The Dueling Class assessment was held in Battle Hall No. 1.
Professor Pava Jones, dressed as crisply as ever, arrived at Battle Hall No. 1 well before one in the afternoon.
With her came the first-year faculty: Professor Kazel, Professor Silf, and Professor Lily.
Professor Kazel studied the dueling hall's facilities with obvious interest and asked in passing, "Professor Jones, what format are we using for this assessment?"
Professor Jones folded her arms. "Rookie Tournament rules, obviously. Not every first-year is Dark Demon. Scraping together twenty usable Magic Guide Cards by the end of term is hard enough for most of them."
Professor Lily lifted her chin, nose in the air. "Naturally!"
Professor Silf's tone turned rather serious. "Pava, since you've asked us to grade, I assume you've drawn up a detailed scoring standard?"
Professor Jones smiled and nodded. "Of course."
But just as Professor Silf's face began to relax, Jones went on, "Whatever the three of you score them is the best standard there is."
Professor Silf's expression went black on the spot. Even Professor Kazel was left blinking. Only Professor Lily seemed thoroughly gratified by the arrangement.
"Fine," Professor Silf said, resigned. "There's still time before it starts. Let's work out a rubric together."
Professor Kazel glanced up at the blissfully carefree Professor Jones. "Professor Jones," he said suspiciously, "this wasn't the outcome you were angling for all along, was it?"
Professor Jones waved both hands at once. "How could it be? I genuinely trust you all!"
…
While the four professors hurriedly hammered out their rubric, the first-years were dragging themselves toward Battle Hall No. 1.
Three failed assessments in a row had sunk a good number of students into a low they had never known before.
The dueling assessment, which everyone had once looked forward to, seemed to have lost all its appeal.
Nobody had guessed beforehand that the practicals would grow harder with each subject. Some students had already written themselves off as failing all three, and their knees wobbled as they walked.
Only a handful of top students still had any appetite for the dueling assessment, eager to prove themselves in it.
As more and more of them filed into Battle Hall No. 1, the air inside grew heavy.
"There's that feeling."
Dark Demon knew that leaden pre-exam mood well. A flicker of nostalgia crossed his face, and then he strode into Battle Hall No. 1.
The rules of the dueling assessment had been settled long in advance.
This assessment used Rookie Tournament rules: an entered deck had to contain between twenty and forty Magic Guide Cards.
The Magic Sphere's Life Barrier was set to the second level — two thousand points.
The battlefield in Battle Hall No. 1 measured 30 by 20, a little larger than a basketball court.
After growing used to a 120-by-80 field, it felt cramped, with hardly any room to open up.
And a Life Barrier of only two thousand magic points was terribly fragile — as if a flick of the fingers would shatter it.
Dark shook his head and let the thought go.
The assessment itself didn't interest him much, but his little goal of finishing first in the year was enough to turn him into a dueling machine.
The format was pure random matchmaking; every student had to duel two rounds, one after the other.
The invigilating professors would score each of the two rounds separately, and the average of the two would stand as the final mark for the dueling practical.
Professor Jones claimed the grade wasn't about winning or losing, only about how you dueled.
But everyone knew perfectly well that a victory would tilt the scoring in your favor.
"Wonder who I'll be drawn against."
Dark's gaze swept once around the hall, then came straight back.
…
Ten-odd minutes later, rubric hastily finalized, the four professors climbed onto the raised dais and drew every student's eyes.
The students drifted together beneath it without thinking, all of them looking up, waiting for the assessment to begin.
Pava Jones, as instructor of record for Dueling Class, took center stage and announced, "Today's dueling assessment will be run jointly by me and your professors of Summoning, Magic Guide Theory, and Arithmetic Class. The rules have been gone over again and again in class. If any of you still don't understand them… then go on not understanding! Come up now, in order, and collect your number tags."
They were the familiar red-and-blue double-faced tags: channel a little magic into one and it split cleanly into a red half and a blue half.
One by one the students went up, took a tag, split it, handed the blue half back, and kept only the red.
