The next few weeks were the same thing. Classes, eating, sleeping and just the overall school life made it all blend together. I caught glimpses of Maddy but she seemed to never notice me. I figured one day I would get her attention. I just couldn't ever figure out how. Adam saw me one day glancing at her a couple times so he started to tease me about it.
A month into the school year it was easy to remember that mark as the school permitted the first duels in the arena to start. The first month of school all fights were forbidden for first years as the bonding with their new beasts would take time to accept all of the changes as well as give everyone a fair amount of time to learn how to utilize their beast. I still hadn't found a good weapon that I liked and our weapons instructor Mr. Algeier approached me at breakfast that morning to meet him in his classroom when I had my fill.
I remember walking into the room slowly at first as the lights were dim which was usual for his classroom when no actual class was running. The ambiance caused me to move slowly and seeing Mr. A standing in the middle of the room with a huge grin on his face slowed my pace even more. His hands were behind his back as he stood in the dimly lit room with a cheesy grin.
"You asked me to come visit you?" I broke the silence as I slowly approached him. He pulled out from behind him a weapon at the time I had no clue what it was. The first thought was a club or mace but it seemed to be made of a tree yet had seven gems on it. The wood glowed a soft tone of white light while in Mr. Algeier's hands but when he handed it to me that is when everything changed.
"This is a sceptre imbued with the seven elements of magic, as you haven't selected a specific elemental path with your elemental wisp you should then have a weapon that utilizes all of the elements." Mr Algeier explained the sceptre to me. This weapon was not a standard weapon at the academy and Mr. Algeier had it specially made after my wisp hatched.
The moment the sceptre had touched my hand it went from the white light to suddenly flashing all the colors of elements. The colors swirled around the bark of the wood each color bleeding out of the gems adding to the colors swirling. In my mind I could suddenly see the way to create a fireball, lightning bolt, arcane missile, ice spike, and boulder. All of those spells were known as the basic offensive spells for five of the elements; fire, lightning, arcane, water, and earth. I for whatever reason did not unlock spells for light and shadow which would come later.
I remember the feeling of the spells being ingrained into my mind yet it felt more like it was being unlocked from my wisp. I concentrated on defensive spells and suddenly the initial defensive spells associated with each element came to my mind: firewall, lightning armor, arcane barrier, icewall, and earthwall. I had never used them before but I knew how to use them if that made sense.
The last thing that surprised me was that I also learned the initial support spells for those five elements that day: wisp flame, electric aura, knowledge, iceskin, and barkskin. Wisp flame buff gives myself and whoever I cast it on a 5% boost to their attacks that use mana. Electric aura gives a 5% boost to total mana reserves. Knowledge gave a 10% boost to the individuals' intellect. Iceskin gave my skin a 10% increased resistance to elemental attacks. Barkskin gave my skin a 10% increased resistance to physical attacks.
These initial spells would become the backbone of my skills to become the most powerful beast master. Wispy was laughed at for being weak and adding such little benefit to the host, part of me wondered if I had a special wisp or if previous owners were just bad but it felt like I had the best beast compared to everyone else. I didn't understand at that moment how powerful the sceptre was for me unlocking the amount of spells through the gems embedded.
The inaugural duel tournament of first years at Ghostrun Academy had a simple format. Everyone dueled three people. Those three duels would result in your score. Tiebreakers were based on total time of battles, fastest being best. This rule pushed everyone to attack as quickly as they could and not to make this day take forever while we wait for two people to attack each other. Then ranking upon those three duels would result in a tournament till a winner after three days of fighting. I found out that 0-3 would result in not even participating in the tournament.
The first set of arena battles that day was one to remember. First of all with the amount of students that needed to duel there were 20 small squares with 40 participants called to fight. Each square had an adult standing next to it as the judge for each fight. The 20 small squares only looked small because of how large the arena was, in truth it was a 50 yard by 50 yard square.
Adam somehow was called up first and a part of me was wondering if that helped him out or not. Adam's opponent was a kid named Bill who had a silverback gorilla for a beast. The silverback gorilla at its initial stages gave the beast master a boost of 50% to their strength and 50% to their vitality. The one downside to a gorilla beast was that they had no mana abilities and in fact they would add a -100 to your mana pool so one would be way behind right away if they had one and wanted to be a magic user.
Adam's arcane wyvern was the star of the show as he had figured out how to do an advanced arcane spell called blink. Blink allowed the beast to teleport 5 yards in any direction. They had worked on timing it to dodge attacks and to surprise attacks from behind. Adam's wyvern ported behind the gorilla and with each of the two heads bit at different heights of the gorilla. While biting down on the gorilla purple flames of arcane fire came out of its mouth encasing the gorilla that roared then dissolved into a golden light that shot back to Bill.
There were two ways you could win a dual at Ghostrun Academy. The first was to perform an attack that the beast master can't defend and is automatically ejected out of the arena, the other is to 'kill' their beast. Killing their beast would result in the beast returning to the beast master and subsequently they would need to regenerate back to health. Special foods have been developed over the years to make it easier but typically your pets first death would drain you to pass out yourself.
Bill had passed out from the overwhelming sensation of his gorilla dying which brought out some laughs from those that weren't aware of the common phenomenon. Adam's fight had been the center of attention as most fights were over in a moment or two as people unleashed their most powerful attacks right away. The commotion of the crowd was silenced when our principal Mr. Garcia called the next set of duels.
I was the last name called which shocked me at first but the time was going to come at some point so why not now I told myself. That was the last day wispy was made fun at the academy. When I entered the square I pulled out my sceptre and started a chant that became my go to chant.
