Chapter 23: End of the competition.

Making an easy spiked earth wall didn't sound fun, it'd be way too easy after all, so I started thinking about alternatives.

A fire wall would be too easy to go through, a wind wall with attack function would take too much mana to be kept active so both alternatives were down.

'What about a barrier of ice spikes, it'd surely cause a lot of damage.'

But creating it would take too much time, the disadvantage of ice magic was that it was still way to difficult to control for me, but I had an alternative.

I created a water vortex around me, obviously after making sure to be a good distance away from any other contestant, I didn't want to injure anyone after all.

The vortex kept rotating and rippling all around me, but all changed in an instant the moment I hit the barrier with a palm strike, causing the entire thing to rapidly become ice, instantly creating a barrier filled with ice spikes around me.

If the water I used was normal it would have never worked, obviously, but the water I used was naturally extremely cold, below its natural freezing temperature, the only reason it was still liquid was the magic I used inside of it.

I've called it simply ice shield, this time I was the one to trigger the change to ice, but if it was an enemy from the outside doing it, the barrier would have encased them into the ice.

There was an absolute lot of thing I would have to work on to make it actually usable in battle, but this was a first step.

The first and most obvious flaw was that I couldn't see through it because of the speed it was rotating with, maybe I could combine it a detection function.

But that would have to wait until my list of things to do thinned a bit more, or a lot more.

I had way too many things to create, I was in deep waters and this entire competition seemed to tell me that I still had an infinity of things to do.

I took my nine points out of ten, slightly better than I expected for a spell with such glaring flaws, and went to sit and wait the next ten minutes to wait for the others to finish their own.

But as I watched the other's performances, I realized why I got nine points out of ten, the others sucked.

I saw mediocre spells, yes, they could be used as the base to improve and create better spells.

For example, that one guy's fire wall could be turned into an attack spell or a scare tactic against beasts, but it didn't offer much for defense, it was just a wall of fire.

There were few really cool spells, but one of them was surely Alice's, she created a spell even better than my own.

It was a mist like cloud surrounding her with lightnings wondering inside of it, this meant that she could use the mist as a detection field and instantly counterattack with the lightning.

She got a ten out of ten.

There was also another guy who created an interesting wind spell and got a seven out of ten.

But that was it, the others got between three and six.

The other prompts weren't as interesting, I had a few spells that conformed to a few, for example my ice pears to impale the enemies to the ground when they asked for a spell to immobilize the enemy.

The best spot for most of the spells went to either me or to Alice, at that point even I had to admit that she was good, learning and studying with her might be a good experience.

But as all things, the competition had to end, the announcer told everybody the final scores.

"Ladies and gentlemen, thanks to all of you for witnessing this magical competition!

Now to the scores, the third place with 31 points… Richard!" It seemed like he would only announce the top three, the person in third place was the one who got seven points with his defensive spell.

"The second place goes to… Alice! With an almost perfect score in the third test of 46 points!" It wasn't unexpected, but the gap between second and third place was massive.

"And finally, to the surprise of nobody, the winner of this magical competition is the representative from Icerock, Avys Winterridge! In the last test she scored 48 points, which would already be enough to win the competition, but when added to her 20 points from the two previous tests grants her a grand total of 68 points!"

The gap between me and Alice, at least in the creation of new spells wasn't as big as I imagined from the two previous tests, it seemed like she lacked the experience rather than knowledge.

Especially her lightning and water magic were better than even my own, I looked forward to what she'd show me the next time we'd meet.

"These three people will receive as reward for their performance a special jar of honey made by last year's Honey Queen, an applause for Her Majesty, Stella Rowland!"

The moment a woman started making her way to the stage my eyes widened slightly, the reason for this was that I recognized her, she was the kind woman who told me about this competition and the entire festival in general.

"It's an honor to be here to reward the young talents of our Honeyfall and of the Wild Lands, the youth are our future, our greatest hope for a radiant future where we don't have to fear to stay hungry or to be eaten by the beasts.

