Chapter 27. Year One

“Ken! Time to go!” Genesis shouted as she knocked on Ken’s dorm door and waited alongside Lovetta and Indra.

In typical fashion, Ken opened the door while yawning. After a quick greeting, the four headed for the stadium to grab some breakfast from the multitude of stalls and enjoy the final day of the year end tournament as well as the last day before they get to head home.

Other than a few weeks of drama, the second semester of the first year went by rather quickly for Ken and the girls. Not much of anything happened for Ken other than spending his days studying, training and once in a while a secret make out session and the girls simply went on with their days enjoying each other's company and grew together closer as friends while also trying to sneak in secret make out sessions with Ken behind each other’s back.

As for Indra, while she became very good friends with the girls over the semester and got much closer with Ken as well, her relationship with him remained platonic.

True to her words, Indra ended up crashing the finals and passed not only the beginner sections of every subject to ensure her enrollment for another year, but she also managed to pass every subject all the way up to advanced level like Clare and Alice already did and can now just focus on getting at least one subject to expert level in the next four years.

For Lovetta, by the skin of her teeth managed to get to expert level on her speed enhancement and as Ken predicted, with a subject at expert level, Lovetta was exempt from the beginner courses and now have six more years of guaranteed enrollment.

Emma ended taking the exams as well after Ken talked to the staff just so they could get a gauge on where she is at after Ken spent so much time tutoring her. While she didn’t pass any beginner exams, she did rather well for someone who had never been to school and studied for less than half a year.

The slacker duo Alice and Genesis skipped the finals since they pretty much spent the whole year doing nothing to improve their grades. While Alice was doing actual work tutoring Ken and helping him with all of his studies. Genesis spent the whole time looking for opportunities to get closer to Ken just like right now with Alice and Clare spending the week with family, Genesis made sure to get as intimate as she could.

Not only did Clare retain her number one rank overall, but she also managed to get expert level on history and math on the written exams and water element on the practical side. Naturally, Clare with her ultra-competitive nature fumed over Lovetta’s higher scores on all of the physical sections and even with Ken trying to logic with her that Lovetta is focusing all of her energy on just the physical training, Clare was agitated the entire day.

Ken got rewarded for all of his efforts and easily passed all of the beginners written classes. Since he was also tutoring Emma, his fundamentals were very strong and ended up almost getting full marks. Sadly, his goal of getting above the intermediate levels so he could start the advanced lessons at the beginning of year two did not pan out, but Alice was more than happy to keep on tutoring him.

On the practical portion, Ken really impressed all of the girls by passing intermediate level on all of the categories. According to Clare, almost everyone should have subcategories they are naturally better at just like how she is with water element and Lovetta is most proficient with speed enhancement even when they spent equal time training each.

However, when Ken got his scores, he ended up with the exact same score on all of his elemental spells and likewise, all of his physical enhancements ended up getting enhanced for the exact same amount. While Ken thought nothing of it, Clare was especially impressed and hypothesized that because he never knew anything and started from zero, with him been exceptionally smart as well, he was able to train up everything equally without any natural biases towards any specific area which meant that his max potential is just that much higher from the ability to utilizing everything at a higher level.

With all of his hard work and dedication, Ken ended the first year of class climbing all the way from the worst ranking of 1022 all the way up to rank 777. And thanks to Clare, all of the commoners got to study and review the materials with the new friends they had made and since everyone who got selected are individuals with the highest of potential, all 1022 first year students passed and are moving on to year two.

For the tournament, since he had no one to impress and felt like he had no chance to finish high enough to get a cash prize, Ken decided to sit out once again and enjoyed the show with Genesis and Indra for the first 3 days during the student tournament with Lovetta joining them when the open tournament started on day 4.

Sadly, Emma was working overtime during tournament week and was too busy to join and watch the events. But since she was getting paid handsomely for putting in the extra hours helping out at the stadium and stalls due to the influx of tourists, and as they were days away from going home to be with family, Emma was more than happy to take on the additional work so they could return home with pockets full of money and buy their family everything they would need.

For the girls that participated in the tournament, Alice did well enough on everything to be part of the top 10 but couldn’t finish in the prize pool. But since money doesn’t matter to her, she was happy enough with her results since they kept her dad in a neutral mood but Ken warned that she better start trying the next semester before her rank falls even more and his neutral mood turns negative.

Lovetta once again finished first and got the 1000 academy prize on the showcase portion to the surprise of no one based on what happened half a year ago. And with her success from before, it was clear that whoever created the “random” drawing tournament bracket got told to not have her run into Clare or Luke until the top four so they could promote her more due to her growing popularity as a commoner who is showing great promise.

With her top-level physical abilities for the first years, Lovetta easily won her matches all the way until she reached the top 4 where she ran into Clare once more. Since Clare had got more experience with actual combat, her advanced magic interwoven with physical enhancements and her long-ranged attacks was just too much for Lovetta to overcome and for her efforts to reach the top 4, Lovetta got another 1000 points in prize and ended the tournament 2000 points richer which is worth 4 ounces of gold if she was to trade it in for actual gold coins and twice as much money as Emma made working almost every day for 5 months.

