Winnie Skadi and Pandora Dragon's back-to-back victories sent the arena's atmosphere into an explosive high.
Magic House's score leapt from eighty thousand to a hundred and twenty thousand in an instant, seizing an unassailable lead.
Unless the other Houses could pull off three cross-tier victories in a row, there was no way to catch up.
The pressure landed on their shoulders all at once.
The Noble House fifth-year who had just been defeated by Pandora took a sharp breath, then immediately began recharging his Magic Guide Card, preparing to challenge a sixth-year next.
Losing to a fourth-year and then turning around to challenge a sixth-year admittedly sounded like biting off more than he could chew.
But if he didn't try, how would he ever know his limits?
Progress through failure.
Growth through dueling.
Even a fifth-year had to live by that.
...
Noble House, Knight House, and Fool's House all sprang into action after that.
Magic House, by contrast, held back.
But the difficulty of cross-tier challenges showed itself in full.
Leaping across at least one grade to beat an equally strong opponent was never as simple as deciding to do it.
The cross-tier challenges that followed failed one after another. Only a Noble House fourth-year managed a hard-fought win against a Fool's House fifth-year.
The Noble House fifth-year who had rallied his spirits fell again while challenging a sixth-year.
After that, Noble House was forced to field its second- and third-years, but none of them succeeded.
The other Houses fared much the same.
The one bright spot was Knight House — they also won two cross-tier challenges.
But by a single point, they still fell short of Magic House.
It was clear now: Magic House had already secured the win without lifting a finger.
Magic House, already leading by nearly a hundred thousand points, would now pull ahead by a full two hundred thousand after this Dueling tournament victory.
That gap was nearly impossible to close through mere differences in actual credits or final exam scores.
Which meant Magic House winning the Academy Cup was all but certain.
...
As this reality sank in, the mood outside Magic House turned distinctly gloomy.
Within the ring-shaped strip, soon only the Magic House students were left laughing and cheering.
Once the captains of all four Houses had submitted their applications to end the challenges, host Judy stepped back onto the stage and announced the match's conclusion and Magic House's final victory.
For viewers around the world, watching this match had certainly been worth their while.
But for the students themselves, pure dueling spectacle alone wasn't enough to leave everyone satisfied.
The moment Doron realized Noble House had no hope left, he angrily twisted the tail of his magic firework, wanting to vent his frustration by setting it off — only for it to give a pathetic "pfft" and fizzle out as a dud.
Dark quickly swallowed back a laugh. He didn't much care who won or lost for Noble House, but he knew better than to laugh right now.
Besides, Noble House's defeat also meant the loss of the Holy Grail, which really wasn't a small thing.
Still, as a pure spectator, today had been a feast for the eyes.
...
With the final award ceremony complete, the Academy Cup Dueling tournament was officially declared over.
The five Magic House students on stage wore bright, confident smiles, raising their fists high toward the sky!
This year, Magic House had finally overturned Noble House's long reign, welcoming a brighter, more brilliant future for themselves.
"Just as the old noble system will inevitably be overthrown — only those who master knowledge deserve to sit above."
In a corner of the audience, a kindly-faced old man wearing a monocle lowered his eyes and slowly traced a symbol on his chest along the path of a "4."
Then he slowly withdrew into the crowd and vanished.
...
Tonight the starry sky shone as brilliantly as ever, as if the gods themselves were looking down upon the mortal world.
...
Dark Demon walked amid the dispersing crowd, flanked by two girls too young to know real worry.
Nearby, Doron and Pistan were still grumbling, unable to let go of Knight House's elimination even after the match had ended.
The people laughing and striding past them were, without a doubt, Magic House students.
As the old saying goes, fortune's wheel turns — today it was their turn. Magic House winning the Academy Cup was already a foregone conclusion.
The Magic House students couldn't help but start dreaming about what wish they'd make on the Holy Grail.
Students from the other Houses, overhearing this, couldn't hide their sour expressions.
Why does happiness always belong to someone else?
...
