The next day was the beginning of the semi-finals. Seeing that everyone who arrived was probably at a high skill level, Briar had prepared well in advance, checking over her gear one last time before once more lining up on the martial combat stage. The crowds were finding it difficult to calm down, seeing as there were only sixteen combatants left.

Briar glanced over at the other candidates. There was Laura, the quintuplets, and nine other combatants. Of the nine combatants, three were female, while the rest were male. Briar memorized the appearance and names of the female fighters first.

Xina, who had an appearance of a rather flirty female, was dressed in a romantic white shirt with cross bands at the collar, and a green wrap-around skirt, which facilitated ease of movement. A pair of brown pants and knee-high leather boots finished the outfit. Her black hair fell in ringlets down her back, and her pale grey-blue eyes stared straight ahead of her. Briar could tell that there were more than several small daggers hidden within her clothes. She was either a skilled thief, or an assassin-in gamers terms.

Triss, was rather largely-built. She wasn’t fat, but every part of her was almost gleaming with rippling muscles. Honestly, Briar was surprised they managed to find someone so buff like that under 20 years old, but there she was.

She wore Leather armor only in key places, on top of a sleeveless robe, which billowed out around her. This striking figure was not all, though. The huge double-headed ax that rested upon her back was at least half as large as she was. Her shoulder-length red hair emphasized her huge temper, finishing her rough, rugged image.

Naomi was neither agile, nor a bodybuilder. She was neither tall nor short, ugly nor beautiful. In fact, given her appearance, she seemed no more than the usual good-natured young lady whom you would regularly pass by on the street. But her sharp eyes gave her away. This one was probably the most dangerous out of the three, most likely specializing either in counterattacks, or an unconventional method of fighting.

Of the nine men who were left, Briar only chose to memorize the top three fighters. The other six weren’t that important, as she had already seen through their strength. Or, rather-the only thing that those six possessed was strength from the looks of their battle record.

The Minstrel was a rather interesting fellow. True to his name, he carried around a stringed instrument, and his attacks were musical ones. By hitting certain key notes, he could temporarily create a lapse in concentration in his opponent, allowing him to attack with arrows coated in a

mild poison that would send his opponents to sleep.

These arrows were shot using the strings of his musical instrument. Briar felt it rather ingenious to use an instrument as a bow. However, his opponents felt it was somewhat unfair-seeing that they never clashed fists or weapons with their opponent. But they simply could not corner him, since his ingenious use of music and arrows would overwhelm them whenever they got too close. They all inevitably succumbed to sleep, due to the sleeping poison, though. Once asleep, they were easily tossed off the stage.

Katar was a wirey youth of 18 with already a hint of a beard on his chin-making him look older than he was. There were two swords on his back, and two more on each side, hanging off his belt. The only reason why the belt could continue to hold up with such weight, was due to the single leather strap attached to the center front and back. He also wore a dark green bandanna on his head.

Briar raised an eyebrow at the suspendered swordsman, but didn’t think too much of it. He had used all six of those blades in all of his previous fights. And not only did he fight well with those swords, he also managed to win all of them, seeing that he was on stage there that day. It seemed he had a strange fighting style where he threw the blades at his enemies.

Briar hadn’t seen any of his actual fights, since somehow, she had always just managed to miss them. She had mostly heard about him from Laura before the kidnapping incident. Although it was a bit dangerous not knowing things first-hand, Briar wasn’t that worried about it.

As someone who is proficient with throwing weapons, though, she didn’t think that she would lose.

Dempsey was the last one. Honestly, this one bugged Briar the most, since he was…a narcissistic ikemen! From the top of his golden forelocked head to the tips of his armored feet, he looked every bit a prince, and he knew it. Even now he was smiling at himself in a hand mirror that he had pulled out of his armor somewhere.

Nobody questions the fact that he has a mirror? Briar thought to herself, but, seeing it wasn’t considered a harmful object, Briar soon put it from her mind.

But she would still not let her guard down against him. Dangerous people are dangerous after all. And he had not gotten to the semi-finals simply by flashing a smile at his opponent.

The five twin brothers’ names, she gave up on memorizing. Since their faces were identical, it was rather hard to distinguish them, especially in the middle of a fight, so she would have to settle for simply defeating whichever of them she came across.

The semifinals were to decide the top ten students. But, seeing as there were sixteen contestants left, one would think that there’d be a few who were left out of the fighting, but that wasn’t the actual case. Everyone would choose their opponent by lottery- taking the names out of a box with paper slips inside. Names could not be changed.

