About twenty minutes later the presenter left the arena leaving behind an audience that was still stunned. As he left, a few dozen wooden stands started rising out of the ground in the arena, as did multiple stairways allowing the spectators to enter said arena. Villin was surprised to see all the basic wooden stands had a signboard with names on them. Each stand was soon occupied by an individual or group that competed in the tournament. They would give signatures and if asked you would even be allowed to take equipment capable of recording pictures.
Villin had mixed feeling about this. On one hand, the situation seemed weird to him but he couldn’t exactly say why. When he thought about it, it made sense. Strong magus were idolized, giving these top students the celebrity treatment was somewhat natural.
Villin and his group calmly headed down, letting those that really seemed to be in a rush go first. Villin was surprised to see everyone that had a stand had magus and children lining up, even those that didn’t perform that well.
Villin wasn’t sure what stand to head toward until Amelia pointed one out to him. It seemed Aiden and his teammate had a stand themselves, Aiden stood at the side letting his teammate give most of the signatures. The group went toward the stand, and just as Villin hesitated between standing in line or just going ahead and walk up to him, Aiden spotted Amelia.
Villin could see a stunned expression on his face, he pinched his nose to make sure he wasn’t imagining things before quickly walking over. He looked at the four of them with a somewhat stunned expression. Then he looked at Amelia “You aren’t dead? You were in the list of casualties.”
Faced with Aiden who didn’t seem sure what emotion to feel, Amelia replied calmly “We managed to escape the academy in the chaos, Decorus did get me good though.” she moved aside her hair showing him her missing eye, causing him to take a step back in shock.
“I’ll go get the teachers.” With the same stunned expression as earlier, Aiden began running back up to The Academy’s section of the stands. His teammate looked at the situation from a distance in confusion, he didn’t hear what was said.
As for the other three, they didn’t ask Amelia why she lied. If she claimed she lost her eye in a fight against Decorus, they wouldn’t go against that, at least they had so much tact.
Only five seconds after Aiden entered the box hiding the important members of The Academy, two people exited hurriedly making their way down, Villin recognized both of them.
To the left was the bulky Pompei who taught them combat classes, to the right was a forty-or-so-year-old teacher Villin had seen once before. It was miss Valentina he had seen once before, she conducted the advanced tournament before the Decorus attacks.
The professor still had a monocle and she seemed quite nervous, soon she spotted them.
“My God, you all are still alive! After the attackers were pushed back we looked everywhere but couldn’t find all of you, we thought you were killed or captured!” the professor’s shouts caused some of the people nearby to look over it seemed something was going on here.
Before she could continue Pompei laughed loudly before commenting “I knew my top students wouldn’t die so easily, I’m the one that taught them after all!” he was grinning as he looked at Villin and Kayley.
“Yes, Yes, anyways since you have all been found now, go up to the box quickly, there is a lot to talk about.” miss Valentine said, rushing them to head up the stairs toward The Academy’s section.
As they were moving up Villin couldn’t help but let out a sigh of relief, at least they seemed happy they survived. He couldn’t help but have been worried The Academy would’ve rather had them dead so there would be no witnesses to confirm they seemingly left the students to die.
Once the group entered the spectator’s box, there was nobody else there, the headmaster had already left. Miss Valentine quickly began speaking.
“Please sit, I am willing to answer any questions you may have about the situation right now.” Pompei also grunted in agreement, he would make sure things were explained properly.
Of course, the group asked about the attacks first, why the teachers were evacuated but they weren’t. They learned the First Grade wasn’t the only section to get attacked. There was a weakness in one of their teleportation formations, this allowed Decorus to find the location of the first grade, third grade, and fifth grade. All teachers were immediately called to go to defend the fifth grade first as Decorus’s main force was also supposed to be there. After they dealt with the situation there they made their way toward the third grade and then the first grade.
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When Amelia asked why the students weren’t just all gathered in the fifth or third grade, miss Valentine and Pompei both looked a bit nervous.
“There are certain things you should know before I can properly respond to your question.” miss Valentine said hesitating a little. “The most important thing you should know is how schools generally rise above others, the method is the same with most of the top ten schools. The Academy itself also used this method allowing it to retake first place a long time ago.” Valentine calmed down as she composed her thoughts properly.
