Ch 3 mk 1

Ara, Maybe I didn’t elaborate enough on the childhood part ;-;

Well, no use crying over spilt milk.

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Part 1 -

I hate road trips.

Thankfully, this one is only a few hours long. Once we arrive in the Holy City of Ichikira, we can use the space bender to get to Kotonashi.

Meanwhile, the other three who passed both tests are sitting in the opposite corner of the wagon and staring at me like a piece of meat.

That’s not the terrifying part yet.

There is a boy and two girls, one of which is the one I punched in the gut.

Over two hundred people took the tests, but only the four of us passed both. That means that we’re the top two percent here.

I only passed due to my ability to chantlessly invoke spells.

On the other hand, these three passed because they’re the monsters of their generation.

My total mana output is at the 55th percentile… these guys are the cream of the crop with their top 2% mana output.

Just don’t make eye contact.

In fact, don’t even look in their direction.

Hopefully they won’t bothe-

I hear someone stand up.

Maybe they’re taking a piss?

The footsteps are getting closer.

Oh shit, what if he’s a friend of the girl I ‘bumped’? He’ll want my ass as a trophy! (http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_me184oauVX1qhj8zg.jpg)

I don’t want to be mounted above a fireplace!

I can’t win a direct confrontation, so I’ll need to fight a battle of attrition.

I can’t win a battle of attrition if he has limitless mana so…

Acting completely on impulse, I reach out as far as possible and drain all the mana I can get from the atmosphere into my body.

To increase my chances of winning as high as possible, I need to drain their mana as quickly as I can.

If I can lower the temperature of this caravan, that’ll force them to waste mana keeping themselves warm.

I invoke multiple infrared light absorbing fields and air currents around me to drain the heat from the surrounding air.

The energy is converted into mana form. Not that I need it…

Temperature is theoretically the kinetic energy of molecules. Aka Kinetic Temperature. That’s how molecules can be laser cooled to near absolute zero.

All I have to do to cool the air is to take the spell that I use to waste mana and modify it a bit. Instead of speeding up photons, it needs to slow down atoms and molecules. Cooling by conduction in conjunction with cooling by EMR (Electromagnetic Radiation) absorption should be more effective.

In a matter of seconds, frost begins to form on the seats around me and the air became so cold it hurt to breathe.

Uhhg, it’s so cold. I didn’t really think this one through…

After disabling the fields, I invoke a fire-pit sized fireball in front of me.

“Ahhh, much better.” I mutter, my voice creating a white fog.

Suddenly, the person behind me runs up next to me… and sits down, shivering.

The caravan quickly heats back up as we pass the area I cooled down.

Ehh? A bishounen? Was he not attacking me?

Uhhg, I feel bad now, overreacting like that.

I should probably apologize then...

“Sorry, I thought you were attacking me…” I mutter

“O-oh, i-it's okay,” he said, still shivering.

“M-my n-name is K-kano Tachibana, let’s be friends”

Friends? I think I used to have friends. They’re dead now, aren’t they?

A car accident, wasn’t it?

How sad.

“Sure” I said, turning towards him.

In the corner of my eye, I can see the two girls in some sort of bubble. They’re looking at me without even bothering to hide their contempt.

Before, they looked at me with envy but now it’s just contempt.

“Perfect.” I mutter sarcastically.

Just perfect. Two of the most gossip loving creatures on the planet just thought of me as a weakling.

Ironically, that might actually be perfect…

If they spread the word that I’m a shitty mage, the biggest, baddest delinquents at the school will come to beat me up and take my stuff.

And when they come, I’ll enslave them using mind magic.

But this plan rests on the girls thinking that I’m weak.

What magic of mine have they not seen yet? I bet none of these people have seen me use water magic yet.

After a invoke a ball of water rather sloppily, I hover it in place, purposely making it bumpy.

“What are you doing?” Kano asks.

“Practicing” I say, just loud enough that the two girls can hear.

