Once the first arena floor was filled with all 3.000 first-year students, Till arrived at the podium with a few teachers next to him, which caused Jason to look up weirdly.

'Why is he everywhere?!'

With a light snap of his fingers which he enveloped with mana, the whole floor turned quiet within a single moment, as Till stepped forward.

"Hello dear students from the three big schools, my name is Till Greil and I'm the Vanguard school's representative for the Basic-tournament. 

First, before anything else, I want to congratulate everyone to have come this far by defeating dozens of other students in order to claim a tournament seat.

However, this doesn't mean that any of you is something special and there are still 2999 other students that came so far, and only the Top 25 will receive any rewards."

Stopping for a moment to take a deep breath, he continued.

"Without wasting any time, I'll announce the rules for the first round! As everyone should know, the Big Three tournament is a combat-oriented tournament, without any additional rounds to seed out students by testing their mana mastery or martial art proficiency.

As such, the three schools decided to divide the 3000 participants into groups of 30 because the first floor has exactly 100 arenas, which perfectly fits our purpose.

After everyone is divided into groups, the AI will schedule the fights, with every student fighting against another.

To put it more simply, everyone will have 29 fights and in the end, the four students with the most wins will enter the second round which will follow a simple. K.O system.

After we reach the top 100, the schedule will change with the Basic Big Three tournament held in the morning, but until we enter this phase, a few days will pass!"

After Till finished explaining the first round and what followed afterward, another teacher that looked somewhat annoyed, came forward, replacing Till on the podium, as he said, quietly seemingly without emotions.

"Mr. Greil already explained everything important for the tournament, but there is something else everyone should be aware of. Every arena will be monitored by the AI, which means that it will also record all fights. This is only to figure out if anyone used unfair means, like guns, grenades, poison that doesn't come from an affinity, or other similar means!

Killing is obviously forbidden and intentionally crippling your opponent too. If someone breaks these simple rules the punishment will be severe but fair, from being exiled to imprisonment or even forced to enter a soul contract with the victim, forcing the perpetrator to become the victims' slave, which allows him or her to do everything with you whatever he or she wants!."

Hearing what the teacher, who found it apparently useless to introduce himself, said, Jason nodded his head, as he already imagined such rules, while hearing what he said about the soul contract was something new to him.

However, thinking about it, this didn't seem to be bad! If someone were to permanently injure his mana core, the perpetrator might even be forced to serve him for his whole lifetime.

With this, the possibility for someone to intentionally heavily or even permanently injuring someone decreased drastically! 

It was not a bad plan to prevent such cases, even if they might still happen if someone were to provoke his or her opponent too much.

In the end, the rules were extremely simple, while the whole tournament schematics felt like they were thought of a few minutes before.

Shrugging his shoulder, Jason ignored the last teacher who said something about healing the injured students and so on, as the notification about his scheduled fights arrived at his inbox.

Opening the message, a small holographic screen manifested in front of him, with all fights of his group listen down while his own name was underlined and easy to find,

Looking through the schedule, Jason figured out that the whole first round would take around three days, which included the weekend.

The only issue he had with this, was that he couldn't refine his body with others looking at him because exposing the body refining technique was not something humanity or even he could handle right now, as foreign races might as well annihilate him and everyone who saw him refining his body.

As such, Jason thought of things he could do, during the times he had to wait an hour or so for his next fight to start.

The schedule spanned from 8 am to 8 pm which meant that he would have to be in the arena for 12 hours, every day, for the next three days! 

He could refine his body in the evening at the Fler's, which was not problematic, and thinking that he might as well absorb mana,  hone his skills or improve his proficiency with his affinities while waiting, Jason disregarded the issues he thought of.

Looking at the schedule, Jason also noticed, that he was the first to fight, which caused him to smile lightly, as he sheathed his pseudo mana grade-1 daggers he made himself in the scabbards instead of the Viridi-Starstream daggers, as they would attract too much attention.

The same applied to his leather armor, as he simply wore his normal grade-2 leather armor instead of the mana grade-2 leather armor.

In the end, it was not a problem to fight with his mana grade-1 Viridi-Starstream daggers, but the other things might attract others too much for the first few days.

Jason also decided against wearing his spatial ring, mana sphere bracelet, and conservatory necklace, even if they didn't release any mana fluctuations and looked like normal accessories.

As long as nobody with an extremely high mana core rank and distinct senses scanned through these items, nobody would detect them, but he decided to be more careful, as he had a bad feeling that the Drake family patriarch might appear suddenly.

If he were to find that he owned three extremely valuable items which he shouldn't have under normal circumstances, Jason would either die or be forced to immediately sign a soul contract in the worst-case scenario.

Jason liked to be alive and not restricted, which caused him to act more carefully at this point.

He also told himself that he had to store these items at home, with the exception of his daggers in order to be safe.

With his current combat prowess, he could already attract too much attention which was neither beneficial nor an extreme disadvantage currently, as long as Old Drake didn't bother him.

Finally being able to fight against his first opponent, Jason excitedly entered the 100th arena, which was the number of the group he was scheduled in.

Looking around he searched for his opponent, as a 1.8-meter tall youth entered with an athletic body entered the arena, and perceiving his mana core and transmutation, Jason could not help but act carefully

His first opponent was a 1st Expert rank, whose mana core size increase only marginally, reaching a state infinitely close to the 2nd Expert rank.

However, he didn't have transmuted mana, which told Jason, that his opponent had a physical soulbond without a transmutation in his mana.

As such, he couldn't really estimate how strong his opponent's physique would be.

Nevertheless, if his mana core size increased by almost one rank, his physique should definitely enter the 2nd Expert rank, more likely his 3rd Expert rank and Jason only smiled lightly, which his opponent perceived.

"Why are you smiling? Shouldn't you despair right now? You're barely a 6th Adept rank and with my strength, I can crush you, before you can even unsheath your daggers!" The athletic-looking youth said, causing Jason to lift his right eyebrow, as he eyed his opponent as if he was extremely stupid.

Right as he was about to open his mouth to retort something, he decided against it.

Sighing, Jason could only lament about his mana core rank, because he was underestimated too often.

But, rather than feeling down, it seemed as if the youth in front of him was one of the few dozens who laughed at him, and an evil smile emerged on his face.

"Please guide me, idiot!" 

Somehow, he couldn't help but say that, right before the AI started the countdown.

Seeing his opponent's face turning red, Jason chuckled lightly before he went into his fighting stance, as the AI ended the countdown, initiating their fight.

Unsheathing his daggers, Jason rushed towards his opponent, without wasting a single thought of utilizing his affinity as he exerted his weightless step technique to the limits, increasing his speed by roughly 40% only to accelerate further by circulating his mana into the lower body, he almost crossed half the arena in a second.

His opponent didn't remain idle, as he also unsheathed two daggers before charging towards Jason with his own movement technique fully exerted.

However, the youth's eyes suddenly widened, when he noticed that Jason already emerged in front of him with a much higher velocity than he ever reached until now.

'F*ck!!'