The final exam arena had been reshaped into a crucible of combat. The captains sat in their elevated seats, their expressions ranging from bored indifference to keen anticipation. Hundreds of candidates remained, but only a fraction would leave this hall as Magic Knights. The rest would return to their villages and noble houses with the bitter taste of failure.
I stood at the edge of the arena with Yuno beside me, the wheel rotating silently behind my head. Asta was already on the platform, his grubby grimoire clutched in his hands, his face a mask of barely contained excitement. Across from him, Sekke Bronzazza was preening like a peacock, his ridiculous cowlick bobbing as he waved to the crowd.
The first match was about to begin.
"Fu ha ha ha!" Sekke's laugh echoed across the arena as he struck a dramatic pose, his bronze grimoire floating beside him. "What incredible luck! The magicless runt as my first opponent! The captains will see how easily I dispose of this commoner and recognize my superior talent immediately!"
The proctor, a stern-faced woman in Magic Knights administrative robes, raised her hand. "Match one: Asta of Hage Village versus Sekke Bronzazza. Combatants, take your positions. The match ends when one combatant is unable to continue, surrenders, or is knocked from the platform. Lethal force is prohibited. Begin on my signal."
Asta and Sekke faced each other across the wooden platform. The contrast was almost comical—Sekke, with his polished appearance and smug confidence, and Asta, with his dirt-stained grimoire and the desperate determination of someone who had been told "no" his entire life.
Before the proctor could drop her hand, Sekke leaned forward and lowered his voice to a venomous whisper that only Asta and those of us with enhanced senses could hear.
"You know, I've been watching you fail all day," Sekke hissed, his smile never wavering. "Every test. Every single one. You can't fly. You can't cast. You can't create. You can't develop. You're a waste of air, commoner. A magicless freak who somehow stumbled into a grimoire that's too dirty to even read. And you have the audacity to stand here and say you'll be the Wizard King?"
Asta's jaw tightened. His knuckles whitened on his grimoire. But he didn't move. He didn't speak. He just stared at Sekke with those green eyes that had never once accepted the world's limitations.
"The Wizard King is the strongest mage in the kingdom," Sekke continued, his whisper dripping with contempt. "He's chosen from the nobility, from the elite, from people who actually matter. Not from gutter rats like you. Do you honestly believe a mana-less insect could ever stand among us? You don't know your place, commoner. Let me teach you."
"Combatants ready?" the proctor called.
"Ready!" Sekke straightened, his showman's smile back in place. "Watch closely, captains! Sekke Bronzazza will demonstrate the power of a true noble!"
Asta said nothing. He just opened his grimoire.
"Begin!"
Sekke's grimoire flared with bronze light. He thrust his hand forward, and a massive cannon formed from shimmering metal—a construct of his Bronze Creation Magic, its barrel gleaming with polished menace. The spell was unnecessarily elaborate, the magical equivalent of a fireworks display, designed to catch the eye of every captain on the observation platform.
"Bronze Creation Magic: Sekke Magnum Cannonball!" Sekke roared, and the cannon fired a sphere of solid bronze the size of a carriage wheel directly at Asta. "Fu ha! Let's see you dodge this, runt!"
Asta didn't dodge.
His grimoire erupted with black energy. A wave of anti-magic surged from its pages, coalescing into a massive sword that materialized in his hands—a blade of black iron, broader than Asta's own body, its edge crackling with the strange, negation-field power that was his birthright. He didn't cast a spell. He didn't channel mana. He simply swung the sword with every ounce of muscle his years of training had built.
The bronze cannonball met the anti-magic blade. And the bronze cannonball lost.
It shattered. Not deflected, not parried, not redirected—shattered. The anti-magic passed through the construct like a knife through wet paper, dissolving the mana that held it together. Fragments of bronze scattered across the platform like broken dreams. And before Sekke could even process what had happened, Asta was already moving, closing the distance with the explosive speed of someone who had been running ten kilometers every morning since he could walk.
The sword came down. Sekke's eyes widened. His mouth opened to scream, to surrender, to do anything—but the flat of the blade caught him square in the chest, and he was launched off the platform like a ragdoll, tumbling through the air before crashing into the wall at the edge of the arena. He did not get up.
Silence.
Complete, absolute, deafening silence.
The nobles in the crowd stared with their mouths hanging open. The proctor's hand, still raised to signal the start of the match, had frozen in mid-air. Even the captains—veterans of a thousand battles, mages who had seen every possible variation of combat magic—were speechless.
"What... what was that?" a noble candidate whispered.
"He didn't use magic. That wasn't magic. That was just... his body?"
"But he destroyed the spell! How do you destroy a spell without magic?"
"Physical enhancement magic," Captain Vangeance murmured from his seat on the observation platform, his masked face tilting with interest. "He must be channeling mana into his physical strikes. An unusual application, but not unheard of. Impressive, for a commoner."
"No."