Time flows on like sand through a river, and the years turn in the blink of an eye.
When Saturday's dueling tournament ended, the last of the festive mood went with it.
Both underclassmen and upperclassmen threw themselves into last-minute review.
With only one day left before exams began on Monday, everyone had to at least put on a show of studying, if only for peace of mind =.=!
Then, in a blink, Monday arrived, and the three days of final exams finally began.
This year's first-year written exams covered six subjects, in order: Summoning, Potions, Magic Guide Theory, Arithmetic, Dueling Class, and Monster Studies.
Each exam ran two hours, one in the morning and one in the afternoon.
After the exams, students would remain on campus for about two more days, unable to leave until the results were posted.
...
That morning, Dark Demon woke up buried in fluff.
It was a treatment he'd have welcomed in winter, but in the increasingly hot summer, it came with a hint of stuffy warmth.
He drew a light breath, lifted the fur-ball sleeping on his chest, and set it aside before finally getting up to wash up.
Once his mind was clear, he took a sip of the apple juice Sylveon handed him, and pulled out breakfast from the basket DemiDevimon had brought, item by item.
This morning's breakfast was unusually lavish. He consciously reined in his appetite, making sure to get exactly the nutrition he needed for the day.
Then came the habit he hadn't dropped even during exam season — pulling out the Great Sage Daily and opening it.
One glance, and the mouthful of apple juice sprayed right back out.
There, on today's front-page banner headline, was written: [Shocking! The Undying Demon King to Be Executed!]
...
The image beneath the banner showed an old man in bishop's robes, small round glasses perched on his nose, every bit the picture of an old scholar.
Where the old man's gaze fell, a thick, sealed mass of black mist hovered, faintly glowing blood-red eyes flickering within it.
Reading further down, the article clearly named the old man: a scholar of the Holy Church, once known before he joined the faith as the "Sage of Suffering" — a man of vast learning.
Dark's attention was seized almost instantly. He set down his teacup and read carefully.
After a moment, he lifted his head, eyes flickering with thought.
"Pfft." DemiDevimon pressed close against his face, reading the paper alongside him, and burst into laughter.
"Something funny?" Dark asked.
"This is hilarious!" DemiDevimon smirked wickedly. "And this thing dares call itself a Demon King?"
Dark blinked, not expecting DemiDevimon's sore spot to be exactly this.
He shook his head, mulling it over.
This article wasn't an official statement from the Holy Church — it was framed as something "leaked" by an outsider's perspective.
Of course, whether that person was really an "outsider" was another question entirely.
The article mainly focused on a Holy Church scholar named Abel Yerkes, who — after more than a decade of research — claimed to have finally discovered a method to truly kill the Demon King!
[The Demon King has not died.]
This, in fact, was no secret.
Because the Demon King of legend had always been called the "Undying Demon King," said to be impossible to kill by any means.
In the tale of the hero's sacrifice, the Demon King's fate had been sealed away, not slain.
Ordinary folk, though ignorant of the true mystery behind the Demon King's immortality, firmly believed in his "undying" nature nonetheless.
So when this Abel Yerkes suddenly claimed to have found a way to completely kill the Demon King, how could it not cause a stir?
This article would likely be reprinted by every other newspaper the moment it hit the stands.
The wider world might already be rippling with reaction.
The rational would try to look into whether it was true.
The credulous would spread it in wild excitement.
If the article were genuine, then the "execution" in the headline would become reality.
That is, of course, assuming the Demon King was still sealed within the Holy Church's secret grounds!
...
After a moment's careful thought, Dark said, weighing his words, "Might be a smokescreen."
No matter which angle he looked at it from, he didn't believe the article was true.
If killing the Demon King were really that easy to figure out, the original game's Demon King wouldn't have survived all the way to the late game.
So it was far more likely that this was a smokescreen meant to head off some crisis — like the Demon King escaping his seal.
But what benefit would the Holy Church gain from releasing such a smokescreen?
Or maybe it wasn't the Holy Church at all, but some other faction?
