19 Student Tournament

If they blocked with such a barrier of their own, it would also protect the badge and as long as they were able to continue the fight and there was no risk of the badge being destroyed. If they were not careful, or took risks and lowered their barriers in order to save magical power however, this would be a different story. This would make sure the students could fight without fear of harming each other, yet they were not able to rely on something like the badge as a protecting treasure to avoid strong attacks.

Students would face each other in one versus one duels and over multiple fights there would be a ranking. At the end, everyone had one chance to challenge someone above them in ranking. If they won, the challenger would take the place of the challenged and the loser would be placed a single rank below them, with everyone else below also dropping a rank.

As such it would not only depend on their personal strength, but it would also depend on how the ones in front of them in ranking could hold their own during the challenge phase. It would not work to hold back, as anyone losing in front of you, would also lower your own rank.

There would also be prices for the highest placed individuals in each age group, to prevent the older students from getting all the rewards just because of age and experience. In the end, while the academy wanted to give everyone a fair playing field, they also wanted to foster their younger talents. As such there were prices for the overall rankings, as well as age group specific prices, while still letting the students of all age groups fight each other, without separating the people of each age group in any way.

The arenas were rather large and placed on the outside of the academy, with about a kilometer in diameter and were filled with all kinds of natural obstacles. Trees, stones, little hills, it was not unlike a natural environment one might find outside. This was to prevent mages to get instantly defeated in close combat and give them some time to prepare for the magical knights who would engage them, yet it did not give them enough time to randomly cast all of their protections. They would have to prioritize their spells depending on their own and the opponent's tactic.

Mirror like images were erected for the audience as were various seating arrangements, food stalls and little shops. It did not look much different from a festival. The visitors would be able to see all the different places of the arenas, to give everyone a better idea of what is going on, while the students who were fighting would just have to rely on their sight and their own magical means.

There was quite the uproar when all the visiting guests arrived. Most of them were from the military, with both mid and high ranking officers watching the festivities and tournament. There were some officials to be found, often related to the students attending the academy, or otherwise related to their families. Many of the clans had also sent representatives to watch the fights. It was a good way to see the younger generations potential and could often be the students' foundation for entering one of the powerful clans later on.

While the guests would soon get to see the students' skills, the students in the meantime watched the arriving guests and many discussions broke out.

"Look there are so many high ranking officials coming today! I have never seen so many of them arriving at the same time!"

"Yes, even all of the great clans sent some people, usually they would just let the other clans gather the information and only stop by when something exceptional happens."

They were in the middle of preparing the fights, with the guests slowly being led to the various seating locations surrounding the area, when a group of guards were leading a carriage through the crowd.

"Make way!" could be heard, as well as many surprised exclamations of the crowd, who quickly let the carriage and the guards pass. No one wanted to obstruct a carriage that obviously belonged to the Aer family.

"Did the royal family also send a representative? Who is it?"

"I don't know, but just some servant or official would never be allowed to show the Aer family's insignia's like this. It has to be at least a branch member of the family."

"I have heard its Lady Velia and her daughter princess Evany!"

"That mad battle princess is here? What does she do here? Is she not normally always on the borders somewhere fighting?"

"Shut up, do you want them to hear you? Don't drag me down with you! It's obvious there are here for the princess Myra who joined the academy."

People were even more excited and curious what someone from the royal family would do here. While it was well known among the newer students, that someone from the Aer family joined their academy, it was not as well known among the older students who had not been there at the examinations. Everyone tried to get a better look at the princess as well, because the princess was well known to be a battle maniac. In a military academy, where strength was highly valued, even though many would know her by her many odd titles like mad battle princess, sword maniac Evany or even more disrespectful nicknames, she was still highly respected for her achievements nonetheless.

In the end, the uproar calmed down somewhat and the two special guests where led to a cordoned off VIP area, while the students got ready for the first duels.

Most of the first few fights were not nearly as exciting as the later ones would be. As the rank of the students would increase, stronger students would more often face each other during the later fights and the fights would get more and more spectacular.

Most of the time, the fights were either rather small scale, because of the lack of power and experience between the duelists, or the overwhelming strength of one side would end the fight rather quickly.

"Watch, Jayden is totally going to destroy that mage. His sword is way too fast and he's totally ruthless!"

"What's so special about that fight? It's just some orange grader, this mage probably cannot even hold a proper shield for a moment and Jayden is one of the oldest and strongest students here. Some say he's early violet grade and he can easily defeat master level swordsmen and even fight against some grandmasters. Do you really think it takes any skill for someone to demolish a pitiful mage of this level?"

