After a brief moment of awkward silence, Joester springs into action!

He runs straight towards Jon, with his poison soaked bastard sword. Jon suddenly smiles as he releases a level 2 water spell. It’s another one of his unique spells, since most of the common spells are too complicated to reproduce using his form of magic.

An incredible amount of mana is released from his hands, converting into water and coagulating in front of him into a gigantic ball of mana infused water. As his sword lay on the ground, Jon suddenly transformed into a mage, shocking everyone except a few of the guards, and a few ministers of the king, who had witnessed his magic first-hand.

Being shocked, Joester hesitated for a moment, which was masterfully used by Jon to allow the spell to reach him. The ball completely engulfed Joester inside the ball of water. Strong and continuous water currents inside the ball prevented Joester from swimming out and kept him inside the ball. Slowly, Joester began losing consciousness from the lack of oxygen, at which point Jon releases his spell. This causes the now unconscious Joester to fall onto the ground like a ragdoll.

However, that wasn’t enough for Jon’s revenge. While Joester was inside his level 2 spell; Water cage, he manipulated some of the water near Joester to surround the sword and dissolve its poison into the water. He next controlled the water to compress itself into a blade, and increase the velocity to a speed high enough to cut skin. Using that, he cut Joester’s skin and allowed a small amount of poison to enter his body, which should be unnoticeable by even a level 6 mage. He should just slowly die of from mana poisoning.

Anyway, back to the present.

“Winner of Round 1, Jon!” announced Nicholas

A round of cheers followed the announcement of Nicholas, while he went back to his station under the king’s parapet, to tally up the scores.

“Ha… Haa..” Jon was panting after an extremely fast paced battle, which could have had his mana poisoned if his spell was a second too late.

“Hey! Jon!” Screamed Hein and Krog as they ran towards Jon.

“Haha! I did it guys! I actually did it!”

“Haha! But Like an idiot you displayed your magic. Now everyone is wary of Jon the Battlemage. Hehe” said Hein

“Hmm. Let’s not worry about that. Round 1 is over, and now all that is left is the group battles for which I will be the mage. So it was only a matter of time before they got to know.” Replied Jon.

“True” said Hein, “Anyways, you got first place at least. Our team should be first or second at least!”

“Huh? We will be second? But I thought that since I got eliminated early on, we would be fourth or something. I thought I was dragging us down.” said Krog like a dejected puppy.

“You big idiot! Listen to me! We are here not to win, but to improve our skills!” said Jon

“But I thought you said mother would kill us if we don’t win?”

“That is not the point here! Try to understand! We have improved a lot. We know that we need to improve you resistance to mind magic, and Hein’s resistance to poisons. Well, we’ll just improve everything while we are at it” said Jon.

“Alright everyone, I will now declare the results” Nicholas interjected. Soon the crowd began to quiet down.

“In first place, we have ‘The Sovereigns’ led by Jon who placed 1st, Hein who placed 4th, and Krog who placed 7th.

In second place we have ‘Triple Threat’ led by Joester in 2nd place, Samuel in 8th, and George in 10th.

In third place we have ‘The Mind Freaks’ led by Robin in 3rd place, Obelix in 6th, and Asterix in 11th place.

In fourth place…” continued Nicholas

“Alright guys, Once he finished announcing the ranking, Nicholas will most likely give us the rules for round 2, so pay attention” said Jon