Mary and Sophie stood in front of each other. Leo thought about it and realized that it may be the first time he saw both of them fight. The absorption dome was activated and one of the teachers got ready to judge the fight.

“Start!”

Both girls stood still. Waiting for the other to make the first move. It was Sophie who first ran out of patience and shot few fireballs at Mary.

The younger girl moved away and dodged all of them by a width of a hair but still kept her distance, releasing an ice cone of her own. Sophie simply melted it with her fire turning it into steam.

Mary shoots few more ice cones slowly getting closer to her opponent. Their weapon clashed, Mary struck with her short sword from the right and Sophie parried it with her sabre enchanted with fire. Their weapons clashed few times, Mary's short sword and shield gaining few burn marks in the meantime.

After a while, her weapon finally gave up and it looked like if she was going to get hit but in last second she blocked the strike with a sword made of ice. And she performed a strike at her enemy shoulder which was parried again. After that their clash continued and Mary was forced to exchange her weapon few times.

Finally, Sophie turned back to her magic and created few fireball to disengage from Mary.

Both girls breathed heavily, white fog coming out of their mouths. ‘What? But it’s not cold? Did Mary do something?’ thought Leo.

Sophie corrected her figure “We should finish it, it’s getting quite cold already. I don’t really like cold too much.” she said.

“Then you can just give up.” said Mary with a flat voice.

Sophie didn’t wait anymore and released a big firewall. It was too wide and tall for Mary to dodge but it was what she was waiting for. She focused her mana inside of her and created a wave of snow at the firewall.

The ice and fire connected and that caused a surge of white steam to be released. The fire was soon extinguished before it gets even remotely close to Mary.

The amount of steam created only increased and soon Leo couldn’t see what was going on in the arena. The white fog blocked the view inside completely.

“Fog is much more visible when it’s cold.” he heard Mary voice from the inside.

Sophie too couldn’t see anything she tried her best to listen but she couldn’t hear anything afterwards.

Mary moved around slowly in the fog, she shot an ice cone that hit the ground creating a sound and she heard Sophie moving her feet reacting to it. Hoping in that direction of the noise she saw Sophie in front of her as the fog slowly dissipating.

The bigger blond haired girl turned her head and saw the ice sword coming for her neck. Sophie gritted her teeth. Mary thought that she won and her weapon was getting closer and closer to finding it’s target.

The air around Sophie shook momentarily from the amount of fire mana she gathered around and a big fire explosion blew all around herself in a second. Engulfing everything inside the arena.

The fire calmed down after a while, with everything that happened during the fight no one was sure what happened inside the arena. All that was left was two girls kneeling on the ground and breathing heavily the choker around Mary’s neck was shining in red and beeping. The arena around her was little wet, she tried to protect herself with ice walls at the last moment but in the end, they were useless.

The judge looked little perplexed but he gathered himself and shouted “The winner is Sophie Leonhard!”

Sophie got up and walked up to Mary. “It was a good fight.” She said outstretching her hand to Mary.

Mary looked at her for a moment then took the hand and stood up. “You too.” she said silently.

“You don’t look too frustrated about losing.” said Sophie.

“I did my best and I’m not really here for winning or losing.” she said turning her head to look at Leo.

“Oh!” Sophie smiled. “I guess that is a good reason. He is quite an interesting boy.” she said.

Mary glared at her.

The older girl chuckled. “You don’t really need to worry, I’m leaving this school soon anyway. Just he is the only person who I have seen fighting here with such fierce eyes while smiling at the same time.”

Leo looked at the girls from the outside of the arena. He couldn’t hear what they were talking about but he was amazed at the level of magic that both girls used.

Soon the girls parted and Mary went up to Leo, without waiting he revealed his excitement about the fight “That was great! I don’t think anyone pushed Sophie this far till now at all. The fog was a good idea, I wouldn’t have imagined that was possible.”

“Had I attacked from a distance I maybe could have won, I just wasn’t sure if I could put out more mana. Cooling down the whole arena with the spell I learned was taxing.” she said.

“You did that as you exchanged blow? Amazing!” said Leo.

“It’s not that hard.”

“But why you didn’t use the ice golem spell that you trained with?” He asked.

“Those would have just been melted anyway and using those use more mana then just normal ice.” she answered.

“Next round will start in 20 minutes. Please rest till then.” They heard principal saying. He used voice amplification device so they could hear him despite being on the other side of the room.

