Karah scurried off to her with a strange mix of excitation and wariness.

  “Vic! That was… incredible! Terrifying, but incredible!” she said, staying at one respectable metre away from where she was sitting, on the ground. “I didn’t think… I mean, you look like you’re my age, right?”

  Vic grunted. She saw people in the hall avoiding now her gaze as soon as she stared back at them. She didn’t like being observed. She needed to stay positive. Now she could just glare people away.

  “No, of course not, miss Aema would have known if you lied when you said your age. Pfew, Vic, you’re really talented!” Karah said, and she stepped closer, finally sitting in front of her while looking a bit uncomfortable, maybe because of her clothes. Perhaps she also preferred to sit on chairs instead of the solid ground, generally speaking.

  Vic stared again at what remained of her demonstration. There was no wooden puppet left, the ground where it had stood was partly gone, the wall supposed to take the brunt of all attacks had been breached in two, and the floor was ridden with small holes having come from blown out sparks of the beam of scorching plasma that was always difficult to truly perfectly control. The hall had been warmed up significantly too. Soon she’d have to remove her coat, which would make her look significantly less cool than she was now.

  Elves were still shutting down the fire she’d started in the hall.

  Meanwhile, yes the other contestants had done some damage, but she had been unable to see the true extent of their power. If she had seen what spells they’d used, maybe she could have just put herself in a “slightly above average” position and won without making all of this a problem for herself.

  The judges were still animatedly talking to each other in hushed whispers.

  She quietly held her head in her hands.

  She’d overdone it.

  “Hey Vic, you’re okay? Is it the mana backlash?” Karah asked, sounding worried. “Oh you shouldn’t have overdone it, I know people here can get pretty mean.”

  “Yeah”, Vic said. “Pretty mean.”

  It was the first time in a long, long time where she’d misused magic so much and misunderstood the situation to that much of a severe extent.

  The boy that had badmouthed her had left.

  She was tempted to do the same.

  “Oh, but it’s just in the spirit of the competition!” Karah enthusiastically added. “Gosh, Vic, you have to tell me where you learnt all that!”

  “I’m self-taught”, she muttered, more to herself than for anyone else to hear. The game system helped. It was intuitive, but it lacked many, many instructions. She’d nearly died because of it a few times. Sometimes she felt that was on purpose.

  Karah frowned.

  “No one can really be self-taught”, she said, like that went against all laws of nature. Maybe that was just what her own school of thought had taught her.

  “Well where do you think the first mages came from”, Vic said.

  Karah chuckled.

  “Oh that’s silly, Vic, of course they didn’t learn it by themselves, arcane magic is far too complex for that. There is a reason why there are some unprovable arcane truths that are known as indisputable principles! Gods taught the first mages the first arcane.”

  Then she stared in the air for a small second like she’d come to a bad-tasting realisation.

  “Oh Vic I’m so sorry”, she said bringing her hands to her mouth. “Of course you can’t know, you’ve never received any history classes”.

  Vic’s eyes opened wide. A chuckle nearly escaped her. She wanted to curl up and die or laugh and promptly die. Perhaps both. She couldn’t have imagined this morning that she’d hear someone apologize to her for saying… that.

  “It’s okay. No offence taken”, she quietly said.

  “It was still mean, and I didn’t want to… Oh it just feels bad”, Karah said.

  “It’s okay, I’m an ignorant dusty little rat from the wastes. How could I know better, right?” she said, giving up with an amused smile.

  “I’m sorryyy”, Karah said, and now it felt mean to tease her.

  Vic sighed.

  “Though tell me honestly Karah”, Vic said, “if you people have a way to scale spells, how high was mine in it?”

  Karah looked taken aback.

  “I… I couldn’t tell, I’m specialised in healing magic as a priestess, but… You were… uh. Well.” Karah said, then motioned at the jury, “I’ve never seen them so agitated.”

  Vic gulped down.

  There seemed to be an argument going on at that table.

  Meanwhile, people who needed to pass in front of her made a wide berth to head in and out of the hall. There were a lot of soldiers heading out, it was weird. But as for the rest of the civilians that weren’t also leaving… She wasn’t blind to the fact people were avoiding her. Until one hooded person breached that invisible barrier that separated her from the others and headed straight towards her with a determined, angry stride.

