Sorry for no chapters, exams. I will try to release frequently throughout the Christmas holidays!

In a cramped, dim lighted room, Wess was currently sitting with his legs crossed and his eyes closed. His arms crossed each other in a squeezed X shape, his index and thumb touched each other to form a circle while his other three fingers were flat like his palm. There was no sound in the room and the only movements in this room was Wess's mouth breathing in the mage essence. 

The mage essence would go down to Wess's core, which was in his stomach. Cores would normally be a golden core and mage essence would leisurely rotate around it. The core would involuntarily absorb the mage essence rotating around it slowly and store it within a small chamber within the body. When a fight broke out or when someone was training, the mage essence would rapidly swirl around the core. This would it in turn make refining even quicker. 

When Wess was in the waterfall he needed mage essence at a rapid pace to feed himself and protect himself, it took the shape of a tornado. Too much pressure was put on Wess's core, therefore his core was extremely weak and he needed to take it slow for one more month. 

~2 years went by like water evaporating from a cup~

A boy with long azure hair walked through the warship. He looked at the walls and realised that he had no true memories of this ship, all his time was spent on training or information gathering. He quickly walked to the central command area to see his master, walking past several of the other teachers. Their faces had slight pity for him as his excuse for taking two years off of training was that he had a severe injury from training. The truth was only known by Sereda and himself, his master only knew a little bit. 

He soon reached the central command area and saw his master in an imposing manner. He was directing everyone in an orderly fashion, it was all done in an orderly and natural fashion.

"Ahh, Wess! Have you finally finished with what was needed to be done?"

"Yes." Wess was extremely respectful to Erez. He now understood how lenient Erez was to him. 2 years of freedom? No teacher would do that, on top of that he gave Wess several potions to strengthen his core. 

"Ok, that is good however I have some bad news." As Erez said this his face fell." As you know everyone has been training to learn spells, well the purpose of this was to prepare you to have a tournament between talents. This tournament will contain talents from the Government, Polios army, Da sect as well as several others from other powerful groups scattered around the continent. Supremacy will be determined through this tournament, however we really don't care about that. If we have no strong talents then the other powers will just take it as us hiding our cards. This is mainly used to give combat experience to our talents.

Every one of you lot will have to compete. That means you will have to compete with your minuscule strength, this isn't necessarily bad as you could forfeit but the army has a rule that everyone needs to learn how to defend themselves. You are not allowed to forfeit unless seriously injured or given permission from an elder. Luckily, or maybe unluckily for you is that I'm an elder, despite being an elder I will not help you. If I allow you to forfeit then you will face the ridicule of your fellow students. I will also face ridicule but that isn't as important as your life. I hope you understand I do value your life and don't think of it as some toy, it's just that if you do forfeit there's a chance that it will limit your future potential" 

"Limit? Is there truly a limit to anything? Break the bounds, break the chains, break the boundaries and become the lord of the world!" An archaic voice echoed throughout Wess's brain like a prophecy. It caused his core to tremble and his breathing to become irregular. Wess's heart felt like a spike pierced through it, it was pumping outside of his chest. This was only the voice of someone, imagine that person's power.

"Fine, I'm tired so let me sleep." With this Wess left the room, leaving Erez with no time to react.

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Wess was currently lying on his bed, his mind reeling. The situation was just...... bad. He had to face off against other, much more powerful, talents. They would have a much bigger range of spells and individually trained their specialities. Wess had five spells in total to combat them and a more well-rounded kit, therefore he would win more matches but had a higher chance of dying. For example if he had to face someone that had both speed and attack but not defence then if he hits a strike luckily he would win, if he doesn't he might die.

"Fuck!" Wess ruffled his hair until he decided to stop thinking. He sat up and three pitch black balls formed in his hands, they flew up and down. At first it was just throwing, but it quickly escalated to juggling. Wess seemed to be a natural at it, the movement was just fluent.

Thump Thump Thump

Panic flashed in Wess's eyes as he heard this. Someone was knocking on his door? It was highly improbable for it to be Wess's master, meaning that it was another student or a teacher. Three loud bangs could be heard from within Wess's room. After the three loud sounds finally faded away Wess told the unknown guest to come in.

