The results of the examination were soon announced.
Due to the interference of the centipede monster, the exam was forced to cancel midway through. However, it wasn't like they could simply give marks to the students based off estimation since the individual examination was used for that reason. This problem was even more so prominent considering that people who helped to take down the centipede were not properly rewarded after risking their lives.
As such, it was decided that all students who were involved in the battle would be given 50 points additionally to their scores after the examination had stopped. For special individuals like Lunaria and Yuuji, there were given an addition of 100 points. Only Kaze got 200 points, but of course this wasn't publicly announced since the public never acknowledged him as one of the few who fought with them.
In the end, the 200 points was barely able to save Kaze and allowed him to get somewhere around 650 points. It was enough to appear on the invisible ranking board, but not enough to get people to notice him since normally people would only look at the top. Needless to say, Lunaria became the most outstanding individual along with some of their friends. Achieving an astonishing 1250 points on her own, she was definitely the top-scorer even without the bonus points.
Following this was the announcement of the first semester exam results after school reopened. As expected, Lunaria topped the entire school with her own abilities. It wasn't just the individual examination that proved her abilities, but the entire exam itself. She easily shot through the rankings to the first rank of both the invisible scoreboard and the official scoreboard.
As for Kaze, he somehow barely managed to achieve the score threshold that Lunaria had set up for him. It wasn't an easy task with all the hard work he had to put in, but at least it was worth it in the end. Lunaria still wanted him to get an average of 85 for the GPA (grades per average) and this was a long progress for Kaze. Still, she showed much satisfaction from his improvement compared to the first few months.
The incident of the centipede came to a closing too, with not much information being released to the public. All that was said was there was an irregularity that had not been previously detected, shifting the blame away from the school itself. Since there didn't seem to be much more than was known about the irregularity other than possible theories, people quickly forgot about the incident a few weeks later.
In the next few weeks, the group continued studying and living together without much hassle. Occasionally, Lunatea would show up to greet her sister and mixed with the group for a bit before leaving the next day. As such, it resulted in quite a few humorous scenarios that were unintentional. One example was when Lunatea found Kaze snuggling into Lunaria's chest, but in reality was just him falling asleep accidentally while being tutored late into the night.
For Lunatea, it was rare to see her sister being so considerate to someone she considered a 'good friend'. She had her doubts before, but reaffirmed that she was willing to trust her sister more than she did herself. Lunaria wasn't the type to simply make judgements, hence why she trusted Kaze too.
Just like that, the months peacefully passed until it was the middle of the year.
Like any other day, Kaze started his morning training before the sun was up. Sometimes, Sera or Rena would be there to join him but today it was just him alone.
After a few weeks of training, Kaze felt like he was starting to get used to the sword that was given to him by the King. It wasn't the best compared to his previous sword, but it was something he could go all-out on with pure magic. He still had to be careful with the output itself as no metal was able to full withstand the concentration of mana, but could gather more than usual.
"Good morning," Kaze greeted Lunaria, who was already in the kitchen preparing breakfast. "What are you making?"
"Morning. I'm just cooking some eggs," Lunaria let out a soft yawn and greeted him. "Do you want me to make breakfast for you?"
"Really? Sure," Kaze easily accepted her offer. "Remember not to overcook though. We know that dragonkins need to consume a lot but we always have leftovers."
"Hehe, I can't help it sometimes," Lunaria simply smiled at his advice and turned around. "The bathroom is free, you can use it if needed."
One by one, each of their friends descended from their rooms and ate breakfast together. After a bit, all of them departed to school together by foot. The few months together allowed them to set a schedule for each of them, in which they were all used to already. Be it eating together or leaving the house at different times, they felt comfortable living together.
Along the way to school, Kaze noticed the streets starting to be decorated with different designs and banners on the housing and lamp posts. All of them were related to one subject alone-the upcoming Moon Festival.
One of the few major festivals that was celebrated in the city of Tristania was the Moon Festival as a worship to two goddesses in particular. They were the Goddess of the Moon, Artemis, and the Goddess of Love, Amitiel. Amitiel was often referred to as Goddess Tiel in short, since she was known more commonly by that name. What the festival was about had to be traced back to a fairy tale of the past.