  “Hey you”, the stranger said while walking, removing her golden-trimmed, fancy looking hood and revealing the pointy ears of an elf and hair dyed in royal burgundy, tied up in an elegant yet simple way, “We are going to have a problem.”

  Karah gulped down.

  People seemed to stop, interested by the drama.

  Vic stared back at this incoming angry teenager.

  “I don’t care how powerful you are, my spell did better in its concept and execution. You are messy and sloppy, so don’t you think that you can win”, the stranger said, her amber eyes staring straight into her own like Vic had dug up some nasty personal offence by just existing.

  Well that was just rude.

  Karah seemed to be about to have a breathing problem.

  “Yeah, I’m so sad for you. You’re losing to someone that came out of nowhere just because they’ve got unknown, never seen before powerful magic. You have all my sympathies, which is a lot”, she sarcastically replied, doing a detached little motion with her hand while wrapping her other one around her knee.

  And oh boy by the way the girl’s eyes widened and her eyebrows scrunched up, she understood what irony was. How refreshing!

  “I innovate. I don’t push all my mana into a spell and call it a day”, the girl spat. “I don’t just work hard, I work smart. Just you watch, you exhausted wreck.”

  Oh boy. Had everyone misunderstood the fact that she was sitting on the ground as a sign that she was too exhausted to cast any spells? Oh. Or maybe she was saying this because she looked like she’d gotten out of a dust storm. Which had been the case.

  On the good side of things…

  …Maybe there was an easy way out of this one.

  Vic smiled indifferently back at the girl, who looked baffled.

  “Don’t you dare look down on me”, the girl reacted, “I’m Thalis, the best prospective mage in the capital! I’m the honorary student that everyone can only hope to come close to being! You’re a nobody.”

  Vic chuckled.

  “Why don’t you tell that to them”, Vic motioned to the judges, while keeping her expression cooled and bored. “I’m sure they can’t wait to hear you argue about why you deserve all that sweet money.”

  The girl reddened, taking a step back. Then she moved forwards and grabbed the hem of Vic’s coat, coming dangerously close to her.

  “Thalis!” Karah gasped. “You’re going too far!” Vic didn’t move.

  “I need that money to keep paying my rent”, the star student seethed in her ear. “I’m getting it.”

  Vic snorted. Everyone needed money.

  “Cope.” she replied, snorting again.

  That Thalis girl frowned in incomprehension.

  “What… what does “cope” mean?” she said. The word sounded weird in her mouth.

  Vic shrugged.

  “You should let go of me”, she whispered back. “People are staring… Oh well. Although I enjoy the intimacy of… this whole thing, don’t you know I carry all sorts of diseases from the wastes? Look at the state of your hand.”

  The girl jerked and realised that now her hand was partly marred with a grey texture. She hadn’t let go yet. Vic smirked a bit more meanly.

  “Be careful, I heard that dust is deadly if you eat it”, she jested. “You shouldn’t eat it”, she insisted. That was very important after all.

  The girl took a step back, and shook off said hand in a controlled manner, probably wanting to show that she wasn’t actually scared but was still annoyed by said dust.

  “I don’t care for your nonsense. I’m keeping my eyes on you”, she said in a dignified way, pointing a finger at her while trying to sound menacing.

  It might have worked if she hadn’t had to most recently kill a lich overlord.

  Vic snorted and smirked.

  With a bit of luck, she wouldn’t be terrified of an angry teenager out for prize money.

  ___

  There was an odd tenseness when the second turn began. It was downright strange how a certain agitation had taken over the grown up cultists who seemed to be in charge of the competition.

  The great priestess that seemed to be the leader of the little trio of judges stood up, clapped her hands twice before silence very quickly spread, and began to speak, loudly and clearly, her flowing robes moving along her arm movements. Her voice seemed to be amplified.

  “The competition will be cut short to one last round”, she intoned, and before anyone could dare protest in any way, she continued: “A cursed, monstrous and ill-intentioned sorcerer has been signalled to have entered the city. The southern districts closest to the city’s entrances are currently being evacuated. The situation is under control, but because of those exceptional circumstances, I, Lilyn, High Priestess of the Order of the All Enlightened, must announce that this biannual competition’s duration will be halved.”

