As I left to the 4th floor I stood in the elevator, I thought to myself.
I didn't have a particular preference on how I wanted to beat this kid.
I just want to do it in such a way that it A) brings Aura, and by extension Svarmet honor,
B) would deter others from challenging me to a duel, C) deter others from trying to recruit me, and D) avoid the animosity and unwanted attention of the Iproline and other noble families.
Not difficult, just tedious.
Actually, I had an idea.
With that I walked into my room to see almost the entire 4th floor in my room.
Nearly 20 teen boys sat in my room.
"And why are they all here Mark?"
"Andras went around telling the guys he saw you out with Princess Aurelia."
"Just call her Aurelia or Lady Aurelia, she hates the title of princess."
"Got it. But it spread to the third floor so she's also probably getting grilled by the girls."
Wow. I underestimated the hormones of teens, even if they're supposedly the best of their generation.
I should call her.
Wait. No. That'd only drag us further under the water.
I should send a mana message, since none of the girls have a stronger link to mana than I do.
They may be stronger in mana quality, but dragons blood made me a master of reducing any magic cast into nothing.
With that I sent a message to Aura.
'Aurelia are you okay?'
'Yeah, but all the girls in the floor are in my room right now.'
'It's okay don't say anything about how we act together, just put on your normal noble act and we'll manage through this'
"Wow, Aurelia, if not for the fact that we have Michael up there blocking mana messages, I'd almost assume you were talking with your 'Knight'."
'Wow, you really are getting cooked, but don't worry, they can't tell I've infiltrated, they aren't good enough.'
'Got it, I should be fine from here'
'Ok, goodnight'
'Night.'
"Hey Lucas trying to receive a mana message from your 'Princess', well it's not gonna happen, Samara downstairs is blocking it from occurring, not to mention I am."
"So tell us what you did with her.."
If not for the fact, this wasn't intended to harm us, and it didn't end up harming Aura, I think I might have killed Andras and a few others responsible.
Anyways, time to lie out of my ass.
"Nothing occurred like what you were thinking."
"I escorted her to the magic range, the food court, and then I acted as an escort to her during her outing in the beast ride"
"Liar, there's no way that's all that happened."
"Speaking of where's Andras anyways?"
"Don't change the subject, but you're right."
"I think he was tired of his roommate so he spread rumors about me and my lady, you guys just got conned."
"No way. He said you guys were holding hands."
"Actually we were arm in arm, since the roads were too busy to escort each other in any other way, plus we were used to being each other's escorts."
"Wow that guy really did con us."
"I'd like to see him get out of this one."
"Sorry about grilling you like that, I owe you for letting us know."
"It's alright, but a reminder to avoid spreading rumors about a ducal family, I may die, but 3 generations of yours will too. So stay away from people like Andras."
"Got it, thanks for the advice."
Although it could be taken as a threat, I made sure he understand I was 'sincerely' giving advice.
It made my lies more credible.
"Wow that was amazing Lucas, how did you manage that many people like that."
"Well I am a noble knight to the only ducal lady in Svarmet, so it comes without question that I have to understand, and be able to comply with noble speaking standards."
"That's so cool"
"Yep. Alright man I got a duel so I'm headed to bed"
"Yeah me too, today was hectic and I'm tired from all the commotion."
As I turned over ready to send another message to Aura, I relished in the sounds of Andras being chewed out.
'Aura how are you doing'
'Not so great'
'It's alright I've already defused my situation'
'What?!? So fast?'
"Look girls, at how shocked she is, we're definitely on the right track."
'Tell them this:..."
"I'm not shocked because what you've said is true, it's that it's so absurd that I couldn't believe someone made such a shocking rumor."
"Huh?"
'The girls are getting confused. It's working'
'Keep working in that charm of yours'
'Shush'
"But, you're blushing right now."
"And what of it, what girl, regardless of status or age, doesn't dream of a white knight."
"Sadly, he is just my escort knight, and nothing so romantic as you described him to be."
'Ouch'
'Sorry you said give it my charm'
'I'm joking'
"Alright girls it's time for you to leave my quarters, as I must wake up tomorrow to watch my knight's duel."
"Ok, ok, our bad, we'll leave."
These girls were very agreeable.
Good for Aura.
'Alright you sound good now, so I'm headed to sleep, goodnight.'
'Goodnight.'
***
I left to the second floor around 4am.
The second floor of every dorm had their cafeteria.
The Estelle hall has 8 floors, while the Medez had 6, and the Terran had 4,
But they all had one thing in common, the first 4 floors.
The first was the lobby and lounge area.
The second was the cafeteria and recreation center.
The third and fourth were dorms.
All halls were the same size.
However the difference between Medez and Terran was Medez carried around 160 students as opposed to Terran's 80.
There may be a discrepancy you say, but that's why Medez has 6 floors instead 4 like Terran.
The third and fourth floors were both dorms, but the fifth and sixth doubled as both dorm floors and training room floors.
In the Estelle hall the 5th and 6th floors were training halls all unto themselves.
As for the 7th and 8th, well they were special testing rooms, libraries, amongst other things.
For example once I was done with breakfast I planned to enter the 6th floor to train then enter the 8th to test my magic power.
Now you may wonder why I listed all even number floors, but that's because inside the Estelle there is an unwritten rule that aside from the first and second floors, all odd number floors belonged to the women and the even to the men.
This usually went unbroken aside from the 7th and 8th floors as not all facilities within them was the same.
Despite the unwritten rule, different incoming years had different takes on it.
Some allowed free access to any hall, while others were rigid, and required a member of the other gender to access the 7th or 8th floor in their place.