“When it comes to the schools, war is the main source of new strength. Every school had a large number of treasures, secret techniques, iron spell books, magic array blueprints, magic equipment, and much, much more. Things used to be simple like this, one school would find the coordinates of another school and attack. If the defending school really wanted to protect the treasures, at most they could take some and escape through a hyperloop.” she paused allowing the group to process this first bit of information.
“When someone escaped through a hyperloop, they would naturally get chased, fights would happen and the winner would keep the treasures, if the attackers caught up and got the treasures their school would probably rise quickly.”
“The problem is that now, long-distance teleportation arrays exist. Furthermore, they can be made in a way where they would self-destruct whenever the school’s defenses would be properly breached. When a school is being attacked, some people could just take the treasures and teleport away using the array, this would make attacking a school practically useless and not worth the trouble at all.”
“And so, an agreement was reached between the top twenty schools. In order to be able to continue gaining strength through warfare, they agreed to keep the treasures within the school grounds, they could protect the treasures with magic arrays and guardians but they can not be taken away. The Academy was one of the main contributors to this clause back when it was made.”
As for why the students weren’t evacuated, there are two reasons. Firstly, it would be a sign of surrender to have everyone retreat, The Academy would be acknowledging Decorus students were more powerful than their own. Secondly, with the students resisting, the focus of Decorus would be on them instead of finding the treasures, this was the treasures might not have been found by the time the teachers arrived to push back the invaders.”
Saying all of this the teacher didn’t look good, and when he looked at his companions Villin saw they also seemed very angry, Villin was the only one that didn’t seem to have a big problem with the way this was handled.
“I suspected The Academy would have somewhat lacking management. Even though non-mortalborn have to pay for tuition, it would normally not be nearly enough compared to what they are getting. We can only really contribute to The Academy when we get to the fifth or sixth grade, it’s normal they see us as disposable, since we have some value being used to delay the invaders, it is natural The Academy wishes to make use of us and get back some of their investment. As for those talented enough to the point where The Academy already expects them to be capable of graduation, looking at our situation and the fact Aiden is in the second grade, they should have been invited to skip a grade.”
The others looked at him with shock, they seemed to strongly disagree with his opinion but Villin didn’t mind. The Academy gave them a massive amount of resources, spells to learn, knowledge to gain, he always knew he would have to pay them back in some way, at least when they would ask him to contribute he might be able to point at this attack, claiming his contribution was already made.
“How many students were killed?” Villin asked looking miss Valentine in the eyes, she was surprised to see no anger or confusion whatsoever, just clarity.
“The first grade is split into two sections, section A and section B. Section B was attacked, only thirty percent of the students survived,” she said in a somewhat sad tone.
Villin nodded with a sigh, he wondered if more of his classmates survived. He didn’t hold any grudge toward The Academy whatsoever, instead, he hoped he would be able to return as soon as possible. He still had a lot he needed to learn and he wanted to learn it quickly. He doubted The Academy would take this attack lightly and suspected they were looking for Decorus’ school feverously.
“Oh right!” Amelia said, looking at the two teachers in front of them “We managed to take professor Richard with us, we also got the spell, and technique books from his classroom.
Hearing this, miss Valentine looked at them with surprise “Any treasures you managed to save during the attack are now considered yours, this is to thank you for keeping said treasures out of Decorus’ hands. As for professor Richard, although he could also be considered as a treasure since he is no longer a living being, I am sure The Academy would be very willing to buy him back at a high price. This goes for all treasures you might have gotten, by the way, The Academy is willing to buy everything back at a fair price if you wish for it.”
Amelia nodded as she looked at her companions, without saying a word they all came to a consensus. “At this point, we would like to sell professor Richard back to The Academy, we believe he is more useful as a teacher compared to a crystal,” Villin said this time as he reached into his jacket taking out the crystal their professor was trapped in.
“I’ll take care of this one!” Pompei said as he took the crystal out of his hands “Richy and I always got along well and I aint letting my stars get scammed!” after yelling out these words he made his way outside.
Even though the others had mixed feelings due to the knowledge dropped, Villin felt rather good. At the end of the day, they profited from the attack on the school. Iron spell models were worth a lot, the creation process was extraordinarily hard and the creator had to make certain sacrifices to create them. If they chose to sell them they would surely get another massive windfall.
But well, for now, it was time to head back to The Academy.