A/n: Sorry for the delay and also happy 3k reads(灬^v^灬)♡!
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Every space in the arena was used up to the point where even the staircases were crowded. Every student at Starlight Magic Academy appeared to be present in the sizable Arena, which was close to the oval.
Marvin, who was spotted at the center of the field, was holding a microphone and appeared to be in only a gray sweatshirt and sweatpants with a lab coat over it.
He could see the Section A student sitting behind him. The day had come when they were supposed to carry out Marvin's instructions. Perform what Marvin had assigned them.
"Wasn't this just supposed to be a class performance task? Why the hell does it feel like we're going to have a tournament of some sort? I feel like we're turning into some sort of entertainment attraction."
Remus grumbled as he scanned the youngsters seated in the bleachers above, his gaze straying.
A boy wearing round glasses remarked, "Oh you know how professor Marvin is, he likes to be extra. Moreover, something similar occurred last year."
"Really?"
"You didn't know?"
Rei interjected while munching on a bag of chips, "He was in bed, unwell for days that he couldn't come and see the same event last year, and we didn't even bother to bring it up."
"Why in the world are you butting in?"
"Why in the world are you being snappy?" Rei said, rolling her eyes at Remus, "I'm not even talking to you, ugh." She grumbled, then, she smiled at the black-haired lad wearing spectacles and said, "right Xavier?"
The young man with dark hair, Xavier, simply nodded absentmindedly as he averted his eyes in alarm.
"Welcome, educators and students! I'm not really good at being a host, so let's just start this performance challenge of section A," Marvin remarked aloud, followed by an obnoxious ringing of the microphone.
Marvin signed someone to hand him the box that had been sitting at the corner. It was a regular squared sized box, but inside were names of his students, which he would pick in shuffle.
He had begun to insert his hand into the hole and shuffle the papers inside before taking one long folded paper. Before he could even open it, he opened his mouth again.
"Ah right, I forgot that there will be a puppet who will be joining us."
Unexpectedly, a puppet emerged from the other side. Zelde was manipulating a wooden doll that advanced in the center of the arena along with Marvin.
Marvin was immediately drawn to the murmuring coming from the section A students.
Marvin reassured the pupils, "Don't worry, you guys don't need to worry about breaking this doll, Zelde can always build another spare," and then cast a teasing wink towards Zelde.
Zelde, on the other hand, simply gave him a resigned look while visibly concealing his annoyance from his companion.
"Alright, first up!"
When he shouted, the crowd fell silent and an eerie feeling enveloped the arena along with excitement.
Marvin slowly started to unroll the paper in his hands.
While they were actually in a panic, the other students thought the class below was terrifying and had an unwavering sense of self-confidence. But in reality the section A student was praying that their name wouldn't be called first.
"Please move ahead, Rayne Drust."
When a name was finally called, the arena was filled with murmurs and chatter rather than a commotion for some reason.
"Rayne? Do we have someone named like here?"
"All I know with an R in class A are Rei, Remus and Rinalyn."
Everyone began to question one another, asking who was the person Marvin had called. The name was too foreign, they seem to not know someone named 'Rayne' within section A .
When a young woman with red hair approached Marvin and Zelde, the audience fell silent. When the students realized it was Rei, they started chatting again after a little pause.
Remus shook his head in displeasure, "I instructed her to introduce herself with her real name. She's been attending this academy for at most three years, and look, students still don't know her name."
Meanwhile, Rei only heaved a sigh as she listen carefully to what Marvin' next instruction is.
"Well then," Marvin started "you only have to Destroy that doll before it touches you." He simply explained, which only made Rei to nod slightly.
With that, both Marvin and Zelde advanced to the corner near the area where the section A was located. The puppet was still, of course, being controlled by Zelde.
Both Rei and the Doll was now facing each other, waiting for the third ring of the bell.
Ting.
Ting.
Ting!!
The puppet immediately dash towards her which caught her off guard, but nevertheless, Rei successfully dodge it off. With this, the crowd went into an uproar, obviously starting to get hyped about the event.
'That might've been bad.' She thought, looking at the crack the doll made as it landed to where she were initially.
Once the doll got back up, Rei glance towards Zelde who was meekly sitting there as if he wasn't controlling the doll she was up against.
She was quite amused, she knew her adviser to be strong but to think he'd just calmly be sitting there chatting as if he wasn't controlling anything, this made her even more impressed.
'A Veteran' Magic sure is something that shouldn't be underestimated.'
─────!!!
Thanks to her keen instinct she succeeded to avoid the incoming mishap. A Numerous sharp large thorns were thrown on her way.
"H-hey! That's not fair!" She cried out flustered by the sudden attack.
"You idiot! Don't look elsewhere, focus on the doll, if that were a real enemy you'd be dead!!"