These rules were usually enforced when the class as a whole decided to do so, making it a verbal rule within their year.
I assume ours was going to be more lenient than not, but definitely not completely open, with idiots like Andras.
Of course ours was only the first year Estelle hall, the other Estelle hall buildings held our seniors and I had no idea how they felt.
With all that monologuing done, I finished the rest of my breakfast grabbed a water bottle and a banana on the way out and left for the training rooms.
I stepped into the elevator, pressed 6 on the button chart, and took a quick 2 minute nap.
The thing about mana elevators are that they can be powered by you or the building they are in, and if you control your mana release enough you can slow down the elevator.
Even if you feed it more mana than necessary, the elevator will simply take it in and store it.
Now, I had much practice with containing my mana leakage in the forest during my time in my knight's quest. After all not all monsters were illiterate to the mana of a human.
With my power nap over, I stepped into the vast square room.
It was roughly half the size of my room, but seeing that those rooms on their own were probably big enough to house several giraffes sideways I felt good about the structure of it.
With the room closed I reached the training terminal.
It was a simple pad with a few options. Well, maybe more than just a few.
I didn't need a timer, or sparring partners, but I did need a mana capacity checker, and a gravity increase of 4x.
I weighed almost 700 pounds.
It felt like I was walking around with weights attached to my muscles.
I wasn't about to give up though.
Every time I moved to swing my sword, or cast a spell, my arms became harder to pick up.
When I could barely pick up my arm, I adjusted the oxygen percentage to drop like I was on a slow climb up a great mountain.
Slowly my oxygen would reach a measly 15% but I would be okay.
I had done it before.
Like before I swung and I cast.
I cast and I swung, but this time I watched my mana go down.
Less mana waste.
Less oxygen waste.
Less stamina waste.
Less energy waste.
Less mental waste.
I refined my body slowly but surely.
My body started to give, first my palms started to bleed, and my blood slowly started to coagulate around it.
My superhuman body was slowed due to the lack of oxygen and gravity.
Some of the blood was forcibly drawn to the ground.
Soon though my wounds began to heal.
And when they did I began to cast silently.
Subsequently I ran out of mana.
And when that happened I picked up the sword again.
And I repeated that until my bones had started to grind against one another, and my oxygen percentage had dropped down to 15%.
I summoned the panel flying around to me.
I shut off the gravity and oxygen deprivation, in stages of course.
I also let the healing magic circle start to work.
Repairing my bones, hands, and other parts.
Naturally I cleaned up my blood.
It contained diluted dragon blood, and mine mixed together.
Plus it wasn't very sanitary.
I couldn't make use of blood magic yet, but once I could I would make any drop of blood I had burn into ash once it left my body without me purposely doing so.
With that I left the training room and went to the 8th floor to test my mana capacity.
As I entered the room I checked the time 6:45am.
Great. I had enough time to check my capacity, turn around shower and then get ready for the duel.
I walked up to the mana capacity orb.
It could handle up to 7th circle maximum capacity. Or roughly 10 million 7th circle mana.
An astounding feat of engineering, but not uncommon in most countries upper echelons.
Aside from the 3 big empires, there were smaller autonomous kingdoms within them. Many were able to because of their great strength.
Because of this the widespread acceptance of 7th circle to be considered a powerhouse in the continent was widely accepted.
There were only 9, 9th tier beings in the continent. 1 was the Empress and 2 were willingly subordinate like the duchy and the dean. 3 others were scattered in the other human empires, and 3 belonged to the non human empires.
As for 8th tier, there were 66 alive, and for 7th tier there were 143.
Not many, but enough to be significant.
When it came to 6th tier, it jumped into the 10,000s.
And the number just climbed higher from there.
Because of that I was quite careful with the orb.
I started to pour my mana into the orb.
It correctly identified my 3rd circle mana quality.
I wondered what would happen if I used the ambient mana.
It has no quality, since it's ambient not active mana.
Probably nothing I hypothesized.
415,689.
Almost 100 more than yesterday. It was a good pace.
With that I returned to my room and showered.
As I started to get ready, I looked at the clock 7:30.
Okay, I need to be 15 minutes early for checks.
I can do that. I checked to make sure I had everything on me and left for the arena.
As I entered a match adjudicator made sure I wasn't formally breaking any school rules or had any cheating methods like an external communication device.
After being cleared, I walked out onto the stage.
I looked at the clock and judge on the balcony in the middle of the stadium seating.
The stadium was packed.
I could see some seniors here, but most of the attendees were the of the 1000, incoming students, staff, and residents in the city.
"I am match Adjudicator Riley."
"Before we begin we will decide the rules."
"Child of the Iproline family, you may go first."
"My name is Charles, second of my generation, I would like a non surrender, non lethal duel."
"And combatant, Lucas?"
"I agree to those terms."
"As for any rules of combat"
My turn first.
"Any mana form is allowed, defensive artifacts are allowed, and no irreversible spells cast."
"Are you sure you don't want any handicaps?"
"No."
"Your loss, you should know I am not only a 4th circle knight, I am also a first circle mage."
"That's alright."
Lets get this show on the road.
"Any final remarks before the match begins?"
"We should bet something right?"
Oh, he was a gambler I guess.
Too bad the house always won.
"Sure, what's your stake."
"I bet one of my wands against your knight's peerage."
Anyone could see that this was a losing bet for me if I lost or won.
But that didn't matter.
"I accept."
"Then with that I declare the duel: Start."
With that I narrowed my eyes at the idiot noble.
He began to taunt me, testing the waters.
"Are you not confident in your abilities?"
"No I'm not confident.....