Genius Seventh Prince 60 Third Stage - Battle!

Soon the second stage of the exam was finished and the kidswere gathered together again. When Greyson looked around, he was extremely shocked by the extremely small amount of children who passed. At the beginning, there were around 500 or so kids, but now the passing amount was around 25 kids. Facing such a stringent pass rate, Greyson couldn't help but feel a bit more proud of his accomplishments. He was also excited to get started with the third stage. This is the time where he can actually fight with other kids to test his combat ability with his magic. His talent and ability could also attract a teacher which would allow him more one-on-one attention from a professor instead of attending large lectures with a majority of the students. Ronan had mentioned to him that as little as none could be chosen to be a higher-up's personal disciple and usually it is only children from the top ten families who are chosen.

Hearing this, Greyson did not find it surprising as those children received the best resources and training since they were young, plus they were born with talent due to their noble bloodline. However, he also had strong belief in his own ability and talent. If he fought his hardest and laid everything out on stage, he was confident that someone should desire him as a personal disciple. Only, he was not sure how powerful a teacher he could attract. As the more powerful the teacher, the more picky and particular they are about students. It might not be that he is not talented enough, however, it could be that he was not talented in their occupation or element of expertise. Plus, how hard is it for one teacher to fully teach a student with seven elements. Greyson had headaches just remembering names of spells let alone be able to learn any of his elements really comprehensively. With no multi-element teacher at Dalia Academy, Greyson had started to worry about plateauing in his improvement. A lot of people say that there are a plethora of multi-element teachers in the Idris Kingdom, so he was excited to find a teacher who could maybe understand his situation more.

The Head Examiner from before finally appeared before the group again.

"Hm... Not bad of an amount this year. Seems there is a fairly large amount of talent in this generation. Well I will allow you all to know my name now as you are now students of this academy. I am one of Aurora Academy's Vice Principals, my name is Elman Morninghand. I would first and foremost like to congratulate you all in your acceptance into our academy as this is no easy feat. However, I would also like to take this moment to warn away any complacency this accomplishment may inspire. This is not the end. Just because you were accepted does not mean that this acceptance is permanent. We test our students every three months to check on progress and if it is not up to par than you will be expelled from our academy. We do not accept laziness nor slackers. Every single student accepted into this academy is a genius, you are no longer as special as you previously believed so I hope that you will all continue working hard to your own goals!"

All of the newly accepted students seemed to be in a daze. Just a couple minutes earlier they had been abuzz with excitement and arrogance for passing the exam while so many had failed. They were expecting grand words of encouragement and congratulations, but were instead greeted with pressure and a bucket of cold water. In the end, though, they all understood why Vice Principal Morninghand had decided to do so. It was too difficult to get into the academy, however, there were still around 25 that got in every three years. The numbers would build up and each of them are all geniuses in their own right which means that hard work and practice will start to separate the stellar students from the average students.

Seeing that all the children seemed to understand his point, Morninghand nodded with approval.

"Alright, it seems as though you all have taken my words to heart. Now it is time to allow your talents to stand out on the stage. It is the battle tournament! You now are all accepted students, but your treatment cannot all be the same. Life is unfair, you must accept this truth and work hard for your own preferential treatment and resources. Their is an odd number so we will first have a drawing to see which lucky student will draw the bye."

Other than a couple of weaker passing students, the rest of the students were actually hoping they would not draw a bye. The more they battled, the more they chances they had to show their prowess. In the end, the largest use for all magicians in the kingdom was in war and defending the kingdom. Noble families had an unshakable power and position because their ancestors and many generations afterwards had many achievements in wars. Magic was something that could heal, help grow food, set fires, provide water. All positive everyday chores that could improve the daily life of the commoners. Human nature, however, corrupts magic into a tool for the power-hungry.

A teacher walked around to each of the students who drew a ball from a spatial bag. The one who draws the red ball out of the white ones was the one who received the bye. About halfway through, before the teacher had even teacher Greyson, the red ball was drawn. It was drawn by a familiar face with bright red hair and brown eyes. The red ball for the bye was drawn by the princess of the Ivywood family, Natalia! Unlike the others, who were trying to avoid choosing the red ball, Natalia was extremely excited to see that she was the one who chose it. She hated fighting in tournaments the most, she didn't want to waste her energy in pointless contests of strength. Next to her, Leopold could only shake his head at her delight. Even her luck was so heaven-defying all the time, but she was born with such a lazy personality. He couldn't help but pity her father who was always breaking his back trying to find ways to force her to practice.