This was the part where a panel of judges would be closely observing the fights. These judges would award points for martial techniques well pulled off, or exceptional cases offense or defense. Defense was on the lower end of the scoring grade, though. The one who scored the highest would be considered temporarily as first place. The six who scored lowest would be eliminated during this round.

Then, during the finals, anyone in the top ten could choose to fight with those above them. If the tenth place won over first place, for example, the previous 1st place wouldn’t become 10th place, but instead everyone else would be bumped down a place. So, the previous 1st place would instead become 2nd place, 2nd would become 3rd place, etc. This would continue for three rounds, and at the end, the positions would be official.

In the end, Briar decided not to bother with the calculations. All she had to do was reach 1st place and maintain her position until everyone’s turns were used up. Even if she was ganged up on by everyone, she would only have to fight 27 more rounds.

While it would be difficult for normal students, Briar was still a 2nd rank Red class. Thus, her strength and stamina were much higher than the other students. Using her mana vision, she could see that the others were mostly in the green class, with Triss, the Minstrel, and Laura being the only blue class present.

It might seem weird that they would be able to reach Blue class, so quickly. But, they were each students of Black Class Martial Practitioners. Their teachers would have bound to have had elixirs and aids to help them quickly advance. Briar knew well, though, the drawbacks of using external aids in breaking through to the next class. While their raw strength would increase swiftly, their understanding would lag behind, becoming a hindrance to them once they reached Black Class.

In this respect, Master Thales was more of an advocate of natural advancement, growing stronger through hard work and perseverance, rather than relying upon external power ups. In this respect, his view seemed to have produced some rather satisfying results, as Laura was now a 3rd rank Blue Class.

Some might say that- since there were two other blue ranks that hadn’t had to go through what Laura did- Master Thales’ stance with natural advancement was a moot point. However, that was simply not so. The other Blue ranks were at 18 and 19 years old respectively, while Laura was at 12 years old. A whole six to seven year gap was not something one could simply brush away.

What’s that? Laura’s explosive increase in time was due to Briar’s meddling back in their childhood? Briar only got Laura past the introductory stage classes. The rest of them Laura had to advance through on her own.

It’s like the difference between showing someone how to do the horse stance, and making them do it for over an hour. At most, Briar’s contribution to Laura’s strength could knock off a year or two. But that would still leave a 4-6 year age gap between Laura and the other Blue Class martial Practitioners that was won through her hard work, and Master Thales’ instructions.

Things are starting to get a bit interesting now. Briar wore a mischievous lopsided smirk on her face. As the introductions were over, everyone had to line up and draw lots to find out who their opponent would be.

The overhead magic display now showed a very easy to understand diagram on it, which would be filled in with the names of the contestants. Right now, the name slots were empty, though. They would only be filled in after the corresponding numbers were drawn.

Ah. It looks like the Narcissist Prince is going up first.

Briar rolled her eyes as the man fiddled with his golden forelock, smoothing it out before he put the mirror in his inner jacket pocket and walked up to the box filled with names, waving at the audience as he went. His conceit had no equal. He didn’t even try, and just quickly grabbed the piece of paper on the top of the pile.

“Dempsey Lir versus Laura Murlough.” The names were announced, and immediately showed up on the magic display, opposite each other in the position of the 1st fight.

The next match had one of the musclemen versus one of the quintuplets. Briar’s match was also against one of the musclemen. Luckily, her match was oriented towards the latter part of the morning, so she didn’t see much of a conflict with her schedule.

Once everyone had drawn an opponent, the first match was set to begin ten minutes later.

Returning back to Madam Rothema’s seat, Briar quickly switched out her disguises, heading towards the Magicians Stage. Yukikage glanced at her from her perch upon the stone railing, and jumped down to follow after her; as a cat, she had seen enough of the fights in the Martial arena yesterday, and was feeling rather bored.

Briar glanced back at her. “Are you sure you want to come with me this time? It may be quite dangerous for you, you know?”

Yukikage twitched her pink nose and twisted her hears with a pleading look in her eyes. “Nyo, I don’t wanna sit still and watch! it’s nyo fun if my favorite human isn’t there!” She swished her tail emphatically.

“Oh? And are you sure that Madam Rothema wasn’t your favorite human yesterday? I recall seeing someone begging for scraps from Madam Rothema’s lunch of roast chicken? You weren’t even the slightest bit concerned with my fights beforehand, were you?” Briar teased.

“Er, that was because…..I was..trying to…practice my begging skills! Right! Besides, I can’t help it if I get hungry, after all! It would have been so impolite to interrupt you in nya(the) middle of your match, right?”

