Once the Lannisters deliberated for a few minutes, Kalob finally spoke up again.

“Since the two people in first-place are only one year apart, the winner of this round will be decided in the fighting competition. According to the brackets that were already decided upon they will meet in the second round. If one or both of them fail to move on to the second round they will have a match after the fighting competition is over.” Kalob said all of this fluently as he explained the arrangement.

The arrangement favored Ruby slightly since she was older than Villin but it was still pretty fair overall.

At this point, Villin didn’t look so good. He was a realist and he knew how skilled he was. He believed he should be comparable to someone in the third grade even though he had only really been practicing magic for less than half a year.

As for Ruby, she had been in The Academy for a year longer than him. Her comprehension was also clearly extraordinary. After thinking for a bit Villin came to a conclusion.

In a one-versus-one fight, he would not be her match. Luckily, he wasn’t planning to face her on his own. He still had his puppet in his backpack, this one wasn’t just better enchanted compared to the one he made in the mortal world. The real change was in the material.

Back in the mortal world, he was forced to enchant a wooden doll. In The Academy, this wasn’t the case. In the marketplace they would be able to enter every week, a few blacksmiths did exist.

He bought Arenak ore from one of the blacksmiths. Arenak was a translucent material that was an extremely good conductor of magic. Even though it couldn’t be used in wand-making, the material was still extraordinarily expensive. Its only weakness was its frailty, physical attacks would easily break it, even a regular punch would be enough to make cracks appear.

Luckily, Villin was a runemaster and he managed to enhance the strength of the material somewhat, making the weakness less fatal.

After getting the material he found one of the sixth-grade transfiguration students. In The Academy, it was a supremely uncommon class but it still wasn’t all that hard to find someone. They transfigurated the material to take a humanoid shape about a hundred-and-twenty centimeters tall.

This all cost him nearly five-thousand magic crystals but Villin thought that it was worth it. Even if the puppet was destroyed he could still use the material, as long as he didn’t use the self-destruction function at least.

The Arenak puppet would be a lot stronger than the first version even if it was made with the exact same enchantments, this was the effect a material could have on an enchanted object.

And so, the result of the fight would be uncertain, if he used the puppet properly he might win depending on how strong Ruby is.

While these thoughts were going through his mind, Kalob explained the rules of the fighting competition. It was rather simple.

The competition would start with the youngest age-group these were the people between fourteen and sixteen years old. They would have a small tournament, the winner would be put together in the next tournament for those between seventeen and eighteen, the winner of this would go on to fight in the competition for those between nineteen and twenty.

After a moment the first fights were released, the first round would have eight people competing in the youngest age-group.

Villin’s first opponent would be the very same boy he had sabotaged just a minute ago. The boy wore a grey robe, showing he was the student of a runemaster.

If Villin were to win he would go to the second round where, if she also won, he would meet Ruby.

After a moment everyone except for Villin and the boy whose name was Leonardo had left the stage, they would be the opening match.

Once more the runes all over the platform shifted, now a large ward was formed all around the stage, even though Villin couldn’t see the runes he assumed they formed a defensive ward

The stage was obviously rather big as earlier each of the twenty-two youths had their own ten square meters.

The stage was a massive circle that was three-hundred meters in diameter, this was plenty of space to fight from a distance.

Villin calmed his breathing as he thought of his advantages. In this fight, he would rather not reveal his puppet yet, this way Ruby wouldn’t be able to come up with a countermeasure just yet.

The person across from him was of the same age as him, but there was one major difference. Firstly, Leonardo didn’t go to The Academy, this meant he had actually lived for fourteen years, he had probably been thought runology since he was six or seven years old even if he couldn’t practice it properly.

Still, this wasn’t a runology competition. Villin wasn’t sure what items the boy would’ve prepared but he was confident he would be able to deal with it using his spells.

In reality, he felt quite excited. He hadn’t really used most of his newer spells in any genuine fights, he had only really used them in spars against Kayley and Amelia.

He thought of the spells that would probably be useful in this match. Reverto was obviously a no brainer, keeping the wandless cast activated was a must.

The second most useful spell would be ‘Voccocito’ or well, the derivative version. If Leonardo tried to throw anything at him he could simply use the derivative spell to knock it back.

In this place, he put both ‘Vinea Tenura’ and ‘Syrtim Celer’. When practicing against Amelia and Kayley if he managed to get both of these spells out he would almost always win. First, he would use ‘Vinea Tenura’ to tie the opponent up, then ‘Syrtim Celer’ would turn the ground into quicksand, causing the vines and the entangled person to be dragged underground.

It was a very scary combination, you would be done for if you couldn’t escape the vines in time.

The final two spells he put a lot of focus on were ‘Void Arrow’ which was an anti-magical spell that could bypass most defenses sacrificing power and ‘Bombardo’ which was an explosion.

Of Course, there were other spells that would be useful such as ‘Drowse’ and ‘Icy Pike’ but Villin didn’t expect to win using them.

Then there was also a certain derivative version of ‘Mentallage’ but Villin counted it as a trump card to use against Ruby. He figured she already knew about most of his other spells since he was forced to practice against Amelia and Kayley in the training grounds, but this was the one spell he had only used twice on another person.

Villin looked at his opponent, eager now. Now that he recounted each of his spells he suddenly felt a lot more confident in himself, he felt winning shouldn’t be a problem.

“Alright, everyone make sure you are not within the bounds of the arena!” Kalob said as he looked at the other competitors who had just gotten off. “Then now, let us begin!”

As soon as he said that Villin began casting a spell. But before he even got it out he was blinded. This wasn’t because of Leonardo, it was because of the ward around the platform, Villin felt himself get sick as he fell to the ground disoriented, when he opened his eyes he was facing green grass. Looking up he saw trees and behind him was an ocean.

“What the actual fuck.”