The rest of the children still chose a white ball from the bag as each one had a number 1 through 12 and matched with another. This was to obviously randomly set the first round of matches. Greyson had chosen the number 8 and began looking around for his opponent. After a minute or so, he came face to face with his coming opponent. The boy was lanky and slightly gloomy looking, he even had the assassin badge as his occupation. Feeling the slight killing intent that radiated off the boy, Greyson grew serious and starting preparing himself for the fight. While he was meditating off to the side, the first four matches began. They were all kids that he did not recognize, but from the whispers to the side, a couple of them were quite famous geniuses in their own right. Watching for a little while, Greyson soon got bored by the fights. Most of these kids had no fighting experience and only threw out magic spells as fast as they could hoping to hit the target. There was no thought or strategy behind their moves. Soon, it was time for Greyson's match after the rest had ended. Both of them were called up to the fourth stage with a teacher presiding over the match to make sure no serious injuries occur.

Bowing as per protocol in friendly battles, Greyson introduced himself. His opponent bowed normally back introducing himself as Victor Absinthe. Absinthe? Greyson was a little surprised to have met another person from this family, however, seeing the assassination badge suddenly made sense. Inwardly rubbing his temples, he wondered if he had some sort of bad fate with the Absinthe family.

Focusing back on the battle, Greyson brought out Mesmer. He decided to try not to use Genesis yet.

"Battle, START!"

At his words, Greyson immediately began playing his flute. It was a grating song on the ears that confused and induced fear in the listeners. Of course, the judges were not affected, however, Victor had been affected for a good couple seconds. Seeing this chance, Greyson quickly summoned his Fire Arrow. However, to his surprise, Victor broke out just before the arrows hit there target. Diving to the side, the arrows only slightly grazed his right arm and leg. He then sank straight into his shadow disappearing from the stage. Losing sight of the opponent, Greyson felt slightly nervous, however soon his red eyes turned to a black color as he felt the dark elements around him. Finally, he felt the elements gather behind him so he quickly dodged to the side and a dagger stabbed out right next to his face. Summoning the shadows, he quickly willed them to bind Victor. He forgot, however, that as a dark magician as well, Victor could faze through the binds. Escaping from the binds, he sunk into the ground again.

Standing still and waiting, Greyson continued feeling the dark element movement around him. This time, when Victor popped out with his quick dagger again, Greyson quickly summoned an earth wall, before his eyes turned purple and he grabbed Victor's arm holding the dagger. Paralyze turned on and Victor screamed out as his entire body was shocked. Falling to the ground, his body continued to seize on the ground.

Letting out the breath he hadn't realized he was holding, Greyson looked over at the judge to make the call. At that time, he finally realized that the judge and the rest of the passed students were looking at him in amazement. Thinking about it, he realized he had already revealed 5 of his elements. Wind in the beginning, fire next, then dark, and then before the end he had used both earth and lightning. Anyone would be shocked. Natalia with her 3 elements was already super rare, let alone someone with 5 elements. However, they had yet to realize that he had seven. Everyone except Natalia did not know he had more. She remembered that day in the forest that he had used the light element to heal her. Only his water element had yet to show itself to everyone. Even Leopold had gripped his spear harder with fighting spirit burning in his eyes.

"Uhm... do I win?" Greyson finally spoke out to the judge.

"Huh? Oh, yes! Stage four, Greyson wins!" The judge first broke out of his daze in confusion before blushing about his own obvious shock. Greyson smiled happily before leaping off the stage and going back to his original spot to rest. To renew himself to his optimum state, he continued meditating. His match had finished the fastest, so the next round of matches had to wait for a while longer before they could go up. This time, Leopold had finally gotten up to have his first match. Sensing the difference in the atmosphere, Greyson opened his eyes to see Leopold ascending the battle stage. Breaking out his meditation, he decided to stay awake and watch this match, as Leopold and Natalia were his biggest rivals in this batch of new students.

To his surprise, right before the match began, Leopold glanced over and met Greyson's eyes before he smiled confidently. Once the match began, Greyson was not disappointed and was instead shocked. Leopold held his spear with strength and summoned a fire armor around his body while his spear turned icy. Using two elements at the same time! He had never been taught this, nor did the idea cross his mind. Mentally kicking himself, Greyson was annoyed that he had never thought to experiment with this before. He was stuck in his narrow vision of single-element spells, so he never thought to try to see if he could use that at the same time. The opponent was not too weak and used the earth element to summon an armor as well. However, Leopold slammed apart the armor with his spear and the opponent's body was frozen into ice. This was not just due to his elements, but Leopold's body's physical strength was also high from constantly practicing with such a heavy spear.

In just seconds, the match was already over. Unlike with Greyson's match, though, no one was showing any shock. Greyson could tell that everyone saw this as a matter of course which made him think that this must not be Leopold's full strength yet. Clenching his fists, he saw that Leopold looked in his direction again with challenge in his eyes. A sudden urge to get on stage and fight washed over Greyson as he started to impatiently look forward to his next matches.

Chapter end