Rei turned to Remus who started yelling, glaring as she shouted back "Oh shut up! After I'm done with this, I'll make sure to beat you up into pulp later!!"
The wooden puppet kept on rushing towards Rei, throwing thorns of needles to her which she only keep on dodging.
It was like that for more than 7 minutes that the crowd became quiet.
Beans of sweat was forming into Rei's face, panting as she catch her breath. The doll also stopped, the needles that was coming out of its body ceased.
The doll rushed forward, its hand all of a sudden forming a claw like nail, it was ready to pounce onto with its sharp long wooden claw.
"Oh C'mon! Give me at least a long short break to breathe—eeek!!"
Baaam!
Pssssh....
Unexpectedly, the arena' temperature suddenly drop. Snowflakes started to fall from the ceiling of the arena— the Arena' roof were always open but was also being closed at some events such as today.
Oooooooooooh!!
The audience burst into hype as the icy fog faded in the ground.
There they saw Rei on top of the doll's back sitting, shaking her head in displeasure, while the doll's claw was stuck into the forzen ground.
"Her ability is ice manipulation? That's kinda cool." One student commented.
"I mean, quite common, yeah?" Said the other.
"But, how did she manage to, you know? Freeze the entire thing in like a blink of an eye, that's pretty impressive if you ask me." Another one remarked, which the other two seems to agreed on about.
Rei who was on top of the doll still, had gotten bored quite easily. She glance back towards Zelde, who in fact, still hasn't shown any difference. He was still there meekly sitting like how he was previously.
The maiden sighed as she stray her gaze to the students above. She knew for sure what was going on inside their head even to her classmates who were also seem to be taken aback from what happened.
"That freaking drain me, this is definitely not a skill that I'll be using oftentimes."
What she used was a skill but also a technique called—Crsytalline Coating— a spell used to, obviously, Coat things.
The spell was ancient, but seem to be quite a common spell. However, it isn't.
Crystalline coating, needs focus and speed. Ice users can always use the regular Coating technique or skill that has been thought, however, the process is quite slow and it'll only freezes the target in a slow period of time.
In the ancient technique however, Crystalline Coating, ice users can instantly freeze the target in a second. The ice will slowly began to morph into a crystalline form, which is harder to break and to melt.
The only downside of this technique is that, it take too much mana from its user. If you have much little, using this technique would be quite too dangerous.
At first, Rei fainted numerous time trying to attain the speed she used just now. It was a difficult journey, however she made it. Although, of course, Rei had quite enough mana to use the technique, however the problem was her body; It cannot withstand to lose such a great amount of mana, which is why she faints in the first place.
But as soon as she practice, her body also starts to get used to the mana outturn.
Rei sighed as she got off from the doll who was struggling to take its claw out from the freezing ground— as soon as she did, large long spikes of ice burst out poking holes into the doll.
This made the crowd to gasp in startlement.
Boom!
The doll exploded which caught Rei off guard, as well as the students, some even yelled in surprised.
Once again, the arena was in an uproar. Zelde and Marvin was also seen to be clapping their hands in amusement, Rei somehow felt something heavy had been removed from her chest.
When Rei returned to her seat, she was greeted by her classmates' astonishment. Giving her a thumbs up as they congratulates her.
"Hey, give her water, hurry." Remus ordered to one of his classmate, but instead, all of them just gave him a baffled stare, "well? Do you want her to faint? Chop! Chop!"
With that everyone nervously looked at one another until a hand was extended with a cup of water. When Remus snatch the cup and was about to thank the person who gave it, he halted soon as he saw who.
"What?" Said Austin who was directly staring as his brow furrowed towards Remus "You're looking at me as if I've put poison in the water, geez. Well, guess what? Unlike you, I care for her, if I want her dead, I'll do it painlessly."
With that he left shaking his head and clicking his tongue in annoyance.
"Uh, if you'd like, I could drink taste it. Posion doesn't work on me anyway." Rinalyn remarked but was eventually ignore by the time Rei aggressively snatch the cup from Remus making some water to spill.
"He's not the type to poison anyone, don't worry," Rei said, as she gulp the water and put the cup onto the vacant seat next to her.
Clap. Clap. Clap.
Their attention went to the center field where Marvin was going clapping his hands in between the microphone.
"That was an absolutely stunning performance, quite a short but she still was able to pull that technique in such speed." He started as the crowd Clap in in unison, but immediately stopped as Marvin held up his hand
"Anyway," He continued "For our next performer... contender— student rather, is..." Marvin trailed off, slowly opening the folded sheet of paper he was holding.
Rei who was being fanned by Rinalyn looked around and noticed something off, "Err, where's Luna?"
"Austin Cornelius, please proceed here in the field."