The word cut through Vangeance's analysis like a blade. Yami Sukehiro was leaning forward, his cigarette dangling forgotten from the corner of his mouth, his dark eyes fixed on Asta with an intensity that bordered on predatory.
"That's not magic," Yami said, his voice low but certain. "I can feel it. There's no mana in those swings. That kid isn't enhancing anything. That's just pure physical strength. He's been training his body to the absolute limit, probably for years. And that sword..." He squinted at the black blade that was already dissolving back into the grimoire's pages. "That sword isn't powered by mana either. It's the opposite. It's... anti-magic."
The other captains turned to stare at him. Nozel Silva's aristocratic composure cracked, just slightly. "Anti-magic? There's no such thing. Magic is the fundamental force of our world. To negate it would be to negate it's existence itself."
"Yeah, well, tell that to the guy with the bronze cannonball-shaped bruise on his chest," Yami said, and his grin was wide and sharp and full of something that looked very much like anticipation. "I knew that kid was interesting."
On the platform, Asta raised his grimoire above his head and shouted at the top of his lungs. "I TOLD YOU! I TOLD ALL OF YOU! I'm going to be the Wizard King! And nothing—no test, no noble, no magic—is going to stop me!"
This time, no one laughed. The arena was still silent, but it was a different kind of silence now. Not disbelief. Reassessment. Every captain, every candidate, every noble in that hall was looking at the short, loud, magicless boy with new eyes.
Beside me, Yuno smiled. It was a small thing, just a faint curve at the corner of his lips, but on his perpetually stoic face it might as well have been a triumphant roar.
"Told you," I said quietly.
"He didn't need my help," Yuno replied, and there was something like pride in his voice. Something like brotherhood. "He never did."
---
The tournament continued.
Match after match, candidate after candidate, the platform stages saw battles of fire and ice and lightning and stone. Nobles demonstrated the polished techniques of their house magics. Commoners showed the rough-edged creativity born of necessity. Some fights were over in seconds—a single overwhelming spell, a decisive tactical strike. Others stretched on, the combatants circling each other like wary predators, testing defenses and exploiting openings. The captains watched, evaluated, made notes in their minds about who would receive offers and who would be sent home.
I watched it all with the detached precision of a machine cataloguing data. This one favored offense over defense, vulnerable to a quick counterstrike. That one relied too heavily on a single spell, predictable and easily exploited. The blonde girl with the plant magic had potential but lacked killer instinct. The muscular boy with the earth magic was strong but slow, his footwork sloppy.
Yuno was called to the platform for his match.
His opponent was a noble—a young man with slicked-back hair and the silver-and-blue robes of a minor house, his three-leaf grimoire floating at his side with the smug arrogance of someone who had never been challenged. He looked at Yuno with open disdain, his lip curling as if he'd smelled something unpleasant.
"So you're the four-leaf commoner," the noble said, loud enough for the surrounding candidates to hear. "The one who thinks he's special because a grimoire chose him. Let me tell you something, peasant—a grimoire can make a mistake. The four-leaf clover should have gone to someone worthy. Someone with noble blood. Someone who actually deserves it."
Yuno's expression didn't change. "Are you finished?"
The noble's face flushed with anger. "You arrogant little—I'll show you what real magic looks like! I'll prove to everyone here that you're nothing but a pretender!"
He turned toward me, his amber eyes flickering with something I hadn't seen before—disappointment. "I wanted to face you."
I let the mask produce a faint, reassuring smile. "There will be other opportunities. Go handle this one first. Don't keep him waiting—it's rude."
Yuno nodded once and stepped onto the platform. The noble was already channeling his spell, a spiraling lance of fire that crackled with impressive heat. He thrust it toward Yuno with a shouted incantation, the flames roaring across the platform like a dragon's breath.
Yuno raised his hand. "Wind Magic: Wind Cyclone."
The spell was flashy. It was elaborate. It was a simple cyclone of compressed wind, summoned with the ease of someone who had been communing with the air since birth, and it swallowed the noble's fire lance like a whale swallowing a minnow. The flames were extinguished instantly, the mana scattered, and the noble himself was caught in the vortex and hurled off the platform before he could even scream.
The entire match had lasted less than three seconds.
"That's... that's impossible," a noble in the crowd stammered. "A commoner just... that was a viscount's son! How could a commoner defeat a noble so easily?"
"Four-leaf grimoire," someone else muttered, and the words carried the weight of both awe and resentment. "They really are on a different level."
Yuno stepped off the platform without a backward glance and returned to my side. His expression was unchanged, but there was a tension in his shoulders that hadn't been there before. The noble's words had landed, whether he wanted to admit it or not. The clover kingdom's prejudice ran deep, and even a legendary grimoire couldn't wash away the stain of common birth in the eyes of the aristocracy.
"Good match," I said.
"He was weak."
"Yes. But you didn't have to humiliate him unnecessarily. That doesn't show restraint. Restraint is a strength."
Yuno looked at me, his amber eyes searching my face for something he couldn't quite name. "You're strange, Ouga."