"Knowledge, wisp flame, iceskin, barkskin, electric armor" I whispered to myself before the countdown even started. I remember hearing someone commenting that I was cheating casting spells before the dual. I had read the rules, support spells could be used before the battle begins so I knew I was in the right. I also had never cast them before so everyone was looking at me while my body had multiple reactions to the spells.
My opponent was a girl named Gina who was fortunate to get a strong beast known to be able to level up to gold rank. We all were at iron rank currently but Gina was considered a promising potential based strictly on her beast. I thought it was going to be a tough fight due to her gryphon but at iron rank the gryphon didn't have much defense or agility to dodge attacks. The moment the countdown hit 0 and Fight was announced I shot out an arcane missile directly at the gryphon's face.
"That's not fair! He was already casting before the fight and then he instantly killed Fiona!" Gina cried out as the fight was called 1 second into it. The adult standing to my left had signalled me as the winner by raising his hand in the air on my side. Most of the arena hadn't even started fighting and were all looking at what just happened. Some were knocked out being distracted while some of the fights didn't start for the first couple of moments as both of the kids were stunned and not paying attention to their own battle. Gina felt faint but kept her balance showing how strong she was in the first place.
The next few hours flew by as I remember watching battle after battle between the super inexperienced classmates that I would be sharing the next decade of my life with learning how to be the best beast masters we could be. The second round was when the fun began for me at least.
I was called in the first grouping for the second round. I walked up doing the same chant of support spells. This fight would not be against an inexperienced beast master as we both now had one fight under our belts. Felix, a darker skinned dark black haired kid had melded with a common scorpion that gave a 20% increase to agility and 10% increase to all other attributes.
Felix had remembered me one shotting my previous opponent as his scorpion was not out on display but staying melded within. I hadn't seen his first fight so maybe that was how he fought now that I think about it, but needless to say I couldn't one shot his beast like round one. I did however fire an arcane missile at his face to start it out, you know keep a routine.
Felix easily dodged it and I just shrugged my shoulders at him as he gave me a look of contempt. He was holding a small double bladed axe in each hand and he charged at me with both at the ready to slice me in two. I decided to try out my offensive spells for the first time and was shocked to see the different delays, speed of the projectile, as well as the size of each attack.
I noticed that the lightning bolt caused a slight stun to Felix as his whole body went stiff for several seconds. I was counting the time and it was two penelope's as my mother used to say to make sure it was a full second of counting. Fireball hadn't connected yet but figured it would just be your normal burn effects. Assuming the boulder would just bruise and the arcane missiles were truly unknown.
I learned in that fight the different types of walls and what they did for me. Firewall seemed more as an attack than a defensive spell. I wasn't shocked by it but it had come to my mind as a defensive spell. Arcane barriers soon became my favorite thing possible. Earthwall and Icewall each had their purposes and I found it easier and faster to create arcane barriers compared to the two walls.
The fun started by accident to be honest. I summoned an arcane barrier right above his shoulder as he went to swing his right hand. The double bladed axe caught the barrier while behind his head and the abrupt stop to his arm at that angle unexpectedly created a huge hole in Felix's defense. I fired a fireball directly into his chest and he was expelled out of the square and was standing next to the judge.
Felix looked down and to be honest I was shocked at what I just did to accomplish the win. I approached him with my hand outstretched wanting to say good fight. Felix was hesitant at first thinking I was going to mock him or try to continue the fight but finally shook my hand. "Yeah man, good fight, I never ever got to attack you though." his face looking down at his shoes.
"I got lucky to block your attack to be honest, don't feel bad it's our first ever day of fighting, you will get there!" I tried my best to cheer him up. Something told me he needed a friend at that moment. I later realized that just the simple act of saying good job would spark a friendship.
My third battle was against a girl who had an elemental leopard of water. The leopard was summoned and I once again one shot its head as the girl was busy looking at all of my spells I had cast to prepare for the fight. I think the arcane missile to the head to start a battle became my new favorite sight in a battle.
I retreated back to the stands to sit back down with my roommates and watch the rest of the battles. The round robin was day one then the tournament would start on day two. The third day was the final four and then the championship to the introductory tournament. I had heard people talking about this tournament for so long that I never truly paid attention to the lore of it all but now that I was in it I was curious.
Adam had won his battle so the two of us were into day two of the tournament ranked high. We both watched closely as each duel that lasted longer than a moment would show each of us potential things for us to dodge or block. The massive variety of beast masters abilities and fighting styles was easily the most entertaining part of the event.
"You think this is good, wait till the 10th years' tournament next month. Those guys have been honing their abilities for 10 years, a battle lasting under five minutes is a blowout and an anomaly by that age." Joey chimed in, noticing how intently Adam and I were watching.
"I think this is more interesting as people have to figure out on the fly how to do things versus a seasoned veteran doing the same thing he has done a million times before." Adam pointed out which I agreed whole heartedly.
"I bet we face each other tomorrow!" I blurted out at the time not knowing how prophetic it was.
"I will kill you!" Adam retorted.
"Yeah, yeah, we shall see" I replied, still focused on the battles below. A boy with a beetle for a beast was fighting a girl who was a wasp. The two insect beasts were at a standstill and the beast masters were engaged in their own hand to hand combat. It was the classic defense that was more powerful than offense for both.
The beetle boy named Bart was able to deflect the sword attacks with the chitin beetle skin on his arms. The stab attempts with the sword by the wasp girl were futile. Then the funniest event happened by far, the wasp girl so frustrated she couldn't penetrate the skin of the beetle boy that she slammed her sword into the ground in frustration. Then picked him up over her head and screamed at the top of her lungs throwing him out of the square to get the win.