After travelling for three days in the airship Aran's team finally reached Bellrun.
Bellrun was one of the two cities of Alderan, the neighbouring country of Carwel. It was ruled by the Cardinal family, the direct descendants of Alfred Cardinal, one of the greatest swordsmen of the heavenly continent.
As the airship reached the palace of the Cardinal family, it was already evening time and they landed at the reserved place for the airship landing. After getting off the ship, Reinfred the captain of the team stored the airship in his rings which were specially made to store the airship.
After that everyone started to walk towards the mansion of guests, where all the participants of the tournament were staying.
The mansion was so enormous that for most of them, it seemed like the biggest mansion they had ever seen. To think that the mansion had enough rooms for the hundreds of participants, the mansion was truly enormous.
As everyone was walking towards the mansion, suddenly a white energy sword created out of pure mana, flew towards them and stuck to the ground in front of them.
" Everyone move back!"
Alexia shouted and immediately pushed everyone back. The mana sword in the ground exploded creating a sparkling light effect, and it made everyone close their eyes for a moment.
" Look who is here...The Phoenix academy! "
Everyone heard a girl shouting as if she was announcing it and when they opened their eyes they saw a girl standing in front of them.
As aran opened his eyes and saw her, she looked the same age as him. With her medium-tanned skin and dark hair which was only long enough for a small ponytail, she seemed different from most of the contestants.
Looking at her swordsmen-like clothing style aran thought that she must be one of the contestants.
The girl had a crazy smile as if she is meeting her best friends. When aran looked at her cultivation, with the peak tier of the Profound realm, and the wind as the single attribute, he got sure that she is stronger than most of the swordsmen in his team.
" What's wrong with you? Don't you think that was unnecessary ?" Alexia shouted at that girl furiously as if she is talking to her sibling.
Aran was surprised!
Not to see Alexia getting furious but Rollo standing there without saying anything. Because, with his personality, if anyone else had done that, he would have started a war between families.
" I didn't see anyone welcoming you so I thought about doing it myself. What's wrong with that? And about the explosions, don't act like you are children. " The girl replied to Alexia.
" Ohh... don't give me that reason, you would have done the same even if everyone welcome us!"
Hearing Alexia the girl started to smile
" Yeah sorry about that," She said and started to look at everyone else.
" So, I am seeing some new faces this year but none of them seems interesting. Are you going to end up like last year?"
The girl said as she continued to look at the others and when she saw aran, she immediately stopped because out of all the teammates, aran had the lowest cultivation like usual.
" Ohh interesting! A profound stage, first-tier swordsman in the tournament, That too from the Phoenix academy! Who is this great swordsman? " she asked sarcastically as she walked towards aran.
" Elissa! don't do that "
Immediately Alexia warned her but the girl continued to move towards aran. Although aran found that the girl's name was Elissa, he couldn't understand who that girl was and what was really happening there.
As she came close to aran, she looked at him as if she was wondering about something but aran stood with confidence hiding the nervousness he was feeling.
" What's your name?" Elissa asked.
" Aran Wilford!"
Aran thought that she might get surprised to hear his reply, but she started to laugh.
" Hahaha... A Wilford, that's interesting. So who is Fenris Wilford to you?"
" He is my brother!"
Even after hearing that, Elissa was still not surprised. She just continuously stared at aran for a while without saying anything. It seemed like many things were going on in her mind.
Looking at her staring at aran's face everyone in his team thought that there is something wrong with aran's face. So they also started to look at aran wondering what might it be. But they couldn't see anything.
After staring for a while, Elissa turned around and begin to walk away from him.
" We will meet again. Everyone !"
She said while walking away as if she was casually saying that. But aran knew that she specifically meant him.
After she left, as aran turned towards Alexia, she was shocked!
Not just her, Rollo was also shocked to see that. That was when aran realised Rollo's face can have a different expression other than his usual irritated face.
"That was weird, what new technique did you use? "
Alexia asked aran because she couldn't understand why Elissa just left like that.
" What do you mean? "
After looking at aran for a moment Alexia calmly replied
" Nothing."
" Enough with that, let's go. We have a lot of things to "
The captain said and everyone started to move towards the mansion.
Although aran had many questions, he thought it might be better if he asked Alexia after everything is set in the mansion, so he remained silent.
As everyone crossed the entrance and went inside the mansion, Alexia told them to stay there and went to the reception to collect their residence key. After collecting the key, she came back with a servant and he showed the way towards their residence.
As everyone followed him and went to their residence, aran saw the mansion was built using space compression magic similar to storage rings and it was bigger inside than outside. There were more than a hundred residences inside the mansion and there were a total of thirty-seven small rooms inside the residence that was allotted to aran's team. After entering their residence, everyone chose a room for themselves.