"Oh .. there he goes surrendering. You were right."

"Of course I was right, the younger students simply cannot compete with monsters who have been in the academy for over ten years, no matter how skilled they are!"

It took a while for the fights to complete as there were several thousand students who would be competing against each other. As the tournament would take several weeks however, there would be more than enough time.

Finally it was Myra's turn to fight, but she was facing another new student. As they had the same classes, the student obviously knew of Myra's hilarious feats and strength and before their weapons could even clash the other student surrendered.

'What a wasted time' Myra thought to herself and was a little bit annoyed that she couldn't even fight a little bit.

Nell and Liam on the other hand quickly defeated their opponents. Nell was just too strong with his spirit weapon supporting him. Not only were his strength and speed boosted drastically by little Red and little Blue, but his senses were linked with the weapon spirits making him able to dodge and avoid feints without even seeing the moves.

Liam on the other hand faced his opponent with overwhelming magical skill. His training with Myra gave him a totally different way of using his magical power. Not only were his spells more efficient, using less of his own strength and helping him use the worlds power more easily, his casting speed was faster and his spell control was better, making his spells harder to dodge or destroy, not to mention that his spells often were variant spells that used the magical power in strange ways to increase their destructive capabilities.

Aaron had his own reputation as a fierce and strong opponent and the fight quickly ended with his adversary surrendering.

The first one to really cause an uproar though was Alyn. She had not even attacked yet and barely summoned her spirit weapon, when people were shouting in surprise.

"It's a bow! Did she just summon a bow as her spirit weapon?"

"How did she get a ranged weapon spirit? It's definitely no normal weapon, it already has a bound spirit!"

Her opponent on the other side of the arena, a mage, did not see what she was doing though and was expecting to face a magical knight. Due to this expectation, he was still busy with his own defensive layers when an arrow took him out from far away, instantly shattering his unfinished barriers and was only stopped by the protective badge which quickly declared the end of the match. Never would he have expected to face a ranged attack and his shocked and confused face made it obvious that not only the audience had a hard time believing in this very uncommon weapon spirit.

--

Several days passed until the first round of fights was completed. Even with a dozen arenas and most fights only taking 10 minutes, it would still take a long time for them to complete with so many students. Myra's next fight seemed to be a lot more exciting this time, at least she faced one of the older students.

As even Aaron had never seen Myra fight, he was slightly worried, but Myra's excited expression was enough to make Aaron relax. He continued to give her pointers for the upcoming fight, with Myra listening like a good pupil.

"Your opponent this time is likely at the master level. His name is Jayden and he should be a pure knight, not really good with any mage spells, so you can expect him to use his power to increase his physical abilities. You might want to exhaust his energies while he gets close to you, this should give you an advantage. In the end, a mage does only have to use a fraction of their own power, while most of it comes from the world around them. That's a total advantage in terms of energy management."

"How tough are these badge shields that we get?" Myra looked at the medallion like badge that would provide them with the inner shield to avoid injuries.

"No need to worry about getting hurt, nothing under a skylords power should be able to break them in one blow and by that time the judges and people overseeing the fights would already step in and declare the winner."

"How strong are skylords?" was her next question that made Aaron laugh.

"Skylords are much stronger than violet graded mages and knights. It's one of the bigger steps in magical power and also why so many people get stuck at the violet power level and will remain grandmasters for all their life. Usually stepping into the skylord realm would mean you have a totally new understanding of the way to use your power, making you much stronger. It's also why those who achieve this realm are called saints or archmages. They are on a totally different level than all those before."

With Myra classifying her magical abilities by a totally different system and with different theories and aspects behind it, she was not sure about her total strength compared to others. She never really fought a grandmaster. She was already aware that she might be able to defeat a master mage, as their instructor seemed to be a master mage, but she never really had the chance to measure her skill against Saint Gorm. The other students really did not provide her the same challenge as they were usually much weaker.

Myra never even had a spar with Aaron, because there never seemed to be the right situation to spar. Whenever there was free time she would much rather go shopping, relax and read a book or just play board and card games rather than fight and the only time she taught someone was when they had knight and mage classes. Even at those times she was mostly just showing moves or explaining theory, but it was never really about sparring.

"I wonder how strong I really am." Myra mumbled to herself getting really for her next fight.