As a worshipper of the Goddess of Love, Kaze was brought up in such an environment since he grew up in a church. It wasn't like they were avid followers, but merely were used to be taught morals and life lessons. The Gods and Goddesses in general were normally just a sign of acknowledging their existence rather than incorporating them into their daily life. There were shrines and churches all over to worship them, but it wasn't being emphasized among the crowd in Tristania.
However, there was also another reason that the Moon Festival was one of the more anticipated annual festival.
It was because of the events that would occur. Every school in Tristania would follow the annual event list and host the festival for their students. The festival itself lasted for 3 days due to the large number of activities available for them. While it was mostly conducted by the school itself, there were outside help for certain things that required more expertise and control. As a result, the Student Council was busy preparing for the said festival which would occur in a few days.
"Lunaria, won't you be busy?" Yuuji asked the dragonkin princess on the way to school. "With the Moon Festival."
"Us first-years are allowed to enjoy the festival for the time being, but second-year onwards would be the head of operations," Lunaria nodded. "I am fine even though I have a post, since I only have to check some documents and help with the planning."
"The Moon Festival, huh? What do you think they have planned for this year?" Chris asked with an excited smile. "We were only allowed to participate in the public events and eat at home, but now that we are all in school, we can have private events specifically for us!"
"Do you think we will get a blessing again?" Irene suggested. "Every year the goddesses give a temporary blessing to everyone who worshipped them on the day itself."
"There will probably be a lottery," Yuuji guessed. "You know, to win prizes and such."
"Is it really that big an event?" Kaze asked, being new to all this. "Back in town, I didn't have anything grand like this. We only ate a little better and prayed a little more."
"Ah, right. That is because it is said that the goddesses in general will watch over more important lands to ensure the safety of the people," Mitsui explained to him. "They might be powerful, but it is hard for them to care for every single person. As such, it would be easier to look after a bigger crowd concentrated in a city already."
"Hmm, we don't have anything like that back in Yvel," Sera smiled at this. "We have other goddesses we worship, but not in huge festivals like these. I suppose it really has to do with which god or goddess you worship."
"Meanwhile in Ile, we don't even care," Shoko shrugged. "While we acknowledge that gods and goddesses might exist, our culture doesn't really care about it that much. For the elves, they worship the Tree of Life instead."
"Well, even more so," Rena corrected her friend. "That is because the Tree of Life has been the guardian of the forest for so many years now that we can't help but feel appreciative of it."
"Lunaria-sama~"
"Lunaria-sama! Top of the morning to you!"
"Good morning Lunaria-sama!"
As they approached the school area, more and more students showed up. With Lunaria being the centre of attention as always, she simply waved at the students greeting her from all directions. Being the number 1 student of the first-year, Lunaria received even more attention than before. It was both a blessing and a pain at the same time, since she needed to deal with even more trouble than what she already had when she first came to the school.
Not only that, her name even spread throughout the second and third-years. While she already was known for being a princess, that was only to the point where most assumed she was famous for her beauty and status. The first semester exam results were a game changer in that sense, for someone who was even more capable than they were showed up all of a sudden.
Lunaria was faced with even more duel challenges from time to time. Since one could gain points if they managed to win against someone of higher rank than they were, more students would often target the higher rank people like Lunaria. To avoid there being an abuse of the system where the stronger students 'farm points' or leach off the lower rankers, there would be nearly no benefits for challenging someone weaker than them in rank.
Each student was limited to challenging 3 people a day, with them being able to accept or reject a duel request. This was done with touching their bracelets against each other as a mutual acceptance from both parties. When the fight concluded, the points would be automatically distributed towards the scoreboards without any cheating since it was all done magically by the system the bracelet was programmed with. Needless to say, the bigger the marginal difference of the challenger's rank, the more points they would be rewarded for winning a fight. Those points were deducted from the loser, so in the case that the challenger lost, they wouldn't be stripped of too many points.
How the system determined one to win or lose depended on the situation itself. For the most common case of admitting defeat, the points would automatically be given to the winner. If this was the case, then it would be easy for the higher-rankers who want to help their friend to increase their rank for them to purposely admit defeat for 3 times a day during the duel. If not, it could be 6 times depending on who challenged who.