Once everyone had one, Professor Jones drew four pairs from the jar of blue halves in front of them all and read the four pairs of numbers out on the spot.
The students called took their tags to fields one through four and climbed onto the duelist platforms to prepare.
The four professors, meanwhile, made their way to the judges' seats at each field, serving as referee and scorer both.
There was no ceremony whatsoever. The first four duels of round one began the instant four whistles blew as one.
As the turn countdowns surfaced in the projections, something in the first-years snapped awake, hauling them out of their slump.
A duel carries its own natural pull. Without meaning to, the students shoved everything else out of their heads and settled into watching.
The eight duelists stood on their platforms, looking down over the fields, their faces gone hard.
…
Half an hour slipped by with the assessment in full swing.
Dueling Class hadn't run an in-class duel competition in a very long time, and most of the first-years were badly out of practice.
But as the rounds went on they visibly loosened up, and their duels began to look like the real thing.
The four professors scored each student on the qualities their dueling revealed, and announced nothing.
Which only left some of them more uneasy — the losers above all.
Off at the edge of field one, Dark had been watching the whole time, building up a picture of the average first-year's level.
Beside him, Diana had gone from itching for her turn to plainly bored.
On his other side, Rose was slowly losing her nerves.
As yet another duel ended, Professor Jones drew the next pair without missing a beat and called out, "Next up — number sixty-six and number twenty-nine."
"That's me."
Dark glanced down at the tag in his hand, then turned his head — and caught number twenty-nine, Justin Wayne, looking around as well.
Their eyes met, and in that instant both understood: here was their first-round opponent.
"Him, is it?"
Dark's interest picked up a little.
Compared with classmates who had never so much as entered the Rookie Tournament, Justin Wayne — one of the first year's seven registered duelists — was at least an opponent worth some anticipation.
He gave Justin Wayne a small nod, then turned back to the two beside him. "I'm heading up."
"Good luck!" Diana pumped a small fist.
"Good luck," Rose added shyly.
Dark walked toward the red side's duelist platform.
Justin Wayne, confirming that his opponent was Dark Demon, let a pained look flicker across his face.
The friends around him patted his shoulder in a moment of silent mourning.
"Don't panic, Justin. Professor Jones said the grade isn't based on winning or losing."
"You believe that?"
"What choice do we have but to believe it?"
"Anyway — good luck. Give it everything you've got. If you can survive one turn, call it a win!"
"Uh… that's laying it on a bit thick. Even against Dark I'm not completely helpless. Two or three turns, at least — never mind. I'm going up."
Justin Wayne shook his head and set off for the blue side's duelist platform.
The moment the pair of them stepped out, the students watching from the sidelines burst into talk.
Dark Demon aside, Justin Wayne was a figure of some note among Knight House's first-years. His upright character and bright, healthy looks made him easy to like, and unlike the more solitary Emma and Virt of Knight House, he had gathered a great many supporters.
Given the permanently sour relations between Knight House and Noble House, no small number of Knight House students in the hall were hoping Justin Wayne would pull off an upset.
Noble House's students, naturally, only sneered at the notion, crediting Justin Wayne with not the slightest chance.
"It's been nearly two months since Easter, hasn't it? Justin Wayne's bound to have come along fast," Doron muttered to Pistan.
Then, a beat later: "Of course, Dark's come along faster."
The most despair-inducing thing about Dark Demon was that he was stronger than you and worked harder than you at the same time.
The gap between him and everyone else would only widen with time — unless Dark Demon hit a bottleneck and turned around now and then to admire the scenery.
The spectators still had energy to spare for gossip. Justin Wayne, climbing the steps to his platform, was already carrying all the pressure he could hold.
Sweat beaded at his temple in the suddenly warm weather, and his right hand curled into a fist without his noticing. It was rare for him to be nervous.
A textbook example of the "knightly personality," he was ordinarily brave and gentle, confident without display, and he had performed brilliantly even in his debut match of the Rookie Tournament.
