Alice awoke in the middle of the night to the sound of quiet murmuring. It was too dark to make out the time on the pendulum clock that hung on the wall, but there was a small magical orb of light dully illuminating the desk where Cadmus was currently sitting. He seemed to be modifying and remodifying a particular magic circle, and each time he did, he would make some sort of note in his journal.

“Cadmus…?” Alice asked tiredly, “What are you doing?”

Cadmus didn’t look her way, but he spoke softly, “Preparing. You, on the other hand, should be asleep.”

“So should you…”

“I’m almost done,” Cadmus said, “I’ll sleep after.”

Alice peered at the magic circle he was working on, and found that it looked a tiny bit familiar.

“Are you just working on one single magic circle? But there were so many different kinds of dangerous magic presented yesterday; will one be enough?”

“Do you remember Ipsum forest?” Cadmus asked, “I tried to devise a counter to Brycen’s vine magic in only a few days and after seeing it only once, and it failed. I’ve learned from that: I will work on what I feel I can truly finish, and I’ll deal with other dangerous elements with what I already have. That’s all there is to it.”

“Okay…” Alice said unsurely, “But don’t stay up too late, alright? You need all the sleep you can get.”

Cadmus paused for a moment before erasing a symbol in his circle.

“Yeah… I know.”

The next day promised to be a great one for all tournament watchers, as the sun rose boldly, with nary a cloud in the sky to obfuscate its brilliant rays. The stands of the massive coliseum filled up quickly, with murmurings of anticipation filling the air in far greater degrees than the day before. Even the contestant’s box, Cadmus noticed, was filled with a far more tense air than yesterday.

Perhaps it was no surprise. Today was the day the tournament would end, and all the participants seeking victory had climbed over numerous hurdles to reach here. Now, more powerful mages than not remained.

“Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the second and final day of the Twin Peaks Magical Tournament!” The announcer was saying, “They say: adversity breeds greatness. In which case, these warriors, who have defeated all in their path must be the greatest! What a joy it will be to watch them compete against each other!”

The crowd roared in approval, and as they did so, the display orbs from yesterday rose to the air once more. They snapped to life, displaying a clear view of the battlefield, which only seemed to excite the crowd more.

Two orbs of shining white magic were suddenly launched into the sky, and they erupted to form two flaming sigils that glowed with a fierce light, even under the brightness of the sun. One was the sigil of The Laurucian Academy of Magic: an open book with a magic circle consisting of only a triangle hovering above it (the sigil had been placed against a midnight blue background so that its white lines would not blend into the light of the sky); and the other was the sigil of the Carmenian Institute of Sorcery: a white owl overlayed on top of a crimson background.

They remained proudly emblazoned in the sky, paralleling each other for a few moments before fading from existence together.

Once all activity died down, the announcer spoke again, “And now, without further ado, let us get started! Organizers, if you would please?”

The display orbs all flashed, cycling through the names of the remaining participants.

Cadmus Guiles VS. Anthony Kayden

“Anthony Kayden…” Cadmus murmured, trying to remember what he knew about him, “He was one of the people Oliver and Ardea fought in the second qualifier round…”

He wasn’t sure how to feel about this matchup; on one hand, Anthony seemed to be one of the weaker participants of this tournament, which was lucky. However, on the other hand, Anthony was not the person he wanted to fight right now.

Shaking such useless thoughts from his head, Cadmus descended the coliseum alongside Anthony, and together, they took their places on opposite ends of the battlefield.

“And here’s our first battle for today, folks!” The announcer said, “Anthony Kayden will now take on the Necromancer himself! Hopefully, we’ll get to actually watch the battle this time, instead of having it covered in mist!”

The referee gave Cadmus a meaningful look at that as the arena-wide barrier was set up.

The referee raised his arm, “READY YOURSELVES!”

Cadmus and Anthony both did so.

“AND—BEGIN!”

Instantly, Cadmus’ hand blurred, and the magic circle for Mist was soon formed. After all, the referee had only said he couldn’t cover the arena in mist for the whole battle, but the beginning of the battle shouldn’t be any problem.

And he needed this mist. The circle he was about to use required some time to create.

As mist poured from Cadmus’ circle and filled the arena, Anthony tried to keep a track of him, but soon the veil of white became too heavy to peer through, and Cadmus moved away from his initial position.

Good thing too, as a Fireball instantly landed there.

Cadmus’ hand blurred again as he began drawing a new circle, the one he had invented right before the tournament had begun, and had used to defeat Zane Brycen.

It was one of the most advanced magic circles he had ever created, and took an appropriately long amount of time to draw. This was not helped by the fact that his other hand was still busy keeping the Mist magic circle active.

