Tournament I

While Magnus and Jin spent every day training, and working on improving Magnus's abilities, news started to spread out that the Freshmen's Field Trip was going to happen soon.

Obviously, the title 'Field Trip' was just customary, it was more of a minor test. Every year, the first years were taken to a Gate site, Gate sites were pretty much old gates that have been subdued, and the monsters were being carefully controlled and dealt with.

Each one of those gates were carefully monitored by a branch of the Alliance, to prevent any mishaps or any of the Gates going out of control.

The reason that Gates had to be monitored at all times, was because no one wanted to go inside the gates. Any form of communication with anyone who entered any of the gates was immediately lost.

And no one who had ever gone inside had come out, and so, it was pretty much taboo to go near a gate, even as a ranker.

Since the Academy was co-founded by the Alliance, it was easy to allow the students to have a session to take a look at one of the Gates, as well as for the students to get a look at actual Monsters and Wild Beasts first-hand, as well as giving the students an opportunity to battle a few of them, to make sure they were prepared fight against them properly in the future.

Magnus and Jin were off to the campus to reach the class when they overheard a group of first-years discussing the field trip. After a little bit of eavesdropping, they learnt about the Field Trip.

Magnus curled his fist in excitement, and asked Jin,

"Hey Jin, how well do you think I'd fare against a 'Monster', would I be able to beat multiple of them?"

"Hmm, if we're talking about your current condition, you… might be able to fight around a couple of Monsters, and a small horde of Wild Beasts. But if we're talking about you going berserk, you should be able to decimate around 30 Monsters."

As Magnus smiled in glee, Jin immediately added,

"Of course, that's only talking about low-level creatures, a stronger creature is way outta your league for now."

"What? There are levels to Monsters as well?"

"Oh come on Magnus, you said you've been studying by yourself for years now? Did you learn anything at all during that time?

"Oh, I didn't bother learning things like this cause they were too complicated, and I thought they would be explained in the Academy."

"Hah, I can't really refute that, but they'll probably explain the levels of monsters, and other useful information in the Field Trip so don't worry about it for now."

Their first class was 'Combat', and the first thing he did was brief the students on the Field Trip.

"Hey class. As you may or may not have heard, tomorrow we're going on a Field Trip. Everyone in this class should gather up to Hall 14, Room 316. I'll be taking you guys with me, and me and Professor Lilith are going to be responsible for you, so don't cause any problems. You won't be the only class, there will be approximately a thousand other students coming with you, so don't be too surprised.

You will meet with all the first years near the 'Gate' site, where you will be briefed on the schedule for you to follow.

Firstly, you'll be given a basic introduction on the types of creatures that may appear from Gates, and key information in identifying them, their weak spots, along with other useful information for the future.

Then, you'll be going through some safety precautions that I expect you to follow without causing any hassle.

You will then be shown up-close, certain beasts that are hard to fight, or some unique creatures, and even more vital information.

And lastly, the event I can tell most of you are waiting for, the tournament. Like every year, we're organizing a tournament to test the overall combat strength of the students.

Anyone who registers will be put against multiple waves of beasts, with the difficulty and strength of the beasts increasing with each wave. And obviously there are rewards, the top 1,000, 100, 10, 3, and 1st place are rewarded generously each year, and as per usual, the rewards this year are going to be even better than last years' one."

The students started to discuss loudly with each other, many of the people in the room wanted to reach at least the top 1000, and were interested in the rewards.

"As for the rewards, the top 1000 will get 50 Crowns, per each beast they've killed. For example, if someone in the top 1000 manages to defeat 3 creatures, they get 150 Crowns, simple enough, right? Also, anyone who doesn't make it to the top 1000 can forget about a reward."

"What about the top 100?" someone asked, and everyone else quieted down to hear the response.

"Aside from the Crowns, the top 100 are allowed to take one scroll from Section 1 of the library."

There was an uproar among the students.

"What's in Section 1 of the library? Why's everyone so excited about a couple books?" Magnus asked Jin, who responded immediately,

"I'm sure you know that special fighting techniques and some abilities are engraved onto scrolls made from materials from the Tower right?"

Jin continued after Magnus nodded with vigor, as he was glad all those years of self-study helped him answer at least one of Jin's questions.

"The Academy creates copies and stores any scrolls that are found through various methods in all the Academy Libraries throughout the world, of course, some techniques are unable to be copied, and other unique ones are stored as well.

And depending on the quality of the technique inscribed, the scrolls are placed inside the Sections of the Library, that can be accessed for a huge amount of Crowns, or from rewards like these. However, it is pretty rare for students to ever get a chance to get a look inside the Library, even last year, I'm pretty sure only the top 10 got to do so."

"Woah, but even so, there are hundreds of thousands of first-years, even among the combat related courses alone, after all, we weren't the only batch to be go through the admission test, forget the top hundred, aside from us, the people in this room probably won't even make it past the top 1,000 will they?"

"Probably not, but y'know… call it teen spirit I guess."

It looked like the said teen spirit didn't disappear even after a day, as the next morning, everyone was talking in large groups while rushing over to their respective halls to leave for the Field Trips.

