The Main Tournament

The main day for the tournament had arrived. I had not learned much the last few days. In fact I had not done much at all. I learnt a bit about spell categorization though. The shadow spell I use is what they call a domain type spell. They are easy to learn but hard to master. The more I learn about the element the spell is for, the stronger it will become, this is because as I use the mana for the spell, it will be influenced by what I know of it when it takes form.

In all honesty, that didn't make any sense to me when I was told about it. After all, if you cast the spell should it not all come out the same. My master after I told her that when she was explaining it to me, went into a lot of detail on how man was energy, therefore it will not be the same to every person. As mages we just manipulate the energy on our understanding and with spells. The most interesting thing I found that she told me though was that the most powerful mages, who understood an element completely didn't need spells, the mana would just bend to their will.

She called this true magic, the peak. When she told me about them there was a fervour that I had never seen in her eyes at all. It was kinda scary, in fact it was extremely scary. Then she taught me about my core itself more and said a little about the man's body or elemental body. Apparently it didn't really have any uses which I found extremely odd. That was something I decided to experiment on myself.

As it turned out though today was a month since I arrived. By my bed when I got up, there was a message. It was from a shadow elder. The man I guess who inducted me into the group, if you could call it an induction that is. It said there were problems and my time here would be cut short. As of today I had five months left here before I am moved somewhere else to conclude my training as quickly as possible then deployed. The message worried me alot. It seems the outside world was starting to turn to shit, and yet no one here knew anything about it.

The main tournament was in the same place as it was before. This time though as I entered I noticed thousands of people entering the stands around the arena, it seems like there will be an audience this time. I could see from the field I was on, that most if not all of the masters and the Arch mage was watching the fights.

In each all ten of the fields there were exactly hundred champions. I had no idea how they managed to get so many champions produced from the qualifiers in only five days, but I decided to let it be and blame it on magic. In the second field which I was on, every single person was nervous and tense. Not a single person spoke, even I was getting tense. I wouldn't have even been surprised if the fields were getting tense with how much of the feeling seemed to be going around.

The Arch mage stood, using some kind of amplification spell, I could hear his voice clearly even though I was a great distance away from him.

"Students and my fellow masters. Welcome to the Main Tournament. As always the victors of each field will be able to enter the tower for a period of five months. Unlike before however, we will have a free for all in each field. This is till there are only ten people remaining and then they will fight it out, in an attempt to gain the slot for the tower. Without any further speaking. May the fight commence!"

As soon as he finished a barrier appeared around the whole field, shocking all of the participants as well as many of the spectators as well. My shock didn't last long though, I began casting spells after a few seconds. I could hear spells already going off in the fields further away from me already, apparently they must have been expecting this or they just cast extremely quickly.

I started with making two mana swords appear in my hands, one of fire the other of darkness. I began to move away from the main groups of people, opting to stay nearer the outside where there were not so many people. As I moved there however, I was slashing with both of the weapons. Only knocking a few out as most had defensive spells cast first blocking my attacks.

As soon as I reached the outside, I could feel a blistering heat on my back. Looking back, what I saw could only be described as armageddon. So many area attacks had been cast at once, as well as a large number of fire type domains appeared. Though a lot of the heat disappeared quickly as most of the people who used the spells or domains were knocked out. Just with the large number of attacks there were only twenty people left including me.

There was a moment of calm as every seemed to be processing what happened, using this I looked around at everyone who was remaining. The five survivors in the centre all had domains active, there were three water types and two earth types. This made sense to me as water had natural defence against fire and earth boosted the best defensive abilities. The rest around the outside were harder to tell, I knew of a few wind mages and there was one water mage among them, the rest I didn't know but assumed that they were fire mages due to the fire mana gathering around them.

The two people closest to me were fire mages, I moved towards them both. As I got closer it seemed like they had formed an alliance as they didn't bother to attack each other and instead went straight for me. This made my approach a lot harder. At one point the dark sword broke as its capacity collapsed. I didn't stop moving though and began to cast dark blots and fire balls at them. The last of my fireballs disrupted them, in the moment it did, I used the time to get in close, finishing them quickly with the fire sword.

As I didm I saw the barrier being raised away. Looking around there were only ten of us left. Though I thought that the fight didn't last long, it turned out that we were one of the last fields to finish.

I just sat straight down onto the floor, letting my mana recover. It should be easier now though I hoped. Group combat like that did not seem to be a speciality of mine, at least I was much better at one on one combat.

With the last field finishing, the Arch Mage stood up and spoke again.

"Congratulations to the hundred remaining competitors. Now you have an hour break before the last fights will commence. They will go the same as the ones in the qualifiers. May you all have the best of luck."

After he finished he sat down, and seemed to be just looking across the arena.