“I suck at water magic, so it’s only natural I try and make it better, right?”

I watch as I let the water magic fall apart, letting it hit the ground with a splash.

Hilariously enough, this body’s primary affinity is water.

Quite a few people will be in for the rudest of awakenings.

“You know what? Screw this shit! I don’t need water magic!”

In the corner of my eye, the two girls grin maliciously at each other.

That was easier than giving laxatives to a baby.

Kano looks at me with pity. What?

Part 2 -

Shortly after taking the space bender, we arrive at Kotonashi academy. The academy is a large complex located on an island with a massive shield dome over it.

The bridge connecting the academy to the city is huge. Ten caravans could fit side by side, and the bridge is over a mile long.

After getting ID'd, we passed through an opening in the shield dome and enter the academy.

When we arrive at the island, we take a left before arriving at a one story stone building labeled, ‘Registration.’

Inside, there is a table with forms on them and a short line behind a receptionist’s desk.

I fill out a form and get in line.

When it’s my turn, the receptionist uses some kind of magic formation on a tiny mana crystal and my form.

After the light died away, she stuck it on a large metal stick… and stabbed it into the back of my hand.

An implant?

Strangely at all, it didn’t hurt.

This crystal is your form of identification. Simply say “Status” to see your information. If it breaks, just come back here and we’ll replace it.

“Status” I tried.

I window popped up with my data on it.

Name:Rene KaishevClass:1_?Rank:N/ARoom:M-3-27

After the others finished, the girls split off from our group as we went to the dormitories. Kano was assigned to my room as well.

As I enter the room, I notice a blocky guy with black hair sitting on a scrawnier kid with green hair and glasses.

The blockier kid seems to be slapping the skinny kid with his own hand.

Ignoring the idiots, I head to a vacant bed and open my bag.

Taking out a sheet of parchment and a pen filled with magic ink, I draw the researcher’s most valuable method to keep out ‘big government and nosy do-gooders’ (ref: Ragnar Benson’s Action Encyclopedia): The repulsor field.

The repulsor field is basically a dome that keeps people without [insert drop of blood here] out.

Then, I prick my finger and let it drip into a small circle in the middle of the page.

There we go, I’m the only one allowed here now.

Finally, I take out the mana crystal in my bag, charge it, and place it on the battery indicator on the side of the page.

(Help: http://www.cdn.sciencebuddies.org/Files/6299/9/symbol-battery.jpg)

Sadly, I only have a single crystal from tearing apart some old magic devices.

Usually, I use it as a fuel bank for a taser on steroids, but right now I need it to protect my stuff.

Thunk.

Turning around at the noise, I see Kano staggering backwards and the blocky guy trying to extinguish a fire on his rear end.

“Are you okay, Kano?” I ask.

“Aahhblaefucker, what was that?”

“A little something to protect my stuff.”

“Does it really?” He mutters sarcastically while rubbing his face.

“When is the first day of classes?” I ask.

“Not quite sure.” Kano replies.

Suddenly, a voice comes out of the crystal in my hand.

“All first years, please report to the stadium for the entrance ceremony in fifteen minutes.”

The two that were fighting in the corner start healing themselves and finally introduce themselves.

“Hi, I’m Hiroto Tsukuda,” said the blocky one.

“I’m Akira,” said the green haired one. “Akira Koizumi”

(AN: omg thx random name generators)

“Nice to meet you.” I said before asking, “Do you know where the stadium is?”

“Yeah, it’s a bit far though so we should hurry.” Hiroto said.

After exiting the building, we started our trek to the stadium.

“So I assume this is a pretty stereotypical entrance ceremony?” I ask.

“Of course. They’ll start with some stupid speech, and then the ranking tournament begins.” Akira replied.

“Ranking tournament? Why the hell is there a tournament in the entrance ceremony?!” I ask.

“To see who gets the classes they want, naturally. This school is pretty much a meritocracy.” Akira said.

“That’s why we were practicing in the dorm!” Hiroto adds in.