Clare easily finished first on the elemental portion of the showcase while bitterly accepting second on the physical portion knowing that Lovetta is simply superior at least for now. Once again, she met Luke in the finals of the tournament, and it turned into another really exciting match no matter how much Ken hated the Darrumburgh noble.

While Clare spent the majority of her free time studying and training pre and post the incident, it seemed like Luke wasn’t slacking off either. Compared to six months ago when Clare won through catching Luke off guard. The Darrumburgh noble wasn’t going to fall for the same trick twice and he was much more cautious while also having improved greatly on his combat abilities.

The match lasted the whole time allowance to the cheering crowds when neither could land a finishing blow and it was eventually ruled a victory for Clare to the cheering elves. Even though she ended up winning once again, Clare was clearly upset at Luke’s growth and her failure to finish the match convincingly.

The rest of the matches went pretty similar to how it did half a year ago with both Xandrian and Dimitri won for their year and Vincent Aguirrane the 5th year winner from Darrumburgh who still got the same hype and praise he did from Lucia half a year ago with no new contender that challenged any of the top students.

For the open tournament, the same story played out where neighboring kingdoms got their matches in round one for the rivalry and while the fights where exciting when it was only amongst the regular participants,but once the top ten heroes joined the bracket, no one really impressed compared to the top ten expect the same 20-year-old grizzly beastman Fernard Aethelwulf who once again destroyed competition all the way up until his match against the hero in his bracket.

Unlike the last tournament where the 7th ranked hero Siveril faced off against the 10th ranked Valentina, the 9th ranked hero Frederick was placed into the same bracket as Siveril while Nolan the speed star ended up facing Valentina.

Since either Siveril or Frederick had the potential and are the two heroes not selected for the academy, Frederick’s adaptable fighting style and overall jack of all trades abilities worked well against Siveril’s heavy armor and tanking fighting style and after 20 minutes when the match got called, Frederick the human hero emerged the victor for doing more damage overall and was able to secure himself the 7th rank while Siveril the lizardman hero falls to rank 9 with the loss.

Valentina the 10th ranked elf hero who specialized in ranged magic also seemed to match up well against Nolan the cheetah beastman hero. Unlike the matchup from half a year ago where Frederick could do nothing against Nolan’s speed, Valentina with her mastery in magic and the limit in arena space, she was able to cover the arena with large ice pillars that forced Nolan to reduce his speed with all of the obstacles.

While Valentina could not track Nolan’s speed like some of the other heroes, by aiming her spelling at strategic locations and placing barriers where she predicted she would get hit, it was another match that lasted the full 20 minutes and another upset where the 10th ranked hero out damaged the 8th ranked and Ken got to see two new faces in the final day of action.

As much as Ken hoped something new would happen, the top four heroes are just too strong and while the 10th hero got to claim the 8th seat for the next 6 months and the 9th got the 7th spot, the top 4 are far too strong to get upset with Zishell and Julius on another tier all together and battled it out once again with Zishell winning for the 12th time in a row. Still curious about what Clare meant when Zishell told her that he had awakened, Ken hoped that one day, he would get to know more details.

With the end of year tournament now over, Lucia once again went around and interviewed the students and with how well Lovetta performed, it was not a shock that Lucia appeared next to Ken and the girls for an interview.

Even after a full year at the academy, Lovetta had not learned how to speak properly when she was not talking to Ken and once again, Lucia abandoned her attempt to interview Lovetta and spoke with Ken instead.

With his natural confidence and lack of caring, Ken spoke comfortably with Lucia for the world to see. They talked and joked about different subjects, about Lovetta and her amazing performance and Lucia finally asked why Ken had not signed up for the tournament himself.

“You see, until I feel I am good enough to finish at least in the top four, I don’t want to waste my effort and it’s better to just watch and enjoy the show.” Ken answered casually.

“Do you feel like that time will come soon?” Lucia asked curiously.

“Oh yea, for sure. With how well I am progressing with my studies right now, I think by next year this time, you will see me down there competing. And if the bracket creator would do me a favor and not let me get matched up against Clare, Lovetta or Luke, I think I would make it pretty far.” Ken answered with a laugh.

After chatting with Ken for a bit longer, Lucia was just about to leave when she spotted Indra and the attention was quickly shifted to the merman girl. The moment the mirror turned from Ken to Indra and Lucia asked her a question, Indra quickly hid away behind Genesis to the disappointed Lucia who realized she got another dud on her hand.

“The merman’s name is Indra, she’s from the kingdom of Atlantica. Super smart girl, she passed advanced level on all of the subjects so if she actually entered the showcase, she would have placed pretty high amongst the first year.” Ken said helpfully knowing Lucia wanted information on Indra since she is a merman.

Glad that she was able to get some information on the merman girl, Lucia turned her attention back to Ken and the two chatted some more about Indra, his relationship with the merman girl and eventually, she thanked him and moved along to interview other individuals that stood out in the tournament.

With the interviews over and everyone satisfied with another exciting tournament, the stadium began to empty while Alice and Clare joined the group to walk back and get changed for the banquet happening later that night.