After two more calm days of walking, Kamys and Boe had finally reached a border of The Shadow Kingdom.

Boe was now looking at a huge black fortress. It was the He Clan’s castle that was used as a transition point to move from The Shadow Kingdom into The Dark Elf Kingdom and back. While Boe was shocked as he looked at the castle, Kamys was moving hastily in the direction of the main gates.

“Halt! Who goes there?” A commanding voice sounded from within the castle. Two figures appeared out of the castle, armed with swords and dressed in cyan military armor.

“We’re from the Black Scorpio school on our way to the Dark Elf Kingdom’s competition,” Kamys answered in a loud and unhesitating voice.

“So you two are alive? Good, your teachers and companions are waiting for you near our castle on elves’ territory.” Guard sounded indifferent, yet he remembered that people from the school passed by them and asked to look out for two young men.

“Then we will no longer bother you two,” Kamys said as he tried to pass through the gates.

“Little Kamys, is that you?” Suddenly Kamys and Boe heard a voice coming from the castle. A second later, blue-haired middle-aged man with a very solemn expression on his face appeared.

“Greetings, uncle Romeo.” Kamys lightly bowed toward Romeo.

“So it’s really you. Why don’t you come into the castle and chat with me a bit?” A kind smiled was on Romeo’s face as he patted Kamys on the shoulders.

“I’m very sorry, but I have to hurry and catch up with my teachers or I might miss the chance to participate in the elves’ competition.” Even though Kamys was apologizing, his voice didn’t show any emotions. That seemed rather strange to Boe, he got used to see Kamys emotional and cheerful all the time.

“Look at this old idiot. How could I forget that you’re participating in the competition? Well, I won’t hold you here then. My son and few nephews already left a few days ago and even your cousin passed by here yesterday. I wish you good luck then, Child of Fire.” Boe noticed that Romeo’s voice contained a hint of mockery.

“What was that about?” Boe wasn’t usually a curious person, but Kamys’ mood greatly changed after they passed through the gates. Kamys was surprisingly quiet and pensive.

“Nothing,” Kamys replied with just a single word. That made Boe even more interested in the issue. What could make always joyful Kamys become so serious and stressed?

“You call me your brother and help when I’m in troubles, but as soon as you face problems, you’re actually putting a wall between us?” Boe’s voice was very angry and aggressive.

“I… I don’t want to involve you in my clan’s internal issues.” Kamys was now even more dispirited than before. He would jump in to save Boe and risk his life for that without a doubt or fear, but he was now so depressed over internal affairs of his clan. This showed how serious were those issues, Boe probably could do nothing about that.

“Since you’re always calling me your brother, then your clan’s issues are mine too.” Boe wasn’t very emotional, but he felt a strong respect and gratitude toward Kamys after their previous experience.

“Sigh… I guess I don’t have any other choice but to tell you everything?” Kamys finally smiled as he looked at Boe.

“Yep, if you won’t tell me all you know yourself, I’ll have to beat you up and get all information I need by force,” Boe said with a serious tone and his face didn’t show even a little smile as if he would really do it.

“Alright. I already told you that I’m the current Child of Fire of my clan, right? And I told you that I was sent away from my clan because of demons’ threat, but it isn’t entirely true. While demons are really attacking us more than usual, there is still a treaty between their emperor and ours so there won’t be an actual war in near future. The real danger to my life comes from within the clan. The title “Child of Fire” was always in hands of the main family in my clan, I’m the first one to get it outside of the main branch of the clan. That’s why my father was afraid that the patriarch would want his grandchild to inherit his position and harm me because of that.” Kamys told the entire truth to Boe and his voice was trembling at the end of it.

“Understood. Don’t worry about that, whatever comes after you will have to deal with me first.” Boe patted Kamys on the right shoulder and tried to smile as kindly as he could.

“Now that I have your protection, I’m relieved.” When Kamys saw an ugly face Boe made, he couldn’t hold his laughter and his mood greatly improved.

