Althea simply smiled as she stepped forward. The boy looked at her with great focus, as if willing her to lose. The Duke must have bullied him or something. Or just offered lavish rewards for defeating her.
An empty space appeared around them as the crowd moved away, giving them space to fight.
A blue circle appeared at the edge of this haphazard circle, marking the edge of the battleground. The battle would end when either of them was unable to fight or was thrown outside the battleground.
"The battle begins." the Empress said, and the two of them moved.
Althea conjured a powerful gust of wind as her opponent set up defenses. Seventeen layers of spatial barriers, fractured spaces to make sure that she could not get through.
A simple gust of wind reached for her opponent. The defenses did not hold. The wind rushed through them, her will superseding the spatial interference as the boy was simply thrown out of the battleground.
The look of shock on his face was almost countered by one of her own. The reason for her victory was simple enough. Althea had a higher cultivation than him, and a significantly better will. There was no way her opponent stood a chance. But for some reason, she had expected him to still hold on somehow.
"The Countess Guarding Diery wins." the Empress announced.
Althea stepped out, reclaiming her position in the row of 'default' candidates. The battle was almost disappointing. Perhaps it was too much, but she had hoped she would face enough challenges to push her to the next stage.
The barrier to Journeyman 7 was almost broken, she was just missing something that would help her breakthrough. That something had been eluding her for a couple of weeks now.
The next challenger was from the Sensor duchy, and chose someone from the Leria duchy. A victory. The challenger had picked the weakest person in the lineup, and got himself a seat.
The challenges continued, a challenger emerging from each duchy, the order decided by some ancient system. Althea was not challenged again in this round, but Isa was. A challenger from the Reh duchy.
The two of them stepped onto the battleground as she looked on, wondering how much stronger Isa had grown.
Isa was the first to make her move. Lunging at the challenger, she covered the distance at a speed Althea could barely track, stopping her sword a few millimeters short of the challenger's neck.
"The Viscountess of Merlen wins." the Empress announced.
A speed this fast could give her difficulty in reacting. A powerful path, she was sure. There wasn’t a lot of difference between their showcases of power, they’d both won by a huge lead. But Althea still felt that Isa’s path was weaker. Just speed would not be enough.
A silence fell across the room as she felt several analyzing gazes fall on her. The round ended with that, and it was Duke Zerolian's turn again.
The Duke looked at his candidates, and then nodded towards Vanessa. So, Vanessa would be going next.
The challenger, a different youth from the Duke's all-male team, stepped up, looking much more nervous. Vanessa stepped forward, casually standing on the battleground.
"The battle begins." the Empress announced.
Vanessa just stood there staring at the challenger as the challenger set up defenses. The challenger made the first move. A purple line of space that shot towards Vanessa. The line never reached her, fading somewhere in the middle.
The challenger focused at the location where the attack faded, trying to sense what had happened. Althea already knew. Vanessa had countered the spell simply by calling on the mana used for it. Using her greater affinity to unravel the spell.
The next moment, the entire situation changed. A set of vines grew from the ground, heading towards Vanessa in a surprise attack. But they did not pierce her. Space folded around her, shifting the attack right towards the challenger that didn’t even sense it coming. Another victory. A hollow one given that Vanessa did not truly use her path, simply using her affinity as a crutch, but a win was a win.
The empress stopped the attack before it could pierce the challenger.
"Viscountess Vanessa wins." the Empress announced.
Althea smiled as Vanessa walked back into the row. The Duke's expression was not pleasant. The Diery county had just thoroughly defeated him.
Of course, that was partly because none of the Duke's prominent heirs were at a suitable age to participate. On the other hand, her retainers fell right into the favorable age.
The challenges continued, and she was not challenged again. The Duke's representative eventually defeated one of the candidates from the Leria duchy, taking up a spot. But the three from Diery county stood undefeated till now. The reason was simple. Not a single one of their competitors had a cultivation near enough to threaten them.
The rest of them were early Journeymen, while they were in the middle Journeyman. That, with their skills, was enough for them to be overpowered at this stage.
"Does anyone have any more challenges?" the Empress asked.
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"No." was the answer.
"Then we will meet in a week to proceed to the international competition." the Empress said
"Of course." the Duke said, teleporting away. Althea was mildly jealous. The ability to teleport was enviable, There had to be a way for her to find someone in the country that had the space element. Or poach someone from somewhere. Perhaps she should ask the college students that had gone to other nations to search for one. The ability was just too prized to let go.
"That was quite a show, Countess." the Sel Empire representative said.
"Thank you for your compliments." Althea replied, eyeing the representative. What did he want? There was no way he just wanted to talk with her.
"How familiar are you with the Hidden Land?" the representative said, talking about the location of the international tournament. The tournament would take place in a special location, a special anomaly that was home to several valuable resources.
"I have a passing familiarity with it." she replied.
"The Sel Empire has won several of these tournaments, and we have collected quite a bit of information about the hidden land." the representative began.