So I need to score high to get what I want? How bothersome.

The stadium is a massive coliseum-like building in the middle of the complex with a matte black coating of bricks.

We join the hundreds of students pouring into the central field. The central field looks about 400 meters long and about the same wide.

The stadium is massive. A few of the seats surrounding us are occupied. Maybe a hundred people watching? They all look like upperclassmen with their fancy white uniforms.

A hush falls over the crowd as two men wearing red robes in the center slowly rise above the crowd. One of the men is the dean himself. Why did the dean himself go to Haven?

Air magic. I can sense mana compressing air beneath their feet.

“Welcome, first years, to the Kotonashi Magic Academy Entrance Ceremony!” Said an amplified voice.

“My name is Kitano Hirofumi (name not important) and I am the headmaster of this school. The Master of Illusions- Horatio Phelms (again, name not important), is the dean.”

Master of illusions? How scary. Keeping this guy under surveillance will be hard.

“I know at this point in time, I should give some kind of inspiring speech, but I spent last night blowing crap up, so I don’t have any such thing prepared.”

The crowd applauds and some of the upperclassmen in the stands facepalm.

“As you should know, In order to get the classes you want, you need to get a good rank!”

“First, there will be the preliminaries. All you have to do is remain standing by the end of three minutes! Good luck!” He yelled.

The area is suddenly saturated with mana.

Nothing happened. Literally.

After fifteen seconds, my heartbeat starts to rise slightly.

My lungs burn a bit.

Bubbles start appearing around some students, the majority of which are wearing fancy clothing. Some kind of nobles… most likely.

Then it hit me. Bubbles. Burning Lungs. Increased Heartbeat.

The oxygen in the air is gone!

Desperately reaching as far as I can with my mana, I gather pure oxygen and use it to build a sphere around me.

As my senses recover, I mix nitrogen in for a 1:4 oxygen nitrogen ratio.

Turning around, I grab Kano, and pull him into my invisible bubble.

As he slowly recovers, other people outside of bubbles start collapsing.

Some people are desperately standing up even without oxygen, but as the four minute mark approaches, most collapse.

“Thanks,” Kano whispers.

A few of the ‘fancier’ students have gathered into little groups and are whispering amongst themselves, occasionally throwing a glance my way.

“Time’s Up!” A voice I recognize as the Headmaster’s shouts.

A red light covered every student that wasn’t standing and they vanished.

“If you’ve made it this far, you either have a good grasp on science, or your willpower is extremely remarkable.”

“Now, prepare for the tournament!”

A red light covered the rest of us and the next thing I knew, everyone was packed into a single section in the stands.

Approximately thirty across… and ten wide, that means about a third of us passed.

The stadium was then split into sixteen even chunks by shield walls. A referee wearing a black and white striped shirt appeared in each chunk.

“A wand or staff is permitted for each duel. Each person will be given a three layer barrier. If the second layer breaks, you lose!”

“Also, don’t attack the referees!”

Do you really need to say that?

“The best of luck to you!” He said before vanished in a flash of red light.

Two people were teleported into each of the sixteen sections and mayhem erupted.

Flashes of light erupted everywhere as an array of magic spells I’ve never seen before splashed across the field.

From my observations, the outer shield seems to take on average two hits from elementary magic while the secondary layer takes five.

Then, I can judge the power of magics I haven’t seen yet by how quickly they destroy the shields.

Kano disappears from besides me and he enters the battlefield.

I spot him in the row closest to me and the second column from the right.

He is against a female mage who just summoned over a hundred rocks and pelted the shit out of him.

Ehh… he lost in the first round. After I went through such trouble…

Now that I mention it, three quarters of the mages here are female.

And they appear to be generally speaking, stronger than male mages.

I wish I was a girl.

A flash of red light covers me and I find myself in one of the shield compartments.

Across from me is a girl. Fuck.

She has a steel staff and a pointy triangle hat. Fuck.

She smirks. Fuck. She thinks I’m easy prey.

