Magic Academy Mayhem: A Class Full of Maniacs - Chapter 22

Chapter 22

The past month had been so busy that Cynthia had nearly forgotten the Freshman Competition was even a thing.

She tapped open the rules and skimmed through them.

This year’s Freshman Competition wasn’t divided by department, but by class.

Aside from the Team Competition, there was also an Individual Competition.

Both followed an elimination format. One loss meant you were out for good.

This would continue until the final winner was decided.

This year, the first-year freshmen of every department had been divided into sixteen classes.

With the five major departments combined, that made eighty teams in total, five people per team, for a total of four hundred participants.

The Individual Competition would be held before the Team Competition.

In order to make the schedule more reasonable-read: save time-after opponents were randomly assigned, the Individual Competition would be divided into nine rounds.

Each round would halve the number of advancing participants, with byes granted when the number was odd, until only two remained for the final duel.

400 → 200 → 100 → 50.

25 → 13 → 7 → 4 → 2 → 1.

Because there were too many participants, the first five rounds would be held in different competition zones around the academy.

Only the final four rounds would be gathered into a single venue.

The Team Competition was also an elimination format, and the rules were more or less the same.

The points to note were as follows: participants were not allowed to take their opponents’ lives. During matches, they could only use Spirit Weapon and magical attacks. The use of any external aids on the field, including magical tools, magic scrolls, or any type of medicine, was prohibited.

In other words, if you got injured during a fight, you couldn’t even use a potion. You could only wait until the battle was over.

Cynthia didn’t particularly care about that and continued reading.

Mission rewards: first place in the Team Competition would receive 1,000 points per person, second place 500, and third place 300.

The rewards for the Individual Competition were the same as the Team Competition.

Points…

Cynthia was a little speechless at the thought.

Within St. Novis Academy of Magic, all outside currency was banned.

According to the rules she had learned over the past few days, whether it was Sky City, the main city of the five major departments, or the twelve surrounding floating islands, everything used points in place of outside currency.

Here, one point was equivalent to one gold coin.

Although the academy gifted freshmen 100 points as a welcome present during their first month of enrollment, prices in the academy were high.

Even if you didn’t spend extravagantly and only counted three meals a day, making it through a month would still be a bit tight.

On top of that, after the Freshman Competition, the academy would stop handing out those free points. With currency not in circulation, it didn’t matter how rich you were outside.

If you wanted to eat, you had to take part-time jobs and accept missions around the academy to earn point rewards.

Who knew whether the academy was trying to train their practical abilities, or trying to prevent class oppression between nobles and commoners…

Cynthia opened her personal account.

Her current point balance was still 80…

Should she be thanking Griffin?

First, he had thrown them into the Secret Realm Forest and onto a deserted island. After they came out, there had been seven days in solitary confinement-during which they could only drink plain congee-and then more secret realm training after that.

As a result, over the course of an entire month, she had only gone twice in total to the department’s exclusive shopping district and the academy cafeteria. Thanks to that, she had saved quite a few points…

After replying “received” in the group chat, Cynthia entered the part-time mission page and browsed through it.

Accepting missions also came with rank restrictions.

For instance, simple tasks like delivering goods, gathering herbs, helping watch a shop, or working as a server only required First Order.

But missions like hunting high-level Magical Beast in the academy’s secret realms or collecting high-level spiritual plants would restrict ranks based on mission difficulty.

Most of them were team missions.

Next came two-person missions.

Solo missions were few and far between, and their difficulty was high enough that they weren’t something first-years could handle.

So if she really wanted to take on part-time work later, she would have to call her teammates.

Cynthia’s mood immediately soured at the thought.

Although Eli and Richter were currently treating each other like they were invisible, that didn’t mean things would truly remain stable forever.

…Forget it. She would think about it when the time came.

After a full day of Magical Beast hunting in the secret realm, her body was even more exhausted than usual because of Resonance. Cynthia stopped thinking, closed the Light Screen, and let herself sink into sleep.

–

The academy’s first floating island was called Undying Island.

It was covered in teleportation gates leading to various parts of the continent, as well as the entrance to the Forbidden Abyss Rift.

The island itself was the core hub of a magic array. The concentration of magic power in the air was extremely high, forming a natural magical barrier.

It could both resist foreign enemies and protect the island from interference by external seasons and climate. On Undying Island, it was forever spring.

Because of its unique terrain, countless trial grounds and arenas had later been built across the island as well.

This year’s Freshman Tournament was being held at Starfield Arena in the western part of the island.

The spectator stands were ring-shaped, rising layer upon layer, and could easily accommodate tens of thousands of spectators.

Magic crystal screens had been set up all around the competition stage to magnify the details of the battlefield, achieving full-area capture.