Once the circle was done, Cadmus cut the power to Mist, and erased it from existence: the referee would not tolerate it if he kept the whole arena submerged in mist the entire battle again. And besides, he would not lose now—his new circle would not allow him to.

As the mist cleared, Anthony quickly located him. However, instead of attacking, he stared warily, as though wondering why Cadmus had decided to erase the mist before trying any sort of attack.

Cadmus switched his only remaining circle to his non-dominant left hand and, after unsheathing his arming sword, pushed mana through it. Instantly, a rushing sensation poured through his veins, and his muscles tightened.

Then, beyond his control, his body rushed forward. It was as though someone else had entered his body and was controlling it for him, while he was simply along for the ride. All he could control with his own power now was his head.

That was how this spell worked.

When something became common knowledge among the majority of the people in the world, the combined weight of that knowledge left an imprint in the ambient mana in the air. This imprint was understood to endure for essentially forever, meaning mages in the far future could use these imprints to learn of all sorts of events that occurred in history.

This too was the case when it came to people. When a specific person was widely recognized by the world, their existence too would make an imprint in the ambient mana of the world.

However, with people, there existed a threshold.

No one knew exactly the exact magnitude of this threshold, but it was commonly accepted that if the degree of recognition for a person surpassed the threshold throughout the world while they were alive, then their full and accurate existence would be imprinted within the ambient mana.

Now, there was no way to simply transfer knowledge imprinted in mana into someone’s head (barring Alice, of course, who was wholly anomalous from any other living being in the world) so such things were of no use to mages.

However, it was only a few weeks ago that Cadmus discovered something. Knowledge imprinted in mana could not be transferred into someone’s head, but he could take one of the figures of history, such as famous heroes, who had left the full imprint of their existence in the ambient mana, and transpose their muscle memory upon his own.

He called it: Heroic Possession.

It was the ultimate conclusion of Cadmus’ research into the transference of knowledge from the imprints in ambient mana that had gone into the creation of Alice’s brain, and his research into the magic of muscle memory that had gone into Dead Puppetry.

All that combined with the vast yet rare knowledge left behind by Ember, the forgotten knowledge of necromancy pulled from Alice’s head, and the intricate knowledge available on the higher floors of the Academy’s library had lead to the creation of Heroic Possession.

Cadmus was upon Anthony in an instant, and with a quick sidestep to dodge the latter’s Fireball, he swung his blade and scored a deep, bright red gash in the arm.

This was no surprise, as the one Cadmus had chosen to borrow muscle memory from was Sigurd the Dragonslayer. The ancient hero had earned his title by challenging a powerful dragon to a duel, and had come out on top with only his magic blade, Gram, and his skill with it. This was also why Cadmus had chosen to buy an arming sword: because Gram had been an arming sword as well, and Sigurd’s muscle memory was most accustomed to swinging that.

But, of course, Cadmus’ muscles were of no match to Sigurd’s; which was why, right now, he was only using seven percent of Sigurd’s abilities. His prior research had allowed him to complete the creation of this magic circle in remarkable time, so he was actually able to draw out twelve percent of Sigurd’s skills at most. However, his body had not been able to handle it, which was how he had landed in the hospital with severe tears in his muscles before the start of the qualifier rounds.

Even so, seven percent of the skills of a legendary hero like Sigurd was more than enough to defeat someone like Anthony Kayden, as evidenced by how Anthony could not even fire back a counterattack under Cadmus’ relentless assault.

That was not to say that this magic circle was complete. The circle had been optimized to a miraculous degree in the short time he had had to make it, but there were still massive flaws present. For one, the muscle memory of Sigurd and his own muscles still hadn’t been well harmonized: each swing, each movement, strained his muscles to the point of noticeable pain. And, as the battle went on, the pain only got worse and worse.

Another problem was the magic circle itself. It had to be kept active in his left hand to continue working, but Sigurd’s fighting style hadn’t consisted of protecting a magic circle as well, so there was no movement from his muscle memory that would protect it from an enemy attack. It may even be that Sigurd’s own movements would accidentally erase it.

Cadmus swung at Anthony once more, and the blade struck the latter in the chest so deeply this time that he screamed wildly in pain. Even the referee instinctively stepped forward, looking to end the match any second now.

And this was another fault of Heroic Possession: Sigurd, in his time, had trained in the art of killing, so his muscle memory reflected that. In his life, he had had enough judgement and control over his abilities to decide when to kill and when not to. No such luxury was available to Cadmus.

“Not yet…” Anthony muttered rather deliriously, “I made it this far… not yet…”

“Surrender,” Cadmus strongly urged, “You may actually die if you don’t.”

“Not yet… NOT YET!”

Anthony barreled forward and tried to raise his magic circle, but he stumbled, most likely due to blood loss, and fell to the ground in front of Cadmus.

