The central stage of the arena was a lot grander than I had expected it to be. It resembled an actual stadium style battleground, with hundreds of seats at an escalated height surrounding the white tiled central stage that was at least half the size of a football field. As soon as I entered, I was escorted by a staff member to a sort of viewing room with other candidates, where we could watch the current match unfolding in front of us as we waited for our matchup. Upon checking the matchup chart on the wall, I was up against someone named Moon Jihoon, although I didn’t have a clue as to who that may be in this room full of about fifteen other candidates.

As I took an inconspicuous seat in the corner, a quick look around the room indicated that most of the candidates were around my age, with the exception of two older gentlemen standing to one side. To my relief, I was not the target of the room’s female attention this time around, that honor instead going to a tall young man with chiseled features sitting by himself to one side. Even with his eyes closed and arms folded, his perfectly styled short black hair, only served to enhance his striking facial features. As a man, even I had to acknowledge his handsomeness. If the refined aura emanating from his body was any indication, I would guess he belonged to a high-ranking family of mages.

Turning my attention to the stage, I couldn’t really focus on the current match between a wind elemental and an earth elemental, since they were both making amateur mistakes Master Jaehyun would have kicked us out of the dojo for years ago. I did notice however that they were wearing what seemed to be glowing chest plates, which were also the obvious targets of each other’s attacks. I assumed this would be explained to me before my match but I had already surmised that this match worked in a similar one hit knockout fashion to Master Jaehyun’s dojo. 

However here, instead of landing a hit anywhere on the opponent’s body, one had to break their chest plate instead. The other important thing I noticed from glimpses of the arena’s spectators’ screen was the man keenly observing the match from his viewing box at the top of the north side of the arena. The man I had hoped would somehow be assigned to the same test venue as me. The man I needed to impress today if I wanted a shot at getting into Ashford Academy. It was the Chancellor of Ashford Academy; the S-ranked Summoner, Ashford Wendigo himself.

Careful not to let this new discovery distract me, I decided to use the remainder of my time until the match to recharge my mana reserves, which were currently at about forty percent after having used Flame Coffin in the last testing stage. After about thirty minutes, my name was announced, and I quietly made my way towards the center of the arena, greeted by cheers from the scores of mages lining the seats surrounding the battle stage. By the loudness of the cheers even through the dome-shaped protective barrier that separated the stage from the stands, I estimated that there must have been well over a thousand spectators. Although that was hardly surprising; after all, every mage in town wanted to get their hands on an exclusive invite to watch young mages battle it out on Magiharu. Since all anyone would talk about in the weeks following Magiharu would be that year’s top crop of young mages, an invitation to these matches was more a confirmation of one’s wealth and connections than anything else. There was no need for me to pay these people any attention though, since I wouldn’t know any of them anyway. All I had to do was focus on my opponent, although I was surprised to see Moon Jihoon’s figure as he emerged from the other side of the arena.

This time meeting his gaze directly as we stood on opposite sides of the white tiled stage, our newly fitted chest plates glistening under the strong sunlight, Jihoon’s features were even more striking than what I had noticed minutes earlier in the waiting room. It was no wonder the crowd had gone silent, as if waiting to see what this young mage with a prince-like aura would do next.

As the bell indicating the start of the match rang, I quickly cast the trio of Flame Coat, Flame Jet and Flame Fist as I dashed towards my opponent; not wanting to give him a chance to react. To my surprise, I was greeted by what felt like an invisible wall smashing against my body, a few feet away from where Jihoon stood. Regaining my composure, I quickly retreated, aware of the obvious mistake I had made, not activating mana sense at the start of the battle. As I scanned the stage with my now mana powered eyesight, I saw an almost translucent barrier surrounding Jihoon’s body, a few meters wide in all directions.

‘Well that’s annoying,’ I muttered to myself as I powered up once again, going in for a Flame Fist which connected with the barrier this time, albeit leaving it intact. As I hit the barrier with a quick succession of Flame Fists from both my hands, much like a boxer jabbing continuously at his opponent, cracks started appearing in the barrier, a slight expression of concern on Jihoon’s face for the first time since the match had started. I could barely see him casting however before the barrier suddenly swelled in size, pushing me backwards into a dimensional portal that suddenly appeared behind me; my unassuming body reappearing on the ground off the stage.

‘Well, fuck…’ was the only response I could muster as I realized Jihoon was a Gatekeeper; mages capable of creating dimensional portals anywhere in their field of vision, and generating barriers capable of withstanding almost every kind of magical spell. The crowd erupted in a symphony of cheers for my opponent, as I quickly got back up to the stage, thankful that this wasn’t a knockout match. If it were, and if it weren’t for the barrier erected to protect the spectators, Jihoon could probably portal me all the way to Serpentine Forest at his level, and just leave me there. This was exactly why talented gatekeepers were some of the most sought-after mages in the world.

