Opening Ceremony

——— Minho ———

The first day of the Monster Battle Contest finally came. 

Right from the morning, the classroom was buzzing with excited students, as well as those who seemed nervous as hell. 

Sir Vicario came on to do an attendance check, then we all headed to the big yard in front of the Academy's main building together for an assembly and the long awaited opening ceremony. 

Everyone stood in neat rows and columns, perfectly spaced so that we'd have looked like a grid of ants from a bird's eye view. Except that I must have been an eyesore standing next to Mira, marking an unwanted blemish in otherwise perfect form. 

The VIPs - I think they were, as they looked like well-dressed nobles, rich men, and other prominent figures - sat behind the podium where Lord Kinsky would probably step up to give his opening speech. There were some empty rows, but as a group of people dressed in gold-white robes appeared to fill them there were many murmurs and gasps among the students who were otherwise keeping good discipline so far. 

"Those are mages from the Association of Royal Magi!"

"Wow-, I've never seen them before."

"I heard they might come and see the fights, but so early in the Contest?"

Of course, Mira and I knew about this in advance thanks to Sir Vicario's tip-off.

Mira usually would have reveled in receiving such attention, but there was a sense of tension and nervousness about her today. I don't think she was particularly concerned that we'd go out at the group stage, but after what happened yesterday, she'd need to really manage her Illusion magic's mana consumption as if to not repeat the same fiasco. If she passed out during the actual battle it would be a disaster which would surely lead to our loss. 

Celestine was kind enough to give us tons of chocolates though, which we accepted gratefully and packed Mira's bag with. 

Lord Kinsky then finally appeared, but he was efficient with his words and delivered a nice, simple, and friendly opening speech that both motivated the students while sending a clear reminder of how important their performance in this contest was and how 'unfortunately' those who don't meet the performance level will have to leave the Academy. 

The poor weaklings among the crowd seemed very concerned. Poor kids.

Nevertheless, what everyone anticipated the most was the announcement of groups to find out who their opponents would be. 

It was Sir Vicario who read out the list of groups and we all listened attentively. Some students couldn't help but shout "Yes!" when they felt they were grouped with whom they considered to be 'weaker' opponents, while there were also plenty of "Oh no" from kids who thought they got tough opponents. 

Of course, there were also others whose names were greeted with a loud cheer due to their sheer popularity among the students, with Celestine being one of them. 

The list was long, for there were many students in the academy, half of which would leave after the tournament unfortunately. It took a while but finally, Mira's group was also announced. 

"And in group 15 - Tanaka, Ella, Tanguy, and Mira."

Fucking hell.

I didn't know who Tanaka and Ella were, as they were from other classes, but Tanguy was the boy in our class who pulled out King Kong during the monster introduction class. 

This is bad… How the heck am I going to face and defeat King Kong? 

"Mira, we are in trouble…"

"You think so?", luckily, she seemed to be in a mood to think and strategize, not just kukuku her way through. 

"Yes, Tanguy has what we call King Kong in our world."

"Wasn't that the massive monkey he pulled out?"

"Yes."

"Do you think you can tame it like the big cat from Kimus?"

"That's going to be extremely hard… I'm sure he'd like bananas, but that's a massive ape. He could probably gulp down a whole banana tree in a few seconds and just want more."

For other animal-type monsters, I did consider using tranquilizer darts and stuff before too. But King Kong was just way too big. I'd need to pump in literally gallons of tranquilizer to have any effect. If he just sat still and let me pour it down his throat it could have worked. But why would he do that for me?

"Right. Can you beat it with raw strength?"

"Mira… I think you are still overestimating Human ability a bit-. We may be 'Demons' in some ways, yes, but physically it's impossible for Humans to fight an animal the size of King Kong"

"How about that Kaboom thing you pulled out before? Explosion Magic Device?"

"I could try… although I wouldn't want to hurt an animal. But even then-, I don't know. King Kong is massive. He might get hurt, but he won't get blown to pieces. If I hurt him but without being able to finish him off, it would probably enrage him and make him go berserk. That's going to be an absolute disaster."

"Hm…"

Mira was deep in thought. 

My mind was racing too, but nothing readily came up in my mind.

"Well, I have an idea.", Mira suddenly clapped her hands and announced.

"Oh, really?"

"I will use illusions to distract it, and you will find a way to defeat it."

"Yo. Isn't that like… the strategy for EVERYTHING anyway?!"

"Yup. It's our default strategy and we shall stick with it. Trust the process."

"That doesn't help at all. Can you please like, reconsider unleashing that supposedly awesome magic power of yours? I'm sure your father would excuse you for this once."

"Nope. I made a promise. I will stick with it. I'm an honorable woman."

Well, you don't look very honorable to me - most of the time anyway. 

"Look, it seems you know that Monster already - he's from your world, right? Use your knowledge and find its weaknesses. Let me know exactly what I need to create and I will use that. We have a few hours until the actual match. Just focus on finding its weakness. One thing I know is that EVERY creature has something that it fears, something that haunts it, something that will make it collapse."

Oh… like the Mirror thing she did to me…

If we could do something like that…