The Festival itself, despite being such a huge affair, happens annually. There are so many competitions that a new one is started every year whether or not the previous one has ended. It can be a little different, but usually it takes 3-5 years for a similar competition to take place. Cooking, for example, might be a competition one year and then it would cycle things like combat and building till around 3-5 years later when speed-eating pops up as a competition. For cooking itself to become a competition again it might be anywhere to 50 years to an entire lifetime. This cycle of random competitions is known colloquially as the Eternal Festival. It is composed of small competitions and has likewise small rewards; a chef who wins the cooking competition might get an apron that never dirties, perhaps. Or apparently, the girl who won the speed eating competition was granted a skill that allowed her to heal by eating. It was said that she then competed in a combat competition and was seen eating entire wheels of cheese in the middle of combat.

The Festival of Champions is slightly different. The Festival of Champions happens every 5 years and lasts exactly one month. In this Festival, countries fight each other in three categories: individual, country, and group. There are specific rules and specific goals for each, but basically it boils down to countries searching for and rewarding strong people handsomely.

“So rather test us on creativity or power or anything like that, they want to test how much we can manipulate our opponents.” I nodded while slowly detailing what our first trial would be.

“Exactly.” Julian stretched his grin wider. “Taron lost the magic elimination round in the Festival three years ago because of a spy, so they want to split us based on how well we can find and eliminate spies so we won’t be caught off guard again.”

“That makes sense. So they’ll start by making us suspicious before we move on to the more combat-oriented stuff. So what is the trial going to be about?” I glanced back to Grey.

“Before that,” Kel sat up in her chair and turned toward me, “Why didn’t Piercil tell you about the trial already? He was supposed to tell all the students about it by now.” Kel looked at me suspiciously, “maybe we aren’t supposed to tell you.” I blinked a few times at that and thought back to what Piercil had said to me in lessons over the past few days.

“JIN. What is the number one rule of Magic?” Prof. Piercil pointed a finger at me and demanded right when I entered his office. The circular space was empty everywhere except for a desk at one far side and various books and tools scattered on shelves along the walls.

“That it must look cool, Sir!” I answered immediately. It was a lesson he had been particularly adamant about since the day I’d met him. Laughing, he threw his cloak across his ‘jolly’ frame and looked at me from behind the shade of his arm.

“Absolutely! And what’s the second rule?” Alright, that one I didn’t know. He only ever really talked about being cool.

“Uhh, you have to be in control?” I shrugged a little and shot out a guess. He widened his eyes and threw open his arms, sending the cloak behind him fluttering in a summoned wind.

“WRONG. You must be versatile! Ready for anything that comes at you! Complicated magic takes time for even the most talented of control artists, so by being ready for anything, you can respond with anything!” I tensed for a moment. His mana had suddenly concentrated and gave off an aura of ‘intent’. “Catch!” He opened a hand in my direction, releasing a flaming ice sculpture in the shape of a dragon. The dragon opened its maw, dripping poison. “And don’t ruin the floor!” At those words I flicked a hand at the floor under the dragon, creating a few chalices of ice that caught the falling poison then flicked my eyes back to the dragon and caught it while controlling the flames to neither burn nor melt and the poison to flow back into its mouth. I looked up after the catch at Piercil. He folded his arms and raised an eyebrow at me. Ah yes, of course. Gotta make it cool. I willed the dragon to coil around my shoulders and summoned the chalice on the floor to my hand before taking both a pose and a sip.

“Ahaha well done!” Piercil applauded. “Now how did you handle the poison in the cup?” I opened my mouth and spit out a small ice capsule filled with the poison I’d drank. “Hmm. Not bad but it would have been better if you’d changed it to water, or even wine. No no, a health elixir! That would rub it in your enemy’s nose.” Piercil rubbed his chin while contemplating how to be as cool as possible. I have to admit, changing poison to potion would be pretty neat.

“I’m not really an alchemist though.” I said, swirling the poison in the chalice and dispelling the dragon. Piercil frowned at me for a second.

“Well, you better work on it. For now, you pass. Let’s work on controlling more than four elements at once.”

“Wait you can control four elements at once??” Kel looked at me in shock once I’d finished relaying one of my lessons. I looked down at Kel then raised a hand in the direction of the table. On the table, air swirled together into a transparent cat who then flicked its tail which split into three tipped with fire, electricity, and ice respectively. I gave it a pat while grinning haughtily.

“Yes.”

Jules laughed and poked the cat, which promptly exploded with a small pop and fizz.

“It’s weak as hell though, huh Sparkles?” Julian narrowed his eyes and laughed silently. I flipped him off.

“It is impressive, but isn’t that just a bit too weak, Jin?”

This time Grey interceded, looking slightly troubled. Don’t you have an elementary school to traumatize somewhere?

“Still, I guess I shouldn’t call you Noob anymore since I can only do two.” Kel said with a small pout. I mean yeah but your two are like a flamethrower and a fireman’s hose so I mean…

“Well can you guys tell me what the trial is?” I scratched my nose a bit before folding my hands and looking at the three seriously.