But what faction would dare make such a claim right under the Holy Church's nose?
And even if someone dared to publish it, would the Great Sage Daily dare to print it?
A hundred thousand questions flashed through Dark's mind in an instant.
But he didn't dwell on it for long.
Because he still had exams to get to.
...
Once he left his dorm, he set the article aside for the time being, meeting up with Diana and Rose in the common room before heading to class together.
Plenty of others were headed the same way.
By the time Dark sat down in the common room, more and more people had gathered around him.
After a good while, he finally saw Diana come rushing down from the staircase, looking flustered.
She was clutching her Summoning textbook, muttering under her breath — clearly cramming at the last minute.
Beside her, Rose also carried her textbook, but looked considerably more relaxed.
The two of them had always had a gap in theoretical study ability.
Diana was the type who understood everything intuitively but struggled fiercely with rote memorization.
Rose, by contrast, was quietly brilliant — an excellent memory, but lacking curiosity and ambition.
If she hadn't met Diana, and hadn't needed to help her work through problems she couldn't solve, Rose probably wouldn't have bothered studying so seriously at all.
Now the two of them complemented each other, and both were doing well academically.
It was just that Diana held herself to such high standards that she got a little tense.
Dark stepped in and said a few soothing words, and she gradually calmed down.
The three of them walked together and soon arrived at the Summoning classroom.
At the front, Professor Silf was already waiting, a thick stack of exam papers beside her, her whole bearing noticeably more serious than usual.
The students filing into the room fell completely silent.
Those carrying textbooks or review notes flipped through them quietly.
"Now that's the feeling!"
Dark sat down in his usual seat by the window in the back row, awash in nostalgia.
None of the first-year professors had made a habit of holding stage exams, and even at the end of last term there had only been the big project, no formal test — he'd nearly forgotten what it felt like to walk into an exam hall.
...
At ten minutes to eight, once Professor Silf saw everyone had arrived, she gave a brief announcement, then handed out the exam papers, but forbade anyone from picking up their pens.
Not until the eight o'clock bell rang did the exam officially begin.
Dark first skimmed through the whole paper quickly to get a sense of its length, then started answering from the top.
The exam ran from eight to ten — a full hundred and twenty minutes.
But the paper turned out to be far shorter than Dark had guessed.
Perhaps it was because this world had no equivalent of grueling test-prep workbooks, nor any habit of frequent testing, so the students lacked exam experience and their answering speed was limited.
So the professors had designed the paper around the average student's pace.
But for Dark Demon, a product of an exam-obsessed education back home, this was hardly satisfying.
Only half an hour in, he'd already finished every question.
Then, chasing a perfect score, he began checking his answers meticulously.
In his past life, he'd never had the good habit of checking his work after finishing an exam early.
But the person he was now was not the person he used to be.
Born into this world, and with his memories awakened, his temperament and will had been tempered — and in exams, that meant far more patience than before.
After checking his answers three times over and correcting one careless mistake, Dark finally set down his pen and looked up toward Professor Silf at the front.
Professor Silf glanced at him, then pointed at the blackboard.
Written plainly on the blackboard was one of the exam rules: "Students may not leave the examination hall before a full hour has passed."
...
Exactly nine o'clock...
Dark gathered his pen and paper, ready to hand in his exam, but just as he started to rise, he sat back down again.
"No point turning it in early with nowhere to go. Might as well just wait here."
So thinking, he turned his head to gaze out the window, clear as polished glass, and his thoughts began to churn once more.
"Leftover time in an exam hall" was probably one of the quietest, most carefree stretches of time in this entire world.
Settling his mind to think it through carefully, that morning's Great Sage Daily article surfaced again before his eyes.
Reasoning through it like any rational person would...
There was a ninety percent chance that article had been deliberately released by the Holy Church itself, through the mouth of an "outsider."
And if that were the purpose, surely it wasn't really about carrying out some long-overdue "execution" of the Demon King?
...
Once the exam ended, maybe he could bring it up with Professor Silf.
____
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