For a couple of minutes, Abelardo gave an opening speech alone in front of hundreds of thousands of people, probably even millions, as people not even remotely related to the academy had come just to watch the tournaments.
After a few more minutes, Abelardo said,
"Alright, that is it for today. For the tournaments that follow, the support staff will be the one refereeing while two people from the executive board will be the judges. One for battle and one for five sub-domains of expertise.
Yes, you've guessed it right, who is more qualified to judge all five sub-domains of expertise at the same time than Lady Sienna of the Verity royal family of demons, the one who has reached grandmaster class in all five domains of expertise.
The one to judge the battles would be Sir Marvin from the blue dragon race, who is also the chief commander of the allied army of dragons."
At the mention of their names, Sienna and Marvin went ahead to stand beside Abelardo.
Clarence and Claudette were surprised that Sienna was one of the members of the board of executives. So it seems that besides wanting to have a talk with Clarence, being a judge was another reason Sienna had come for.
After giving the speech, Abelardo's body flickered for a bit and the very next instant he disappeared from his current position and appeared on the ground below. He lifted both his hands up sideways and muttered something inaudibly, then put his hands back down.
Clarence could instantly feel the surrounding mana being moved in the direction of the ground, where he could sense that a tremendous amount of mana had already gathered.
He guessed that the tremendous amount of mana was Abelardo's, who was using it to control the surrounding mana to do his bidding.
Soon, some of the mana was turned into soil, some into metals of different colors and some of the mana controlled the earth of the ground.
Witnessing the miraculous sight, Clarence was shocked, as he had never seen his parents make a move despite being so powerful. He had only ever read about things like that.
He looked around to see that a lot of youngsters had the same expression as him and some seniors even had a serious look on their faces.
The huge amount of soil and metal rapidly began taking the shape of a humongous stadium. After the stadium was made, five circular discs emerged from the battle ground.
Clarence assumed it was where the small battles would be held. As for the important ones, he wasn't sure yet.
Abelardo's body flickered again before appearing at a distance away and he made the same movements, resulting in the same thing repeating. Just that, this time, soil and metal rapidly began taking the shape of a dome with a large number of what he assumed to be individual rooms.
After doing his part, he looked at Sienna and Marvin and said,
"Now it's up to you"
His body then flickered again but this time he just completely vanished.
Sienna stepped forward and addressed the crowd,
"Youngsters wanting to participate in the tournament of professions follow me to the dome."
After she said her part, she moved towards the dome, with quite a considerable number of youngsters following after her.
Marvin was that blue-haired middle-aged man, the one who made an entrance with his dragon form.
He came forward and said,
"Assuming the rest of you want to participate in the battle tournament, I am going to put a simple test to weed out the unqualified ones first before we move on to the battles."
He then pointed his hands to the ground and inaudibly muttered. The next moment, a long transport vehicle was formed on the ground in front of their eyes.
The vehicle was long enough to accommodate all the people who were going to participate. It began moving in a circular route and gradually picked up pace.
Just as all of their attention was on the vehicle, Marvin spoke up,
"I will be teleporting you all to this vehicle in the next few minutes. You have to jump out of this moving vehicle without heavily injuring yourself in the process.
The vehicle in itself is extremely spacious, enough for you to even take a run-up before trying to jump.
It tests the three main aspects: whether your own speed is enough to negate the inertia of the vehicle, whether your legs or if you are jumping in a way that you land on arms, have enough strength to offset the momentum of the vehicle. And defense, simple, whether your defense is good enough to prevent you from getting heavily injured.
The vehicle will do fifty laps, the earlier you jump off and land without being heavily injured, the more privileges you get in the tournament later on. Alright, Off you go."
Clarence felt himself being pulled in by some kind of force, but before he could even try to resist it, he was sucked in by that force. The next moment he found himself in the vehicle Marvin was talking about.
Having already thought about what he would do, he took a stance one usually takes before running, then executed his leg technique. Running at high speed, he jumped out of the vehicle as soon as he was on the edge, but didn't stop executing his leg technique.
His legs landed on the ground but he continued running. For a few seconds there, his peak speed exceeded that of the vehicle itself, causing him to attract attention from Marvin, who was high up in the air watching the participants.
He stopped executing his leg technique after feeling the momentum from jumping fade away and stood on the side to watch the other participants who might jump from where he was standing. He wanted to see what unique things people could come up with.
He looked around for a bit and spotted a leaderboard hanging high up in the air. On the leaderboard there was a glaring golden colored name, Everett Winslow, shining brightly, below which was Bernard Arlington in silver and Clarence Verity in bronze. The names kept coming up on the leaderboard for everyone to see.
A bit surprised about the results, he thought,
"Damn, they were both ahead of me? I gotta act faster in the following rounds. Can't believe I let something as easy as this slip through my hands.
Well, I am also happy about one thing: the top three are dominated by the demon race, not to mention the top three, the majority of the leaderboard is going to be dominated by the demon race.
We have a huge advantage in terms of physique in the earlier ranks, so we demons will obviously come out on top, heh."
Clarence then looked ahead and saw that one guy had jumped from the train. He was looking forward to seeing what this guy would do. The person mentioned suddenly took out a sword and stabbed it deep into the ground.
Due to his mana sensitivity, Clarence could sense that the person had been running his mana at high speed and had covered his hands and legs with it.
The hand to maintain a grip on the sword and leg to stabilize his body. After negating the inertia of the train, he pulled out the sword and put it back into his spatial braclet. He was probably a human based on his appearance, but one could never know.
Waiting for a few more minutes, Clarence saw another person who had jumped near the area he stood. The person in question was a burly young teen who curled himself into a ball and mobilized his mana to cover the area of his body where he calculated that he would land on.
After the initial landing where he let out a suppressed groan, he kept rolling for a considerable distance before he stopped.
The person got up and dusted his body with one hand, while the other hand was limping by his side, it was apparent that his calculation was a bit off mark and his hand had taken a portion of the hit after landing.
The force of impact due to the inertia of the vehicle was already too large, so even a portion of it was already disastrous. But when he continued to observe the guy for a few more minutes, he was surprised to discover that he had begun moving his injured arm.
A few more minutes later, the arm was as good as always. Clarence was surprised as, even for him, that kind of injury, although not anything serious, would be a pain to deal with.
The guy looked up at the leaderboard, then turned around to look at Clarence, who was looking his way too, but within a second, the two looked away as if nothing had happened.
Clarence thought,
"Another genius, it sure won't be an easy tournament. And judging by those eyes, he is probably from the draconic race. Ah yea, I forgot about them, they are like us too.
Born with robust bodies and talented in physique-related techniques and skills. But unlike us who need to use different treasures to upgrade our soul talent, the Dragon's talent in soul develops naturally as they grow. By the time it turns into an adult Dragon, it is already talented in both physique and soul.
That is probably also why their reproductive speed is low. Their innate advantage is too high."
Snapping out of his thoughts, Clarence realized that the vehicle had already completed fifty rounds. Confirming his guess, the vehicle gradually began slowing down before coming to a complete halt.
Looking at the leaderboard again, Clarence was excited to face the challenges which would come his way.