"Isn't it crazy that Professor Fredley is letting him use more than just magic?"

"What difference does it make? It's not like he'll injure him either way."

"I mean, duh, Professor Fredley is insanely powerful. He was a candidate to be the Advent of Lightning in his youth, after all."

"Right. I'm more surprised that the ninetails has an item that can store so much MP and it's insane that he's so willing to show it publicly. I'd be a bit more discreet if I owned that."

"Where do you suppose he got it?"

"No clue. A dungeon maybe? Could be a relic from the Age of Primals. Either way, I'm betting all of my MP on this. He must be stupid to offer a ruby-gold coin per 10,000 MP staked if he loses. We lose literally nothing if he loses and it only costs us our MP if he wins. I've never heard of a deal so good. I'd think it was a scam if Headmaster Erion didn't give his blessing."

"I'm just happy I have over 100,000 MP. With ten ruby-gold coins I can pay off my father's debt. Stupid idiot of a baron."

Alice Fairwaye frowned as she found her seat in the arena-turned-grand stadium. 'Everyone's underestimating him too much. There's no way Professor Fredley won't be pushed to his limits if he wants to remain uninjured here.'

While she did indeed think that was true, she had still bet all 700,000 of her MP on Lone's victory.

Despite her prestige at The Academy, she was still just the daughter of a knight from a country that didn't really respect mages and magic as a whole all that much.

70 ruby-gold coins could make all of her worries for the future disappear just like that. Of course, she had more faith in Professor Fredley, so she'd also bet five of her saved up white-gold coins on his victory. Since Professor Fredley expected himself to easily win, he had only offered a win ration of 1:1.2, but even with that, Alice still stood to gain - at a minimum - a whole white-gold coin.

'Honestly, Student Lone's counter bet option is insane. It's literally impossible to lose as a better. Either you make out like a bandit when the ninetails loses, or, by some miracle, he wins and you still make a tidy little profit,' the girl thought.

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Things were progressing rather quickly as the stadium was getting close to full, meaning that the contest would begin shortly.

Alice bit her lower lip in mild frustration. 'Not only talented and incredibly wealthy, but he's also surrounded by friends...' Her eyes wanderer to a group of people sitting in the front row with a big banner reading 'Go, Go, Lone!'. Of course, this was his unruly band of adventurers that had invaded The Academy with him.

She also noticed three human girls, one of which was famous in The Academy for possessing a holy magic affinity, while the shortest of the three even had some affinity for space magic. The third was less impressive, but she was still a genius of lightning magic and was said to be a candidate for Professor Fredley's next personal disciple. Of course, these girls were Hazel, Alisa, and Emma.

Alice clenched her fist as her eyes returned to Lone who was happily stretched and waving to the crowd, endearing himself to them. 'Not only that, but a lot of the demis are openly showing their support for him as are a good chunk of the teachers... Some people just have it all, don't they?'

Regardless of her bitterness, time moved on. Before long, everyone who was coming to watch the show had arrived. Even Headmaster Erion and Vice-headmaster Merkel had made an appearance and were sitting in a large private booth at the peak of the stadium.

Amplifying his voice with some simple utility magic, Professor Fredley addressed the crowd. "As you are all already aware, Student Lone here has requested an indefinite leave of absence for his friend, Student Swind. Knowing that such a thing was unfair when the given reason wasn't a particularly good one, he happily accepted my offer to earn this leave of absence through a duel with myself!"

After a short pause, the professor continued, "Of course, a normal duel would be incredibly one-sided."

"You're telling me," Lone interrupted with a short laugh.

Not minding him at all, Professor Fredley resumed speaking. "In light of this, I have decided to alter the rules slightly. Student Lone has ten opportunities to attack me. I will not dodge even a single one of them, but I will use defensive-based magic to defend myself. Student Lone is allowed to use any weapon and any means at his disposal to attack me. Should he injure me to the point the healing magic is required to prevent me from losing my life or my consciousness, then he wins. If no such thing happens after his ten attacks are over, then I win. And, of course due to his generosity, everyone who has bet on our duel will also be a winner! Well, so long as you made sure to bet on myself, ahaha."

Lone yawned while the crowd laughed at Professor Fredley's joke. "Can we start already? I am bored out of my fuckin' mind."

