guess it gives our graduating class enough face" Ivory says without looking at Fiona.

Fiona smiles, "As the representative and the strongest in the class, it's only right to make sure my dear weaker classmates have a good big sister to look up to" She said with a smug smile.

Ivory's eyes flashed cold and was about to say something until Selena said,

"Alright enough, the emperor is about to speak".

The three women stopped and then looked over to where the emperor stood and on the floor is Jason kneeling respectfully.

Everyone in the arena is wondering, what this prince will wish for.