The top 10, 3, and First Place rewards weren't discussed yesterday, and were going to be made public only right before the tournament to increase the determination of the students, and so, everyone couldn't stop discussing over what the first place prize might be.

All Jin had told Magnus after he had asked him about the same was that it was unlikely to be bad, considering even the top 100 was that great. That made Magnus curious about something else,

"If the first place turns out to be really good or something that I need, am I allowed to use all of my strength?"

Although Magnus wasn't worried about the ranking, he was still eager to find out whether the couple of students from earlier were still stronger than him, especially after all that training. For the past 2 months, he hadn't seen any of the other 5 'stars' that were present on the admission test day, and he was curious to see whether he would now be able to view the status of the top 2.

Jin had told him that even though there were an entire 7 Stars on their examination hall, he was able to find out that there were no other ones, even among the all the other First-years, and then followed with his usual 'all because of Fate' bullshit, although, the more he said it, and the more things like that happened, the more Magnus doubted whether things like that were coincidences.

"Yeah, I've decided, the first place is probably gonna be important for you, considering we're children of destiny, don't hold back at all, in fact, I even give you permission to go berserk."

Jin had told Magnus to ask for his permission before going berserk, as it would be a pretty big problem if he did it and caused a mess without being able to stop.

"Alriiight! Is everyone here!" Professor Lilith entered the hall, and many of the hundreds of boys blushed as they looked at her, as her normally beautiful body and seductive aura was covered with something that wasn't a Teacher's Uniform for the first time, which made even some of the girls get caught off guard.

There was a mini-portal in the room, which was going to be their method of transport. After all, it would be hard to take hundreds of thousands of students at once the normal way.

However, portals were something made with the latest developments in the Magic Industry and were hard to sustain for long, and as such, many-a-times, things like Mini Portals were used. They were essentially one-time-use portals that could instantly be deactivated and activated in a different location, without a very high consumption of resources.

The best part about mini-portals however, is that they could be connected to an actual portal without much difficulty, and could transfer people to that portal instantaneously.

"Hoh, that's sick, is it hard to make a portal like this?"

"Yeah, well, at least making it instantly is hard, and only a few of the high rankers can use mana like that, which is why stuff like this is the pinnacle of mana research right now."

Once they entered the portal, which felt like they were being massaged by something soft, like water, they entered an open area with hundreds of thousands of students talking at the same time, which was pretty loud, to say the least.

Somehow, among the hundreds of thousands of faces, Magnus was able to see Estelle and Remus, and decided to approach them with Jin.

While they were all talking, the last batch of students had arrived from the portal. That's when the field trip officially began, the students were led to various different halls where they were informed about random information that might save their life one day, and yet, the only thing on everyone's minds was the Tournament.

***

*Gulp*

After multiple hours of intense memorizing of all the information given across the various boards, Magnus felt really exhausted mentally, and he was chugging down a bottle of mana-filled soda.

There were actually a few lectures that they listened to as well, which Magnus actually found really interesting. They were given by the people who actually spent their days actually fighting the monsters coming out of the gates, even in the present, who were called 'Hunters'. Normally said hunters were people who weren't able to make it to a high position, and decided to dedicate their lives to the benefit of society, and were widely respected for that.

The lectures were about the various things you could do when suddenly faced against a monster, when caught off-guard, or about what was the best course of action against them.

Magnus learnt quite a bit, and was glad he memorized every bit of information he learned today. He didn't even know how he was able to do so, perhaps it was due to the 'Rational Mind' and 'Resolute Will' he had? But those had become corrupted a while ago, and there was no actual change to him by the corruption, so he just assumed it was due to those former traits.

He had already registered for the tournament, and Jin had told him that he wouldn't participate and would rather just cheer for Magnus from the side.

They were currently awaiting for the tournament to officially start, when they would declare the format, the rules, and the prizes.

*Ding*

There it was. Magnus was in the tournament open hall, with thousands of others, waiting for anything to happen, and then a buzzing sound occurred.

It signified the start of the tournament.

Magnus clenched his fist, his intuition was telling him this would be a hard challenge, but a necessary one. All his fights so far were won by a landslide, this would be different. This would be life and death. This was legit.

He took one last look at his status, that had grown by a lot in the past months, before looking forward, with eyes filled with determination.

STATUS:

{Magnus}

Occupation: N/A

-Master of the Philosopher's Stone [Fully Absorbed]: The host has control over the energy produced by a Mythical stone.

-Blessed by Mana: The Host can infinitely produce the purest form of mana, proportional to the Energy Stat.

-Sorcerer of Energy: The host can contain multiple forms of energy in his body without any drawback.

-Creator of the Quintessence: A title reserved only for the creator of the æther.

-Seer of the Origin: Title for one who has glimpsed into the source. Effects unknown.

Traits:

-Aether Physique

-Psychotic Will

-Irrational Mind

-Energy Circuit

-Berserker's Drive

Stats:

Strength: 72

Agility: 67

Vitality: 94

Energy: 128

Spirit: 57

Skills:

-Mana Mastery {passive}

-Aether Authority {passive}

-Energy Manipulation {passive}

-Wrath of the Berserker {active}

-Psychosis {active}

He was going to win this.