"I've been told."
---
The matches continued. Candidates rose and fell. Dreams were realized and crushed in equal measure. I watched them all, waiting for my name to be called. It didn't come. Match after match, the proctor called other names—nobles I didn't recognize, commoners who had shown promise, the children of merchant families who had saved enough coin for a grimoire and a dream. My name remained unspoken, hovering at the bottom of the bracket like a promise waiting to be fulfilled.
Asta, fresh from his victory, had become the unofficial mascot of the commoner candidates. They crowded around him, slapping his back and congratulating him, their earlier mockery forgotten in the face of his impossible triumph. Asta basked in the attention with the genuine, unguarded joy of someone who had never learned to be cynical.
"That was incredible!" a commoner girl gushed. "I've never seen anything like that! What kind of magic was that?"
"It's not magic!" Asta said, grinning. "It's just hard work! I've been training every single day since I was a kid! One hundred push-ups, one hundred sit-ups, one hundred squats, and a ten-kilometer run! Every! Single! Day!"
The commoners stared at him with a mixture of admiration and disbelief. The nobles, who had been listening from a distance, exchanged glances of condescending amusement. A hundred push-ups might impress peasants, their expressions seemed to say, but it would never match the power of noble blood.
I knew better. I had seen what Asta would become. The nobles' bloodlines would mean nothing when he stood at the pinnacle of this kingdom, a magicless boy who had outworked everyone who ever looked down on him.
But that was the future. The present was still unfolding.
The afternoon wore on. The sun began its descent toward the horizon, painting the arena in shades of amber and gold. The matches grew more intense as the weaker candidates were eliminated and the stronger ones won.
And still, my name was not called.
I stood at the edge of the arena, my arms crossed over my chest, the wheel turning its silent cycle behind my head. The waiting should have been tedious. In another life, it might have been. But the void where my emotions had been sealed recognized no such thing as impatience. I simply existed, observing, cataloguing, waiting for the moment when the stage would be mine.
Finally, as the last rays of sunlight began to fade and the magical torches around the arena flickered to life, the proctor called my name.
"Final match of the preliminary round: Hasegawa Ouga, unaffiliated, versus—"
The proctor paused, squinting at the bracket board as if to confirm what she was reading. The arena fell silent. Even the captains, who had been consulting among themselves, turned their attention to the platform.
I stepped forward. The wooden boards creaked under my weight—six foot three inches of muscle and bone and the cold, hollow power that had consumed me piece by piece over the past year. My black hair fell past my shoulders, loose and wild. My grey eyes reflected the torchlight like mirrors of polished stone. And behind my head, visible to every captain and every candidate with mana above Stage 5, the eight-spoked wheel rotated in its eternal, golden cycle.
"—Salim de Montfort, of House Montfort."
A figure emerged from the noble section. He was tall, though not as tall as me—few were—with sharp features and pale blond hair pulled back in a severe knot. His robes were the deep purple of an old and respected house, trimmed with silver thread that probably cost more than most commoners earned in a year. His grimoire, a thick tome bound in dark leather, floated beside him with an aura of quiet menace. And his eyes, when they met mine, were filled with the particular contempt that only hereditary privilege could produce.
"So you're the giant," Salim said, his voice carrying the clipped, precise accent of the upper nobility. "The one with the strange grimoire and the even stranger floating wheel. I've been watching you all day, commoner. Your magic is pitiful—basic water spells, nothing more. Whatever that wheel is, it hasn't made you strong. It's made you a freak."
I said nothing. The mask smiled, a faint, serene curve of the lips that communicated neither threat nor fear.
"Nothing to say?" Salim sneered. "No clever retort? No defiant speech about how you'll overcome the odds? I expected more from someone who looks like a monster."
"I'm not here to talk," I said, and my voice was calm. Empty. The voice of a god who had forgotten how to feel. "I'm here to fight."
Salim's eyes narrowed. For just a moment, something flickered in his expression—uncertainty, perhaps, or the first stirring of fear. Then it was gone, replaced by the practiced arrogance of a noble who had never been truly challenged.
"Very well, commoner. Let's see what that wheel of yours can do."
The proctor raised her hand. "Combatants, take your positions."
I stepped onto the platform. The wheel behind my head began to turn faster, its golden spokes catching the torchlight and scattering it across the arena like fragments of a dying sun. The captains leaned forward in their seats. Yami's cigarette had gone out, and he hadn't noticed. Yuno's amber eyes were fixed on me with an intensity that bordered on hunger. Even Asta, who couldn't see the wheel, was watching with the unerring instinct of someone who sensed that something important was about to happen.
"Match begins on my signal," the proctor said. "Three. Two. One."
"Begin."
And the arena held its breath.
Find out in the next episode of dragon ball -------ahem. I mean next chapter.
(Author note here: help me reach 50 power stones and I'll upload 5 chapter together 😉. I hope we can cover it in a month.)