When everyone went to their room and got comfortable there, Alexia called everyone and told them to come to the resident hall. As everyone came back to the residence hall, Alexia distributed the special participant badge to everyone.
" You will need this badge to participate in the tournament and also to visit the memorial of the Cardinal family's ancestor once! So, don't lose this badge. If you did then you won't get another."
After getting the badge and hearing Alexia, aran started to wonder if his mission was going to be harder than he thought. Soon the captain came forward to announce something.
" As you know, the tournament will last for about a month and tomorrow is the selection round of the tournament. Since there are hundreds of participants here, everyone cant participate in the real tournament so you will have to win in the selections round tomorrow. If any of you feeling sick by travelling, take some rest now and be ready for tomorrow. "
As everyone heard him, some who were feeling sick went back to their rooms to take some rest and the others went outside to look around.
Since aran wanted to know about the mansion, he decided to go outside to look around but before that, he had one more thing to do. So he immediately grabbed Alexia's hand who was also going outside to look around.
" What ?"
Alexia asked looking at aran who was holding her hand.
" Oh, sorry, I just wanted to ask you something. "
" Then ask quickly. I have to catch up to them." She replied turning towards the captain and rollo who were also going outside.
" You know the girl we met at the entrance. Who is she?"
" Ohh, her. She is the young lady of the Bryde family! She is not a student of any academy but she is still allowed to participate in the tournament with her own team since her family is the co-organizer of this tournament."
Aran was really surprised to hear she is a young lady of a royal family. Because as he remembers, she didn't look like a lady at all. He started to wonder why did she just leave after knowing about him.
" Okay then, I am leaving. Are you coming ?"
Alexia asked aran who was standing there lost in his thoughts. Hearing her he immediately got out of his thoughts.
" Ahh, what? No, I will meet you outside " He said.
" Ahh okay "
Alexia left running after saying that. After that aran went back to his room.
After closing his room's door, he immediately brought out Arrax from his rings.
Since Aran had thought that it won't be good to enter the palace with arrax he had asked arrax to enter the ring. Although arrax didn't accept at first since he was also feeling sleepy, he accepted and he was taking a nap inside the ring.
As Arrax come out of the ring, he climbed onto aran shoulder and both of them went outside and looked around and saw all the preparations that were going on.
The whole mansion was filled with hundreds of students from different academies. As aran looked at their cultivation he saw that there were some of them, who were even weaker than him.
Since most people used to participate in the tournament just to visit the Cardinal family's palace and the students from small academies were also there, he was feeling a little strong among them.
The swordsmanship tournament was organized by the Bryde and the Cardinal family, two of the greatest swordsmen families of the heavenly continent. These families split Alderan into two cities and became their rulers.
Last year, the tournament was held in Eastbourne, the other city ruled by the Bryde family, so this year it was held in the Bellrun.
After walking around for a while Aran came close to the royal palace of the Cardinal family. On the left side of the palace was the memorial of the Cardinal family's ancestor.
Although many of the participants were already entering the memorial, Since Aran was allowed to visit the memorial only once, he was planning something else.
After looking around for a while he found a bench at the backside of the memorial and sat down facing the wall, staring at something.
" So, we are here. What's next? " Arrax asked.
Aran had told him that they are here to get their hands on one of the strongest sword techniques in the world, so he wanted to know where it was and what the plan was.
" Look there "
Aran said and continued to stare at the wall but as arrax looked there, all he could see was a big wall.
"It's just a wall. What's special about that?
" Use your dragon vision "
As arrax activated his dragon vision and looked through the wall he saw that many cultivators were protecting a room.
Inside that room, there were many things placed on the wall and he saw more than a hundred people looking at different things.
The place was heavily protected by many monitoring artifacts inside and outside and on top of that room, there were two cultivators, constantly observing it.
" There are many things in there, but what exactly do you plan to take?
" We aren't going to take anything. You see the book that's placed in the middle of the room, you are going to copy it !"
" So, How are we going to get that, with all of them around?"
" I just came here to see how it is. Now that I have seen it, I will think about a plan. But for now, we have many other things to take care of "
" Like what?"
" Like food. I hungry!"
After saying that he got up and walked away from there. As he was heading towards the diner, he met Alexia, with the captain and Rollo.
After seeing aran, Alexia asked him to join them for dinner. Since the captain also insisted, he went with them.
After going to the mansion's diner and eating dinner, those three went to look around but aran told them that he has to take some rest.
After taking some meat for arrax, he went back to his room. Since he wanted to get up early tomorrow, he immediately went to sleep without wasting his time overthinking.