After having a long night during The Opening Ceremony, I ended waking up late. I had to rush to school. Just when I thought things could get worse than this, another thing come up. My school uniforms got wet when a truck moved past me. I was entirely wet.

Suddenly, a hot wind blowed around me. It felt very warm. So soothing as well. A small voice was heard.

“Jeez, White. Can you calm down?”

I looked behind me and saw Fitz Triangulum, a girl from the 1st class. She’s a Wind Wizard. With that in mind, I figured the hot wind was actually her doing. She was drying up my wet shirt.

“Fitz? You’re late as well?”

“What are you talking about?” Fitz looked at her watch and began to panic. “Oh no! We’re late! Especially today! Come on White, let’s go!” Fitz grabbed my arm and ran toward the school.

“Wait hold on! I’m still wet!”

“I’ll dry it later. We don’t want to get disqualified just for being late, right?”

And so, she dragged me to school as fast as she could. The moment we finally stepped inside the compound was when the school main gate begins to close itself.

“We made it.” I said that while I was still catching my breath.

“Here.” Fitz dried up my wet shirt with her Wind Manipulation magic.

While she was drying up my shirt, I spoke to her, “So you’re in Rika’s team, huh?”

“How do you know that? Oh wait. Don’t tell me.” Her face suddenly turned wild.

“Don’t tell you what?”

“Don’t tell me it was…” she looked irritated about something.

“Yeah, Rika told m-” I never even get to finish my line. Fitz blew me away to a wall with a 'gentle' gust.

I didn’t expect that would happen on the first day of Magic Duel. We haven’t even started yet. What was wrong with her?

Fitz was mad about something, “Hmph, whatever. Your clothes are all dried up. See you in the Treasure Hunt, White.”

“What is wrong with that woman? Was she mad when I mentioned Rika?” I wondered deeply about the reason she blew me to the wall. I gave up. I don’t have time think about it.

In any case, I went to the HQ and notice that Haz was there. It looked like Haz got released from the hospital despite the broken backbone he had. He told me he was still under inspection with the hospital. I really wanted to talk to him more but I’m wasting time already. After I said my farewell to Haz, I went to the school field.

“Finally. I made it. Just in time.”

The school field was filled with dozens of students participating the Qualification Round. Everyone was talking with each other. I could see some of them were already building up strategies. Some of them were also training to the last-minute. But most importantly, I could see all of the main Stardust members face looked pissed off. How unlucky.

“You know. Just because you had a long night doesn’t mean you have to slack off on such an important day, right?” Blax scolded me.

“You disappoint me, White.” Rulend shakes his head.

“I’m not THAT late, guys.”

“Enough.” Hosuke stopped us. “Everybody is here now. We should focus on what is in front of us.”

“Don’t get all too serious now, Hosuke.” Rider seems to be relaxed.

“Yeah, don’t be so tense.” Airi was relaxed as well.

Hosuke were irritated by those two and replied, “How can I not be tense?! Aren’t we’re all anxious about this? You too right, Lore?”

Lore was a bit surprised. “Uh…I’m not sure how to respond to that. I’m fine.” It seems that only Hosuke was being too anxious about this.

“How can all of you be so calm about this?” exclaimed Hosuke.

“Relax, Hosuke. We’ll be fine.” I assured him

“Are you sure about that?”

“Don’t you worry.” Blax patted his back. “Besides, we even have Seven to help us right?”

“Oh Seven huh?” I took out Seven from my bag.

“Greetings and salutations my beautiful people!” Seven’s speech was different.

“Are you alright, Seven?”

“I am absolutely positively fine. Not to worry. No pressure.”

We all looked at each other and looked back at Seven and said the same thing together, “Haz…”

“What? I wanna watch the qualification too you know. Am I right, Zone?”

“Fine. Fine. We wanted to support you.” Zone was also together with Haz apparently.

“See? We just wanted to support you in any way we can!”

Zone then interrupts Haz, “I thought everyone can watch The Treasure Hunt. It’s not like it is a private match or anything.”

“Haz…” We said together once again.

“Alright! Fine! I’m cutting off my communications for now. But I’m still turning on the camera got it?”

“Fine. Fine.”

Haz and Zone’s voice was then cut off. Jeez, how much more can you get from that guy. I can’t believe he’s one of the top students here. I guess we don’t judge a book by its cover. I mean, look at Rika. The more I know her, the less I think of her as one of the top student of the school. She seemed more like just another fragile girl. Everyone has their secrets to success.

“Alright, everyone. Group up. We’re going to devise a plan.” said Blax as he unfold a piece of paper hidden from his pocket.

Blax placed the A3 sized paper to the floor. It was filled with multiple plans and their probability. How much do we want to win again?

“First things first. Since this is a treasure hunt. Plus, we’re already familiar with each other’s strengths and weaknesses. I advice for all of us to split in pairs.” Blax carefully thought out plan begins to unfold.

