When Lena and I arrived at the battle arena, we sat on one of the seats at the bottom of the stadium. The stage had a few small streams built into it, and it was about 50 meters long and 25 meters wide. There was a barrier created by formations surrounding the stage to protect spectators from the fight and seating for about a thousand spectators was available nearby.
I looked around after all the students had taken their seats and saw that there were about 500 new students. Ten teachers then walked out in front of the stadium before a middle-aged man who led us here took a step forward and began speaking.
"Welcome to the battle arena, where all the events for single combat will take place. To enter the arena, sit on one of the formations on either side of the arena and connect your mana to it. It forms a magical body with your consciousness inside the arena, so you can fight to the death without getting hurt. As you use your mana, the formation will draw it from your real body. The fight will last until the magical body of one party is destroyed. Each time a match is concluded, another formation will fix any damage to the arena before the next one starts. We will rank you from 1st to 500th today, and you can see your ranking at any time on the first year's stone stele outside the arena. After the tournament, those who place in the top 10 will be able to select their own teams. Those 10 teams will each be assigned a teacher before we fill out the classes with the students ranked 11-500, so each class will have 50 students. That team will be your class representatives if in the future you want to swap a member of your team you may only do it within your class of 50. Each member of the top 10 teams will receive a weapon of their choice from the class one category. A class tournament will be held at the end of each year to determine class rankings, and an individual tournament will determine individual rankings at the start of each year. Your individual ranking will determine your allowance. Every year, 1000 gold will be awarded to the first place, 500 gold will be awarded to the 2nd to 10th places, 100 gold will be awarded to the 100th to 250th places, and 10 gold will be awarded to 250th place to 500th place. Now take your class token and place a drop of blood on it. This token will identify you as a student of this academy, so be careful not to lose it."
after the teacher finished his introduction to the newcomer's tournament 500 tokens flew out of his spacial ring before hovering before every student.
Lena and I took are tokens before placing a drop of are blood on them. The token slightly glowed before I could see the words match 25 on the token.
Then the middle-aged teacher spoke again "Now that you've all registered your tokens, look at your tokens. If you have match 1 on your tokens, enter the arena to begin."
Following the teacher's words, everyone looked around for the two students heading to the arena.
I was surprised to find out that one of the contestants in the first match was Sarah, the one I plan to select for my team. Her opponent was a tall and bulky man who stood about 6 feet tall and weighed somewhere around 200 pounds.
Both of them went to the arena before sitting on the formations outside of it. Sarah the bulky man appeared on the stage at the same time and the fight started quickly, Sarah instantly channeled her air mana to increase her speed before running at the large bulky man trying to catch him off guard. She extended her fingers and pointed to the man's eyes when she arrived. Unfortunately for Sarah her opponent wasn't underestimating her and was on guard when she was only a few inches from his eyes the man caught Sarah by her wrist before throwing her to the ground and then stomping on her head with his boots before her magical body dissipated into light particles.
It took a bit of time to describe the fight, but it only lasted a few seconds.
The man and Sarah left the formations after the fight and returned to their seats. As my eyes followed Sarah, I saw Mariah welcome her twin back with a hug to comfort her. Mariah seemed to sense my gaze before turning to me and giving me a death glare before returning to comforting Sarah. I was impressed that she sense my gaze thinking to myself what good instincts.
Sarah was ranked 500th, being the lowest ranking new student. Maybe it was bad luck that she had to fight first, but since 250th to 500th places all received the same yearly allowance, no one wanted to waste time fine-tuning the rankings.
Despite the fact that Sarah lost, I was surprised by how fast she was. Her body was weak because of malnutrition, so the fact that she was able to increase her speed so much with only a C-grade mana core showed that she had worked hard.
The other fights went by slowly until match 25. Lena saw me standing up and wished me luck, so I walked to the formation and looked across until I saw a girl who was relatively tall around 5'8 with a slender body, brown hair, and green eyes.
We each sat inside the formation before entering the stage; when we appeared, I could see her channeling her mana into a fireball. Since she appeared to be concentrating on it a lot, I sent mana into the earth to form an earth spike that rose from behind her and stabbed her through the heart.
When I returned to my seat Lena gave me a thumbs up before we continued to keep watching the tournament until match 77 which was Lena's turn to fight when she stood up I wished her luck since she said the same thing to me I assumed it would be considered polite.
Before heading to the arena, she smiled at me. Her opponent was a short fat man standing only 5'7 feet tall and weighing at least 250 pounds with the figure a boulder. When the fight began, the fat man and Lena started running towards each other. The fat man made fire appear around his fist and they were only about 10 meters apart when Lena activated her jagged terrain, causing the fat man to trip and fall to the ground. Lena bent over and started picking up stones that her magic had dislodged from the ground and throwing them at the fat man on the ground it was really a very amusing sight to watch even I was slightly enjoying it. After being pelted by a few stones one of which caused his head to start bleeding the fat man stood up but seeing jagged terrain that circled him from every direction for at least 10 meters he knew chasing her was impossible. So he picked up stones and threw them back. After about a 10-minute stone fight that gave the spectators in the audience a good laugh. The fat man finally dissipated into particles, leaving a physically exhausted Lena the victor.