Looking at the results he saw that he was going to fight a boy from final year, he used illusion magic and a rapier if he remembered correctly. Also, Sophie was going to fight with Alice. That could be fun, the amount of water she could control grew lately. Apparently, she trained in healing magic and as it was one of the most taxing spells to use, the constant strain over the years increased her mana capacity by quite a lot. Maybe she had a chance.

-*-

In the end, Leo won quite easily, his opponent tried to confuse him with illusions of himself that ran around with the original. Which caused Leo to jump around the arena quite a bit but after a while he noticed that the clones didn’t produce a sound so finding the original was quite easy with his enchanted senses from his spell.

After shaking hands with his opponent he ran out to find where Sophie and Alice fought and by the time he got there the fight has already started.

Alice’s spear and Sophie’s sabre clashed their magic on their weapons both cancelling each other. Alice advanced on her trusting with a spear as Sophie parried the strike taking steps backwards.

Occasionally Sophie cast fireballs but Alice blocked it with water everytime. Alice noticed Leo watching and smiled, she thrust her spear again and this time a water spear followed behind it.

Sophie dodged both spears taking a single step to the left and attacked with her sabre from overhead. It looked as if it was going to get Alice but it was stopped in the air by the shield of water redirecting the attack.

Alice jumped backwards few steps and smiled, she put both of her hands in front of her and a big amount of water gathered. Soon it looked as if the whole arena was split in half with water.

The water moved forward and it looked as if a big tidal wave was going to drown Sophie. Sophie put her left hand in front of her and a big fire cone was released. It penetrated the wave splitting it in half but the cone didn’t stop as it continued forward heading for Alice.

The black haired girl created a big water ball in front of her but it didn’t help much. The fire cone got little smaller as it went through the water but after that, it landed directly on Alice's chest. Her chocker started beeping.

“The winner is Sophie Leonhard!” shouted the judge.

“She still had that much mana despite the last fight.” said Leo loudly.

“Yeah, and I’m still tired from the fight.” He heard a familiar voice next to him. It was Mary. “Congratulation on your win, you ran away so fast I couldn’t even tell you that.”

“Ah, sorry. I just wanted to see.”

“Sure, I know that boys prefer them bigger anyways.” She said sulking, comparing herself to both of the girls.

Leo tilted his head. “What do you mean?” he thought for a second looking at the both of the girls in the arena.

Sophie was little shorter than him nowadays she was 5 feet 8, when he met her she was a head taller than him. Alice was even smaller than her being 5 feet 3. Leo’s eyes wandered to their chest area, he noticed that Sophie was little smaller than Alice but still bigger than Mary, catching himself he blushed and averted his eyes quickly. It seemed that Leo’s puberty was starting to get to him.

“What were you looking at?” asked Mary, teasing him.

“Nothing! And I don’t think that your spells ware smaller than theirs, they were probably bigger with the whole fog thing.” He said hastily. Trying to hide what he was thinking about.

Mary looked at him for a while before chuckling. “Sure.”

Alice in the meantime left the arena and got close to them. “You were watching! Thanks, Leo.” she said.

“Yes… the amount of water you used was amazing! I don’t think that you used that much before!”

“I thought I could beat her after I heard she was tired from a fight with Mary with that but it seems she has limitless Mana. I want to know how she does it.” She complained. “How did your fight go?”

“I won.” said Leo.

“That’s great! You need to avenge me!” said Alice.

“I would need to get to the finals first…” said Leo.

“You can do it.” said Mary “And you have to win for me too.”

“Ehh… that’s heavy.” for Leo, winning against Sophie was like a dream, he would try his best though.

“Isn’t it good enough motivation?” said Mary. “Then if you win I will give you a reward.” she proposed.

“Eh!? Then me too!” joined Alice.

Leo looked at them. “Well if you say so… I was going to try my best anyways…”

-*-

In the end, Leo won his next two fights, the quarterfinals went quite well with him winning quite easily against a water magic user with two swords. In semi-finals, he would have nearly lost had he not choose to protect himself with his defence based light magic purely by instinct, since his opponent attacked him with invisible wind blades which he only noticed coming at him at the last second. He used quite a bit of mana but he managed to charge through and strike his opponent overpowering him easily.

He still wasn’t sure how the protection device he wore calculated what was dangerous and what not but he was getting hang of what he could take on with his spell.

Sophie too won her fights as he expected. It was a strange feeling for him, it was his first time getting so far into the tournament, usually, he would have already lost to Sophie. Maybe he was quite good after all on the bigger picture.

After Mary wished him the best, he entered the arena for the last time today, he got there first and after waiting a minute Alice entered the arena. She had her usual fiery eyes and smile on her face. Leo was smiling too, he got ready letting mana fly through his body.