"...am I right ?"
I turn to the elder standing as a referee and ask with a smile to which he just nods and starts to leave the ring leaving only me, a kneeling Erastus and an appalled crowd. I slowly walk up to Erastus and I see the seriousness from the earlier duel has been wiped off leaving the Erastus I am familiar with, and with a smile I strech my hand to him.
He just stares at me for a moment and then with a smile he grabs my hand and says
"You are one dangerous opponent"
************
"Take note of your teammates so as not to lose them and do not under any circumstances swap with another teammate, is that understood ?"
"Yes sir"
We all chorus aloud as we stand in front of the forest facing dean Frederick
"You better(hehe). Now, you know the drill, except for our new students and so I will take my time to explain this so you can understand. Consult your group head for any question or confusion you may and will eventually have. You may leave, thank you"
With that he nods his head and turns to talk to one of the elders leaving the assigned group head to manage the chaos he has thrown a quarter of the students in. I turn to Erastus to see him looking at a piece of paper with a few names and he starts shouting their names, most of the names he called were around us, I guess they were already making their way here after the dean speech. I take a look at them and I see they were of different elements and some were veterans of this competition.
After gathering every member of the group, Erastus makes a grabbing motion in mid air and then blows whatever substance was in his hand and I notice the temperature drop, and also white powdery substance fall on each of us.
"I just placed a condition on the heart of everyone here, if anyone so much as make a move to switch to another group, you will wish for death. And uhm, follow everything I say else the same thing happens to you"
He smiles and starts walking while looking at the map he was given, leaving all 15 of us in shock, the veterans among us just kept walking with him
"Was that true ?"
I ask as I rush up to one of them
"I do not want to find out if it is"
"Why is that?"
"Everyone who knows Eros knows he is one ruthless bastard."
"What do you mean, he does not look like that"
"You are new, I suppose?"
"Yeah"
"The reason he is respected is not because of his closeness to the dean, but because of what he did during one of his competitions as a newbie. Every year hundreds of elementalists enrol into our school but they are filtered off by the end of their first year"
"What do you mean by filtered off ?"
"They are made to fight one another till the survivors emerge. Over hundred people made to fight to the death over the span of 80 hours till a handful of them is left, an estimate of 5 or 7 people are expected to emerge as survivors, the most this school has ever seen was 10 while the least was 4. That was before Eros arrived, he made over a hundred people hastags on twitter in 36 hours"
I stand there in shock as I stare at the senior and then at Erastus' back
"What about now, is it still the same system"
"No, that was before dean Frederick came into power, after that he put Eros in power over the student body saying he was the best for it, some said it was because he was the dean's cousin but the truth was he wanted to keep an eye on him and use him to keep an eye on the students activities,to make sure no one else stepped out of line, he was then known as Eros the bloody crystal, cause of his affinity to crystal and all, and the way he had made blood flow. After that he spent six month in power before appointing someone else to take over and then he went on to build his own body, after that he was known as Eros of the Sanctuaire des beaux hommes, no one dared to cross him after that.
I stare into the distance and then at Erastus, I then walk up to him
"Did you mean that ?"
I ask catching up to Erastus as he looks at the map
"Obviously, I have to do whatever it takes to get us to our destination"
"But_"
"Even if it means making them believe their lives are on the line"
I stop and look at him
"What!"
"What?"
I look at him as he stares at me innocently, seeing nothing wrong in him using his reputation to make empty threats to a bunch of people
"But if anyone of them slows us down or put us in a perilous situation, I am leaving them behind"
I smile as I look back at him as he stares at the map carefully.
A few days after walking, I see at the end of the forest, the dean and some of our elders talking with some people, I suppose they are the escorts sent from the other school to come pick us up. After a few minutes of walking everyone sees them and they get joyous. They lead us to several vehicles and we drive off to a hotel that has been prepared for us. When we get to the lobby, the dean made it clear that we just had 2 hours to get ready to go to the airport, meaning our stop was just to freshen up so as to look presentable before the students from the other branch at the airport and to the elders in the Sanctum of Sages.
************
As we get out from the hotel we get into the vehicles prepared for us and drive off to the airport, it was a short and quiet ride as everyone was tired and tried to conserve the little bit of energy they had. As we get on the airport we see the other students just arriving also, we watch at the side as the deans greet each other and beckon for us to go into the airplane, as soon as we got into the plane students who knew each other from each school greeted each other with smiles and hugs leaving me to realize this was the reason they conserved their energy during the ride. The once quiet students now began to chatter and laugh about every and anything. I found a sit unfortunately not by the window side as I wished and sat closing my eyes as I try to practice spreading my energy to see just how long I can hold it for. As I begin, I feel a light tap on my shoulder from behind and I turn to see Erastus with his smile waving his hand over signifying he wanted me to come over. I stand up and see the smile is still on his face, walking back to sit beside him, I see that even with the amount of students we did not look jam-packed and everyone was looking quite comfortable.
I sit beside him and he waves at me with a smile, I wave back and we started talking, I asked him how the Sanctum was and he told me it was like any other college or academy but the only people allowed to learn there are exceptional philosophers who wish to ascend to sainthood, the 'cream of the crop' as he had put it and the other set of people who could get in to learn were the top sages best apprentice, as he said those something about them made me think the Sanctum Of Sages was the same place as the Sages Resting Ground, but I discarded the thought, it may just be the enrollment process that may be the same, also if it was really the same place as the Sages Resting Ground then why did they allow student to come here and hold competitions. I decided on focusing on that, not wanting to raise my hopes.
I asked him to tell me more about the competition and he explained that the competition lasted a week, on the first day there would be a feast organized by the school two branches for the philisophers and for each other though I see no reason as to why they did that, on the next day there would go to pay their respect to the sages at sunrise and then when they come back, the slots would be drawn and taken and the announcement would be made, the next day the fights would begin. The competition would last for 4 days and on the 7th day they would pay their respects again and then hold a feast before departing the next day