I interrupted him, “Wait, in pair? But we only have 7 members. What about the 1 left?”

“He will be our wildcard in all of this big mess.”

“Care to explain, Blax?” Rider asked.

“We know that the Treasure Hunt will be situated in a magic-powered forest and we also know that this qualifier has tons of participants. It will be a little crowded considering that this years participation is the highest in history. But there is a catch.”

“What catch?” asked Hosuke as he scratches his head.

“From what Zone gathered, the forest this time will be a lot bigger than before. 7 Times bigger to be more specific.”

“7 Times bigger?! That’s like almost 3-4 big cities combined!” Lore was shocked about this piece of information. We were all shocked.

“That is why, it is better to split up. Now about the wild card…White, you will be the wildcard.”

“What? Me? What even is a wildcard?”

“You will be our backup plan. With your Time Manipulation and Seven on your side, it will make a big impact to the competition. In addition to that, you always seems to know well in the arts of hiding yourself from people’s eye.”

“Well that’s because I’m always alone...Nothing much...People just don’t notice me...” Regretfully, the tone of my voice was the tone akin to someone having a mid-life crisis.

“And that’s your gift.”

“How is THAT a gift? It seemed more like a curse to me.”

“How long can you stop time again?” Blax Ignored my plea.

I sighed and answered, “About 2 seconds now. But with the recreation of Roman’s pill that Haz made, I can slow down time, which is two times longer than stopping time.”

“Oh yeah. So you can now slow time? No wonder you seemed fast when we’re fighting him.” said Hosuke.

“In fact, the pill is no longer a pill. Here look.” I showed them a watch that Haz made for me.

“A watch? What does it do?” Rider asks.

“This watch can infuse the ability reducer, enabling me to slow down time instead of stopping them. Nif is also inside of it.”

“Nif?” Hosuke shakes his head in disbelief.

Rulend answered his question, “So not just you got a helping hand from Haz with his device, you will also have Nif who uses Digital Assist to guide you. It seems science and magic decided to work together. You may be something completely new in this day and age. Instead of upgrading into A New Gen Wizard. You might end up becoming A Next Gen Wizard.”

“What kind of terms are you talking about Rulend?” asked Lore.

Rulend began to explain to the others about the new classification of magic types. Meanwhile, I looked around and saw my classmates from a distance. It seems they were also joining. When I take another look around I could see that almost all class has one or two volunteering teams in this year Magic Duel. This will be interesting.

After finishing discussing our plans, all participants will have to stand behind a white line that represents the start line. It’s just like a marathon. As we all planned, we split into pairs. Blax with Rulend, Rider and Lore, Hosuke with Airi and of course I’m all alone acting as the wildcard. But to be exactly honest, my side seems to be packed with more than just a pair. I mean I have Seven which has Haz and Zone and also Nif with me.

Sounds cheating but I noticed that a lot of them used a walkie-talkie to communicate with each other. There were also students who were not participating uses the walky-talky while watching from the television. There was also a blackmailing happened when I was running for my life to this field. How corrupt can this school get? Then again, everybody wanted to win. What matters is how you use your magic. It’s not cheating because its magic unless you get caught doing it.

Everybody were already behind the white line. The school disciplinary teacher, Mr. Z walked in front of us and put his hand to ground. The ground was shook revealing trees and vine rising up into the atmosphere. Mr. Z’s magic was called Growth, he can grow out plants and even make a forest out of it. Not just your ordinary forest mind you. This will be a living forest. Everything will be dangerous.

With that in mind, not only I have to carefully advance without being notice. I also have to avoid being harmed by those natural floras. As soon as the horn was blown out, all participants begins to run into the forest. Some of them also started jumping into it. There was also flying.

But the most important one that I saw was that there was a small number of teams who stayed back including us. We weren’t suppose to enter the forest until 10 minutes into the qualifiers. We did that to avoid the first wave of chaos that caused by the impatient and persistent teams who went in without knowing the hazards in front of them. I saw Rika’s team were also lying in wait from the outside. For now, we looked at the multiple screens showing The Treasure Hunt.

It seems there was already two teams who were disqualified because all of their members end up getting eaten by some flowers. That’s 14 students. They were safely brought back thanks to Mr. Z’s ability. Things were getting tougher as more teams continued to disqualify themselves because of either caught up with the nature or getting caught up in a duel or a team battle.

‘It is better to conserve our Infinitum to the last minute.’ That was what Blax would say in these kinds of situation. If we rushed in we will be forced to use our Infinitum early. That would be bad. 10 minutes have passed, the forest becomes less dangerous than before thanks to the decreasing amount of teams involved.

Mr. Z also lowered the danger level of his forest. All teams who waited knew this because it was backed up by past Treasure Hunt and Zone’s information. I can tell that Zone had a very profitable week when he got that information. In any case, the real Treasure Hunt starts now! The Qualification Round, Begin!

TO BE CONTINUED