Public-Public?
No thanks.
I'd rather not let my information be able to be accessed publicly, or for people to read my card.
The card works by making sure you are alert in two ways.
First you must inject a little mana if the card isn't in emergency mode
And second you must be looking at it.
Otherwise it won't show.
It also disrupts any mana signature that isn't yours, or those allowed to see from watching over your shoulder.
And there.
Private-Private.
Good to go.
"Lucas!"
There's Aura's voice ringing out behind me.
"Look what I got!"
She ran to me and hugged me from behind.
"Look! Look!"
She shoved a purple card in my face.
"Wow Aura that's impressive."
"I know right."
"There are only two purple cards on campus."
"So be careful not to lose your seat okay?"
"Muuuuuu. Lucas is no fun."
She pouted.
"Come on" I pulled her along with me.
"Let's have some fun."
***
With the introduction of the cards, we could eat infinitely at the cafeteria, but blue card owners got a monthly allowance of 3000 credits, and purple owners got 5000.
Black card owners received 2000, white 1000, and red 500.
The other colors also received credits in varying amounts as well.
I moved through the academy to the gates to the city.
With our ID cards no fee would be charged to us anymore.
With that we entered the city.
I had two plans today the first was to bring Aura to the magic range.
It was a place where we could shoot our attack magic freely towards some mannequins and earn some prizes.
It was like the 'Total Brake' version of carnival games.
And the second was to go on a tamed beast ride.
Some people in the Masvis empire use tamed beasts to travel from place to place.
Some beast walk, some run, but the one we were going to try, were the ones that could fly.
I started to walk in the direction of the range.
"Hey Lucas, why haven't you prepared at all for your duel?"
"Because I'm not worried in the slightest."
"Oh, so where are we going anyways?"
"You'll see when we get there. I promise it's fun."
With that she smiled and we continued our way to the range.
Now to her it may seem odd that I'm not preparing. My only weapons are my Knight's sword from the duchy, which isn't bad and is significantly better than most weapons below the 6th tier in the weapon choosing ceremony.
And the wandsword 'Black Crown'
When I say wandsword I don't literally mean a sword with a wand handle or anything.
It means a sword capable of manifesting both aura and magic spells from mana.
It also means that the sword is mana conductive.
Which leaves room for enchantments.
Now wandswords are odd in that, sometimes they're less durable than regular swords and sometimes more durable.
However, the durability will almost never be equal to that of a normal sword.
My wandsword was a key.
And don't get me wrong, you would be more than hard pressed to find a way to break the thing so a dagger, it worked spectacularly.
However, I wanted more of a shortsword for my wandsword.
The reason I wanted both a blade and a wandsword but not just a wand lies in the mechanics of the game.
In game the protagonist regardless of course will always use both combat types.
This also applies to me. I wield both types as well.
However, I am also a knight, not in the sense that I am a 4th circle knight captain, but that I have a sworn duty to protect Aura outside of my oath.
So I may discard my sword for a better one, but I cannot be without one.
I'm not worried though, I'll just grab one from the 5 Gates.
As for my wandsword. I'll be choosing it during my weapon selection ceremony the day after the duel.
Besides the semester had just started so I had no worries about strong battles with weak equipment.
As for my armor?
Well I had three sets of enchanted armor. As well as a few defensive artifacts, courtesy of the Duke and Duchess' gifts to me for my birthday.
My strongest was my paladin armor.
I wasn't a devotee, but Aura and Alicia were both worshippers of a god.
I wasn't acutely aware of who, which may make me look like a bad son and friend, but worship of god wasn't exactly smiled upon.
The Principality, which used a Papal Supremacy.
The Principality of Yohan the 3rd, or the principality, was an extremely relaxed, lenient, and agreeable to all religious people.
Aside from demon worshippers, they welcomed people of all religions, which may seem odd at first, but considering they were the #1 religion by a wide margin, it made sense.
They worshipped three gods, the god of day, night, and hope.
Of course the other branches had gods too.
But the way the games described the oracles passed by the gods, were as such:
Most oracles in this peaceful time, were nothing more than divine siblings sending down their complaints, or praises of each other.
In fact most gods were quite peaceful with each other and none were enemies.
Naturally as siblings do, they had those they liked more than others, but none didn't love each other.
Well maybe aside from the God of death, he was said to be a recluse, and powerful god.
But was often busy with work, and rarely interacted with the church, and less with his siblings.
However because of him and the Goddess of the Night, dark magic was tolerable in the empire as long as one didn't use it to commit taboo.
Which in the eyes of the god of death weren't really taboo, but it did make his work harder.
Anyways, the story of how I got the armor, wasn't exactly a big one.
For my 17th birthday Mother Alicia had sent to the principality for my already crafted and enchanted armor to have a bishop of the church to bless my armor with divine enchantment.
The Dark purple color of the armor, gained silver accents and insignias of the church, not that I knew what they meant. Mom smiled so I assumed it meant everything was good.
She also told me to keep being so devout. Which I did not understand, since I did not pray.
Or worship a god for that matter.
And that's how I received my second armor.
My first piece I received a year earlier for my 16th.
It was a really cool and strong piece of armor. It was molded from parts of a large sandworm, griffin wings, and eldritch limbs.
I called it living armor.
It wasn't really alive, but it moved with me really well.
The plating could slide over each other when I crouched or rolled, or would harden in place when I flexed.