Six kids rushed through the door and fell over like a lump of clothes. 

"Oww, it's all your fault Julius!" 

"Nah it ain't, not my fault you leaned on me." Wess's eyes were filled with a startled expression. The other talents rushed in here and started talking as if it was natural.

Artemis saw this from the corner of his eye and hurriedly started explaining the situation. "We thought that as we ignored you at the start of this journey we should do something to make up for it and hang out. What better opportunity to do this then now, just two days before the tournament?" Wess smiled warmly in response to these kind actions. 

If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

"Guess what I brought?" Julius unwrapped a piece of cloth that was swirled around an object similar to a bottle. 

"Alcohol!?" The eyes of all the kids went round. Alcohol was forbidden for kids. It harmed kids in the initial stages of mages, and so was forbidden.

"I honestly can't say I'm surprised. You always do stupid stuff like this." Artemis snorted when he saw the alcohol. He wasn't going to risk his potential on something as stupid as food or drink. The taste would last for a few minutes and then be forgotten.

"No, you're mistaken. This alcohol isn't going to harm our potential. It doesn't contain the acid Gayamata, making it harmless." The kids' eyes perked when they heard this. They were always curious on the taste of alcohol. Even Artemis's eyes couldn't fully divert its path from the alcohol. 

"Let's just have a sip."

~2 hours later~

"We should become blood brothers!" Julius held up his glass and waved it around. 

"Why not?" Wess had never had so much fun in his life, maybe having close friends would be possible.

"Yeah why not?"

With this everyone bit their thumbs, letting blood roll down their thumb. 

"A-are you sure we should be doing this?" Artemis's voice quivered as it rang out. Even though he was drunk, he still had some sense of reason. They knew each other a decent amount, but that wasn't enough to become a blood brother. They also didn't know Wess that well.

"Yeah, maybe this isn't as smart." Terra's amber eyes had a hint of worry in it.

"....." Ren said nothing. He went along with what everyone said, never protesting or saying his opinions.

"It's fine. Trust me." Although Artemis still had some discontent he kept it to himself and did the ceremony.

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"Awaaah." Stifling a yawn, Wess opened his eyes. What he saw when he opened them was a gigantic mess! His bedsheets were on the floor, soaked in alcohol. There was blood absorbed within the carpet and it was a brownish-blue now. 

"Hmm? My legs are stuck and so are my arms." Wess looked down to his body and his eyes nearly popped out of his sockets. Julie was lying on his body with her left leg in the space between his two legs, his arms were surrounding her. The only clothes that were still on were her bra and underpants.

"Wow.... Did it have to be like this? I wanted my first time to be with the person I truly loved." Although Wess said it like that, he didn't mean it at all and said it with a dull, emotionless tone.

"Hmmm." Julie's eyes was starting to become more visible and less blurry. "Uwaahhh!" Before she could even see who it was, she realised that she was in the embrace of a man. She pushed away with all her might.

"Is that you Wess?" Julie's startled eyes became a lot more calm when she realised it was Wess. This was noted by Wess, causing a puzzled expression to cover his face.

"I will forgive you this one time as the deed was not done!" This was said solemnly, but with a childlike face and her voice being squeaky, it gave the opposite effect making Wess laugh.

"Wh-what is so funny?!" She could no longer hold her embarrassment in and left quickly. Wess sadly sighed to himself before seeing her leave. 

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"Hello everybody! We know you have had to complete a long and tedious formality, but this was to ensure the safety of our talents. Though we all know that it was worth the wait, after all this is a rare opportunity that happens only once every 10 years!

This tournament will contain 128 students, split into 4 groups. It will be an elimination style round until the last 8 people. These people will be split into two groups and fight each other. They will fight for control of a hilltop. One person will be refining mage essence, while the other three will defend that person. Once their bottles is full then they win. There are two bottles for each team and the teams will be picked at random." The answer caused commotion within the crowd, normally the group that held the tournament would withhold this information to make the competition more interesting. However this time the host just blatantly said it, it must mean that they were holding something up their sleeves. 

"The first match is Julius vs Artemis!"