The combat test was held inside the training grounds and went by without incident up until Kye was called forward. She formed her weapon and stood ready to be tested by the instructor.

“Please use your dominant hand, Lady Kye. Your profile states you are left-handed.”

“Oh, a lefty?” said one of the boys. The instructor scowled at him, and he immediately apologized.

“Yes, that is correct, however, there should be a note in my profile stating that I may use my right hand in class.”

“What is with this girl?” one of the boys asked.

“Just because she has a high score in mana doesn’t mean she should be allowed to do whatever she wants,” said another.

“Silence,” Liliana ordered as she turned toward the rest of the class. “The Princess trains primarily with her right hand. These disrespectful outbursts will stop immediately.”

“Indeed,” Instructor Line said. “Lady Kye is a royal of both Nippon Sekai and Alcanus. You may consider Lady Liliana’s words as an order from me in this situation.” The instructor turned back to Kye and continued, “There is no such note in your profile, I’m afraid, but given the results of the previous tests, I will make an exception so long as you are proficient with your right hand.”

“Thank you.”

“Additionally...” Line glanced over at Alethea. “Rather than test you myself, I’d like the two of you to spar. Lady Astarte and Lady Allison are legendary, and if they have personally trained someone, they should be quite skilled as well. Do you both accept?”

“Yes,” they answered.

“Very well.”

“Wait just a moment!” Michelle interrupted. “If these two will be tested against fellow students, I would like to be matched up against one of them.”

“And I-“ Elizabeth began but was cut short by her brother.

“You two, honestly…” Doran said. Elizabeth gave him a pouty face and Michelle turned her frustration to him. “I swear you have a vendetta against Kye.” He gave Kye an apologetic smile.

“It’s quite alright, I don’t mind,” Kye said. “Alethea?”

“Sure.”

“In this case, Michelle… you’ll watch,” Doran said. “Elizabeth will fight Kye and I will fight Alethea. Is this acceptable?” Michelle begrudgingly nodded.

“Very well,” Line said. “I’ll allow these matchups. Kye and Elizabeth first.” The blondes nodded and stepped forward.

“I am Kye Akari of Nippon Sekai.”

“I am Elizabeth Maya of Drachenheim.”

“I vow to fight such that I bring honor to my people.” Kye branded herself with light mana while Elizabeth used orange-colored mana.

“Dragon mana, for anyone that doesn’t know what that is,” Doran said. “It’s a subtype of neutral mana unique to Drachenhiem.”

The orange mana surrounding Elizabeth was swirling fiercely. Compared to Kye’s light mana, it was almost wild.

“Considering the difference in our scores and the type of test, I’ll match your output,” Kye said.

“I don’t need your handicap,” Elizabeth said. Her already swirling mana transformed into a torrent. “Convert: Longsword. Dragon Force.”

“I see. Convert: Longsword.” Her mana output is more potent with dragon mana, to begin with, and Dragon Force has multiplied that output one hundred-fold on top of that. The drawback is it’s consuming significantly more mana to maintain that output. She probably thinks this is enough to match me or force me to use white mana. It’s not a bad plan. Her output is quite a bit higher than my own right now, even if she can’t maintain it for long. But that won’t work against me.

Kye inhaled and exhaled slowly and drew in the aura of golden mana until it was a barely visible thin film clinging to her body. She ran her left hand over her weapon, with only her index and middle fingers, and several runes appeared.

The instructor was shocked when she saw not only Kye compressing her aura, but also the runes. I think I need to have a conversation with Allison. Aura compression isn’t taught until year three and runes are in year four. The Drachenheim girl’s use of Dragon Force was alarming at first, but Lady Kye has closed the gap in terms of output. I’d estimate their output is close to 200M each now. This should be interesting. “Begin!”