“Are you here for business or tourism?” A tall, handsome youth with a dark-grey colored skin in a grey military outfit met Boe and Kamys before the border of The Dark Elf Kingdom.

“We’re here to participate in the competition. We’re from the Black Scorpio school of The Shadow Kingdom,” Boe answered calmly.

“Names?” Guard asked as he took out a huge book from the table on his right.

“Boe Nas and Kamys Tad.” Kamys called himself by the fake name, because he registered in the competition with it.

“Okay, here is your map. Your teachers are already waiting for you in Shkebik city.” Guard passed the map, and Boe saw that there was only Shkebik city on it and the way to reach it from borders of the kingdom.

Boe and Kamys reached Shkebik after three days of walking. On the way here, Boe found out that unlike legends about them, dark elves didn’t all have pointy ears and tall body. Pure blooded elves from ancient families were tall and only people of the royal family had pointy ears.

When they entered the city, they started searching for their teachers, but the city was too vast and there were too many hotels and inns. When they finally managed to find teachers, it was already very late and the competition would start the next day.

Boe noticed that Rid Hag wasn’t among teachers, but he didn’t ask any questions since he already suspected that Rid was the spy inside of Dooran’s camp. Other teachers have probably already punished Rid somehow. When teachers asked what happened to assassins, Boe lied that they somehow managed to avoid meeting them and then got here using a different route. Both Boe and Kamys didn’t want their true power to be known to anyone so they couldn’t tell that they killed three rank 2 assassins by themselves.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

Teachers weren’t stupid though, they have actually been to that mountain and saw corpses of assassins, but they would never think that two young men with rank 1 powers did that themselves. They knew that Kamys was from the Theodore clan so they naturally assumed that Kamys had a powerful guardian by his side who eliminated assassins.

On the next morning, Boe, Kamys and the rest from the school met up at street and went to the center of the city together. The competition was going to be held in a huge stadium with ten thousand seats for spectating.

The competition was actually called “Dark Elf King’s Trials”. Each participant would go through three trials consecutively. All tests were using illusion magic arrays.

The first one was called a “Trial of the warrior”. It tested participant’s fighting prowess. It gave maximum of twenty points based on a speed of completion. Only people with fifteen points or above were able to move forward.

“Trial of the hero” was the second one and it tested participant’s courage and determination. Maximum points earned in this trial were thirty points based on the time spent inside. Twenty-five points were a threshold to participate in the next trial.

The third trial was the “Trial of the leader” which tested participant’s leadership and decisiveness. It was a very mysterious trial, where each participant would see unique illusion built specifically for them based on their thoughts and fears. Amount of points earned would appear on the magic array once participant would finish the trial.

Final placements were determined by the sum of all three trials results. People outside of the top five would basically not receive anything, but glory and respect. Only five best participants were eligible to enter the next magic array.

And the last one was called the “Ancient King’s audience”. Each of the best five would enter an ancient magic array, which would grant them a chance to meet a strand of the legendary Dark Elf King’s soul, who has established The Dark Elf Kingdom many years ago. The king would then decide what to give to his guest based only on their short conversation. Most of people who managed to meet the king, came out with empty hands, but from time to time a genius would appear that would satisfy the king’s high expectations. Genius like that would get a heaven-defying treasure or world-breaking knowledge.

Originally, this was an yearly competition and only elves would participate in it. But in order to establish better relationships with The Shadow Kingdom and Church of Light, elves made their competition open to other races once in five years.

When Boe and his group entered the stadium from participants’ entry, they saw that the whole stadium was already filled with people. They then saw a lot of people standing at the center and started moving in that direction. When they reached the crowd, they saw a lot of different uniforms and emblems. People from all around the continent came here to compete for prizes from elves. There were close to ten thousand participants and more than half of them were dark elves.

“THE COMPETITION BEGINS IN TEN MINUTES. ANYONE WHO WON’T BE ON THE STAGE BY THAT TIME, WILL BE AUTOMATICALLY DISQUALIFIED.” A thunderous voice resounded throughout the whole stadium.

