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As Oswald’s group entered the pit, I could feel his concentration, which seemed to be an increasing norm ever since I whooped his ass for trying to sneak his aura into our one on one spar last time.

Ever since then, he would just give me dirty looks but would not engage me, and I am glad he is keeping it that way. Other than that, I mostly ignore him and his cronies and they mostly do the same.

As his group took up position, I could tell that his group was well drilled as they flowed into formation without any words said.

Soon enough, the goblins were dragged into the Pit, awoken, and when they grabbed their clubs, the call to start rang out.

Immediately, the two mages started chanting and the three fighters started jogging forward at a controlled pace, and after a few steps, a girl I recognized as one of the skirmishers increased her pace ahead of Oswald and the other fighter.

As the skirmisher was about to clash with the goblins, she pulled the same trick Instructor Greyham did to me and flashed them with a blinding light, and because goblins are one of several species who have excellent night vision and are thus sensitive to sudden exposure to light, they were blinded quite badly.

This led to some of the goblins stopping in their tracks as they clutched at their eyes in pain while those behind those who stopped crashed blindly into those in front, causing a goblin pile-up.

When I was expecting the skirmisher to swoop in and score some kills on the blinded goblins, she instead rolled to the side as a Spark and Stone Bullet flew by where she was previously standing to hit a still-standing goblin and another that was still getting up while holding its hands over its eyes.

By the time the skirmisher got to her feet, Oswald and the other fighter were at the same distance as her and the three front liners charged together and slaughtered the blinded and proned goblins. And from the controlled and precise strokes Oswald was performing as he cut down the goblins, I could tell he has been putting in some work ever since we last fought.

The whole combat engagement was short, sweet, and effective, all handled in less than a minute if I am not wrong, it was the best time yet.

The assistant instructor who kept track of the time with some kind of Artificer’s magic tool that acted as a stopwatch, announced Oswald’s team’s time to be 52 seconds and no penalties.

When I turned to my teammates to see what they thought of it, I saw them looking somewhat sad, “What's wrong guys, why so down?”

Henry sighed, “They had the best time by far, that's going to be hard to beat. I hate to say it, but their mages are better than us, and then there is Oswald. He does not come from a renowned house for no reason, he most likely came up with that battle plan.”

“Yeah, now we are never getting that reward.” Dave lamented.

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Wow, they must really want that reward, especially Dave and Sam. Well, I guess I can do something about that.

I puffed up my chest and told my team, “Then I guess you all forgot who whooped Oswald’s ass.” my team looked at me and I asked them to gather round, we have some planning to do.

***

Eventually, it was my team’s turn to fight in the Pit, and soon everything was set up and the call to fight was shouted.

The moment we were given the signal to start, Dave, Sam, and I ran at a dead sprint toward the goblins while Henry and Arabella started chanting their spells.

Naturally having trained more, I was quite a bit faster than Dave and Sam, and when I got to the halfway mark, I felt the mana of the Lightweight Augmentation spells being cast on Dave and Sam.

When I was well over the halfway point to the goblins, the goblins had just got their shit together and just started sprinting in my direction.

When I was about 10 meters away from the first goblin, I made my move. I raised my off-hand and cast a second circle darkness spell in a wide area and made the dark haze move towards the goblins before they could move out of the way.

In that haze of darkness, I could see just fine because it was my own mana, but as for the goblins, even with their excellent night vision, they could not see a thing in the magical darkness and were wildly flailing around their clubs, I even got to see one of the goblins smack another in the back of the head, making the smacked goblin fall to the ground clutching the back of its head and rolling around while cussing in its guttural language.

That made me chuckle a little, but first, there is work to be done. As I moved freely through the magical darkness, I easily lopped off the head of the nearest goblin, cut the goblin behind the first from shoulder to hip, cut the leg off one of another goblin to leave it for the others, and lunged forward to the last goblin in line, stabbing it in the neck and severing its spine.

As I heard the footsteps of Dave and Sam getting closer, I dispelled the haze of darkness while a goblin was still impaled at the tip of my sword. This revealed to everyone three dead goblins, while two other goblins were rolling on the ground in pain, one from getting smacked on the back of the head by another goblin, and the other from missing a leg.

In less than two seconds of the darkness being dispelled, Dave and Sam locked onto the only two moving goblins and set upon them blades first, and it was done. And if I was keeping count correctly, it has been less than 30 seconds since we started.

I turned to my teammates and raised my hands while shouting, “BEST TIME!” and the four of them raised their weapons while also shouting “BEST TIME!”

It was then that Instructor Greyham jumped into the Pit and shouted for the verdict, and the four Arena staff who were keeping score just signaled that my team had no penalties.

Then he looked to the assistant instructor who was keeping time, and the assistant instructor announced, “27 seconds with no penalties.”

Hell yeah! Shaved 25 seconds off the best time! And my teammates were going apeshit over the results as they ran towards me and Instructor Greyham.

Before they reached me, Instructor Greyham side whispered, “You little shit… I thought I heard from one of my instructors that you were holding back to avoid carrying your teammates, what happened? You are demoralizing the rest of the class.”

To which I whispered back, “Well… my teammates really wanted the reward and-” but before I could continue with my excuses, the rest of my team caught up and we moved to the stands.

When I got to the stands, I was met with many eyes of admiration, quite a number of envy, and others of anger, especially those that were coming from Oswald. Let's just hope my win does not spawn any major drama, I just wanted to do something nice for my team.