A Dragon’s Curiosity

“As practitioners following the spiritual path, just cultivating all day long in a tower won’t get you far. To improve your strength competition and rivalries are a valuable source of driving force, allowing you to easily break through the bottlenecks between ranks to strive for even greater heights.”

Each of the students focused their attention on the front of the room, where Miss Anet had prepared a new table with two chairs, with a high-quality duel board lying on top of the former. While the regular editions were made of wood and had coloured stones for them to use, this one shined under the light, the material for the board surely above the third rank and from a precious tree. As for the gems, rubies and sapphires of a high quality glimmered in the light as well.

“To give you some motivation, the class will hold a competition at the beginning of each school week. For the whole duration of a lesson, one of you will sit on the [King’s Seat] - faithful to the saying, the winner is the king and the losers are bandits.

Anyone has one chance to challenge the king. If the challenger wins, he will become the new king, if he loses he can’t challenge the current king again during the next week.”

Even while explaining the rules, the female lecturer had a bored expression on her face, while her tone never showed any signs of excitement. Nisha reckoned, a competition of this level was far below her attention.

Contrary to her lukewarm handling of the matter, the class already showed signs of boiling in excitement. The king’s title for the class already appealed to the more vain individuals, who were more likely to have a chance to compete for it. Only by having superior talent could they have ambitions to rule over their peers and earn the prestige associated with the title, hence they had some strength to back up their arrogance. And furthermore, the mage branch would not fail to offer some rewards to further enhance the competitive tension.

Miss Anet did not disappoint them.

“As a small incentive, there exists a price for the King each week. Every week, the winner of the contest can claim one hundred merit points from me. Furthermore, if the king is confident to hold his position, they can - at the start of the lesson - add any amount of their merit points to the prize pool. This way, the fights will still be somewhat interesting when you start earning more merit later on.

Naturally, the challengers can’t just take this bonus for free. Aside from this time, each challenger has to pay one tenth of the prize pool to gain the right to challenge the king.”

Pausing here for a moment a collective breath escaped from the class, the announcement too shocking.

As new students, each of them had been allotted fifty merit points in the beginning. To earn more, they either needed to submit items they crafted, brought back from trips into the Dungeon or act as helpers for older students. With these as the main ways to earn more points, each class they attended so far needed them to purchase materials later on as well. So the chance to win twice the amount which they formerly possessed ignited the fighting will of each youth present. A simple game could allow them to purchase more expensive ingredients or enjoy preferential treatment, where else would they get a chance like this?

As for paying some points to issue a challenge, they only needed to spit out a small amount to win ten times as much!

With blazing eyes, the aspiring mages waited for their teacher to declare the start of the competition.

“Naturally the amount paid will not be counted towards the fee a challenger needs to pay for the particular session. The king collects the points at the time a challenge gets issued. It can count as the privilege of holding the king’s seat.

This game is similarly played by most of the senior students, over the turns a separate duel board league and leaderboard has somehow appeared in the form of a student organisation. You can check them out on your own and treat it as practice for the class tournament or enter there yourself if you feel confident to challenge your seniors, the prizes naturally can’t be compared to a first turn level.”

If the previous atmosphere had been boiling, currently you could hear a pin drop. As first turn students, they had treated the duel board as an early exercise for beginners. None of them predicted this somewhat simple game held such a high status among their senior magicians. If they could grab the king’s seat now and later on use the experience as a starting position in the student-organised competitions and leaderboard, how high could their fame soar?

Aside from Nisha, who already guessed the game held some significance based on the existence of the blue stones ranked up to the fourth rank in a basic edition of duel board, the burning fighting spirit almost materialised in the air. As for the dragon, she figured it out a long time ago when tinkering with the control formations. Why bother with creating such a sophisticated formation to control high ranked mana, if people fitting them didn't regularly use these stones?

Still, even the proud dragon among them got slightly interested. Instead of desiring material wealth in the form of contribution or lording over her peers as the king, she was rather interested in fighting all out matches to increase her strength. As the reward was high, each and every student would give their absolute all when fighting for the king’s seat.

Fortunately for the right now present students, Nisha set her aims higher than just a little first turn competition. With the strength to go against second or third turn seniors, entering the leaderboard and participating in the duel board league would benefit her more.

“I’ll not talk any more about this; you can figure it out on your own when you are ready. As for the current fight, there is no king yet, and no one needs to spend any merit points. Look for a solution among you who will challenge who, and I won’t interfere. The only rules that will apply are one versus one matches, and whoever sits on the throne as the king lastly will get the title in the following week.”

From the beginning to the end, Miss Anet’s soft voice never changed in tone or demeanour. Although it could not be considered frosty, it was also devoid of any warmth. In her mind, even if someone dominated the competition, as these were first turn students, they were far below her notice anyway. In a way, this thinking could classify as arrogant. However, the female lecturer also had the strength to back up her words. In such a position, it was rather appropriate to feel a slight disdain towards the youths. She even provided them with guidance; they should consider themselves lucky!

