CHAPTER 47: CHAPTER: 47, TOURNAMENT BEGINS

In the morning, every Blessed woke up from their sleep and got ready for the upcoming battle ahead.

Dainsleif also woke up, he wasn’t going to fight since everyone thinks his class and skill isn’t suitable for fighting. But he still needed to attend the tournament as the crown was still in his possession.

Everyone was present at the training grounds where most of the officials were present. They were all anticipating how much the Blessed has grown within the nearly 20 days.

According to the current events throughout the Empire, the invasion from the underworld has begun to show signs of appearance. Not that they would be threatened from the demons summoned within the borders of the Empire.

They have a detective artifact that was made by the Goddess Kairo herself. With its help, as long as they know what foreign activity, powers or items they are looking for, they can trace its exact location. Unless of course, the target leaves the borders of the Empire.

But the one that could threaten them are the demon forces that are summoned out of the Kaiser Empire. As the other kingdoms and empires outside the Kaiser Empire didn’t have the same detection abilities as them, so the appearance of demons were much more frequent than the Kaiser Empire.

The demon forces outside have ample time to grow strong enough to threaten them. And it won’t be long before they start to invade with larger armies.

This tournament would show them the growth rate of the Blessed and how they should allocate resources on them. Not only that, they were excited for how the new found skills would affect their growth as it could literally change a wastrel to an average powerhouse.

After everyone was present, Saintess Lily took the stage and announced, "Dear Blessed, may we begin the Tournament of the newbies.

As you can see, we’ll be drawing names from this jar right here. And the two names drawn would fight each other until only one remains standing. You may forfeit if you know you cannot win, but that would lower your evaluation scores for your future resource allocation. So it is advised to fight with all you’ve got even if you can’t win. Anyone intentionally escalating the fights would immediately be out of the competition with resources deducted that would be given to you."

"Let us begin then!"

**

After she said that, she picked up two names from the jar and read them aloud, "Enchanter Isaac and Witch Grace! Please step forward."

Hearing her words, two people from the original 30 students of their class stepped into the arena. Isaac is a B-rank Enchanter. His skills are mostly used for enchanting weapons and items with mystical effects and attributes.

Isaac should have been in the Mana combat section, but he insisted on joining the Blunt Combat as according to him, though being a Utility class, he would still need to understand the weapons he will enchant in the future. Additionally, he can still learn some level of self-defense as utility classes are the most vulnerable and most targeted subjects in a war.

Grace, as her class suggests, is a Witch. Someone who is mostly proficient in Witch-craft, like using minor curses and low to medium level magic, as her class was only of B-rank.

She is obviously in the Mana combat section, trying to learn other forms of magic’s like mid-level fire manipulation and dark spells that were her two innate skills.

After everyone awakened their mana, the classes were still held except most of them were trying hard to level up and have average stat points before they begin to learn various other mystical arts of this world.

Isaac and Grace both stood face to face both prepared with their weapons and spells. Isaac had his enchanted sword with various effects, like heightened durability and faint magic resistance.

While Grace stood, her hands already holding a fireball that didn’t seem to burn her even a little and a cryptic fire that was black and emitted faint soul-like faces. It was said to be ’Corrupted Soulfire’, a type of rare fire ranked 99th on the Mutated Fire list. A list that ranks strongest to weakest fire’s that are different from the Mystical Fire list.

’Corrupted Soulfire’ is just a mutated and weaker version of the original ’Soulfire’ from the Mystical Fire list ranked 79th. And now this very fire has given Grace a little advantage over Isaac as even though weak, the ’Corrupted Soulfire’ was still stronger than regular fire on her other hand.

With a whistle from the referee, they both rushed towards each other. They both had reached level 10 within the week hunting in the dungeon and their stats were pretty much the same, both invested most of their points on mana as their class had high mana requirements to be used properly.

Isaac had physical training and was proficient with some of the commonly used weapons, but he was still far from reaching beginner rank in any of the weapon arts. His moves were average, not fast enough that Grace can’t dodge.

Grace waited until Isaac was close enough before she threw the fireball right in front of him, which Isaac dodged with nearly getting hit. Both of them were close, and the small explosion caused by the fireball affected her a bit.

Throughout their entire fight, Isaac was mostly trying to catch up to Grace to attack, but Grace anticipated this and blocked him every time. She was moving less than Isaac but her mana was depleting faster than Isaac.

Because Isaac only used ample mana to activate his enchantments while she was using them everytime she attacked using much more mana.

But, even though Isaac had stamina recovery enchantment in his armor, the recovery speed was still pretty slow, that made him slower and slower, resulting in him getting hit by her Corrupted Soulfire.

At the end of their hour-long battle, the winner came out to be Grace.

The judges were very satisfied as both of them showed average battle intelligence. While Isaac was overconfident in his enchantments, Grace only used her magic when she was sure to hit or would be hit, which showed her calculation.

Both returned to their seat and Saintess Lily drew two more names from the name jar...

To be continued...