If I was going to beat Jihoon, I had to get through his barrier somehow while avoiding any portals he created. The good thing was, expanding the barrier had clearly tired him out, so I knew he couldn’t keep playing with the size of the barrier for a long time. Once again casting the trio of D-rank fire spells, I launched at my opponent’s barrier, dodging left as a portal appeared in front of me. In the second it had taken Jihoon to create another portal to my left, in the direction I had dodged, I had already regained my footing, dashing forward once again. 

I could hear the cheers steadily rising again as I danced around the portals Jihoon conjured repeatedly like some kind of fiery figure skater, all the while moving closer to his barrier. If I had been relying only on my eyes, Jihoon would have won the match already. However, my keen mana sense would pick up a slight increase in the vibration of the pure white mana particles at the location where Jihoon was creating his next portal, making his spell quite predictable the longer the match went on. Although Jihoon’s portal creation was getting slightly faster too, which was impressive.

As I arrived at the barrier, I took a gamble by casting the C-rank spell, Flaming Body, enveloping my body in a fiery aura, hotter and much more intense than a simple Flame Coat. My gamble paid off, as red tinted mana particles started congregating all around me, vibrating faster and disturbing all other mana particles around me; effectively making it difficult for Jihoon to accurately create a portal close to my body. Without giving him any time to react, I launched a Flame Fist at the portal, which, powered by the strength of my Flaming Body enhancement, shattered the barrier into a thousand pieces. The crowd erupted in cheers at my unexpected display of strength, the giant screen even showing glimpses of Ashford Wendigo nodding his head in approval. Jihoon however, looked less than pleased.

‘Hey, well done for breaking my barrier, I honestly wasn’t expecting that,’ he spoke to me for the first time, smilingly.

‘You’re not too bad yourself, although your defenses could be in better shape right about now,’ I shot back, grinning.

‘Oh, I wouldn’t exactly say that,’ he replied, as dozens of portals opened up all around the stage, the show of power from Jihoon eliciting another applause from the crowd.

Of course, why hadn’t I realized this before? Now that Jihoon knew I could break his barrier, he had stopped wasting mana and concentration on maintaining that spell, and would instead fight me with what came most naturally to him; creating portals. As I once again attempted to dodge portal after portal, narrowly scraping by a few times with the combination of my still active Flaming Body and intermittent use of Flame Jet; I could tell that my mana sense was having a hard time keeping up with Jihoon’s near instantaneous portal creation. Furthermore, a purposeful Flame Sphere I had shot into one of his portals had finally emerged as a singe on the ground outside the stage, after being bounced through and sped up by a series of interconnected portals. So basically, if I were to get caught, I was probably going to end up face down on the ground with my chest plate broken the next second.

Honestly, I couldn’t help but admire Jihoon. For a mage who was around the same age as me, his near instantaneous portal creation in his immediate vicinity, along with being able to generate a strong barrier, probably meant he was somewhere around upper C-rank, if not higher i.e. a natural genius like my sister. I couldn’t see any way out of this situation except for what I was about to do, simply hoping that the barrier between the spectators and the candidates meant no one outside of this stage could use mana sense to see what was going on inside the barrier. Taking a deep breath, I activated what I believed was the most basic form of lightning element body enhancement; Lightning Coat, at the same time increasing the intensity of my still active Flaming Body to its maximum limit. Although this combination of spells would quickly drain me of my remaining mana reserves, I was hoping the intense flames would camouflage the occasional blue currents of electricity emanating from my body.

As my speed rose to the highest it had ever been, powered by the two simultaneous elemental enhancements, I dashed forward, zigzagging my way through the minefield of portals to appear in front of Jihoon in the blink of an eye, before he even had a chance to comprehend what was happening. In that brief moment our eyes met, as time seemed to slow down, I could tell he had already begun silent casting, but unfortunately for him, it was too late. With a well-aimed Flame Fist directed at this chest plate, Jihoon was launched backwards, landing a few paces off the stage, narrowly avoiding a direct collision with the barrier surrounding the arena.

As a team of medics rushed towards him, Jihoon’s smiling face was plastered on the viewing screen as the crowd erupted into a cacophony of cheers louder than any I’d ever heard before in my life. Having quickly withdrawn lightning coat as soon as my strike had connected, I now stood alone on the stage, my body lathered in a fiery blaze, enjoying my brief moment in the spotlight. Of course, the cheers immediately turned to pin drop silence as the crowd marveled at the sight of the man now approaching me on stage. As I looked at the man walking towards me with a dignified neutrality on his face, I couldn’t believe it. It was him. It was Ashford Wendigo himself.