Without any surprise Aura went back to the honor seat after welcoming the visitors since that was the tradition, then one of the now nine vice principals took over, more specifically Stella which seemed to be not only the librarian but also the spokesperson of the academy.
Stella cleared her throat once feeling that Aura should have said a couple more of things, after inwardly sighing she pressed a button which was attached to the podium in the skybox of the vice principals.
All the people inside the remodeled training grounds looked upwards where four huge flat curved objects suddenly appeared, but their appearance wasn’t what surprised them but the fact that now everyone could clearly see the whole arena in an up-close way, and there was also a take of the inside of the skybox of the vice principals so everyone could see and hear Stella.
Daimon saw it and he nearly choked, those were clearly stadium screens, he couldn’t help but steal a couple of gazes at Liz and just as he expected she turned her face away and feigned ignorance.
Outside of the skyboxes there was also a ruckus, this was a new magic device which no one has seen before, a combination of the surveillance cameras recently released in the market by the Greenwich Sage, image projection magic, a magic formation called “eagle vision”, which in simple words was the “zoom” function of cameras back at earth and lastly camouflage functions.
Although Liz obviously took the “TV” Daimon has shown them as her inspiration, it wasn’t as easy as just gather some other technologies and call it a new invention, Liz had to recalculate the magic formations and integrate them to work all together without interrupting each other, in other words she created a new “circuit” which covered the functions of a several ones.
Stella smiled happy with the reactions of all the spectators, as the main campus of the number one academy in the White Fang galaxy, they had to show that their advances in magic technology weren’t behind their “allies” in the Blue-Sky galaxy.
“Luckily thanks to the connection between the principal and the Revy family, Elizabeth Revy which is known for her… eccentric attitude, acceded to create a couple of things to demonstrate for the exploration”, she thought as she remembered the little surprise they had in storage for the next week.
“Everyone calm down, these are “Watchtower Screens”, a new magic device created by miss Elizabeth Revy in cooperation with the Wild Claw academy, we’ll be using them to improve the experience of the spectators in this tournament”.
Inside of the elite class’s skybox Daimon saw a little cunning smile forming in the corner of Liz’s lips and he inwardly laughed, after this tournament there will be a lot of new income in the market aspect of the Revy family.
Seeing that the spectators had calmed down again, Stella continued with her speech.
“The tournament had been divided in four days, two for the second years and two for the first years, we’ll leave the rules and specifications for the first years aside for the time being, as for the second years…”.
Stella pointed at the east and west areas of the Arena and two gates from which students came out appeared.
Both groups were using standard equipment granted by the academy to maximize the “fairness” of the matches, the idea was to see the true skills and battle prowess of the students instead of the advantages wealth can give them.
Daimon raised an eyebrow looking at the group coming from the east, he recognized the one leading them, it was a tall girl which seemed to be about 18 years old just like Aisha, she had long brown hair and eyes with a peculiar tone between honey and red, her wolf like ears and tail gave her away as a member of the Argent family, the daughter of the supreme elder of the Argent family, Arianna Argent.
Liz which was shamelessly sitting on Daimon’s lap, nodded in recognition.
“Ohh, that girl has reached the five-star mage realm at the beginning of the second year, not bad”.
Daimon glared at Aura which was smiling at him.
“So, this was the surprise she was talking about, it’s indeed quite impressive considering the past week she was at the four-star mage realm, it seems I have a “sister” disciple now”, he thought.
Aura would have not gone out of her way to train Arianna unless she managed to leave a good impression on her, the reason is that a master is like a parent, it’s a relationship that is supposed to last for life, a good example of that is the field marshal which even after surpassing Richard in strength terms, still respects and treats him as his instructor.
So those who study under the same master are considered to be brothers and sisters, like that’s why Boris sees Aliya as her niece even though they don’t share the same blood, because her parents were students of Richard.
Of course, not everyone follows that ideology willingly, but for half emperors at least there is a contract involved, so that the disciple won’t betray its master.