For the chance to celebrate the best of our city's youth, I thank all of you." she said while thanking the judges, who were the also the organizers, with a big smile on her face.

From that the celebration went on smoothly, Stella gave all three of us our honey, something that I was curious about, but not particularly so.

After the audience started dispersing I neared Stella, "Long time no see." I told her.

"Indeed, imagine my surprise when I saw that this competition's winner was exactly the girl who knew nothing about it until the last possible minute," replied the older woman with a chuckle, "but I guess that someone who can traverse the Wild Lands has far more experience than any of our youth, if this wasn't your first time, obviously."

"Oh no, I've been going around for a long time," I answered and asked back, "but why are you here? Aren't you competing for the title of Honey Queen this year?"

"Oh no, I almost forgot that you don't know anything about it, the winner of the previous year's festival cannot participate in the next one, this is to ensure that a single person doesn't keep the title for themselves all the time, it's just a title after all."

This was in line with the spirit of the festival, it was made to entertain and to have the people of the city rest for a brief amount of time after all.

"Cool, but why didn't you tell me you would have awarded the winner?"

"I didn't think you'd win, the people here prepare for it all the time after all." was her answer, which I had to admit, was very fair, I had seen how many of the participants didn't seem surprised by many of the things happening in the competition.

They had obviously seen the previous year's ones and prepared, if not even directly participated in those previous competitions themselves.

But before I could open my mouth again to make small talk with the woman, a very enthusiastic girl grabbed me between her arms.

"Avys, Avys, can you teach me now?"

I looked behind while furrowing my eyebrows in displeasure, I talked with the operative girl one time and she was already hugging me?

But when I looked into her eyes, brimming with excitement, I couldn't bear to really get angry at her, those eyes were very similar to mine when I found something new about magic.

"Sure," I replied, "but you better tell me about your lightning magic, I've been trying to make it work in the way you do for a long time."

"Great! It's a promise!"

I smiled at the small bundle of excitement, but I didn't forget who I was talking to, "Goodbye Stella, I'll share your honey with my family."

"It seems like you already made a friend here, well, have fun and see you another time." Was what she told me before turning around and starting to talk with another person, she seemed popular as many people wanted to talk with her.

She looked like a good person.

"Let's go to my house Avys, we can teach each other everything there!" She said while starting to drag me in the direction I presumed her house would be at, but I had to stop her.

"I can't, my father might worry if I stay away too long, why don't we go to the city hall? Our carriage is over there."

"Oh, a carriage! I've never been on one!" she replied while smiling at me, slightly calming down.

"Really?"

"Yep, my parents can't use magic so I've been learning with Grandpa, you see…"

In the midst of our talk we made our way to the city hall, not really hurrying at all, but once we got there it was just in time to see my father walking out of the hall, accompanied by an old man.

The old man, who I assumed held a role similar to the old man Sigmund, had wide shoulders and a perfectly straight back, a monocle on his right eye that could help covering his green eyes from which I felt the same power I felt from grandpa.

But for some reason, I kept feeling less and less threatened by their aura, I thought that it was because I knew that grandpa wouldn't to anything to me, but it seemed like that was not the case.

"Hey da…" i said before being interrupted by the girl at my side, "Grandpa!"

She then trotted to where my father and the old man had stopped talking to look in our direction, "Hey Alice, did you win the magical competition?"

The old man didn't seem to have any doubt in her win, he looked like he asked just to make sure.

"Nope!"

"That's goo… huh, you lost?!" now he seemed genuinely perplexed, he knew his semi adopted granddaughter's ability and didn't know of any youth who could beat her in Honeyfall.

"Hey dad," I said, "Look at what I've won!"

I held the honey jar right in front of him with pride to show off my achievement.

"She won," told Alice to her grandfather, "she's my new friend, Avys, she's from Icerock!"

My father, who seemed to had just now understood the situation, patted me on the had while giving me compliments, but right after he grinned at the old man, "It seems like I was right, my daughter is the best."

I could see the old man's face visibly scrunching up, almost pouting, which didn't look good on a man of his age.

"Oh well, my granddaughter is still the cutest!"