Elizabeth opened with a simple bolt of lightning that Kye blocked. The attack was a feint, and Kye knew it. She twisted around and blocked Elizabeth’s follow-up. A wave of gold and orange mana blasted out from the clash. Elizabeth sent out a stream of electricity through her blade to incapacitate Kye through her weapon, but that electricity didn’t go any further than Elizabeth’s weapon. It reached Kye’s weapon and stopped. Unsure what was wrong, Elizabeth continued with a physical assault. Kye blocked every attack. After a short exchange, Elizabeth jumped back.

“Not bad,” she said. “Your ability to channel mana is quite impressive.”

Kye nodded. Elizabeth raised her left hand to the air and orange sparks began crackling around her. Dark clouds formed in the sky above the academy. “Dragon Lightning!” A large orange bolt of lightning descended from the cloud. It reached the ground in under a second, traveling no slower than natural lightning. Kye had already raised a hand to block it and merely redirected it to another area of the sky.

“What?” Elizabeth mumbled under her breath. “No matter.” Her aura of orange mana began crackling with lightning as she started mixing dragon mana and lightning mana. “Convert: Iaitō.” Elizabeth vanished, leaving behind sparks in her wake. Kye transformed her weapon as well. Elizabeth’s output had increased, but her speed became the real focus. Elizabeth’s next attack seemingly came from out of nowhere. She appeared to Kye’s left and attacked with a lightning-imbued strike.

“What are you trying to do?” Kye asked as she held up her left index finger and blocked the attack. “The goal of this is to gauge combat capabilities for class. This is not a duel.”

Elizabeth was focused on the finger that held her blade at bay. “How are you blocking this attack with just a finger?”

“The mana flowing through my finger is greater than the amount flowing through your sword.”

“You are so smug! Will you not fight earnestly?”

Kye glanced over at Doran and then the instructor. Doran gave her an apologetic smile and the instructor was sighing at the exchange.

“So be it. I don’t understand why you seem to have a problem with me, but there is no point in this. I’d much rather talk it out, but for now...” She knocked Elizabeth off balance and quickly formed a double-layered magic circle beneath her feet. “True Binding. Gravity Well. Rune of Exhaustion.” Chains of golden mana appeared from the magic circle and wrapped themselves around Elizabeth’s arms, legs, and waist. Gravity Well increased the gravity on them tremendously, and between that and the chains, Elizabeth couldn’t move. The second layer of the magic circle activated next. The Rune of Exhaustion drained her mana at an incredible rate. Soon, Elizabeth collapsed, unable to maintain her mana output. Kye canceled the spells and rejoined Liliana, Aliana, and Alethea.

“The hell just happened?” asked one of the students. The archnobles and royals were equally shocked, aside from Kye’s group.

“My apologies, Instructor Line. Do you have sufficient data from that exchange or shall I-”

“No, no, Lady Kye, I have more than enough data,” Line said. “That match was enough to give me a better picture of your abilities in all three areas. Though it was entirely unnecessary, I can still use all of it.”

“Would you mind if I took Doran’s place and sparred against Alethea? I feel I was not able to properly demonstrate my physical combat abilities.”

Line glanced over to Doran who only shrugged in response as he was picking his blonde sister up off the ground. She glanced at Alethea next and received a nod. “Very well.” Kye and Alethea soon began sparring using only a minimum amount of mana and focusing on their swordplay.

Once class was over, everyone was given free time for the day so that the instructors could meet and discuss the results. Alaira, Rika, and Luka were confused at Kye’s sudden display of magic at the end of her fight with Elizabeth and decided to ask her about it before she and the others left to visit James.

“Hey, hot stuff, you put on quite a show today,” Alaira said with a smirk.

“What’s up, Lara?” she replied. Kye was used to that sort of speech from Alaira. The lot of them frequented both of the palaces in Arslade and New Tokyo, so they spent a lot of time together whenever their parents had business with each other. With the restrictive childhood all royals and nobles have it was rare that any of them got to meet, and even when they did it wasn’t often. “Yeah, sorry, I wanted to show off some, but I was kinda backed into a corner in that fight with the Drachenheim royal, so I ended up going quite a bit beyond what I wanted.”