Wait, most of these attacks I’ve been seeing are projectile attacks.

In other words, inferior versions of bullets from gun otakus in the sim.

I’ll just use my distortion spell I built. It’s based off Kanade’s in Angel Beats.

After the referee checks that both of us are ready, we begin.

A complex magic formation forms at my feet as the distortion spell is created. The space around me is slightly warped, creating a noticeable magnifying effect.

A massive barrage of fireballs, water blades, and rock bullets fly towards me. Shit. Chantless magic.

I notice that she’s drawing in a lot of mana from the environment. Let’s stop that.

Reaching around me, I begin pulling mana from the air into my mana core, taking note that I can’t pull mana from outside the shield wall.

Her projectiles fly towards me, barely avoiding me at the last second like a school of fish.

Now, time to employ battle of attrition tactics.

I fire a massive amount of water straight into the air and pool it, focusing the light into a 10 meter by 10 meter area around her.

So much for concealing my affinity.

Too many clouds. She isn’t even smouldering yet.

I don’t want to focus it to a point in case she reflects this shit back towards me.

She hurriedly creates an earth wall above her which slowly starts to simmer.

I let the water drop while raising myself on a earth platform about five feet up.

Now that she’s soaked, let’s have some fun.

I use the water all over the ground to pick up dirt and mix it into mud.

Then she leaps into the air using wind assistance and carpet bombs the area below her with fireballs.

Using more air, I help her out by throwing her higher into the air and spinning her wildly.

She screams as she flips around in the air. Shit, she can output mana faster so I can’t stop her from coming back down if she really wants to.

As I change the potential of the clouds above her, the hairs on my head stand up.

An arc of lightning flashes down and channels through her staff like a lightning rod.

She clearly goes limp as it hits her, shattering both outer barriers like glass and cracking the inner.

The referee catches her limp body as she falls and I’m declared the winner.

Everyone is watching me in shock. You could call me… a lightning bolt out of a partly cloudy sky.

As the red light covers my body, I let an explosion rip right above my head.

Exit complete!

When I get teleported back, there are about a hundred-fiftyish winners there.

The people around me eye me curiously.

They seem to notice my staff… or lack thereof.

Staffs and wands are expensive man! The cheapest ones cost like a gold which is a month’s wages for the average laborer. The cheap ones don’t even give very good buffs!

And so I didn’t bother of course!

No thank you, good sir, I’ll take my money and get swindled elsewhere.

Well, my parent’s money, but that’s besides the point.

A red light covers me. What? That was fast.

When my eyes focus again, I find myself in another compartment. Awww, I was hoping for the bye.

When the match begins, the girl begins chanting.

How anticlimactic.

I close the fifty meter gap in three seconds with wind magic.

Five meters remaining.

I pull up a block of stone in front of me and use earth magic to blow off chunks I don’t need, creating a rough spear shape.

Taking the spear, I run forwards and stab it at her as she falls on her rear.

The outer barrier shatters with a single stab.

Two strokes removes the second barrier off the terrified girl.

I guess I win again?

As I walk away, I admire my new spear.

“I think I’ll call you ‘Staffy’” I mutter as the referee invokes the teleports.

Sadly, when I teleported out, my spear-staff didn't come with me.

I sat down on my seat and observed the remaining battles.

One in particular catches my eye.

A relatively tall blonde elf was sitting inside of a bubble while her opponent threw everything she had at the bubble. Eventually her opponent ran out of mana and conceded.

I began to observe this bubble as much as possible. People keep using it but I’ve never heard of it before! I must know moarrrr!!

I casually lean over to the girl next to me and ask “What is that bubble the blonde elf is using?”

“It’s an environment sphere.” She replied.

“How do you break it?”

“Really really fast and sharp objects.”

A really fast and sharp object…

I could try to hit her with a meteorite…

Something the size of 40mm BOFORS ammunition should work. AP styled ammo, naturally.