Briar raised an eyebrow, hiding her smile at Yukikage’s frenzied search for excuses, but afterwards, she didn’t prevent Yukikage from following her, either. After all, there were no rules stating that familiars couldn’t join their masters on stage. There was a rule against bringing house pets on stage, though.

Due to the fact that magicians had to make sure their minds were in tip-top shape, the ceremony was set to start later than that of the hot-blooded martial practitioners. As things were, Briar ended up being one of the first magicians on stage for the semi-finals. Yukikage leapt to land upon Briar’s shoulders, swinging her tail contentedly to and fro.

Seeing this, many of the audience (especially the infatuated fan club) had faces with loose expressions. Mutterings of ‘I want to be that cat’, and ‘How picturesque’ could be heard in the stalls. To Briar’s discomfort, she noticed that many of the young men of marriageable age had taken up the seats close to the stage. Her nose twitched only once, before she decided to ignore that group.

But others grumbled under their breath about how some fool student was trying to break the rules again. In all fairness, it was hard to associate the cat on Briar’s shoulders with a familiar. The most well-known familiars were impressive, brutish beasts like Obsidian Bears and Ptera-birds.

Familiars weren’t just an aid in magic, but also served to guard their partners from attacks out in the fields. Since an attack on their soul-bound human was like an attack on their person, familiars take their partners safety very seriously. Well, since Briar’s strength was abnormally high, Yukikage hadn’t had much of a chance to prove herself after her transformation.

Moreover, familiars weren’t just a dime a dozen. They were actually quite scarce in the world. It was considered lucky if 1 out of 1,000,000 could find themselves a familiar. But the reality of the situation was that it was more like 1 out of 100,000,000.

Even now, there were only a paltry number of magicians who had found their destined familiar. Well, it couldn’t be helped, after all. Most of the people thought that a familiar was an already pre-destined thing bound only to specific souls. The truth of the matter was that a familiar was actually a soul-bound contract.

Not just any random beast could enter into a soul contract. Not only did they needed to have intelligence and mana, but they also had to whole-heartedly accept the person they contracted with, and vice versa. It wasn’t a master-servant relationship, but one of partners: who were closer than the best of friends. Therefore, not many could avail themselves of the opportunities to acquire one.

Now that more Magician students had arrived on stage, they also had noticed the pretty little housecat sitting on Briar’s shoulders. One of the girls, a timid-looking brown-haired shy young lady who stood next to Briar on her left, tactfully tried to warn her.

“Hey, you might want to get your cat off the stage. It could cause you to get into trouble if you don’t remove it, soon.”

“Why?” Briar asked.

Before the girl could respond, a scoff rang out from Briar’s right side.

“Why? Because pets aren’t allowed on stage during a wizard’s fight, that’s why! Unless, don't tell me-you’re trying to get us to believe that that tiny kitten is actually your familiar? Pah! Such a joke is not even humorous at this point! It's simply distasteful.” Briar turned towards the source of the unpleasant voice, and both her eyebrows were raised.

A blonde-haired beauty with ringlets in a fancy peacock-blue gown stood next to her. In Briar’s otaku friend’s terms, she would be the very image of ‘rococo style’. It wouldn’t be surprising if the mascot characteristic of ‘rococo’ rang out. She could almost hear the ‘ohohohos’ ringing in her ears. She was almost tempted to say 'Gokigen yo~' to her, but-due to the language difference, nobody would understand the reference.

Briar and Yukikage looked at each other: Briar’s searching; Yuki’s questioning, can I? After a second glance at the Rococo miss to her right, Briar gave a small smile and nodded ever so slightly. Yuki winked and jumped down to the floor, wandering over to the Rococo miss.

Sitting down at a distance of about a meter away, in front of that young miss, Yuki stared unblinkingly at her.

“Look, now it’s just going to wander about the stage and get under everyone’s feet! Can’t you see that your pet is disrupting the whole ceremony?”

Briar simply smiled sweetly. “As a matter of fact, she isn’t my pet.”

Then Yuki jumped forward, swiftly changing size to become as large as a panther. Shocking the Rococo miss into dumb silence as she came face to face with Yuki’s large form. The audience had not missed this small exchange either, and there were many exclamations within the crowd.

“But, since you told me not to tell you, I shall comply.” Briar grinned, as Yuki turned aside and leapt at Briar, returning to her small size before once more becoming comfortable upon Briar’s shoulders. The audience and some of the combatants chuckled with mirth.