In order to counter such a situation from happening, the system would issue a temporary auto-ban if it detected such an irregularity and both parties would be prevented from duelling for the next 3 days. If something like this happened again, they would be banned and sent to the principal's office for disciplinary regulation. At worst case, suspended from school.
Another possible scenario was where the duel never ended. If both sides wouldn't admit defeat, then by theory the duel would go on forever. As such, there would also be a timer in place. If there was no 'action' detected by the bracelets that involved physical or magic attacks in 10 minutes, the duel would be forcefully cancelled. Both students won't be penalized for the first few times this happened, but after a certain amount of time that it frequently occurred, their rank would decrease following the force-cancellation.
The core aspect of the system was that it didn't necessarily rely on one to be stronger than the other to win. If that was the case, then it wouldn't be fair to those who always had a counter like mages who specialize in fire magic being constantly targeted by those with water magic. Hence, one of the other ways of winning was to make contact with the opponent. What this meant was that if one person grabbed hold of the other person's arm where their bracelet was located, the duel would be decided immediately.
This was a little more subjective since it depended on the situation as well. If a person wasn't wearing a bracelet, the duel wouldn't activate. If they kept the bracelet somewhere after a duel was initiated, if they escaped, if they were forced into a duel… The list went on and on to place countermeasures after experiencing the system over a decade or two. This was only newly implemented in the recent years, since magic had gotten more advanced. In the past, duels would always be done with three mediators or more who would determine the winner and loser.
Since the duel system was opened up to the first-year students as well, duelling could be seen all over the place. There were limits to where one could duel, which only included challenging another within the school grounds. They were mostly done in the huge training area, where it was open and always free to fight. Other than that, multiple duels were also a common occurrence.
Lunaria had been on a winning streak since she was constantly challenged. No matter how strong or weak the opponent, she easily swept the ground with them. As said before, it was possible for the strong to challenge the weak, but they won't receive rank points. There were also exceptions to this rule, one being that people at top 20 rank would get their points deducted if they challenged someone weaker than them and lost. As such, those who were in the second-year and third-year would often challenge Lunaria as well. The exception rule applied to first-year being challenged by people who studied longer than them too.
"Lunaria, how is your win streak looking like?" Kaze asked her. "It must be hard to maintain such an incredible record."
"Not really. If you know how to counter each person then it's easy," Lunaria shook her head while trying to act humble. "Erm… please don't let anyone else know, but I have currently surpassed 120 wins…"
"I got it," Kaze winked at her. "I know that you have to submit your personal records from time to time, but people do ask you for your stats. What do you tell them then?"
"Uh, I just keep it a secret," Lunaria giggled at him. "While I have never lost, that didn't mean I won't lose in the future."
"As the top 1 of the first-year, I'm surprised some of the top 10s haven't fought you yet," Kaze asked, talking about the top 10s of the other years as well as of the entire school. "Or have they?"
"Hm, I suppose they decided it was too much a hassle when they are also constantly bombarded with challenges," Lunaria shrugged. "Anyway, see you for lunch."
Separating with her to head to their respective classrooms, Kaze and Yuuji walked down the hall together.
"What about you, Yuuji? Being a top 10 must also be tough," Kaze asked the prince.
"Oh, it is," Yuuji sighed at this. "I'm glad that you haven't challenged any of us yet. I'm surprised, considering that you seem very interested in sword fighting."
"Well, yes, but I don't dare to have my first match yet," Kaze stammered, rubbing the back of his neck in embarrassment. "I barely qualify for the board rankings so it is a little…"
"But you have what it takes to be top 20, at least," Yuuji nudged him with a slightly annoyed look. "Seriously, you keep asking all of us about our match experiences but you don't fight yourself."
Indeed, it was as Yuuji said. Due to the point accumulation as being one of the few special individuals who contributed a lot to the centipede battle, everyone who lived in the house were all top 20 people. Even Mitsui and Shoko, who both hadn't done much to help, also got into the top 30 with their own skills. They collected enough points such that they didn't need to rely on the extra points to get them to where they were. Kaze was the only unlucky one, so to speak.