The other mages were pitiful. Most of them didn’t know how to chantlessly invoke magic, so the bum rush strat worked wonders.

The round before the semi-finals, there was a mage with a scary amount of mana that tried to turn me into a brisket the second the round started.

I had to flash freeze the shit outta that place because the soles of my shoes melted and fused me to the ground.

I won with my second barrier a hair from shattering.

Now that we were in the semifinals, the battles progressed one at a time and used the entire field.

“For the first match of the semifinals, Rene Kaishev versus Soseki Yosai!”

That sounds like a guy.

Hopefully he’s less violent, right?

As the familiar red light fades, I see a black haired kid with really pale skin. The creepiest part is how his pupils are black.

“What? How am I supposed to fight a stupid little kid!” He roars.

Well, the only way to fight arrogance is with more arrogance. You gotta disgust the disgust-er. You gotta hoop the loop… what the hell am I saying.

“I thought I was getting an OPPONENT, not a SICKLY child with a DEFECTIVE head from the ORPHANAGE!” I scream back, using wind magic to amplify my voice a few decibels louder than a rock concert and causing half the audience to clutch their ears in pain.

However, Soseki was unfazed.

“Are you all BARK and no BITE? If you think you have JACK, come show me!” He fires back, leaving my ears ringing.

I could just go over there and kick his ass… but I would lose the ‘coolness’ fight. First to move loses!

Pulling up a tremendous amount of rock up, I build a ten meter tall throne that rises beneath me.

From my high vantage point, I shout back down, “Are you, a FILTHY PLEBIAN, telling the GLORIOUS ME, to touch the RAW SEWAGE that is the battlefield?”

“If a MERE COMMONER wanted to duel, he couldn’t expect THE KING to show up at his HOVEL while he kick up his feet and wait!” I continue.

This battle is no longer about winning, it is about making everyone else think you’re superior. It’s also an insult war. Oh great internet, show the world the beauty of a flame war!

After creating a stone golem, I have it swagger drunkenly up to him.

(Hey, controlling this shit is hard)

Making it wave its stubby arms around like a professional actor was the easy part, since flailing is easy.

The hard part was creating sound waves right on the golem and making it sound like words.

“EFF YEW DUNT GAWT THE BOLZ TO FEHGT HIZZZ MOJISTEE, ROON BOK TO YO MUMMEE!”

From the corner of my eye, I can see the half of the eliminated spectators cringe. What?

Then, having the golem reach forward… I flick his hat off. I don’t know if that constitutes a ‘diss’ in this world… but it seems effective.

His eyebrow twitches.

He slowly thrusts out his arms until they’re fully outstretched. Then, he points both palms out at the golem. Pretty much all the mana in the stadium channels into his hands.

Wait, I’m in the line of fire!

As he discharges a pillar of white hot fire from his hand, I jump at a forty five degree angle towards him, using wind to propel myself into a crazy arc.

My massive throne explodes into hundreds of fragments as a massive white hot line is drawn straight through it.

Wait, I can end this no sweat.

After releasing a barrage of fireballs, I drain the oxygen in the air around him.

Unfortunately, he notices and creates an environment sphere.

How do I get rid of this?!

Oh wait, fast pointy things!

I create a shard of rock somewhere a few hundred feet above me and slam it down onto that bubble.

A large plume of dust is blast out from around him… revealing no visible damage.

That’s… sturdy.

I pull up a large block of stone the size of a car and throw it high into the air using wind magic.

On it’s way down, I accelerate it again.

I smile in satisfaction at the large shock wave it creates.

Once again… Soseki climbs out of the wreckage complete unscathed.

Wha-

How

I dropped a car travelling at twice its terminal velocity on him!

Wait.

There’s an obvious weakness.

I can *see* him.

I’m going to microwave this bastard.

This bastard is just sitting there smiling.

Not for long.

For this, I’ll need a magic circuit drawing. The waves have to be 95 GHz and not just ‘somewhere in this general area.’ After all, I’d get in trouble if he died… so let’s avoid killing him.