  Oh, so this city wasn’t as good at keeping out deadly creatures as she had once thought. That was actually good, just in case she needed to make a hasty escape. After all, if they could get in easily, she could get out seamlessly.

  “Hey, the prizes are not going to be halved too, right?”, Vic suddenly cried out, only realising that instead of yelling while remaining in the midst of a crowd’s anonymity, the crowd instantly parted so that a small corridor was created in it and the great priestess could stare straight at her. And each person in that corridor was now looking at her too.

  Karah squirmed back and faded back into the crowd.

  Gosh darn it.

  The priestess sent a glare.

  “The prizes will remain the same, you insolent one”, she augustly said.

  Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  Vic blinked back a few times.

  “Oh well thank you!”, she replied gratefully without a tint of aggressiveness in her tone.

  The priestess seemed extremely irritated. Yes, yes.

  Who was the childish, irritated, insolent one now, huh? Who was being the overreacting brat?

  The priestess then tsked.

  “Inconsequential”, she whispered loudly, clearly aiming for her to hear, which just made Vic become even smugger than before, before dramatically clapping her hands. “Now, for all the contestants who choose to remain, get back to your assigned positions.”

  Vic got up as everyone moved around, and walked back to the front of her ruined corridor, where the wooden figure hadn’t been replaced. Huh. It was odd, was she just going to shoot air?

  Just as she thought that, that Aema supervisor walked to Vic’s side and began whispering to her in hushed tones.

  “If you would please move to this other one”, she said, pointing to an empty corridor a few lines away.

  Vic blinked as she noticed the way the amount of contestants had drastically diminished. There were a lot of unoccupied lines now.

  “Hey, why are there so many empty spots now?” she asked.

  The supervisor hummed.

  “It’s only a… higher amount than usual”, the woman said, like she didn’t want to further stroke Vic’s ego. “Contestants who have already participated pay fees when re-entering the competition. The recurrent participants who end up in the last five positions in the rankings of each round pay fines. Anyone may give up at any moment free of charge before the judges announce the rankings. Each round is pricier than the previous one, and this fee is being settled not as a second round’s one but as a final round’s one.”

  Huh. So it left only the overconfident and rich or the actually competent ones within the competition. It was a… slightly debatable way to win time. But that was a weird explanation. It didn’t explain at all why so many people had left. Was there some sort of unknown trap in the finals for strangers like her?

  “It’s entirely free for me, right?” Vic asked.

  The supervisor nodded, giving her a side glance that seemed to tell her how no matter the prowess she showed, she’d still be looked down in some way. That was probably the downside of living off from an unhealthy dose of monster hunting and looking the part with her ragged clothes.

  Vic smiled back like she was a shark that smelt fresh blood.

  “Thank goodness”, she full-heartedly said, “and here I thought I was going to have to pay money out of my own pocket. I’m such a greedy little thing, you wouldn’t believe it. Oh I promise you, I’m exactly like this everywhere I go, it’s like I don’t even care about the godly, the higher causes, and all the people who might want to sacrifice me to their all-consuming gods.”

  The supervisor awkwardly stared.

  She seemed taken aback, like she didn’t know what she was supposed to answer to this.

  Oh. She looked extremely awkward. Like she’d said something taboo or insane and the lady was struggling to process the humour behind it. If she could perceive any humour in it, that is.

  “Uh”, Vic said. “You can step away if you want. I’ll be gone out of your hair before the end of the day, I promise.”

  The supervisor stared at her some more with an unreadable expression before writing down something on a parchment and quickly stepping away.

  Well that was something.

  The first contestant in line began preparing themselves, until a loud voice announced their name and type of magic spells.

  “Mage Octavius, Illusion magic”, another supervisor at the end of the line of contestants said. The crowd bristled. Oh. Another kid her age was there… no, he was even younger than her. And from his skin tone, it looked like this city really attracted everyone around the world. A dark elf, huh. And a kid at that. All the more curious…

  Someone poked her shoulder, and she turned around.

  It was Karah.

