Kayley felt a bit nervous when she saw Villin and his opponent disappear but knew the reason. At some point in the first competition when there wasn’t much going on Kalob explained what would be happening in the second round.
Kaley was surprised to see the other runemasters were also curious, it seemed they hadn’t known beforehand.
The contestants would be brought to what was called ‘The Lesser Islands’. Every two students would be brought to another one of the islands. The one irregularity was the initial distance the students would be from each other, the exact location couldn’t be controlled so each of the contestants would be sent to a random point on their respective islands.
The islands were quite big, it would take about three hours to jog from one end of the island to the other. They were also extremely close together though. Generally, there was only about a kilometer between each of these islands.
Kalob estimated the round would take one week and put a limit of two weeks. The runemasters seemed as surprised as she was when they heard of the arrangement but nobody complained. The only person that commented was an elder mage who had to visit a funeral in four days, he would then come back on the fifth day.
The first two were Villin and some boy named Leonardo who would be facing one another. Once they were in position the runes surrounding the stage flashed and the duo disappeared.
The other contestants standing around the stage were all blinded, once they managed to open their eyes properly again Villin and Leonardo were gone and Kalob asked for the following two to go onto the stage, Ruby and a girl whose name was Charlotte.
Once all of the eight contestants in the youngest age-group had entered, the runes had dimmed considerably. With another spell, the entire area shifted again, turning back into a house. Then everyone except the contestants in the older age groups was given a special pair of glasses, the older contestants were also isolated and brought to another room.
“Runemaster Granolf has made a few great advancements lately in his mastery, these glasses are proof of that! They are capable of receiving both sight and sound from magic eyes from truly great distances, we must thank him for his assistance in preparing this year’s challenges.”
Granolf Mafoli was full of smiles as he accepted praise from some of his peers.
When Kayley put on the glasses she immediately felt a certain degree of control. She could mentally choose between a huge number of ‘magic eyes’. After a while she found a magic eye that showed Villin in the distance, he had just started walking along the shore, trying to get a bearing of his surroundings.
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“The Magic eyes are set up in locations we believe will have interesting events or fighting locations. This includes the shorelines, clearings, and a number of other easily reachable locations.”
As Kalob explained Kayley went through the magic eyes on the island Villin was on, there were indeed a very large amount of them. She guessed about a third of the island was surveilled.
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Villin vigilantly began making his way alongside the shore, he had already guessed what was going on.
Looking at the curvature of the shore Villin guessed the island would have an oval shape of considerable size. The best way to find his opponent would probably involve his puppet but Villin was still very hesitant since he was assuming the other contestants had some way to watch.
The island as a whole seemed very typical. The shore was about ten meters long at most points at what point a forest appeared, one that Villin assumed sprawled over the entire island.
The only other thing he saw was a small mountain in the middle of the island.
The second inaccurate assumption Villin made was that his opponent was on the complete opposite end of the island. This would mean that if he kept following the beach, he would find his tracks at the very least.
But after thinking for a while, Villin decided not to. He wanted to keep as much of his abilities a secret, the best way to do that was to set a trap.
Magus were notoriously bad at setting traps Villin found. In all the books he read all he found were various ambushes where the target gets surprised by the amount of magus.
As for other traps, as long as you didn’t try to enter powerful magus’ houses you would be fine.
Villin didn’t intend to follow this principle. He figured he could close up to the mountain and set a proper trap, using not just a magic array but also the environment. Causing a number of rocks to fall shouldn’t be too hard.
And so, with this in mind, Villin began heading into the woods.
It wasn’t long before Villin felt troubled, the woods were extremely thick at most points, almost as if nature was forcing him to take certain paths.
Villin cursed as he thought of a way to go against this. He didn’t want to meet his opponent before he set things up and going along the places that probably used to be paths was a good way to find him prematurely.
At first, he used Icy Pike and Voccocito to try and get through the various vines and dense shrubbery but after dealing with it for a while Villin found a better way. When it came to vines, Vinea Tenura was a good spell to use. Even though he couldn’t control existing vines he used his own to push them aside making a path. When it came to low shrubbery he used ‘Syrtim Celer’ to cause them to drift underground, then a few seconds later he would have a cleared path to walk on.
Of course, he was still extremely slow as he had to control the vines and wait for the quicksand to take away the shrubbery but it was faster and less tiresome than before.
Another problem was that it wasn’t very stealthy. Even though he was very quiet, if his opponent followed the beach to find him, it would be very easy to follow him.
Still, Villin found it the best option, he drew a few magic arrays behind him as well that would alert him when someone passed through.
And so, he slowly but steadily made his way toward the mountain.