Chapter 11: A Certain Magical Sport
When Villin looked at the map once more, there were a few other things he wanted to check out. Firstly he wanted to go to the club board. In reality, when he got to that location he was a little disappointed. It really was just a simple wooden board with papers nailed onto it.
Any student could decide to start a club. These could be studying clubs, sports clubs, clubs for your specific hobby,...
The problem was that the person making the club had to spend magic crystals to rent a room. And so joining a club generally wasn't free as you would have to pay a weekly fee to be a member.
He didn't dally around for long before heading to the third location he held interest in. There was a location on the map called 'Cut and crease training grounds'.
The location of these training grounds was actually quite far away, bordering the dueling ring. In order to get to the 'cut and crease training grounds' he had to pass the dueling ring. When he got through the door to get there he was slightly stunned. Unlike the clean straight corridors in the rest of the school, this place looked very rough. Rather then a room it was more of a cave.
The cave was round-ish in form and when he got closer to the center he noticed there were three dueling circles. The circles were about thirty meters in diameter each and it was quite easy to spot them. After all, they were each surrounded by a magic array, currently looking like circles drawn with crayon on the ground consisting of hundreds of runes.
In actuality, these magic arrays were made by a student a few years back and he takes five percent of any bet made in the dueling rings.
He moved to the back of the cave before opening the cave towards the cut crease training grounds. As soon as he entered he heard some people talking. The place he was in now also looked like a cave and it was of similar size to the previous one. There were no magic arrays in this room as the only things in the room were a few dozen chairs that got moved around as people needed them. On the right side of the room stood five people in a circle, they didn't seem to notice him even as he joined them.
In the middle of the circle were two other people, they were clearly the center of attention. On the left side was a girl with brown hair and blue eyes. She was wearing glasses and beads of sweat were coming off of her face. Before her were half a dozen sheets of paper floating around. Two of them seemed to be folded into spikes while the others were floating before her opened as if to fend off attacks. Each of these 'defensive' papers had tears in them as they had been ripped before.
On the right side was a boy with purple hair and eyes. His hair was rather messy and he looked absolutely exhausted as five pieces of paper floated before him. Three of them were made into spikes, one simply seemed to be crumpled into a ball while the last one seemed to be in charge of defense. Even though at this point the final one was nearly cut in half.
As soon as he arrived Villin knew the goal of the game should be either to draw blood or destroy the enemy's paper, the former ended up being right.
The boy was the first one to make a move this time. Two of his spikes shot over to the left and right side respectively before floating on different positions behind his enemy forming a triangle with his attacking papers. Villin heard some gasps from the people around him as apparently, it was an impressive thing to do.
The girl kept two papers before her while having the other two fold twice almost instantly and move behind her, then, as expected, the boy attacked. The three spikes moved toward the girl at fast speed each going through an arc. This was a hard attack for the girl to defend against as she couldn't see the spikes behind her and so she had to turn around to defend against those two while guessing where the other spike would go.
She ended up guessing correctly as all three spiked went into the set defenses tearing them apart even further. Yet the boy hadn't had time to retract them when she counterattacked sending one of her spikes over at a speed way faster then his own had moved at. He managed to fold his defensive paper once before the attack hit but it wasn't quite enough as the spike tore through it after about a second. Just as it looked like it would stab him on his cheek the crumpled piece of paper arrived, it didn't only manage to block it but as soon as the spike hit it, the crumpled piece of paper opened up and started engulfing the spike.
Because of this one of the guys watching cheered for about half a second before he stopped, looking at the competing boy with sadness. A small paper cut had appeared on his cheek, apparently, the girl had sneakily moved her second spike behind him before slashing at his cheek and the match ended in her victory.
"Well Aiden, looks like you owe me some crystals don't you."
The girl with her glasses tried to look as if she had won easily but was clearly extremely exhausted, both of them would probably go sleep right after this.
"Just know that I'll win against you as soon as I can manipulate six pieces at once, just you wait Amelia!"
The boy replied before throwing over a small bag. She opened it to check the amount before retorting.
"Feel free to challenge me again, I do have a few more books I'd like to read in the library."
She said this with a bit of a cocky smile on her face, it was clear she was rather proud of her comeback.
After this, both of them walked toward their friends who were watching the battle. Amelia to the girls and Aiden to the boys. Amelia ended up being the first person to notice he wasn't part of either group. She looked at him, took a step back, looked away, looked at him once more, and then came over to introduce herself.
"I see a first-year has come to look at our battle." She said with a wondrous smile. Even though she wasn't the prettiest girl she looked extremely smart, something that was also rather attractive. "The name is Amelia Blackwood, and you are?"
"Villin Grey, it's a pleasure to meet you, you seem to be extremely skilled at cut and crease!"
Even though he had never seen or heard of cut and crease before today, he was still extremely impressed. This sort of sparring probably wasn't too dangerous while he guessed it still required a high amount of precision and control over your magic.
Amelia smiled "Well thank you, Villin Grey. I am about to retire to the dormitories, do you wish to walk together?"
Villin only waited for a moment before agreeing. He was also planning to go back to the dormitories just about now since he noticed his magic power had been full for quite some time already. It was just that during his reading he had totally forgotten about awakening his nodes.