Sigurd’s movements reacted instantly to the sudden opening they had been provided, with Cadmus’ blade descending quickly towards Anthony’s throat—

“VICTOR—CADMUS GUILES!”

The referee’s call came just in time, and Cadmus barely managed to overload his magic circle with enough mana to shatter it and regain control of his body to divert the killing blow. The arming sword struck the ground beside Anthony instead, and the impact sent a wave of shivers up Cadmus’ arm and through his body.

This was perhaps the most troublesome problem of Heroic Possession: Once the spell was started, it became impossible to accurately cut the flow of mana and stop it again. It was like the mana and magic circle were two particularly powerful magnets; they would stick together, but it was impossible to cut the attraction to pull them apart again.

The workaround solution Cadmus had found for now was to simply pour as much mana as he could into the circle instead, which would break it, thereby stopping the spell. However, this would not work as a permanent solution: too much mana was wasted to stop the spell, and once it was stopped, Cadmus would be forced to draw the entire circle all over again if he wanted to use it again.

But of course, he would have to work out the kinks in his own time. For now, he had no choice but to use Heroic Possession as it was, rough edges and all.

“What an enjoyable battle we’ve been granted for our first match of the day!” The announcer said amidst the cheers as Cadmus ascended the stairs, “Who could have expected the Necromancer to be so adept in swordsmanship! If only his first match hadn’t been obscured in mist…”

When Cadmus reentered the contestant’s box, he found Elise Auxil standing next to Candice, looking thoroughly healed, as though she had never fought against Ardea in the first place.

“You look well,” he told her as he took Alice back from Candice.

“Yeah, Laurucium’s medical resources and expertise are not to be underestimated,” Elise said.

“And you fought well against Regis. Your tactic of copying Rex Optime’s methods was particularly impressive.”

Elise snorted, “Thanks. Yours was an interesting match as well.”

Cadmus nodded, “Thank you.”

“I am curious though: why did you not use these skills of yours in Ipsum forest?” Elise said, “We would have had a far easier time if you had.”

“My skills, as you say, come from a specific spell,” Cadmus said, “I didn’t want to reveal that spell so early, so I held off on using it.”

Elise looked befuddled, “Really? We were on the verge of defeat at the end though. And you said that you weren’t sure if you could trust Orange to not just eat Alice when you sent them away as bait. Was all that really worth hiding your spell?”

“I made a mistake back then,” Cadmus explained, “Between trying to develop a spell to stop Brycen’s vines and our confrontation with his team, I wasted too much mana. By the time I realized that Heroic Possession was the only way we’d be able to truly be rid of them, my reserves had already been emptied to the point of rendering that option impossible.”

Elise let loose a small sigh, “I guess I can’t be too angry about not being told about this Heroic Possession of yours before; there was always a chance of us being pit against each other in the tournament as well… However, it’s hard not to feel annoyed knowing that we might have lost just because you wanted to keep a single spell of yours a secret.”

Cadmus stayed silent.

“But,” Elise said after a moment, shrugging, “I suppose you did your fair share of work to match mine in that forest, and it’s not like I was particularly helpful in those battles either, so it’d be wrong of me to hold this against you. Let’s call it even.”

Cadmus nodded, “Very well.”

“What an amusing little spell you’ve created, Guiles.”

Cadmus’ mood instantly soured as Mark Tempor walked up to them.

“A spell to somehow grant you the skill of swordplay?” Mark continued, his voice light and easygoing, “I don’t think I’ve ever even read about a spell like that.”

“How do you know it was a spell that did that and not just a result of training?” Alice challenged, glaring at Mark as though trying to harm him through looks alone.

Of course, seeing how she was small enough to fit in Cadmus’ breast pocket, it was obvious that she wasn’t going to be intimidating anyone any time soon.

“Come now,” Mark laughed, “I gave your friend a whole lecture about this; I’d recognize the Biteback symbol anywhere! And then that sharp increase in skill? The connection’s obvious!”

Cadmus frowned, this was why he’d wished to hide his circle in mist…

Mark’s grin darkened, “Now, let’s hope we get to see which one’s better: your strange skill-enhancement spell, or my time spells.”

And, as Mark gave him a quick pat on the shoulder and went to rejoin his friend, Gale Holland, Cadmus found himself wondering the same.

“And now, we move on to our second battle of the day!” Cadmus heard the announcer say, “Which pair will follow that heart-pumping match? Let us see!”

The display once again cycled through names.

Gelida Olvo VS. Shin Ito

“Oh! What luck!” The announcer exclaimed, “We will now have the pleasure of witnessing the Mage of Frigid Winter battle against the man who defeated even the incredibly skilled Gawain Le Fay! This should be a treat to watch!”