  “Uhm, this might seem weird, but…”, she said, “do you mind if I stay with you right now? I’ve just been asked to stay at your side from now on, but I wouldn’t like to do this behind your back…”

  Vic’s eyes widened.

  Oh. Oh-ho.

  Well, that just confirmed her suspicions of Karah being genuine. A genuine fool, maybe, but still genuine.

  Oh, the things that cults did to good people.

  “Heyyy it’s okay”, she said, while fingergunning at Karah. “I won’t hold it against you.” Karah stared back at her, then slowly raised back her own fingers, and mimicked the motion, though very much more awkwardly than Vic.

  Vic chuckled. Karah smiled.

  “I honestly thought that you were already doing that to me in the first place”, she admitted. Karah just looked shocked, her fingers lowering themselves down on their own.

  “No, I’d never…” then realisation struck her face. “Oh! That’s why you asked me why I was following you when we first met!”

  Vic nodded.

  “Yeah, there’s been more members of your… order, who have been rather… insisting”, Vic said, chewing a bit on her words. That was one way to put it.

  “Oh I’m so sorry that happened to you”, Karah said, “Some can really give a bad image to us all, but they’re not… It’s not their fault, they’re just clumsy in their work, like I can sometimes be. I’m sure they can grow to be better. They’re not as pure and sincere as the real core of the Order.”

  Pure, huh.

  Vic froze.

  Right. She needed not to forget that this was a cult.

  She hummed.

  “Oh, by the way, I was wondering if there was any sort of… different treatment between sorcerers and mages, since I was asked to say which one of the two I would be”, Vic asked.

  Karah blinked.

  “Is that why you didn’t answer?” she asked, “Don’t you worry! They’re considered to be equal! It’s just that they form different schools of formations in the capital. It’s to see in which school you’d like to potentially enter, if your talent is spotted!”

  Karah gently shoved her shoulder.

  “Even if you don’t get first prize, which I…” she said, “Uh anyway, I’m sure you’re gonna get scouted out!” Karah said with a smile.

  Nice to know she needed to run away from this place as soon as she got the spoils of the competition. It would feel a bit bad to leave Karah hanging, but she needed to clearly let that go or it would be used against her.

  …A shame. She’d forgotten how it felt to have a friendly companion of her age. It was nice while it had lasted. All things, nice or awful, had an end.

  “Fourth contestant!” the loud supervisor interrupted. “Mage Thalis, honorary student… presenting a still unnamed form of novel magic!”

  Oh my, she hadn’t paid attention to her surroundings. She wanted to bonk her own head. She couldn’t afford to be more distracted than usual.

  “A still unnamed form of novel magic, huh?” she whispered. “Isn’t that too much of a long name for a type of magic?”

  No snorts answered her. Tough audience, huh.

  The young elf draped in fancy clothes stepped forwards, focused eyes hardened with burning determination. She started moving, her stance secure and graceful, preparing her spell with slow, ample movements.

  “Thalis comes from… a city of… oh, that’s an ugly word, I don’t know how to say it”, Karah whispered to her, as the hall had quietened considerably. “She comes from a long line of necromancers, but… but! She turned to our glorious Elkroth as that’s where she saw a righteous, just cause to follow!”

  Vic noted the strange wide flask laying next to Thalis on the ground.

  Karah got closer to her to speak more quietly.

  “She refuses to use necromancy as her parents and everyone in her family line did, and she innovates without having to use human corpses! I think that’s very inventive and neat. She’s amazing for that. She chose good over evil.”

  The goop from the flask elevated itself from the ground and started forming a strange black oilish golem-like creature.

  “That’s… something”, Vic whispered. Dang, and that whole invocation process looked complicated.

  Was she using some special sort of dirt to do this? This wasn’t necromancy… was it? Was she using oil? Oh! Maybe this was oil. It would be really funny if this turned out to be something similar to oil from earth that contained ancient microbes dead since a few hundreds of thousands of years.

  So much for “not doing necromancy”, she thought with a snort.

  The creature’s shape stabilised, and with a final move, Thalis finished one big, flowing motion, and her goopy golem took a shinier aspect, like it was much more rigid and solid now.

  Thalis stopped moving, and sat down straight in a lotus position.

  “Magic attack”, she said out loud and clear, a statement for everyone to hear.