Finished with her speech, the teacher retreated to the side, sat down on an empty chair and closed her eyes. Some students guessed the teacher would just neglect their competition, but Nisha knew better than this. By now she was fairly sure the mental observation that startled her earlier originated from Miss Anet, who should be taking a look at the situation near the king’s seat now with it as well.

Alexander had quite the feverish look in his eyes as well. A hundred points a week were tempting enough, not to mention all the points earned by others buying challenger rights. For a second, he could dream about sitting on the throne - well, it was a regular chair, but in his imagination, it was a throne - and beating every single of the arrogant nobles in their class.

Unfortunately, a female voice quickly brought him back to reality.

“It does sound interesting.

Oh well, let’s start round three.”

While looking at the girl with a deadpan face, the youth wondered if he heard wrongly. Currently, all the other students crowded around the board overlooking the front of the room, almost fighting with their fists to have a chance to become the king. Only the students who had no hope even to move the red gem remained sitting in front of a board, alone. That was, apart from this cultivation maniac. While the elf admitted she found the contest interesting, she also declared more training was in order! How fast did the elf change her mind?

Like a bucket of cold water flowing over him he also suddenly remembered the existence of this monster sitting beside him. Even if Alexander managed to climb on the throne through a miraculous stroke of luck, wouldn’t this maniac only come and bother him to train more with her? And previously the elf stopped when he ran out of mana, would she do the same on a stage in front of the rest of the class?

Releasing his sadness into a deep sigh, he could only nod and condense his mental strength again, preparing to fight another bout.

“Let’s do it then. Please have mercy on me.”

With about two dozen of the more gifted students vying for the king’s seat, only the two of them still duelled each other, which earned them some odd looks from the others. Nonetheless, the temptation of the merit points kept them from meddling in their business, and no one said anything.

Focusing his wind mana the male mage had enough substantial gains from this single lesson. By sharpening his battle strength against the elf, his potential kept emerging, and his cultivation advanced to an absolute peak of the first rank. Within a few days, he was confident to break into the second rank. Still, the scene from their first two rounds was probably going to repeat itself, neither side gaining an advantage in the duel.

Nisha, on the other hand, observed her opponent. With her study of the stone and the formation, she had thought of a few theories that could adequately display her brains rather than her brawn - in a magical manner of speaking.

Securing the position of the gem, she employed her mana directly around the stone instead of only wasting it away in the formation.

Consolidating her control over the stone the dragon started to form a thin film of raw mana around it, effectively sealing off the formation inside.

Alexander was extremely startled by this development, and he suddenly lost connection to the formation, his mana pressure just dissipating into the empty air. He knew the elf did something, yet he couldn’t figure out what changed. Compared to experiencing how his mental strength disappeared, this sensation immediately told him the stone did not exist for his mana. And still, he could clearly see it lying on the table.

Just as he was about to stand up and ask what the hell was going on, Nisha suddenly started smiling broadly like a cat that just stole a ham.

Extending one of her slender fingers, she just pointed at his side of the board and whispered ‘go’, before the stone immediately started moving. Granted, it only moved with the speed of a snail. However, this was under the full pressure the young magician could muster. Nothing worked, and the red stone still approached the end zone of his side of the board.

Nisha herself was quite pleased with the result.

Due to enveloping the stone with a thin barrier, the scattered pressure her opponent released could not reach the formation inside anymore, effectively blocking his attack. Similarly, her mana would not be able to affect the stone; however, she gained some inspiration from seeing her classmates push each other around to be the first to sit on the king’s seat.

If pressuring the inside didn’t work, she only needed to give the stone a push from the outside. Using her finger as a guiding principle, the scattered mana pressure from her fire source gathered and gave the stone a push from the outside. Instead of dissipating, the red rock gradually approached the other youth’s end zone.

Alexander could only raise his hands in defeat when he finally lost in their third duel, the elf apparently learned at an even faster rate than him, and he felt the usefulness of sparring with her quite a lot.

Even without the two of them, the fierce competition around the king’s position waged back and forth, progressing much faster than the duels carried out by Nisha and Alexander since most of them only pit brute strength against brute strength.

For the last three matches though, a young man garbed in an expensive robe embroidered with golden thread and precious gems. As he sneered at the defeated ‘bandit’ in front of him, his group cheered.

“Only a royal personage such as big brother Weston is worthy of being the king. It looks like the merit points will go to him.”

Flattering the arrogant young man his group cheered again while the defeated challenger left the stage with an unwilling expression.

As Nisha and Alexander happened to finish their third bout at this time, they both happened to look towards the king’s seat, appraising the current champion. The dragon never put him in her eyes, while he was certainly one of the strongest in the room with his mana almost reaching the late second rank, as her aim were the seniors in the second or third turn.

“Isn’t there anyone worthy to challenge me? If we continue in this manner, I’m afraid the best mage in this class will be me.”

Confident in her strength, the elf didn’t mind his provocative words and prepared to tinker with the stone again while waiting for Alexander to recover, they probably still had time for a fourth round.

Unfortunately, it seemed like the young man practising with her had other ideas.

“Don’t be so arrogant. This girl here could crush you like a rotten apple!”