Two weeks after the beginning of his students' training, Arima stood in the middle of a plain with his eyes closed.
"So, how is it?" When he opened his eyes, Chulainn inquired.
"He's saying that he'll arrive in two weeks more weeks or so," Arima replied.
Chulainn hummed and looked at the ground. "It's an interesting idea though; to make a Natural God move for you."
"Well, it was easy. I didn't even need to force or convince him. I just baited him a little and he started moving," Arima shrugged and transferred to the PA. He reappeared in his classroom and casually sat on his seat. He was the only one in the room at the moment.
"Then what about those kids, why are you teaching them so earnestly?" Chulainn finally asked the question that intrigued him the most.
Arima smiled. "What is there to say? It's fun to teach people, you know? Anyone who teaches can agree with me when I say that it's rewarding to see your students succeed. Also, I'm merely doing my job. I accepted to be a temporary instructor so I must accomplish my duty."
Chulainn mused. "But it's not really a reason to go that far. Why do you want to make them so strong in the first place?"
"As I said," Arima stood up and went toward the door. "It's fun."
He smirked and left the room. Today, no one was waiting in front because it was the first day of the local competition and all of them were most likely waiting at the fighting stage.
Arima nonchalantly walked through the corridors, passing by numerous students who gazed at him as if he was some kind of divinity.
The place he arrived five minutes later was a large building with runes engraved on the outer walls. When Arima walked in through the front door. He was welcomed by the reception that was in the hall.
The woman behind the reception slightly tensed when she saw Arima but quickly restrained her emotions.
"Where are my students?" Arima asked and the receptionist took a map from the top of her desk and handed it to Arima.
"There. Your class has been assigned to the third block," She said and pointed at a certain point on the map.
Arima glanced at it and nodded. He then gave it back and left.
"Huh?" The woman was confused as to why he would leave the map behind but Arima had already vanished before she could say anything.
Arima teleported in front of a certain door before opening it. An amazing sight was behind. It was a huge training area. Perhaps even bigger than the whole building it was supposed to be in
Of course, Arima wasn't really surprised. He had sensed the spatial distortions the moment he entered this building.
Within the training area, most of his students were present. They were sitting cross-legged with their eyes closed. Arima was confused at first but then noticed Night who was releasing his aura steadily and slowly.
"Tempering, huh?" Chulainn remarked and Arima nodded.
Tempering was one of the simple ways to practice both your mind and body. It consisted restraining your own aura and 'bathe' in the aura of someone stronger. The effects of that training were essentially bettering mana and aura control, strengthening your body and mind, and warming up.
"It's actually a perfect training before a competition," Chulainn added. "Your soul beast is pretty responsible."
Arima snickered and patiently waited at the entrance. Ten minutes later, all of the students opened their eyes and felt invigorated. When they spotted Arima watching them, they all hastened themselves to greet him.
"You're all ready to go it seems. I don't know how strong your first opponent will be, but if there's something I need to tell you, it's this," Arima raised his voice and caught the attention of everyone. "You're not allowed to lose," He stated and his students held their breath.
They all nodded at the same time. Arima was satisfied with that and turned around. "Let's go then. If I'm not wrong, you'll compete against the class four."
When Arima finished talking, a bell rang across the entire building and a voice resounded.
"The first round will start. Teachers, please lead your class to the assigned arenas," The voice instructed and Arima promptly left the training area with his students tagging along.
Arima led the group along with Night and Chulainn. Lanya and Karma were not there. They had preferred going somewhere else to take as troll apparently. Well, it's not like they were obliged to come. Lanya only needed to be present at the end of the competition to confront Velvet.
As for Arister, that guy was walking behind together with the class. In fact, Arima didn't know how to react anymore. That guy actually had a crush on Ferzia and it was almost too much. But the fact that Ferzia herself wasn't rejecting him was also very unexpected.
After a minute, the class arrived at a vast white room. There was barely anything there except an impressive-looking arc in the center. It was producing a sort of shining silver-light veil.
An old man there welcomed the class and explained to them that the arc was a portal leading to a confined space where the tests and fights would unfold.
When they went through the portal, they ended up in a simple stone arena with multiple rows of seats surrounding it. It was incidentally there that the jury was sitting and it was the first thing Arima checked when he entered the arena. Because he was actually acquainted with two of them out five.
He smiled and took a single step forward. That made him travel the entire distance in a second.
"How are you doing?" Arima slowly sat down and spoke to the man with a large build next to him. "Raal."
The Demon King laughed in return. "I heard you were teaching some kids and requested to be a jury here. At first, I didn't believe that the Kind Demon would be diligently teaching at an academy, but the facts actually shocked me."
"Hello, Arima," A woman's voice joined the conversation and an elegant and beautiful elf took a seat beside them. "I came here for the same reason."