Alice scowled. She was using magic herself to ensure that she could hear Lone and all of his chants to figure out what magic he knew, but hearing him talk so disrespectfully towards a dignified and very powerful member of The Academy's staff rubbed her the wrong way.

'He's far too arrogant for his own good. Does he not understand how close to Divinity Professor Fredley is? On one hand, I want him to lose to put his ego in check, but on the other hand, I kind of also don't so he doesn't start putting some actual effort into getting stronger. I still need to prove myself his better during the tournament...' Alice was very conflicted, quite clearly.

"Of course," Professor Fredley replied. "Whenever you are ready, Student Lone, please, attack me."

"Fuckin' finally," Lone said. "Well, let's start things off simple, shall we?"

Lone's feet kicked off of the ground and he moved faster than most eyes present could even hope to follow, though he didn't break the sound barrier. Now wasn't the time to be showing off his max speed, after all.

The next moment, everyone could see a massive blast of air move past Fredley as Lone's fist was lodged into a barrier made out of pure lightning which was wrapped around the professor.

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Professor Fredley smirked and reached out with his hand before he flicked Lone's clenched fist, sending him tumbling back.

Landing elegantly on his feet, Lone shook his scorched hand. "That stung a bit. There's no way that you'd get taken out by a simple punch, after all, right?"

"Naturally," Professor Fredley answered with a confident arrogance.

'I really need to learn how to project my voice like that. It's honestly kinda cool,' Lone thought. "Well, the next thing that makes any sense would be magic, so let's dance, yeah?"

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Alice watched as Lone tried to use lightning magic, earth magic, fire magic, water magic, and even charm magic on Professor Fredley. The charm magic almost worked, but luckily for Professor Fredley, he had a fairly high level in that magic's resistance.

'He's only got three attempts left. Why did he retry using lightning magic? It's common knowledge that Professor Fredley is so good at lightning magic because he lived in the Lightning Plains of Julhund for two full centuries... He practically immune to lightning. What is he thinking?' Alice asked herself.

She glanced up at the headmaster and vice-headmaster's booth only to see a sly smile on Headmaster Erion's face. 'He's happy? Does... Does he want Student Lone to lose to teach him a valuable lesson? Or... Or does he know something that we do not?'

Regardless of the girl's internal questions and confusion, the duel continued.

Lone held his chin as he stood a few paces away from Professor Fredley. "You know, I have a few options here, but I was genuinely expecting you to get a bit tired out by my spells by now, y'know? I didn't want to one-shot you, so I cast them raw, but maybe that was a mistake?"

Neither Professor Fredley nor practically everyone else that could here him understand what he was saying, so Lone just sighed.

"Well," Lone said, "I kinda wanna use Saturn, to be honest, but I'd kill you if I used that. Let's go with utter humiliation, huh?"

He reached into his battlemage robes and took out his lexicon. "Lightning Wave."

"This again, Student Lone? Please, you must learn to accept when something won't... work..." As if a frog had been caught in his throat, Professor Fredley stopped talking and wore a serious expression.

"What on Altros is that cube? Clearly, it has somehow tripled the strength of your clumsy original spell. Even I may not walk away unscathed from that, Student Lone," the professor said as he readied his Lightning Cloak once more.

With that up and running again, while defending from an attack as powerful as Lone's Lightning Wave would easily consume 20% of his MP normally, Professor Fredley didn't want to take any risks. Were he to actually sustain an injury from the element that he was once almost the advent of, then it would be the biggest stain on his honour in his entire life.

'50%. I'll give my cloak 50% of my Mana Points. I'll gain a light headache from using so much so fast, but better that than losing any face,' he decided.

With a relaxed swipe of his arm, Lone sent his Lightning Wave forward. Crackling dangerously, the bright collection of static lightning bolts charged towards Professor Fredley. They thunderously crashed into the Lightning Cloak and the resulting explosion of light blinded everyone not prepared for it.

'What the hell?!' Alice had been one of the many unfortunates who wasn't expecting suck a wild magical reaction. She shielded her narrowed eyes, and very slowly the focus returned to them.

"Professor Fredley's on his knees?" Alice asked in confusion.