Much like Lunaria, some of them have had their fair share of challenges. With mostly random students coming up to them and challenging them, they also had their fair share of wins and losses. Only people like Sera, Rena and Shoko received little to no losses due to their experience of being trained differently compared to nobles and talented fighters in school. However, when compared with Lunaria based on their ratio of wins to losses, Lunaria was still leagues above them since she was constantly challenged, making the number of matches she had to continue to increase drastically.
Even then, Kaze… did not want to fight others.
It was quite obscure in the fact that while they acknowledged Kaze to be strong in his own sense that they expected him to be challenging a lot of people and winning, Kaze himself did not want to challenge others. One of the most probable reasons they had discussed among themselves were either due to Kaze's own lack of confidence in fighting because he was lacking in pure magic control, or that he felt inferior in a sense that he didn't dare to challenge others automatically.
Even when they explicitly stated that they were fine with fighting him, Kaze never went as far as challenging but only practiced with them. As a result, his rank continued to fall until he was one of the lowest ones since everyone had been challenging each other over the course of the past few weeks since duelling was enabled for all. With the scores tallying up even more, it made Kaze's score look miserable in comparison.
It was this same issue that gave Lunaria something else on her mind to be worried about.
Lunaria knew that with Kaze's strength, he could fight the others if he wanted to. He would win by a large margin based on his skill levels. While his only real weakness was dealing with magic attacks, that didn't make him any weaker based off his duel with the King. It was clear that in sword skill alone, Kaze easily exceeded the norm from his constant training.
She had talked to him about this before, a few of them had. They respected his decision to not fight since it was his own choice, but at the same time it was such a waste of the potential he had.
Perhaps… he was against hurting someone?
As Lunaria continued to ponder about this, she got slightly distracted in one of her matches and hadn't realized her opponent coming right at her until they were up in her face.
Right now, she was fighting against 3 people at once. It was something that was allowed as long as the parties themselves were okay with it, causing Lunaria to receive multiple duels at a time. It was easier to thin out the number of requests she had at a time, so Lunaria was willing to take the risk of a loss. It honestly wasn't that bad to lose once or twice, but somehow she always won.
"Sword skill: Water Slash!"
"Pin her down!"
"Haaaaa~~~~~!!!!"
In the matter of seconds, all three were crumpled to the floor and Lunaria won yet again. The crowd watching them fight all applauded and gave her congratulatory words. However, even winning right now seemed like a hassle. She was starting to lose interest in fighting not because she couldn't lose, but because there was simply no motivation to keep her going.
Being the top-ranked person was never something she intended, but it was something that happened to be a thing as she kept receiving challenges. Sure, there might be extra benefits like discounted cafeteria meals and special services, but neither attracted Lunaria. She had something else that confounded her, so much so that she had so much excess points left unspent.
Points were gained from winning matches as well as doing certain tasks required in school. These points could be accumulated and then applied on certain things. One popular option was spending it on potions that would normally cost money to buy from outside. Lunaria had once considered how was it that the school could do such a thing and not receive anything in return since they were essentially giving out free stuff just from students duelling, but she saw the benefits in the long run and disregarded it.
It was most likely due to sponsorship. Parents and nobles who were satisfied with the way their child ranked would likely continue to invest in the school, creating a healthy supply of funds for the system itself to continue operating. It was something simple yet effective, seeing that parents of noble children were more likely to spend than not.
With another day filled with victories for Lunaria, she decided to end her duel requests and headed home.
"Haa… Kaze," Lunaria muttered to herself. "Why are you not participating…?"
Lunaria was so engrossed in her own thoughts that she didn't realize someone approaching her from the front.
"Yoohoo~ you're Lunaria-sama, right? It was so hard to get to meet you in private with how popular you are lately."
With the person before her calling her name, Lunaria looked up and widened her eyes at the opposing party.
"You are… Frey?"
"I'm glad you know who I am. That saves me the trouble of self-introducing~"
The person before her was one of the top 10 strongest people in the entire school, the Ambiguous Death-bringer, Frey de Mistledream.
With a sparkly atmosphere around her, Frey danced on the spot and winked at the confused dragonkin princess.