I create a circular table with a little depression on the side.

Then, I create a knife out of rock. It’s a very crude knife. After heating it in a fireball to sterilize it, I cool it with some water. Element mastery is very convenient!

I slit my left wrist while holding my arm over the depression in the rock.

I wait until I have about five second’s worth of blood.

At this point, a hush has fallen over the crowd, and Soseki is just watching, fascinated.

He’s going to regret not interrupting this.

In about thirty seconds, I draw out a magic diagram that changes all EMR that passes less than three feet over the formation into 95 GHz microwaves as long as there is sufficient mana.

In an amplified voice, I ask, “Hey, is the destruction of the two outer shields the only victory condition, or is making them regret they were born also acceptable?”

In about five seconds, I get my response. “They CAN surrender…”

“Do you surrender” I ask.

“Go suck a dick!” He yells back.

Suddenly, I’m struck by inspiration. I recall reading a light novel once where there was a knife that had the useless effect of healing the enemy.

Eventually, it was used as a tool for torture.

“It would be a pity if you died, so I’ll give you a gift.” I said.

I invoked the auto-healing I used during my body ‘enhancement’ training. I set the target for Soseki. 30% total mana output should work.

“With one noodly appendage he giveth.” I holler.

From one of my arms, a green aura peels off my skin and flows to Soseki in a line.

His visible injuries are healed; His cuts close themselves while bruises vanish.

He looks at me in surprise.

“With the other, he taketh away.” I continue, slightly louder.

I create a small pond above my head, focusing the light from stadium lights into an EMR reflection panel (aka magic mirror (mirror mirror on the wall, who has the biggest hand of them all)).

The stadium lights light everything as bright as day so I didn’t notice that it was already dark out. How tiring.

As soon as I started pouring mana into my ‘microwave,’ Soseki started screaming.

I’d scream too if my skin went to 130 degrees fahrenheit in two seconds.

After counting to five, I disperse the beam and cut power to the microwave.

Soseki is rolling around on the ground, clutching his body.

Supposedly, when the Active Denial System was tested on Earth, no one could pass the pain threshold of 3 seconds.

The spectators look really pale.

“Do you concede?” I ask.

“N-no” He says, stammering.

“Well then.”

Five seconds and much screaming later, I ask again.

His response doesn’t change.

He seems to have forgotten that he can counterattack.

“Fascinating.” I mumble before cooking him like a hot pocket again.

This time, I ask, “Why are you so desperate to win? What the hell are you after?”

“Come to think of it,” I say, “What is the smallest class available?”

“Sixteen,” he answers.

“Then why would you still go such lengths to win?”

“Only the winner of the tournament can choose to be the Headmaster’s pupil.”

“Wait, is that what we’re fighting for right now?”

“What… you didn’t know?”

“ARE YOU FUCKING SERIOUS? I COULD HAVE JUST FORFEITED MY LAST MATCH AND WENT TO SLEEP, DICK MOVE, GUYS, DICK MOVE!” I scream, at no one in particular.

“Anyways” I continue

“I commend your resolve. If I won, I’d have to fight another match, so I conceed.”

“Wait, are you really giving up the opportunity, when you’re so close?”

“I just want a decent liberal arts education in magic.” I said. “No more. No less.”

“Being the strongest?” I continue. “I have no such ambition.”

His eyes which burned with defiance, are now filled with an unsated curiosity.

“Have a good night.” I said, eventually getting bored.

After dipping my hand in the crevice filled with blood, I smear it all over my magic formation, completely destroying it. It would be bad if someone else got a hold of this.

Cutting off all outgoing mana, I turn to leave…

Completely forgetting that I was keeping a small pond levitated above my head.

Seconds later, I found myself lying on the ground, completely soaked.

Amidst howls of laughter, I managed to groggily get up and leave.

Today wasn’t even the first day… The first day is the day after tomorrow.

Screw entrance ceremonies.