Besides Arianna there were other two men members of the Argent family, a girl and a man with a human body but a bull’s head, which Daimon recognized as members of the Faresh family, a girl from the Leeris family like Stella and two more guys which didn’t have any visible beast characteristics.
The other group was leaded by a member of the Jolbaris family, just like Alexander his hair was orange and he had their characteristic tiger like ears and tail, if there was a difference then that would be that he was bulkier which probably meant he was a knight instead of a mage, according to Aura he was the son of Arthur’s sister making him Alexander’s older cousin, Samuel Jolbaris.
Besides Samuel, there was a girl with short dark brown hair and light brown scale patterns on her arms and neck besides a lizard tail, unlike the lizardmen of the Caddle family which were possessed by the fire djinns, she was from the Ramir family which claimed to descend from a magic beast of ancient times called earth salamander, also besides those scales and the tail the rest of her body was the same of a human.
There were also two guys from the Risha family, one from the snow eagle clan and one from the fire crane clan, the next one was a tall guy which looked like a tower, surpassing two meters of height, with black hair all over his arms, a member of the werebear clan the Arkuoda family, the last ones were a pair of male twins with lavender color sclerotic and blue pupils, the characteristic of the illusory silk worm clan, the Allier family.
The freshmen were surprised to see the second-year students of “new” races, but that wasn’t the case, it’s just that some families only chose to send those who consider good enough to invest their whole resources in, with the goal to make them enter the elite class, and apparently this year none of those families was sent to attend the admission exams.
Also, normally second and third years stay in their own areas with the exception of the welcome party, which was when Daimon and Aisha were targeted for the “hazing ritual”.
Samuel Jolbaris separated from the group he came with and then both groups joined and sat on a bench in front of the arena, making it obvious that they were told what to do beforehand.
“As I was saying, the matches for the second years will be divided in two days, the first ranked of the class will be given a direct pass for the finals, while the other fourteen participants will be randomly selected to fight each other, today we’ll have four matches, and tomorrow after the last three matches there will be a revenge match only for those that the judges and referees deem capable of getting a better result than their current”.
The stadium vibrated for a split of a second while the ground opened to reveal a stone platform with a size of 300 meters length and 150 meters wide, about three times the size of a football field, there were two people standing on the platform wearing uniforms of the army.
Then the four screens were divided to show Stella in half of them and the two people from the army on the other half.
“The rules are pretty easy, the conditions of victory are knocking down the opponent from the platform, or make it unable to continue fighting, one of the participants can also willingly forfeit the fight but that will immediately ban it from the revenge match”.
“Only the equipment proportioned by the academy will be allowed, pills, elixirs, scrolls or other eternal means are forbidden, mortal attacks are forbidden and any try to breach these rules will be punished on the spot by the two colonels which are our acting referees”.
“Besides that, everything is allowed including the use of race characteristics, referees please start the matching process”.
The two men nodded, and went down from the platform, then a small space in the wall opened and a big metal box with two slots at both sides appeared for everyone to see, the two men pressed a button in their respective sides and a ball with a number was expelled from the slots.
“Rank number 2, Arianna Argent”.
“Rank number 5, Cayden Arkuoda”.
Two different voices echoed through the whole place, then the four screens showed the image of Arianna and the tall guy with hairy arms.
The crowd immediately went crazy, the first match was between two students from the top five, although the ranks are a hierarchy within the class, truth to be told, only the first rank was supposed to be significantly stronger then the other top five members of the elite classes.
The others supposedly have similar strengths and skills, that’s why Alexander only directed his hatred towards Daimon, as he was the only one that “truly” surpassed him in the eyes of others.
As Arianna and Cayden were going up the platform, the image shown in the screens changed one more time to only focus on the area of the platform, Arianna stole a couple of gazes at the skybox with the emblem of the academy before doing the same at the one with the emblem of the first’s year elite class.
“Lady Aura, let me show you the results of my training”, she thought as she looked at the almost unnoticeable strap marks in her wrists and ankles above the area covered by her tennis shoes.