  The creature moved, blew its hands outwards, and a spell shot out of its hands.

  Oh damn.

  The spell tore a hole through the torso’s wooden figure, splinters flying outwards: and it might have been a weak red flame, but its aim had been precise.

  Thalis got up, and bowed with a classiness that spoke of having been either rich or noble in some way.

  “And it is my pleasure to present once more”, she said, giving a brief glare at Vic, “A most brilliant spell of my own creation, that is clearly above all that has been shown today. Only the simplest of arcane spells can now be inscribed into them, but it is only the start of a long line of achievements for the innovation to come!”

  Damn. She’d invented the equivalent of magical robots. And said robots could shoot out magic spells. That was… impressive. Holy shit. That was a game changer. It would change everything.

  Even after she left, she needed to keep an eye out for this city. They might prove dangerous on a large scale if they automated the constructions of those… things.

  The great priestess looked greatly pleased.

  “An excellent feat, Thalis. The Counsel of Greater Instances has as always, taken note of your determination and your future prospects look bright.”

  Thalis smugly smiled and then glared at Vic, this time definitely trying to catch her eyes.

  Vic stared back. She wouldn’t back down from that sort of amusing little challenge.

  She was starting to feel bad for Thalis. She was going to lose, despite trying so hard. She smirked and pulled out her tongue at her. Thalis grimaced back while somehow keeping up her whole classy facade.

  Hm. Perhaps it did truly feel bad for her.

  Pfft, nah.

  The way she was being sent glares was just amusing at this point, and the abrupt lack of reaction she was now getting from Vic apparently just infuriated her more.

  This was nice.

  “She might be all that great and talented, but her personality is still a special bag of moistened, overcooked barbecue flavoured chips”, Vic said lowly to Karah.

  Vic looked back at Karah and saw her giving her a curious, uncomprehending, questioning look.

  Oh, Karah couldn’t look at her like that, it was obvious now that Thalis had some heavy baggage. No one was this competitive without reason. The smelly family issues explained some of it from miiiiles away anyway.

  Staring shortly at the rest of the amount of contestants to see how much time she still had to wait, she realised a bit blankly that there were in total only twelve contestants.

  Oh my.

  That was extremely little compared to the previous amount. It might have been near the hundreds before.

  An adult competitor was then announced, calling off first his title, his name, and then his type of magic. He then respectfully stepped forwards. The sorcerer’s pale, clean clothes were unlike the ones worn by the civilians of the city or the sorts of uniforms worn by enrolled students. He was another stranger like her. He did have a downward crescent shaped symbol on his back. She kind of dug that whole astral aesthetic.

  He began incanting with a low whistling sound, and the illusion of a miniature shimmering flowing shooting star formed from his lips before blasting towards the wooden figurine which cracked from impact. Its whole shape was warped with suddenly growing ice crystals. It wasn’t too bad. She might have struggled a bit against it, if she didn’t manage to dodge it by rolling away.

  She silently observed the next three contestants. Their spells were good, and frighteningly efficient at disposing of an unmoving, inanimate enemy. Some others, she’d never seen before despite travelling around for some time. But it wasn’t like she’d ever seen that many mages or sorcerers showing off their magic in the same place at the same time. It was refreshing in a way. So much to discover in so little time. She’d write things down if she had a book.

  Oh. Ohh.

  The purpose of this contest made now sense. It meant to compile all sorts of spells from everywhere around the world.

  Most of the spells here were meant to deal damage in some way, except for that young illusionist that really was an outlier from what she now understood. Why would they be cataloguing those types of spells? Perhaps to be able to figure out strategies against them if anyone attacked the city?

  But the more the contestants showed off, one going so far as to pale and begin panting and puking, most likely from mana exhaustion, their spell bursting out with robust energy and cutting in two the wooden puppet, before having its course broken by the security wall behind, the more she couldn’t deny how badly she miscalculated when showing off herself.

  She was at the end of too many envious glares. It wasn’t that the contestants were overconfident. They were… “good”, from what she understood now of what “good” was considered to be here. She hadn’t had great points of references to start with.

  Her laser of boiling sun plasma had just cut too much their chances off. That might cause issues later on.