Both Gelida and Shin descended onto the battlefield. Once there, Gelida held out her hand to shake.

“Let’s have a good match.”

Shin took the proferred hand and shook it firmly once.

“Yes, let us.”

They let go and took their places on opposite ends of the battlefield.

The referee declared, “READY YOURSELVES!”

Shin got into a stance put a hand on his sheathed katana, while Gelida lowered her center of gravity and raised her hands in preparation to draw.

“AND—BEGIN!”

As a first in this entire tournament, Gelida quickly leaped back and exited the stone battlefield, choosing instead to retreat across the field surrounding it, the one that looked like it was used for chariot racing and the like instead.

Shin quickly unsheathed his blade and gave chase.

“What’s she doing?” Alice asked.

“Running away,” Cadmus said, “Ito is a skilled swordsman, so it only makes sense for a projectile-based mage like her to create some distance.”

Gelida had been drawing a circle while she had been running, so, once she was done, she turned around and fired a few Ice Shards as she continued backpedalling. The spiky projectiles of glittering ice raced towards Shin, but Shin smoothly deflected them, not even slowing down as he did so.

By this time, another circle was already in Gelida’s hand, and she jammed it against the ground. The circle glowed, and a small jet of bright white energy swam through the ground at an even higher speed than the Ice Shards, and exploded into a wide cluster of icy stalagmites when it reached Shin.

Shin was forced to leap back to avoid the attack, and it seemed his charge had been stymied. But then, Gelida grunted in pain, a shallow gash gleaming a bright red on her shoulder. It took Cadmus a moment to realize that in the single moment that Shin had taken to dodge Gelida’s Ice Spikes, he had also unleashed a Wind Blade of his own.

“Ow, ow, ow…” Gelida said lightly, experimentally swinging her struck shoulder, “You’re really quick, aren’t you?”

Shin nodded politely, “I thank you for the compliment.”

Then, he shot forwards again and dodged another assault of Ice Spikes. This time he dodged sideways, and so was barely slowed down. But then, Gelida assaulted him with a shot of Ice Spikes a third time, and when he tried going around it again, he found an Ice Shard hurtling towards him.

Gelida had followed up her Ice Spikes with a shot of Ice Shard on either side of it in anticipation of Shin’s dodge, and it was only through sheer reflex that he was able to deflect the attack with only a thin cut to show on his cheek for it.

“You yourself are rather quick,” Shin said.

Gelida grinned, “Thanks!”

The two resumed their attacks at once, with Gelida firing a few more Ice Shards, and Shin sending forth a collection of Wind Blades. They traded fire at a rapid pace, but all the while, Shin continued inching closer. Gelida tried to backpedal, but even so, Shin’s advance was just a mite bit faster.

Soon enough, he reached Gelida, and with two rapid slashes, cut through her circles, causing her to stumble backwards and fall to the ground. His blade came to point at Gelida’s throat, and the referee called it.

“VICTOR: SHIN ITO!”

As the audience’s enthusiastic applause filled the stadium, Shin held his hand out, and Gelida took it, pulling herself to her feet.

“Wow, you’re really strong!” Gelida laughed, “That was amazing!”

“As are you,” Shin said, nodding politely again. “Although, you did not seem to hold the fervour for victory as most remaining in this tournament.”

“What are you talking about?” Gelida asked, “I wanted to win.”

“Indeed, but I sense it was not as… important to you as the others,” Shin said, “Then again, you would not have achieved this level of ability if you were not driven in some way…”

Gelida chuckled, “Instead of thinking so hard, you should just be happy you won. I really did try my best, you know?”

“It is hard to feel proud when I did not even have to contend against your renowned ‘cold spells’,” Shin said, “I understand they are one of the main facets of your strength.”

“My ‘cold spells’ wouldn’t have helped here, trust me,” Gelida said, giving him a comforting pat on the shoulder, “They’re only meant for fire and the like. The most they would do against you is maybe give you a little chill.”

“I see.”

“He’s so humble…” Alice said quietly.

Cadmus looked down and saw that she had placed her hands upon her red-tinged cheeks while watching Shin’s profile intently.

“Another remarkable battle!” The referee exclaimed as the noise from the audience began to die down. "It was unfortunate for Ms. Olvo to be paired up against someone like Mr. Ito, but Mr. Ito won that battle fair and square! And now, I’m sure the next battle will be just as exciting! Organizers!”

The display orbs cycled through names once more, and quickly landed on a result among the few participants left in this round.

There was a moment of still silence.

“Oh my… oh my…” the announcer finally breathed, “Now this… has the potential to be something truly special…”

For once, Cadmus found himself agreeing wholeheartedly with him.

Lancelot Du Lac VS. Gale Holland