“Right. Well basically…”

So the way it turns out, we will be battling in two teams in order to capture a goal. Whoever captures the goal will be the winning team and will be given a spirit crystal, which is just experience that was somehow crystallized. It’s useful in that you can target what you want to level up but we’ll get to that if I actually win it. There’s one more caveat to the trial. Both teams will have several spies. The spies’ job is to make the team they’re with lose. If the spies are successful, they will be counted as victors even though their ‘team’ lost. At the same time, the teachers will be evaluating the top performers among the participants and will allow the top five into the first level vault.

This setup was both very good, and very bad for me. You see, when I was enrolled in the academy by the Guild, they didn’t bother hiding who they were. They said it was because I would have some missions where others knew what I was so it would be good to get experience completing a mission regardless as early as possible. Frankly I think they just didn’t want to make up a fake backstory for me, but I’m not allowed to complain. I had tried to settle the issue on day One by asking the teachers not to spread my background but it was pretty much common knowledge by the end of the week regardless. This means I’m probably going to be suspect numero-uno whether I’m actually a spy or not. I could use that if I’m not a spy but if I am I might be fucked. A fun little characteristic of the trial is that there will be a counter visible to everyone that will show how many spies are left. This is my main problem. It’s a problem because everyone knows that there’s a guy in our group who has a set of skills nearly ideal for finding and eliminating enemy spies, that guy is me, so if I’m not a spy I can take out the ten enemy spies and get top 5 contributions easy-peasy, but if I am a spy, then I have to either pretend I’m incompetent, or kill spies on my team while simultaneously helping my team enough to balance out the loss of contribution killing my own teammates would get me. Also, we’re not allowed to kill, just incapacitate or lightly maim so I have to knock them out with enough force to not kill them but also not give them a chance to fight back. To make matters worse, capturing objectives is kind of like a king of the hill battle. Both teams have to fight over a small patch of cleared area deemed ‘the objective’ and every ten seconds that one of your teammates, but not a single enemy is on that space is added to your overall time. For this rule, spies are considered to be a member of the team they are actually on. First team to five minutes wins. Two rules complicate matters slightly. One: both teams have a very powerful ‘cannon’ at their base. This cannon is a large magic machinery that fires bullets made of a paralyze spell. If hit by that spell, a person is considered dead. The cannon is already ready to use but its aim cannot be shifted from the capture point in the middle and it requires magic power to use. The exact amount is something like ten people charging it for one minute. Two: whenever a non-spy is ‘dead’ that person is teleported back to their base fully healed and with half their mana, whereas a spy is out of the game.

To summarize it as it was explained to me, a normal person has to hold the objective as long as possible using their firepower, strategy, and cannon while making sure the spies don’t do anything to ruin the plan. The spies have to sabotage anything they can without dying, and without being caught. Being a spy and getting top five would be…difficult.

We discussed strategy in the cafeteria for a bit but stopped prematurely at Kel’s reminder.

“We will likely be on different teams, so let’s not go into specifics. In fact, I think I’ll head in for the night.” We all agreed and turned in. The next morning we went to the THUNDERDOME. Like gladiators we walked up a dark passageway under the THUNDERDOME before bathing in the light of the stage. The dome looked the same as the first time I’d been here with two notable differences. The stage was covered in tens of small cubicle-like boxes, and the seats were filled. The thunderous roar swelled to the top of the coliseum before pounding down on the stage, seeming to reverberate through the very earth.

“So that’s why it’s called the THUNDERDOME.” I looked up at the thousands of screaming faces before following my fellow students to the front of the cubicles. There, a black box with a depression in the top waited for our arrival. The kid in front of me walked up to it and pressed his hand into the depression. A mechanical voice tinkled through the air around him.

“Klien Aikkle.” Along with the voice, a number appeared on Klien’s hand, signaling which cubical was his. Obediently, I walked up when it was my turn and received my number. 69. Good luck, I hope. I chuckled a bit to myself and looked at my status plate.

NAME: Jin ﴾Third Prong﴿

TITLE: Enigmatic/ Endless Sleeper/ Graduate of the Third Prong

AGE: 20

RACE: ???

LEVEL: 23

CLASS: Assassin

STRENGTH: 97

VITALITY: 153

SPEED: 201

AGILITY: 192

LUCK: -12 (+30)

INTELLIGENCE: 119

DEXTERITY: 208

MANA: 157

SKILLS: Origin Lvl 2. Traveler (+lighten load/+quick travel/+distance travel). Enigma Lvl 5. Mental resist. Aura of Misfortune. Projectile weapon proficiency. Lock-picking. Silent movement. Treatment Lvl 9. Hide. Quick Climb. Bluff. Emphatic Cry (+increased tear volume). Pain Resist Lvl 3. Trap Proficiency.

Good luck, right. And, sure enough, when I got to cubicle 69 and stepped inside the cheery voice of Prof. Piercil greeted me along with a happy little hologram of the man himself.

“Jin! Lovely to have you here. Now, I assume you somehow found out the rules so we’ll skip that part.”

Thank you, Piercil. If you didn’t clearly dote on me so much I bet my life would be so much easier. Now please make me normal.

“So you’re a spy.”