The 1st floor…

It was a large hall, well, using the word large would an under estimation of the size of the hall. The hall was just too huge!

The ceiling was around 100 meters high while the hall was big enough to hold 100,000 people at the same time. Grimm thought that this hall might be going underground to satisfy Hall’s size, he could not think of any other reason.

At the centre of the hall, there was a large pillar, as it was cut from between not letting it touch the ceiling, it resembled a stage more due to it’s diameter.

All apprentices were standing around the tall white pillar waiting for something to happen. It was then when the apprentices heard a voice that they looked up to see a figure hovering on top of the pillar.

The figure wore a black cloak while some black fog covered his facial features, the hands looked just bones with no flesh sticking on them and no other body part could be seen.

Behind that figure stood two more figures wearing red and black cloaks respectively. The figure in red was a woman with pretty face of a teenage girl looking cheerfully at every apprentice, while the man in black cloak had a hard face showing no expression. The trio who were standing on top of the pillar were formal Sorcerers of the school.

“Crescent Tower has issued a challenge against our Gibbous Tower. The challenge will be held in Mirror Valley like it has always happened. Every apprentice will get 5,000 magic stones for every apprentice they eliminate.” The Sorcerer waved his hand in mid again creating a fissure. For whole fifteen minutes, the fissure kept spreading ultimately taking shape of a mirror.

The smooth mirror floated in the mid-air. Many apprentices had seen this for first time so the astonishment could be clearly seen on their faces.

“Lets begin!” The Sorcerer clapped with both his bony hands over his head. Somehow, hearing the clapping sound every single apprentice in the hall fell unconscious wherever they were standing.

Grimm felt his head heavy and tried to stretch his hair but to no avail, it was when he remembered that he was bald.

Grimm looked around to find himself in the middle of a forest. Thick trunk, towering trees and canopy covering most of the sky.

“The competition has already begun.” Alpha's voice resounded in Grimm’s head.

Hearing this Grimm became alert. It was then did he noticed something hovering over his head giving bright light. He tried to touch it, hide it, destroys it, only to find that he could not do anything to it.

The Halo kept pulsing like heartbeats. Grimm felt that the Halo was communicating with something, it was then the pulsing got stronger.

Grimm felt losing his control over his body and saw his own body ducking. The place where he was standing a moment was frozen by ice shards. Grimm quickly figured out what had happened.

Alpha must have seen this coming so ducked the shot to save him and he felt that the Halo's pulsing was an indication that someone was near him or not.

With Alpha's vision, he could see a figure in a white cloak standing on a tree branch getting his spell ready for one more attack.

Grimm quickly took action, two hands stretched out of Grimm's back with palms joined and while Grimm quickly drew a sign with his hands. Between joined palms there was a pebble stored in them when Grimm completed the hand sign, a pebble shot out from between the palm at high speed.

The white-cloaked appreciate was in the middle of making hand sign as he did not expect the retaliation would come so fast. But seeing it was just a [Blazing Shot] spell, he became careless and cast his own spell to counter this minor spell.

What he didn’t expect was the sudden magnification of the pebble. When it clashes with his spell, other than slowing its speed a little it does much but when the pebble ten-times it’s original size exploded, the damage he took was very high.

Like a kite with its string cut, the apprentice blew away from the explosion hitting the tree truck near it and then falling down hard.

The apprentice was spewing blood and didn’t seem like he was far away from death. He didn’t have the strength to stand up anymore anyway but Grimm still cautiously probed and shot another [Blazing Shot].

The hands retracted from Grimm’s back reverting to his original appearance.

'You have gained one point!’

“Quickly take the loot and let’s hide. The explosion was very loud, others will be coming here shortly.” Alpha said.

Grimm moved quickly to the apprentice's dead body and took everything he could find on him, hiding on thick branches of the canopy using [Erase] and [Silence] spell at the same time, hiding his presence.

After a while, an apprentice came to the scene and probed around. Looking at the Halo on top of his head, it looked like this apprentice must have killed four or five in this short period of time.

This apprentice wore an emerald cloak with white linings. He quickly looked at the wounds of the white-cloaked apprentice, probed for any clues to the direction of another apprentice who killed the one before him. After getting no result of the probe he quickly hid in the tree branches just below Grimm.

Another apprentice wearing black cloak came, checked the white-cloaked apprentice's wounds and chuckled to himself. He rubbed his hands, wearing a cunning grin on his face and hid on the same tree just below green-robed apprentice.

From the bushes came two apprentices, one male and another female. They looked at the scene and looked at each other. As if taking with their eyes, they nodded at each other and hid on the tree which was near to the white-robed apprentice who was laying dead.

Don’t know if intentionally or not, the female apprentice from the duo had left a footprint at a very inconspicuous location.