As she had muttered, the man was sweating heavily as his face contorted in pain. There wasn't a drop of blood on him or even a single burn mark, so clearly, the lightning hadn't hit him.

Immediately people began theorising how he may have ended up like this, the most common conclusion being that he had over-prepared for Lone's original skill, and, as a result, despite having blocked it perfectly, he was now suffering through extreme mana withdrawal, or, as it was officially called, MP Overburn.

Those with the senses to feel one's MP could tell that Professor Fredley still had a little over 25% of his total MP, but it wasn't unheard of for people to have particularly violent reactions to using a great portion of their total MP in a single skill.

This was why it was so hard for people like Swind with such a low MP capacity to learn any magic since even practising would drain them entirely.

It was for that specific reason that all skills which could be amplified endlessly with MP were heavily monitored and were only taught to students that had applied for them and had been given permission directly from Headmaster Erion himself to learn them.

Alice herself had one such skill, but she didn't suffer nearly as much from MP Overburn as Professor Fredley seemed to be. 'Is that really what it is? But... why is he shaking so much? That's not normal for MP Overburn.'

Lone walked up to the professor with a big grin on his face. "You know, I'm really tempted to punch you as hard as I can right in your face just so I can say 'There's no way that you'd get taken out by a simple punch, after all, right?' all sarcastically, but I'm not one to leave things up to chance."

He turned his back to Professor Fredley and bowed to the crowd. "Thank you for coming to watch this duel that Professor Fredley was so kind as to grant to me, and to all of you who placed bets on me losing, you can come and give me your MP at my shop in the town this evening. If you don't come before midnight tonight, then try again tomorrow after classes."

An upset and particularly racially-charged human senior student yelled back, "You haven't won yet, you cocky fool!" If he wouldn't get punished for it, he would have used a demi-related slur in place of 'cocky fool', no doubt.

Lone shrugged. "I guess you're right, I haven't won yet." Without even looking back at Professor Fredley, Lone said, "Tail Spears."

Gasps of shock and horror became widespread as all nine of Lone's tails mercilessly burrowed into Professor Fredley's body. One even punctured his lungs while another destroyed his left kidney. The other ones made mincemeat of his limbs and ruined his other internal organs.

"May wanna heal him quickly. I'd give him 10-mins before he bleeds out. Maybe less since I crushed his heart too. It was black as sin, after all," after saying that, Lone shoved his hands in his pocket then wandered out of the arena with a trail of blood dripping off of his fluffy limbs in his wake.

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"And you made such a man your personal disciple why, exactly, Erion?" Vice-headmaster Merkel asked accusingly.

Erion chuckled softly. "And you allowed Professor Fredley to scheme against him despite him being my personal disciple why, exactly, Vice-headmaster Merkel?"

VIce-headmaster Merkel glanced away from the infuriating man and stared at the group of alchemist teachers and the professors who were skilled in recovery-based magic - both groups of which were casting magic spell after magic spell or performing live-surgery to keep her assistant alive.

"He's isolated himself with this," Merkel coldly stated. "The staff will hate him and the students will fear him. Such cruelty is new to them, even to the seniors that have been on dangerous field trips. Many more may even challenge him for revenge, using numbers to bully him."

"Hahaha," Erion laughed. "You think he will care? He will revel in such an opportunity. Revenge leads to foolishness, and foolishness leads to opportunities for the wise. I expect the demi student population will venerate him even more, which will, in turn, make them even more aggressive towards Sophie. Give him a month, see if he acts any differently in light of today."

Vice-headmaster Merkel slowly got up and shot a dangerous look Erion's way. "He is not my primary concern. Our recent enemies that have appeared thanks to your actions of late, however, are. You allowing that barbaric lump of wasted talent to create even more through association is leading this establishment to ruin even faster than it already was."

Erion shook his head and smiled sadly. "You've known me for over 200 millenniums and not once have I acted in a way the would put The Academy in jeopardy, now have I?"

"You forcing your ideals of equality onto the noble students is one such action," Merkel refuted. "One mistake, Erion. That's all it takes. If you make this ship sink, then I swear by the Primals, I will not sink with it."

Erion gestured to their booth's door. "The door will forever be open for you. Unlike those that you protect, I am no slaver."

"So it would seem." With that, Vice-headmaster Merkel left the room.