  Vic pulled her hood deeper over her eyes.

  She should have picked something more discreet. Efficient, but unassuming in its efficiency. That would have been better.

  “Are you okay?” Karah whispered.

  Vic grimaced. Would it really be good to change the type of spell she’d picked? Were contestants expected to stick to one so that the jury could “grade” it correctly?

  Would it be seen as a sign of weakness? Didn’t they want to test that she could reuse multiple times this spell?

  “I’m overthinking it”, she whispered.

  She’d just do it. There was no need to think about this when she’d be gone from this city by the end of the day with some delicious prize money. She could already see that heavy bag of coins in her hands.

  “You don’t have to be anxious, Vic”, Karah said, cutting her off of her thoughts, holding suddenly her hand with both of hers, and oh crap, that was a cultist too close for comfort, “You were great already. You can do it! I believe in you!”

  Vic squirmed uncomfortably.

  “Ha ha, thanks”, she said, slowly getting up. “I’m going to warm up”, she said, happy to get hands off of her own, as Karah let got when she stood up. She stared happily at the last contestant before her. What an excellent excuse to get a little bit more of personal space.

  She stretched a little bit, absent-mindedly observing her surroundings. The exit wasn’t guarded. Most guards had left as reinforcements for that evil sorcerer rampaging through the southern districts. This was good, in case she needed to leave before the cultists tried to make her listen to another pathetic indoctrination attempt.

  She held her right arm with her left one, and squeezed tightly the knuckles of the former one. Little bursts of mana were sparking up out of it because of her anxiety as the last contestant finished. She didn’t notice people flinching at that display.

  She stepped to her assigned line and removed her hood.

  She stretched her fingers, and silently began pulling the spell to her, the air visibly tensing in turn.

  “W-wait!” the Aema supervisor said, racing to her side, “The jury hasn’t finished with their grading of the contestant before you. You’re supposed to wait after your name has been called.”

  Vic made a strange noise between a grunt, a groan, and a “ughhh”.

  The tenseness of the air was released. She waved it away.

  “…Fine”, she grumbled. She was feeling tense herself. Her gut told her that something bad might be about to happen. And she trusted her guts.

  She closed her fists tightly together.

  “…if only they sped up a bit”, she whispered, not noticing how the supervisor flinched at her in turn. A few people were staring at her with weird, shocked expressions. Some others simply accepted it.

  She began tapping her foot on the ground. She couldn’t care less anymore.

  The priest who laughed a lot looked up from his piece of paper and chortled.

  “Just a few more minutes”, he said, placatingly, in that voice of his that meant to laugh off nervousness.

  Vic waited. And waited. And stared at the high priestess that was the last one still grading down the previous contestant while taking her sweet time.

  Finally, she looked up, and with a single raised eyebrow, made her wait a few more seconds just because she could. That arrogant hag.

  “Very well”, she haughtily said, “we may proceed.”

  “Victorya”, announced the supervisor, seemingly awkward, because he didn’t know whether Vic was a mage or a sorcerer, “using… fire magic?”

  Vic ignored the slight call for help that she could hear in that tone of voice. They wouldn’t be getting any information from her. She stepped up, pushing her hands out of her coat together, and pulled an irritated wide beam of all-destroying plasma outwards just like before. It came out with a vengeance, blown out droplets of the fluid boring holes in the ground in an instant just as they separated from the main ray. Blindingly bright white energy shot out, devastating in an instant the sad wooden puppet that was precisely its size. It wasn’t even gone to a crisp. It was just gone. The metal shield put in the way didn’t make a difference. It was so quickly melted, peeled off like a drag by a strong blow of wind, that it disintegrated before even dropping to the ground. Rare molten chunks were all that remained.

  She cut off the beam just as it had finished its course, yet it still dug and pierced the protective wall and the stone slabs that had been added a few minutes before precisely for that reason. The decorated wooden wall behind it still caught aflame again. There was again yet another hole in the main building. And another fire had been started.

  She stepped back.

  “You really should get a good insurance plan”, she said to no one. Ah, right. Insurance plans probably didn’t exist here.

  She was being weird again. Now people were going to stare at her because of that and only that, she thought with a bitter, amused bark of a laugh.