Later, while Dark — flush with credits — stopped paying attention to duel competitions altogether, Justin had kept entering, piling up experience and credits and improving steadily all the while.
Even against second-year duelists, his win rate had been climbing.
And the more that was true, the better he understood how terrifying it was that Dark had taken the overall championship of the first-to-third-year bracket at the Easter Dueling Festival.
The pressure weighing on him now was more than any outsider could imagine.
Even so, the steps up to the platform were only so long, and they had to be walked to the end.
By the time he reached the top of the blue platform, Dark was already waiting on the red.
The two of them had little to do with each other at the Academy. Once on their platforms they exchanged nothing more than a nod of greeting, then each drew out his deck and slid it into the slot on the duel table.
The tables came back to life, and projections bloomed in front of both platforms.
Two months since Dark had last touched a duel table, and not a trace of rust showed.
Ready, he raised a hand and waited quietly for the whistle.
"Tweeeet—"
Professor Jones blew hard, and the air over the field pulled taut as a drawn bowstring.
"Preparation Phase" [30s]
As the thirty-second countdown surfaced in the projection, both duelists drew at once.
Contempt, fear — from the moment the duel began, all of it became weightless noise from outside the field.
A true duelist sees nothing but his opponent.
"Duel, start!"
Dark drew in an instant.
Five Magic Guide Cards came to hand.
He turned them over and spread them open like a folding fan.
The five cards registered at a glance, his mind engaging in the same beat, racing through every tactic and line available to him.
Then a smile surfaced.
[Lust III - Moon]
[Magic Beast (Eevee)]
[Drifloon]
[Vampire Young Lady]
Drawing both copies of "Lust III - Moon" at once made everything remarkably simple.
In a Rookie Tournament format where deck size could be tuned freely between twenty and forty cards, Dark's hand held not one dead card. However the opening fell, it would never be bad.
The additions of "Vampire Young Lady," "Moon God Spirit I," and "Primordial Dragon Egg" in particular had made his deck far easier to get running.
With this five-card opener, had he wanted to, he could have led with "Drifloon," triggered the "Vampire Secret Rite," and called "Vampire Young Lady" outright, crushing his opponent's hopes under the sheer weight of a seven-star Magic Guide Card.
He had no intention of doing that.
"Tick!"
The thirty-second countdown ran out, and the turn switched over.
…
"Battle Phase" [30s]
…
As Dark raised his hand to summon, he could plainly see Justin Wayne's expression ease a little.
It made no difference to him.
"I choose you, Drifloon!"
The difference in their summoning speed told at once: Dark finished his summon while Justin Wayne's Normal Summon was only halfway cast.
Drifloon shot out of the card face and drifted without pause toward the blue half of the field.
By the time Justin Wayne's Normal Summon finally completed, Dark had already begun his second.
Still, the three-star Magic Guide Spirit Justin Wayne opened with did manage to block Drifloon short of the blue summoning zone.
It was a bald knight in full armor, a heart-shaped opening cut into its breastplate, mounted on an enormous pink pig — "Heart Knight"!
Its looks left something to be desired, but Heart Knight was formidably strong. In its three core stats it ranked among the very best of the three-star Magic Guide Spirits, and its Ultimate Move, "Heart Salvation," was a superb healing technique with a special effect on its mount.
But a gap in tier is hard to cross.
When "Heart Knight," at Justin Wayne's command, raised its lance high and loosed its other Ultimate Move, "Heart Beam," at Drifloon, a shaft of even fiercer pink light washed over the little spirit.
And Drifloon, pulling a face, evolved on the spot under the effect of "Lust III - Moon"!
"Drifblim," witch-like in shape, took form swiftly inside the evolution light, then smashed pitilessly through the heart-shaped beam and hurled itself at "Heart Knight."
Terror descended.
____
Gift for Everyone: Once we hit 50 Powerstones, I'll release +1 bonus chapter
________________________________________
If you want more chapters, please consider supporting my page on (P). with 50 advanced chapters available on (P)
👻 Join the crew by searching Leanzin on (P). You know the spot! 😉