“Yeah, no kidding. I thought you were actually in trouble there for a minute, but then WHAM! You just blocked that super-powered slash with a FINGER. Then you insta-casted two expert-level spells and one epic-level spell at the same time!”

Kye feigned a smile, but nobody fell for it. Luka glared at her, Rika raised an eyebrow, and Alaira crossed her arms. She was getting cornered from three directions. “Well... you see...”

“Uh huh?” Alaira pressed her.

“You can cast some high-level spells, too!” Kye fumbled to argue against her fellow royals. “You can cast Pyroclasm! That’s an epic-level spell! Rika has Ikazuchi Shinten and Luka-”

“You’re not getting out of this that easy! Sure, we can cast some gnarly spells, too, but you insta-casted THREE. I thought we all agreed to hold back and not make a spectacle of ourselves while building our reputation over time!” Alaira was not particularly upset, but her scores were already locked in place, so she was stuck with lower scores than she wanted. “And YOU, little miss white mage.”

“Huh! M-me?!” Alethea jumped back. “Eep!”

“Are you just as monstrous as Kye? Your skills with the blade are solid and your mana was pretty high, but I bet you were holding back, too!”

Alethea felt like Alaira was staring into her soul. She hid behind Kye instinctively. Alaira couldn’t help but burst out laughing. Rika and Luka sighed and tried to stop her, but it was too late. Kye already smacked her with a mana infused chop to the head that sent her to the floor.

“OWW, what the hell?!”

“You were getting out of control,” Luka said.

“You deserved that,” Rika added. “Look, you scared Alethea.”

Alaira jumped up, rubbing her head. She saw that Alethea was still hiding behind Kye. “Oh, sorry. I guess I went too far. That’s a surprise though. As strong as you are though I’d never guess you were timid, especially after that speech yesterday.”

“She doesn’t have to put on the brave façade with us,” Kye said.

“So, what’s the deal here, anyway. Do you two know each other? The way she hid behind you... it’s almost like you are sisters or something.”

Liliana and Aliana grabbed Alethea together and forced her out from behind Kye. Alethea bowed and apologized, as unnecessary as it was.

“So...” Alaira curiously watched as Alethea looked to Kye for answers.

Kye smiled at Alethea and asked, “What do you want to tell them?”

“They’re your friends aren’t they? We should probably-”

“Alaira and Rika are cousins, actually. Alaira through James Marshall and Rika through Ginchiyo Tachibana. And Alaira and Luka are cousins through Alexandra Romanov.”

Alethea pouted. “I know the royal family trees!”

“Of course, we are friends!” Alaira said. “Kye might not think so, and we’re certainly not as close as Liliana and Aliana, but we’ve also known her for a long time! So, what about you? I know full well that you were more sheltered than the rest of us. I don’t understand why the Atlantis sisters kept you locked up so tightly. I mean, we never got to go out either, but our parents brought us along between palaces often enough. Ugh... Kye, when you take over Nippon Sekai can you please try to get rid of this ridiculous restrictiveness for noble and royal kids? Cabin fever for an entire childhood is too much!”

“...I agree.” Kye said with a solemn nod.

“Hey, you’re trying to dodge the question again!”

Kye sighed and looked at Alethea as if to say “I gotta think of something don’t I?”

Alethea nodded, as if saying, “Yes, please.”

“Alright, fine,” Kye said. “We’re dating.”

Alaira’s jaw dropped while Rika’s and Luka’s eyes widened.

“Wh-what?” Alaira was dumbstruck.

“Have you secretly had contact before the academy?” Rika asked, still wide-eyed.

“Once, eight years ago and only briefly,” Kye answered.

“So, you’ve only had today and yesterday to get to know each other?” Luka asked.

“We kinda hit it off.”

“Uh huh...”

“Okay, well, it was good talking! Let’s catch up properly sometime!” Kye said as she began to push her group out of the door. “I’m busy today, but I’m free tomorrow! Bye!”