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My team and I made our way to The Pit, or at least a partition of it. There we came face to face with another group of five, along with two assistant instructors, one of them being a mage, the other a fighter.

When we all arrived, the fighter instructor called our attention, “In this five-on-five match, the winner is decided upon defeating the whole opposing team or getting the opposing team’s leader to surrender, if we decide that you are defeated or “killed”, we will ask you to leave the fight. Magic will be restricted to second circle spells and below, and all sharp weapons are not allowed during this match, if you are holding on to any weapon other than your wooden training sword, please pass it to me and it will be returned to you after the match.”

After some of us nobles handed in our ceremonial weapons, the mage assistant instructor then raised a pedestal of earth, placed an hourglass on it, and said, “Are both teams ready?”

At that question, we all got into our formation. Our opponents went with fighters and skirmisher all in the front and mages in the back, while my team went with fighters up front, skirmisher in the middle, and mages in the back.

When both teams gave the signal that we were ready, the fighter assistant shouted, “Fight!”

“Charge!” Henry Carroway, who won his leader position by coin toss, yelled as he began casting an Augmentation spell.

Unlike the other team whose front line was charging us at full speed, Dave and Sam listened to my instruction and performed their “charge” at a rather sedate jog, with me a step or two behind them.

As our two teams closed in on each other, I kept an eye on where the enemy front line was looking. I saw that one of their fighters eyeing Sam, while the skirmisher was eyeing Dave, as for the last fighter, it may have looked like he was looking at me, but his gaze was slightly off from me, he was looking at Henry who outed himself as the leader when he gave the charge command.

The moment the melee fighters clashed, the fighter eyeing Henry sidestepped Dave who thought he was about to be doubled-teamed by two opponents and headed straight for Henry, and as we planned earlier in a quick and dirty discussion for our team’s formation, knowing that I am the strongest in the group, Henry decided to play it safe while testing the waters for our first round and put me in the middle to defend the mages.

So, I did my job and positioned myself between the mages as the boy was gunning for Henry. This boy charging toward me in order to get to the Henry was huge for a twelve year old, compared to the rest of the kids, this corn-fed motherfucker looked like the kid that was held back a grade for a few years.

When the boy was in striking distance of me, he unleashed a wide horizontal slash at me, and I could tell that his attack was more to get me out of the way instead of hitting me, and I am pretty sure I know why he is avoiding a fight with me despite me being smaller than him.

By now, the whole Advanced Combat & Tactics class knew that I was a special case due to me being the only one to spar with the instructors during our class, and he knew he had no chance of winning against me, so he was trying to go direct for Henry.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

I bent backward as the swing came at my chest, I expected him to use my change in posture to run around me and attack Henry, but instead, he surprised me by transitioning his sword swing into a shoulder change that caught me head-on while I was off balance, and as I was falling over, I saw that his eyes were still locked on Henry. That is when I realized I underestimated him, his plan was to take the shortest path possible and run me over to get to his target.

To salvage this situation while I was still falling, I dropped my sword, reached up, grabbed his training armor by the armholes, and used all my body weight to give a sudden tug with my right arm.

This caused the charging boy who was leaning forward while carrying his momentum forward to fall forward and on his side from the sudden extra weight. The boy who took the brunt of the fall was stunned for a moment and I took advantage of that by scrambling to his back and locking one of his arms behind him while I had a knee on his other shoulder.

I then cast a second circle Spark spell, held it in my free hand, pointed my glowing hand at the pinned boy’s head, and looked at the instructor for confirmation of my “kill”.

The fighter instructor nodded and shouted, “Mason, you are out.”

Hearing that, the boy, who I now knew as Mason, stopped struggling under me, so I released him and went to retrieve my dropped sword. After that, I looked around to see how the rest of the team was doing.

From what I saw, they were not doing good. Despite having the Decreasing Weight Augmentation spell cast in their practice swords, Dave and Sam were not doing good, unlike them, their opponents were from noble houses and most likely had their family’s fighting style and better coaching at home, so while Dave was barely holding his own, Sam was totally on the back foot and was being pushed back more and more towards me.

As for the mages, they were stationary, busy having their own magic dual with the opposing mages, lobbing spells over the fighter’s heads, and completely oblivious to their crumbling front line.

“God dammit Henry.” I cussed softly as I saw our glorious leader totally engrossed with spell-slinging instead of leading. But all this criticism will have to be saved for later, for now, I will need to save the fighters’ asses and clean up this shitshow.

The first thing I do is rush to help Sam. When I got to Sam, he was about to get a hit to his chest when I came in between him and his opponent.

“Go help Dave.” I said to Sam as I engaged Sam’s opponent. When Sam’s opponent saw who he was dealing with now, he clicked his tongue in annoyance as he changed into a more defensive stance, but that did not help him out much.

I tried to bait him into striking at me so I could disarm him, but he did not take the bait and stayed in his defensive stance, wasting my time. So if he was not going to expose himself, I would do it for him.

I jumped toward him, locked swords, put my foot behind his, and pushed. But this boy had better reaction than I thought and quickly recovered his footing, as we were locked in a contest of strength, I decided that if my pushing did not work, I would let him do the pushing instead.

I put more strength into the pushing contest while pretending to try to get his sword out of the way, and when I felt he had committed to the push, I swiftly stepped to the side and stuck my foot out as he fell forward and tripped over my foot.

As he stumbled a few steps forward to recover, I was already behind him with my sword to his neck, “Surrender.”, I said as I tapped my blade to his neck, and he raised his hands to acknowledge his defeat and walked to the side.

When I turned around Dave and Sam were finishing up their fighter, and after that, we had an easy time steamrolling the remaining mages.

After the assistant instructors announced our victory, we made our way back to the stands, and everyone had proud smiles on their faces, especially Henry. As we took our seats in the stands, I killed the mood by saying “We need to talk” in a serious tone.