It turned out there was a reason that not many of the more powerful students had shown up so early.

It turned out that quite a few soul armours of poor quality were given out towards the last of the thousand.

Even the third years fighting at the beginning were only peak E rankers.

The second years were barely better than F rankers, and the first years didn't bear speaking about.

It was closer to two ordinary people fighting with a little bit of armour.

While the older fights looked a lot more controlled, the first few fights of my year were little more than people running at each other.

While it had been quite a few years since I had combat training of any kind, it would be apparent to anyone that most of them were amateurs.

That trend, unfortunately, continued for most of the morning. The first-year fights usually finished quicker.

The older years could drag on far longer. With near equal stats and similar training, the fights could sometimes go on for ten minutes.

After an hour, the first years had only reached the E rankers themselves.

I hadn't realised that they would do the entire bracket of the F-rankers first thing in the morning, with only the top four being eligible to fight in the E-rank bracket.

It was nearly midday when the actual fights started to begin. The older years, D rankers had come and gone. Some of them had been interesting fights. The few light or Heavy types with actual manifesting weapons of some sort.

The other types could do nothing but forfeit the round. Of course, their rankings were weighted slightly differently. It wouldn't only be this tournament that would do so.

They would each undergo individual testing on their own time.

As the older years continued to fight, the seeding became very clear. The first few hours had been the bottom five hundred. Now, it would be the top.

A few more people began to trickle in as the top third year took her place on the stage.

This wasn't a fight I expected much from.

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The number one ranked third year versus the number five hundredth.

A A-ranker versus a C-Ranker. A fight that was never going to end in any different way.

The A-ranker didn't even have to activate her soul armour to take the man out. A heavy who had immediately hidden behind his shield once the match began.

That proved to be nothing in front of the strength of a peak A ranker. She ripped through the shield with ease.

She pierced through his body with a single fist.

Like that, the match was over. Brutal and fast. Far beyond what I had been expecting.

The seats around me were still far from full, so I had no one to question about the identities of who was fighting.

I hadn't been involved with who was who in the last few years in the academy. My mind had been focused on other things.

The older-year fights continued similarly, with the higher-seeded fighters destroying the lower seeds.

For the first-year fights, there still wasn't much to see. There had been a large quantity of E-rankers this year. More than the norm.

Creating the new Types seemed to have taken most of the materials from the Sages Will, leaving few to go around for the remaining bindings.

That meant very few interesting fights. Some had a few people who had trained in combat. But they were few and far between.

Another person finally joined me in the front row. Unfortunately, it wasn't someone I felt like talking to.

Emilia Roman appeared in the arena, led to a seat beside me. She surveyed the arena as if she were the owner of it all. Which she could have been.

I had no idea about the true power of the Roman family. Only knowing that I didn't want to have anything to do with them.

"Nice to see you again, Kajus. I trust you had a good evening."

I wasn't sure how much she actually wanted to talk to me. But I decided I wanted to put my best foot forward. This would be my first one-on-one conversation with another new Type since I had met Arthur on that fateful day.

"I did. I had quite a relaxing evening. Not having to prepare for the ranking took some stress off."

Emilia continued looking at the matches that were going on. Her mouth soured slightly.

"The others were training last night. Me alongside them."

I wasn't sure if she was trying to reprimand me or what she meant by what she said.

"By the time I returned from putting the wolf in the stable, I couldn't find anyone else to practice with."

Emilia didn't look pleased with that answer. Her eyes still focused on the few fights of interest.

"You know as well as anyone else where the practice area is. We will all need to work hard this coming year. There is only one person in our year who I haven't seen training at one point or another. Can you guess who that is?"

She finally turned to look at me with a pointed look.

I supposed that was a good point. I hadn't been training much in sight of anyone since I had arrived. I had spent most of the time I could in the stables working with my monster as much as I could.

Which left much of my combat training to the side, from the display I had seen so far today. I didn't have to worry about the combat abilities of many of the F or E rankers. It was only the D rankers who seemed in any way competent fighters.

Fighters that, with my current stats, it wouldn't matter my skill level. I would be ground into the dust.

"Emilia, I have been practising with the wolf whenever I can. My physical stats would not allow me to compete with any of you. I can try to join in with those trainings. But it wouldn't do either of us any good. If you have any other suggestions, then I am very open to hear them."

That might not have been the best way to go about it.