The wings allowed me to move faster, and fall slower or faster as well.
The eldritch limbs allowed the movement of all of the pads.
They also pushed out certain plates to meet attacks.
For example if I had an attack coming right underneath my arm towards my torso, the limb would push out the armor plate like a button to be pressed and layered others around it to deal with the damage.
At first it was heavy carrying it around, but the constantly shifting shell and my link to the armor allowed me to cover my more vulnerable areas, made it manageable.
After a few years I also got used to it.
This is the armor I'm currently wearing, after all it's not every day you receive armor this well made.
It was on par with a good portion of the 8th tier weapons.
And for my last armor, which I received after my pilgrimage through knighthood, was a ceremonial piece. It was so embarrassing.
Aura took to calling it her 'White Knight's Shining armor'.
It was armor, just not as good as the ones before it.
It was white, with gold trims.
The shoulders both had pauldrons, but my left side shoulder had a banner stretched from my back shoulder blade, over my shoulder, down to the lower right side of my torso.
It was Purple, Red, Silver, and Gold, containing the coat of arms, and seal of the Duchy.
It was a truly extravagant piece.
Aside from that, I had a bracelet that functioned similar to the living armor.
The bracelet was a nice clear blue color, meant to look as decorative, and not flashy at all.
After all what good does a defense artifact do if it is discovered and then promptly broken or stolen.
This was my 14th birthday gift. It was a bracelet that was made from combining the three monsters the giant slime, the anchor bird who's feathers act like hooks, and the spike bird, whose feathers were short like razor sharp toothpicks.
This bracelet could easily act like razor wire, or slice apart attacks.
I could also use the hooks to grapple away or move quickly.
The bracelet is actually alive however.
The slime core is inside the bracelet.
The slime is a tamed monster, and since it doesn't have any consciousness I don't feel very guilty using it for this purpose rather than letting it hurt the environment or other innocent villagers.
And that mostly does it in terms of armor for me.
For the duel I don't think I'll allow the living armor to pre-empt any attacks.
If he sees what armor I'm wearing he may decide to try and steal it or harm Aura to receive one.
Which his parents will one hundred back him, since this armor is really quite the masterpiece.
However the bracelet made of at most high ranked monster materials, if he really maxed out his estimate, wouldn't be enough to make the entire Marquessate move.
So that was safe, and it would show off the love I've received from my parents at the duchy.
With all that said, Aura and I were already inside the range.
So we let loose, and she won a dino plush. I won a lesser reward, a baby thunderbird.
Which made sense since a baby thunderbird was a 4th circle equivalent monster, and the dino, or actually 'Ancient tyrant lizard' was a 6th circle equivalent monster.
She didn't much care for the predator with cute eyes, and much preferred the baby bird who was in flight.
She thought it was much cuter.
I didn't mind switching with her though.
After the range we left to the nearest food court and ate lunch.
She of course took her burger, because in her words, 'I can't eat chicken in front of my baby bird.'
So obviously wasn't able to either, so I grabbed some pizza.
As we finished our food she dragged me towards the crepe-ice cream place.
I opted for a chocolate crepe sandwiched between two waffles, she opted for the crepe cone with two scoops of chocolate.
With that we left the food court, as we started to finish our desert.
Her ice cream didn't melt as you would expect.
Why?
Because the city was protected with magic, but also enhanced by it.
I was in a warmer circle than Aura so my chocolate would stay melted within the waffles, instead of solidifying.
The need for a cold circle didn't last long though, she devoured the ice cream fast.
I guess she was ready for the other plan I had for today.
I finished my waffle as we reached the gate to the west side of the city.
As we emerged from the west gate the beast ride sign could be seen, so I did my best to distract Aura from it by pointing anywhere else.
Eventually we appeared at the entrance and she squealed, like in joy. I guess she found the young monsters cute, but to be fair, some of them really were.
Eventually we decided on a flying manta ray looking monster.
The monster index identified it as a sky rabbit.
It looked nothing like a rabbit, it was massive, had no feet, hovered above the ground, and flew.
I wondered what it ate.
As we stepped onto the sky rabbit the handler gave me a wink as he handed me the controller.
I guess he thought we were a couple.
I could see how he would think that.
Anyways we flew around the allowed zone aways from the imperial palace and capital.
We watched the sunset together on the rabbit.
It was peaceful.
At first she was sticking her hands out and feeling the wind move around her arm.
After a while she pulled her hand back inside the rabbit's wind shield.
I think flying creatures having a mana wind screen was really cool actually.
She came and sat down beside me and put her head on my shoulder.
With that she fell asleep soon after.
Not long after that I pressed the controller to return as by the time we were almost back, she'd wake up.
As we began to descend into the city again, she woke up.
When we landed we walked to the handler to pay him for our ride.
"Did the two of you enjoy your ride?"
He smiled.
I'm sure he knew what he was doing.
But I wasn't going to knock him for it.
It was just good business practice, so I answered for the both of us.
"Yep."
With that we walked to the academy gates in the west side.
After being teleported to the Estelle hall, we walked up to the elevator. She got off at the third, and I did not.
To access another gender's floor you needed access from all in that floor.
You also needed the Hall's Chief maid or butler's approval.
Most people were able to accomplish this.
Some weren't I wasn't too worried about Aura or myself, Andras on the other hand.
Probably wouldn't.