Althea knew what he was getting at. An alliance. Now that he had seen how powerful she was, he wanted to leverage her power to give his team an advantage. Getting something from the Human cup was practically hopeless, but the Hidden Land itself was a great treasure.
Althea was counting on it to let her reach the later Journeyman stages, and if she was lucky, break through to the Master stage. There were fruits there that would allow you to sense the vague concepts of mana and your elements. There were even fruits that would allow one to gain a new element there, but that was probably a rumor. At least, the Empress did not know of anyone actually getting it.
"I shall consider it." she replied. The Solerian Empire was sure to have its own information, and she couldn't be sure the Sel Empire wouldn't betray them when things got hard.
The representative's face fell. "Well, I suppose we can discuss this later. I hear this is going to be one of the most competitive tournaments in this century. Perhaps you will gain another ally."
Althea frowned, hearing the implication. If she didn't ally with him, he would ally with someone else, and that someone else was as powerful as her team. But was he telling the truth? The power the three of them had was more than enough even without the boost gained from the Hidden land. Was there truly another team with similar power? Perhaps the Empress would know.
The representatives left a few minutes later, letting her breath a sigh of relief.
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The Empress teleported the three of them back to Diery county, where she found that her pile of paperwork had grown. A pile that seemed to be doing an excellent job overwhelming her loyal maid.
Mira was sitting on her desk and reading through the papers, but the papers looked like they would fall on her any second. Even as Althea walked towards her from the garden, a servant came and deposited another pile.
The amount of work she had to do had only grown as she implemented more policies and the Diery county changed. The Diery administration was looking horribly understaffed, and staffing it was proving to be a slow process.
The education system had died a gruesome death in the late Countess' reign, and that had resulted in a lack of people that could read. Or were willing to study. Recruiting from other territories was basically asking for spies. So she had to choose a slower option.
Restarting the education system, give incentives, and then hope enough people are willing to work in administration. The slower option did not seem to be working at the moment.
"What happened?" she asked.
Mira raised her head abruptly, surprise masking the exhaustion on her face for a few seconds.
"Oh, your grace, you're back."
"What happened?" Althea asked again, looking at the paperwork in Mira's hand.
"There was a problem with the merchants." Mira replied, sighing. "A bunch of them are protesting the food prices, saying that demand has dropped now that so many territories are not buying the Diery family's crops."
"Remind them that the Diery family is buying the crops back at the standard price." Althea said. "That is the only aid we will give them. If they want to drop out of the business, it just expands our monopoly. The noble's actions were no secret, and I doubt it will last either way. Didn't the Senesor duchy end up buying our crops anyway?"
"Yes, your grace." Mira nodded. "The Zerolian and Reh duchies are the only ones still refusing to buy our crops. I fear that Duke Zerolian might have found a foreign source of crops."
Althea raised an eyebrow. "A foreign source of crops? In this political climate? I wonder who it is." Of course, she knew who it was. There was only one force selling this amount of food.
"I think it is the Elara Empire, your grace." Mira picked up a piece of paper she had set aside, showing it to Althea.
A laugh spilled from her as she read its contents. As usual, she was right. The Elara Empire had just sold a million tons of food, and was hiring her fleet to ferry it back to the Solerian Empire. The Zerolian Duke was the only one that would buy such a large amount of it.
"So they are still buying Diery crops through the Elara Empire." she stated.
"This is still cheaper than what he would have to pay us, your grace. After all, the Zerolian duchy would have to pay three times the normal price." Mira stated. Oh right, she’d nearly forgotten about her little decree.
Althea simply shook her head at the ridiculousness of this. "Just send a public notice replying to the merchants' protest, there is no need to reply to every one of them."
A smile stretched across Mira's face as she started drafting the notice in a hurry.
“Thank you, your grace.” she said, a wave of pure mana utterly shredding three piles of paper. How many petitions had been filed? Was this going to be an issue?
Althea went looking for Isa and Vanessa, wondering if she should take a softer approach. The two of them were conversing with Pulsie. Or more accurately, trying to politely listen to him lecture them.
"— speed is not the most compatible with your element. A combination of speed and accuracy would be-" Pulsie droned on about some meta theory related to the sword element.
"I know, I was holding back my strength." Isa interrupted the plant before he could go any further.
"But your movement vector-"
"Pulsie, perhaps you could pause your questioning?" Althea interrupted. Even if he was right, and she wasn’t sure he was, Isa had Verest to teach her. This could easily be taken as an insult. "I am sure Isa knows what she was doing."
Pulsie grunted his disapproval but did not say anymore.
"That said,'' Althea continued. "I was wondering if the two of you would be up for some practice battles. I am approaching a breakthrough, and the push could be what I need."
The other two girls shrugged. Althea also wanted to see what they had learned.
"Knowing each other's abilities would probably help in the coming stage. There are sure to be a few attacks against us."