Cynthia’s match was not in the same competition zone as her other teammates. Following Griffin’s instructions, she passed through a teleportation magic array and arrived at the venue. After waiting for a few minutes, the random matching officially began.
Cynthia watched the Light Screen flicker, and finally found her name on the fifth line from the bottom.

Her opponent this time was-Rafael Clavien.

The instant she saw that name, it was as if a boulder had slammed down on her chest. An indescribably strange feeling rose in her for no reason.

What the hell…

Cynthia ruled out the influence of Resonance and ultimately determined that it was an emotion left behind by the original Cynthia.

After all, Rafael Clavien had been the original Cynthia’s only friend in childhood…

He was also the young master of the Clavien Family, one of the Empire’s four great ducal families.

The four great ducal families governed the east, west, south, and north of the Empire respectively, so their territories were naturally thousands of miles apart.

Generally speaking, before coming of age, aside from festivals and royal banquets, the children of ducal families rarely gathered at the Ducal Mansions established in the imperial capital.

Unless there was a specific reason, they stayed in their own family territories. Even after entering the Imperial Capital Academy at the age of six, they would return to their family territories via teleportation arrays during the holidays.

The reason the original Cynthia had a connection with Rafael was that when Rafael was three, forbidden rifts in the northern region had increased, and internal strife had broken out within his family.

Duke Clavien had no choice but to send the young Rafael to be fostered temporarily with a friend’s family-which was the original Cynthia’s family.

That was how the original Cynthia met him.

They spent two years together. It was not until he was five and a half, when everything in the north had finally been settled, that his family came to take him back.

Later, due to Rafael’s health, he could not attend the Imperial Academy like the original Cynthia.

So although they did keep in touch through letters afterward, during the period when the original Cynthia’s older brother disappeared, her father fell into a coma, and her mother went away to recuperate, she was physically and mentally exhausted.

On top of that, the malicious butler obstructed her, and the maids interfered, which ultimately forced the original Cynthia to lose contact with him.

She did not even know whether he had continued writing to her.

After that, the original Cynthia saw Rafael again at the age of ten because of a royal banquet.

But by then, she had already gone through too much, and her personality had changed drastically. Though she had not forgotten him, she was still quiet and withdrawn when they met.

When he asked how she had been all these years and why she had stopped replying to his letters, she had no idea how to talk about the misfortunes of those years, nor was she willing to mention that unbearable past.

So she chose to run away from it.

They exchanged only a few brief words before she left the banquet and went home. After that, they never met again.

However, after that day, the original Cynthia once again began receiving letters from Rafael-at least two letters a month, along with a large pile of gifts.

But she did not know how to handle this friendship that had been separated by years. Every time, she grew irritated and conflicted over it, and in the end, she always replied in an official, distant manner.

As this went on, the other party probably grew tired of it too, so at the beginning of this year, they completely lost contact.

As for why they could not use communication artifacts or the like… simply put, long-distance transmission required a tremendous amount of mana.

In addition, various magical barriers and arrays blocked the regions from one another. Without a cultivation level above the seventh tier, one could not even activate a communication artifact, let alone anything else.

Even the communication function of the Spirit Card developed by the top academy on the continent could only waive mana consumption within the range of Sky City and the Twelve Floating Islands.

Once beyond that range, even on the deserted island below Sky City, the communication function and several other functions would be restricted.

To send a message, one could only consume the corresponding amount of mana. As for video communication, that was even more difficult.

That was also why they had been unable to contact Griffin from the deserted island, while Griffin had been able to contact them.

Cynthia had not expected that in her very first match, she would run into someone connected to the original Cynthia.

That sudden, strange sensation just now… was probably emotion left behind by the original Cynthia.

Although the original Cynthia had appeared cold and gloomy on the surface-and in the two years after moving to the capital to avoid her parents, she had become even more moody and was regarded as a lunatic-she had still held a certain amount of affection for this childhood friend.

She had not wanted to deepen their relationship again, but she also had not wanted to destroy the friendship that had once existed between them.

Cynthia’s analysis of the original Cynthia’s emotions was practically on the level of a master psychologist, and she understood the conflicted mindset behind her deliberate choice to cut off contact.

After thinking it over, she ultimately decided to maintain the status quo.

In any case, after growing up, they had only met once. More than half a year had already passed since the beginning of this year, and they had remained out of contact the entire time. Presumably, he had let it go as well.

From now on, she could just treat him like a stranger.

Cynthia did not dwell on it any further and continued reading the brief information about him.

Tianxuan: Class 016.

Spirit Weapon: Nightmare Scimitar.

His sequence was… Divine Sequence 9.

Cynthia fell silent.

According to the records, Sequence 9 seemed to be the blessing of the God of Destruction.

Wasn’t it said that the top ten Divine Sequences were extremely rare, and that the entire academy had only ever produced a few of them?

So what was this supposed to be?