The day went normally, Avur still couldn’t move, so after school Daxxel carried him to the inn and then to his room and laid him on the bed.
Daxxel sat down on a chair and ate an apple when he spoke: “I don’t know how you intend to participate in the academy tournament, Avur.”
Avur froze…
a tournament?
Nobody mentioned anything about it.
“Dax…
are you kidding?
What do you mean by ‘tournament’?
Which tournament and when?” Avur was visibly confused.
He hadn’t heard anything about it, probably because he’d had a fever during the first two periods he missed.
Daxxel realized he hadn’t told Avur what the teacher had said, so he told him: “The Ascension Tournament is a tournament where you start at rank F and fight your way up.”
“Our school does this every year, and it starts in two days.
Everyone’s training right now, maybe that’s why we didn’t find Pixie, because she was training.
But don’t worry, two days is plenty of time to be completely healthy again anyway.” He ate the apple and threw it in the trash can.
“Did you just say TWO days?!
Two days are enough to get healthy again?!
I have to train too, otherwise I’ll end up in the F-rank!” He got out of bed, his ego winning over his exhaustion.
He started shadowboxing.
At first, he couldn’t even land a punch; he was clumsy because he was exhausted.
He succeeded on his next attempt.
It looks pretty silly to watch, but for Avur it was an enormous achievement.
No one can imagine how exhausted his body must be after nearly dying from a 46-degree Celsius fever.
It was amazing enough that he survived, but to even start shadowboxing in the first place is just insane.
Daxxel wanted to stop Avur, but he saw that Avur’s eyes were shining with excitement and he gave the impression that he wanted to win at all costs.
“Okay, then I’ll go home now.
If anything happens, just give me a call.
See you tomorrow,” said Daxxel before he left.
Avur continued training, doing push-ups, squats, pull-ups, and so on.
Then he opened the book to see what else he could learn from it.
“Save State”—maybe I should learn that too?
Ah, I should focus on improving my current skills before learning new ones.
Avur trained nonstop for two days, even during his lunch break at school.
On the day of the academy tournament, each participant was paired with someone of the same rank.
Newcomers like Avur were immediately placed in the F-rank, meaning he had to fight his way up to reach the S or Z-ranks.
Avur’s first opponent was a frightened girl, probably a year older than him.
She possessed a magic wand, which means she is a witch.
Avur didn’t hesitate long and said directly: “Come on, I have to work my way up, so do the same or just remain a loser.
Either way, I have my own goals, so I’m going to win this.”
He attacked first by using a portal, punching into it, and it appeared behind the girl, hitting her and knocking her unconscious.
“Seriously…?
Is an F-rank really that weak?” Avur was disappointed.
Now he had to compete against even more F-rank fighters.
In each rank level, each player had to win ten rounds, otherwise they could not advance to the next higher rank level.
Anyone who lost was eliminated from the entire tournament and their certificate was recorded as an F-rank.
The battles are filmed by VS-Drones, which display a person’s current ranking, magical abilities, and other statistics.
These drones then promote the fighters to the next higher ranks.
VS stands for Virtual Statistics Drone, a drone that shows fighters an image to see how long a fighter can last, or more simply put: spectators and fighters can use the footage from the VS-Drone to see what is happening and what abilities and limitations a person has.
Over time, Avur finally reached the A-class, where he had to fight Pixie…
he knew it wouldn’t be easy and that it would be difficult to win against her, after all, he hadn’t had a break and had already fought against over 50 people, while Pixie had previously been in the B-class, which meant she hadn’t wasted too much energy.
Being in the A-class simply means being ranked within the A-class; it doesn’t mean he changes classes just because he reached the A-class.
The A-class, or any other class, are therefore considered ranking groups.
Avur began his usual attack: He opened a portal, slammed into it, and it opened behind Pixie.
But Pixie grabbed his arm, pulled him out with her entire body, and used ice particle snowflake magic, freezing Avur solid.
He attacked relentlessly, using poison – a single touch was enough to activate it.
But she dodged every attack.
Although he sometimes reached her, he had no time to cast his magic.
Pixie began using two magical elements: water and earth.
She used earth magic to anchor the ground so that Avur’s feet became trapped within it.
Avur knew this and leaped into the sky, but then Pixie changed her tactics and made the ground shoot upwards, engulfing his entire body and hurling him back down.
The impact caused his eyes to roll back.
Pixie, unstoppable, continued to throw him to the ground.
Then she drowned him with her water magic.
Where did she get the water?
Surely from the clouds.
Avur regained consciousness and tried to free himself from the earth magic.
He activated poison that destroyed Pixie’s earth magic, which had enveloped him.
He then escaped the water by running in circles, transforming her water magic into a whirlpool that could no longer drown him.
Since she cannot focus her magic on a moving target, the water began to disappear.
She can’t believe how stubborn Avur is.
She has literally thrown him to the ground several times with her earth magic.
He has a broken arm, two broken legs, and yet he’s still moving. This chapter is updated first at g.com.
Avur stopped thinking about what to do.
What mattered now was being in the here and now.
In a flash, he appeared behind Pixie, struck her with all his might, and hurled her against the wall.
Pixie healed herself with her advanced healing magic.
Avur was not himself.
Avur was in a state that athletes commonly refer to as the zone.
His thoughts vanished; his body moved in ways he could scarcely imagine.
What had previously seemed impossible now felt completely normal.
Every complex movement became easier, all pain disappeared, and he was extremely focused.
He appeared before Pixie, who had now recovered and refused to give up against someone like Avur.
She attempted her ultimate spell, the electric phoenix; a gigantic, phoenix-like being appeared behind Avur, 100 meters away, flying towards him at 10.8 million km/h.
Pixie smiled triumphantly.
She believed she had won.
The phoenix was full of electricity; he had no time to dodge, and blocking it would mean absorbing over a million volts, so he would die.
She thought he would give up any moment, but he didn’t.
Avur simply used his right hand, activated a new ability called parry, parried the attack with his hand, knocked it back, and hurled it into the sky.
Next, he employed his own fighting style, striking her 300 times per second and executing a flash step every millisecond.
He was so focused that he didn’t stop until he was finished.
Pixie couldn’t see anything; he was moving too fast for her eyes to follow.
She healed herself every three seconds, but it still hurt terribly.
Her magical energy was beyond all limits, forcing her to push her healing magic to its absolute limit.
When her healing magic was exhausted, Avur intended to deliver the killing blow.
He raised his right fist and struck her face with all his might, but his fist stopped just short of her face.
The air pressure threw her back, but his fist sank downwards.
Avur was unconscious.
He had passed out while standing.
His right hand was burned and bleeding heavily; it was the same hand and arm he had broken.
However, he had felt no pain upon entering the zone, so he continued to use his right arm despite bleeding all over his body.
He had passed out two minutes earlier—meaning that at that very moment he had fended off the phoenix, brutally attacked her, and used the flash step without even being conscious.
It was his fighting spirit, his determination to win at all costs, that drove him to continue.
Pixie was completely exhausted and collapsed unconscious, resulting in a draw in the fight.
Althea watched the fight via the VS-Drone, along with the other students and teachers who hadn’t participated in the tournament or had lost.
Everyone was amazed at what kind of person could go so far just to win.