"It's been a while, Karia," Arima greeted her. "Your aura has become a lot purer."
"Yes, thanks to you," Karia brightly smiled.
The three other judges frowned at that exchange. They thought that personal connections with the jury shouldn't be allowed. But they also had heard about the man sitting there. Almost no one wasn't conscious of the Kind Demon.
There were also the Demon King and the Elven Priestess who had substantial influence even within the Main Land. They chose to keep their dissatisfaction for themselves since their status was not comparable.
Meanwhile, Arima's students looked at their teacher with strange eyes. They didn't know he was so close to those big figures.
Night sighed. "Hey, don't lose focus. The thing you should worry about is over there," He uttered. He seriously felt like he had already done too much for those kids.
The class followed his words and looked toward the opposite side of the arena. The second class had arrived from another portal. The teacher of that class was a scholar-like middle-aged man. When he saw Arima, his expression turned very sour.
"Teacher Musk," One of his students called him. "We will do our best," He declared and Musk smiled at him and his determination. Even if no one wanted to admit it, both he and his class knew that they had not a lot of chances to triumph over Arima's students.
"Attention, please. The first round of the local tournament begins. Everyone, ready yourself. The first test will be aura measuring," The announcing voice from before resounded again.
"I'm the one supervising that," Karia said and stood up. "I'll be back in a few minutes."
Arima and Raal smiled and nodded at her. Karia did exactly like Arima earlier. She took one step and appeared in the middle of the arena.
"The way the examination will unfold depends on me. I can choose to either make you pass one by one or all together," Karia announced. Her voice was soft and soothing, not especially loud, but it still reached the ears of everyone.
"I will obviously pick the latter. We're not here to lose time. All of you step on the stage and release your auras at the signal."
The two classes jumped on the arena and gradually condensed their aura to release it at any given moment. At the same time, on both sides, students started transforming using their soul contract.
Karia observed that and smiled wryly. "(He made something really scary, didn't he?)"
"I will give the signal. I will now countdown from ten to zero," The announcer said and initiated the countdown.
"10, 9,7," The students regulated their breath.
During the countdown, Gaodu's appearance slowly changed. Ferzia's eyes glowed menacingly and Kine became surrounded by a red hue.
"3, 2, 1, start!"
At the signal, the auras of eighty students were liberated at the same time. This kind of pressure was sufficient to even scare a Ninth Level. But for someone like Karia who was between the Tenth Level and the Earthen Realm, it was barely adequate to bother her. Additionally, her main strength relied on her pure soul and her incredible affinity with Spirits and nature. She could be considered to be as strong as a First Sky.
Karia glanced at Arima's class with sharp eyes. Although this wasn't much for her, she had to admit there was something odd with that class.
The aura coming from them was just absurd for a bunch of kids. She could also feel a certain aura so wicked and prideful that it intuitively made her feel inferior. The owner of that aura was Gaodu who was wearing a blue outfit. He was staring at Karia with a huge grin on his face.
In her opinion, there were no mistakes possible. Whether it was on purity, quantity, or magnitude, the best was undoubtedly Arima's class. She discharged her own aura and overpowered the others to make them stop peacefully.
"The winner is class 3," Karia shared her verdict.
Arima's students smiled while the other class was a bit depressed. The very instant they released their aura earlier, they already had understood that they had no chance of winning this test.
"How was it?" When Karia came back to sit on the bench, Arima asked.
"Little demons," Karia responded and Raal burst out laughing.
"Indeed. After seeing this, I have no other words," He gazed at the students. "I never saw something similar. Among them, I felt an extremely powerful dormant aura, something like a cruel beast in a sheep's clothing. I even detected a Blood Eater."
"I don't know if you're just fortunate to have gathered that many talents or too good at teaching," Raal jested and Arima snickered.
Five minutes later, the students competed in magic theory. This time, it was another judge that supervised the entire test.
In the end, although the opposite class had read and learned from Arima's popularized books, the latter's class directly studied under his tutelage. They could also consult him every time they had doubts and confusions and receive a detailed and intuitive explanation.
After the theory, it was mana and spiritual forces' control and power. In the end, Arima's class won every test with a crushing defeat on the other side.
When it finally was time for the combats, Raal got fired up to supervise it when Musk suddenly stood up and conceded for his class. He knew they had no chance. There was no point in reducing his students' self-confidence further. And even if they were to miraculously win, they would still lose the overall match.
"Huh?" Raal blanked. He was quite excited to see what Arima's students were capable of in a fight but the occasion was taken away from him in a second.
Arima smirked and stood up. "Well, you'll have the chance to see it during the next round," He reassured Raal then joined his students before leaving through the portal.
The Demon King's face darkened and left glowering. Karia chuckled and followed after him.
Like so, Arima's class easily passed the first round.