Once Kalob announced this, he pointed his wand toward the platform and cast a spell. As soon as he did, runes all over the house and platform began glowing. Villin could feel incomparably thick magic power all around him, radiating everything with its power.

Then everything began to change. The walls folded themselves up leaving runes to float in the air, behind it, the snowy mountains could be clearly seen.

Then the platform began to grow bigger and bigger, until each contestant had more than ten square meters for themselves. Once this happened the folded-up walls were transfigured into the design of the floor and the floor first began to expand and then rise. All of the runemasters seemed to know exactly where to stand as they were brought up multiple meters into the air.

In less than thirty seconds the entire area had changed. The building had disappeared and instead, they were now in what looked like an open-air boxing arena. The runemasters, their dates, and the special guests were now all standing multiple meters higher than the platform, allowing them to see everything clearly.

After a bit more of the runes stopped emitting light and were once more hidden. The only exception was a string of runes around the platform. These runes flew through the air and circled around each of the contestants. After floating around for a bit they found their place just a few centimeters away from the contestants’ clothing, moving as they did.

“What the-” Villin looked at the runes in awe, he could feel they were forming some sort of magical barrier around him, probably to avoid injuries.

The entire situation seemed insane, just a wave of the man’s wand and everything around them changed like that, obviously, the runes were the main perpetrators but it was still incredible, for an entire house to be enchanted like that without any problems and the enchantments to be capable of transfigurating the entire house and then protect certain targets as they were moving.

Villin barely managed to restrain himself from examining the runes floating alongside him as he focused himself on his task.

Looking at the situation around him he noticed Kalob’s mouth was moving and yet he couldn’t hear a thing. It seemed that sound was cut off, Villin also guessed this meant the competition had started.

It was only now that he realized a couple of items had appeared around his section of the platform.

There were a total of twenty-one items spread across his ten square meters. There were two layers, ten items were on eye-level, ten others had appeared two meters higher. The only exception was a note which was now floating just before his eyes. It seemed like all of the items appeared out of thin air.

Still somewhat confused, Villin grabbed the paper note that was floating in front of him, as soon as he touched it, it lost its magic properties and so he opened it to read it.

------------------------

‘Dear contestant.

Around you, you will notice thirty items suspended in their location. Each of the items is protected by a ward. As a contestant, you have two goals.

Your first goal is to breach as many of the wards as possible.

Your second goal is to enhance the items you get from the wards.

Your third goal is to sabotage your opposition.

You may not use any of your own equipment, this includes your wand and enchanting pen.

No combative spells may be cast at any time, be it offensive or defensive.

You may not enter another contestant’s area.

You have one hour.

Good Luck.’

--------------------------

“What the fuck?”

Villin looked immensely confused when he read the note for multiple reasons. It was completely different from how he expected it to be, he thought he would just have to enchant a certain piece of equipment as well as possible within a certain time.

At least, that was what he was led to believe. Now it seemed like that was completely wrong.

Seeing his task, he had one major problem with it.

He didn’t know a thing about wards.

Villin scratched his head trying to find some deeply-hidden knowledge he might have about wards but didn’t find a thing. After sighing deeply once Villin decided to have a look at the items around him first.

The items on head level all seemed to be things that could be used to aid him. He saw a wand, an enchanting pen, chalks for a magic array, some measuring tools, a mystery backpack, and a couple of other objects Villin didn’t recognize.

After thinking for a bit Villin moved toward the wand. The reason for picking this first were two of his spells. Firstly there was ‘Vococito’. Even though it could be used offensively or defensively in its nature it is simply a utility spell used to bring objects toward the caster, and, of course, using his derivatory format he could also repulse things. He hoped that maybe it would help get other items out.

The second spell he wanted was ‘Mentallage’. With this spell, he may be able to contact Kayley who was outside of the arena, even though she wouldn’t be able to reply, some basic signs could be given to respond to his questions. Since Kayley was able to hear the runemasters discuss she might have crucial information.

Villin was pretty sure this wouldn’t be considered cheating, after all, runemasters were known to be resourceful, it was in their nature. Since there wasn’t a rule against contacting the outside, he might as well try.

And so, Villin approached the wand. He looked at it from multiple angles but couldn’t see the ward and so he extended his hand to try and grab it. As expected, the ward appeared as soon as Villin touched it, the ward consisted of a few dozen large runes floating all around the wand, as soon as Villin touched it, his arm was thrown back, he was forced to take a step back as well, it seemed that the wards were repulsive in nature.

Villin approached it once more but ten seconds later the runes disappeared from sight again. Villin was stuck in thought for a bit.

No matter what, changing the runes would take time, and a bunch of it at that. He wasn’t familiar with wards and adjusting its runes would at least take ten minutes. This would mean he would only be able to get six items, each of them from the lowest circle, even though Villin didn’t know what the norm here was, it seemed very low for a runemaster.

He thought of potential other options and after thinking for a bit he found a potential one.

“If this doesn’t work this is gonna hurt.”