Ten minutes later, the scene was packed with young men and women. Boe was standing calmly, not caring about anything in the world. Kamys was looking around all the time and his fists were clenched. He was obviously looking for people from his clan.

“THERE WILL BE A HUNDRED MAGIC ARRAYS AVAILABLE FOR THE FIRST TRIAL. WHEN I WILL NAME YOUR SCHOOL OR FAMILY, COME OUT AND ENTER ARRAYS.” The voice was even louder this time and Boe felt a headache starting.

“GOLDEN GRYPHON, BLACK CROW...” The voice named a lot of schools and hundred people came out from the crowd. All of them had different clothing and aura, but all of them entered one of arrays each at the same time. A hundred young men and women were now standing in arrays as if they were hypnotized.

The stadium went quiet, no one knew the level of power of those students or the difficulty of the trial so they didn’t know what to expect.

“Cough-cough” A young girl in golden uniform suddenly coughed and blood sprayed out of her mouth as she fell onto the ground. A huge “0” appeared on the array. The girl has evidently didn’t manage to make any success inside of the first trial. Right after her, few people coughed just like her as they fell and “0” appeared on their arrays.

When all hundred people finished their trial, only ten people managed to get “15” points. All students present were best geniuses of their respective schools or clans and yet only ten percent were able to pass the trial.

…

After three hours, people with “16” points results started appearing. Apparently, elves saved stronger students for later. And at that moment, Boe finally heard his school’s name. He yawned, stretched and followed Kamys in arrays’ direction.

When he almost reached arrays, he noticed that a lot of people were watching in his direction. At first, he didn’t understand what was happening, but then he finally took a look at Kamys and it finally reached him. They were all waiting for the Child of Fire’s performance and he was just too close to Kamys so he mistook glances to be in his direction.

Boe stepped into the array and his vision got blurry. After a moment, he was already standing in a middle of the fighting scene and there was a person in front of him. It wasn’t actually a person, but the dark silhouette without facial features. But the most important part was the fact that it was a rank 2 wizard. Only now did Boe understand why all those so-called geniuses couldn’t get fifteen points. Even though it was only a weak rank 2 wizard who just broke through, it was definitely more powerful than most of the rank 1 wizard geniuses.

Boe has already activated his demonification form and took out the Claws of Enthriil from his ring. He needed to finish this as fast as he could in order to get more points.

Silhouette has started chanting some technique, but Boe started moving and was already two meters away from it. The opponent jumped back, evading Boe’s attack while finishing its technique’s chant. But before it could react, Boe suddenly changed his trajectory and ran past the silhouette. He then turned around to face the enemy and moved his right leg one step back. He concentrated on his moves as he clenched both his hands into fists, then connected them right in front of his chest; they were now engulfed in a thin layer of battle aura. He then attacked with both fists at the same time as he moved his right leg two steps forward. It was the same move that he used to defeat Loseac, but now it released a little amount of battle aura. But this little difference with an addition of the demonification form, astoundingly increased the power of the move.

*BOOM*

An impact forced Boe a few steps back and the silhouette disintegrate into a strange black powder on the floor.

Boe’s vision suddenly became blurry again, but when he opened his eyes he was back at the stadium again. He then looked below his feet and saw “20” on the array. He was pleased with the result and stepped out of the array, but then he noticed that everyone was looking at him with bewildered faces and the whole stadium was deathly quiet.

“Brother Boe, I guess we shocked quite a few people with our performances.” Kamys was standing in front of Boe and smiling from ear to ear. Kamys got out of the illusion even faster than Boe and both of them were from rank 3 school. While some people knew Kamys’ secret identity and could accept his result, Boe was completely unknown young man.

“Who is he? Do we have a dark horse in the competition now?” A young man with dark grey skin, white hairs, scarlet eyes and pointy ears was standing in the front of the crowd on stage with a very dignified and aloof expression on his face. But the most distinguished feature of his was a big scar across his forehead. His clothes were golden with an image of a crown on the chest.