CHAPTER 23: TOURNAMENT BEGINS

As the days passed by, Gideon gradually fell into a routine. In the morning, he would train himself and Lisk, in the afternoon he would hunt monsters, and at night, he would visit Victoria.

He learnt that since Victoria had the highest chance at winning the tournament, their parents had subjected her to brutal training.

When Gideon learnt how they would almost kill her from exhaustion via from her training, it took her all she had to stop him from having an outburst and alerting their parents.

"Don't worry, when I get stronger I'll take you away from here and no one will be able to stop us." Gideon said with a determined expression as he patted her head.

"Mhm, I'll wait for that day." Victoria said with a smile.

The two of them said bye and Gideon left the room. As he did, Victoria opened her palm and a purple ball formed above it.

"Don't worry, I'll support you all the way."

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The day of the tournament had arrived.

The city was livelier than usual and people were seen supporting those who they thought would win the tournament.

The place with the highest amount of activity however was undoubtedly the arena where the tournament would actually take place.

The stadium was massive and resembled the Roman colosseum in the past. It was large enough to accommodate around a hundred thousand people.

Victoria sat down in the underground area where the combatants would stay before the fights began. She silently pit on her equipment in the small VIP room and looked at herself in the mirror, she was feeling quite confident after her breakthrough earlier and she had made more progress in fusing the two elements, unknowingly causing her hair to turn more purple, but still unnoticeable by others including herself.

'I'm sure Gideon will be watching, I'll show him how much I've grown.' Victoria thought with a smile as she put on a pair of red and blue gauntlets, her weapons.

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Gideon walked into the arena with his usual disguise, luckily the security didn't give him any trouble about it and let him pass after he showed them his ticket.

After he entered, he quickly found a place to sit and he observed the actual arena. There were hundreds of schools and it would naturally take time to do all the fights one by one, so there were actually 30 separate arenas so that the fights would be sped up. There were also screens that focused on each fight.

Suddenly, music began to play as the commentator's voice suddenly rang throughout the arena.

"Hello everyone and welcome to this year's Child mage's tournament." As the commentator said this, the crowd cheered loudly.

"We are also going to give a round of applause our high ranking officials, some of them are from important houses while others belong to the military or guilds." All eyes fell on a VIP booth nearing the top of the arena and everyone gave a round of applause, save for Gideon.

Inside the booth, there were around a dozen people who who sat down and looked at the masses below. Every single one of them were at the gold rank.

Among them, there were some people Gideon would recognize such as his parents and the crimson dragon guild master. And although no one said anything, the tense atmosphere was obvious.

"Now to explain how the tournament will go. There are 512 contestants and all of them will be put into 8 groups of 64, and all the contestants will fight each other 8 times. Each the winner of each fight will be given 3 points and the 8 contestants with the highest number of points will qualify to the next round of 64. After that, there will be a battle royale and the remaining 16 contestants will qualify for the round of 16. Then we will have a usual tournament style event until the final winner is decided.

(Author: Note to self, forming tournaments hurtಥ⁠‿⁠ಥ)

"Now, let's see who are the seeded contestants for the tournament." As the commentator said this, the screens suddenly displayed rows of names with numbers by their side and stopped at 64.

Victoria Kingston: 1

James Lancaster: 2

Fredrick Hill: 3

Sera Crow: 4...

The rows of names showed those who were most likely to win the tournament and those who saw the contestants whom they supported on the list cheered loudly.

Gideon saw Victoria as the top seeded contestants and could help but feel a swell of pride in his heart.

'That's my sister for sure.' He thought.

"Now without further Ado, let the first fights begin." The commentator said and on the screens, names were paired randomly with each other and the first 30 fights had been made.

"Mm, yes so we have Bill Casper against Jonathan Grant, Regina George Against Drake Harrow. Oooh, our top seeded contestant Victoria Kingston is going up against 7th seed Leah Remini, that's definitely going to be a very closely watched match." The commentator did his job expertly as he made the audience more excited as they waited for the matches to start.

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Victoria was busy meditating to make sure that she was in a leak fighting condition when the watch given to her by the tournament officials vibrated. She looked at it and saw that her match was about to begin.

She got up and opened the door and saw one of the staff standing outside about to knock.

"Ah, miss your match will soon start, please follow me to the designated arena." The woman said respectfully and Victoria have a mod before she followed the woman.

She walked through a hall that gradually went up, and as he saw the opening, she could hear cheers and chants causing her to feel a bit nervous, after all this was the first time she was in front of this many people.

She stepped out and saw the hundred thousand plus people cheering at her appearance.

"And there's the top seeded contestant, Victoria Kingston!" The commentator shouted as everyone cheered for Victoria loudly.

She kept her cool as she followed the woman who brought her to the stairs to the arena. She stepped on and saw her opponent. It was Leah Remini.

"Your match will start in 1 minute." The woman said before she stepped of the arena and a blue astral barrier surrounded the arena.

"I've always wanted to meet you.y name is Leah." Leah was a cute girl with sky blue hair and fair skin and she seemed very nice. Her weapon was a pale blue sword.

Victoria just smiled faintly and nodded in her direction. Unfair her parents wouldn't let her have friends with the common people, but she didn't dislike them though.

"10... 9... 8..." A robotic voice began to count down and the two of them quickly entered their fighting positions.

"3... 2... 1... Begin!" The countdown ended and the fight started.

Victoria took the initiative to attack as she ran towards Leah, at the same time, fire covered her fists while 3 water spears rotated around her.

Leah didn't let her get close though as she took a step and ice spiked suddenly emerged from the ground.

Victoria jumped over the spikes and punched out with both of her fists. Then, two fist sized fire balls shot out towards Leah who created an ice barrier to block the attack.

"The main battle has begun and Mrs Victoria has charged forward. Mrs Leah quickly responded with ice spikes but what's this? Victoria jumped and punched out fire balls. Oh but Leah blocked it with an ice barrier." The commentator spoke very quickly as the fight unfolded.

Suddenly, Leah's ice barrier shattered and turned into numerous ice shards that shot towards Victoria at high speeds. Victoria didn't dodge and actually pushed forward by using her fire to push herself. Her ice spears turned into a thick water barrier which blocked the ice shards.

Fire then converged around her fist and she punched towards Leah's head. Leah raised her sword which was covered in frost to meet the attack and the first clash happened.

*CLANG*

Leah took numerous steps back as her arms ached from the impact. Clearly she lost the clash.

Victoria didn't let up in her attacks though as she created multiple water whips which lashed out at Leah and closed off all her escape routes.

The temperature suddenly dropped and the water whips suddenly began to freeze. Leah saw this as her chance as he charged towards Victoria as the frost around her sword increased in intensity. Victoria met her charge and the two engaged in close quarters combat.

*CLANG CLANG BOOM*

Fire and ice intertwined as the two exchanged numerous blows which dazzled the crowd. They looked evenly matched.

Suddenly, just as the two were about to clash again, Victoria suddenly opened her hand and caught the sword which shocked everyone.

Leah was about to release the sword when tendrils of water emerged from Victoria's back and binded her.

Leah was about to struggle when a flame covered finger stopped just in front of her throat. This scared Leah.

"I surrender." Leah's voice was registered and Victoria emerged victorious. The crowd cheered even louder upon seeing this.

Gideon smiled under his mask when he saw his little sister's performance.

'She really is a little monster.' He couldn't help but think.