The prince sweated from the heat of the javelin that was right next to him. He had no Essence in him at all, so he couldn't even do anything.
A look of frustration appeared on his face for a moment before he let it aside. He sighed. "I guess it's my loss then," he said.
The javelin disappeared from the princess's hand as she stopped using her Essence entirely. She breathed in relief as she no longer had to fight anymore.
The fight had gone on for far too long.
She slumped a little, using her brother as a support, and got down to the floor and she started breathing heavily along with him.
The referees all looked in silence as if they didn't know what to do.
The host arrived right on time and walked up to the royals to check on them before anything. After seeing that neither was hurt as badly as they could have, a massive grin appeared on his face as he turned around toward the audience and announced the result.
"Princess Alena of Blackhawk Academy has won. She is the winner of our competition!" he shouted.
Following his shout, the crowd erupted. What was noise, what was cheer; it became impossible to tell. The prince closed his eyes and let the sound all drown out.
After a few moments, he opened his eyes and looked toward his sister. "Congratulations. You did it."
Alena sighed and looked toward her brother. "You did not bad yourself," she said. "You had nearly won. I feel like I had to cheat to win against you."
"You did?" he asked for a second before remembering something. "Oh right, you ran out of Essence. How did you manage to use it again?"
"I just borrowed a little from my other core," she said with a foolish little grin on her face.
"Borrowed… what?" the prince was a little confused. "You used Moonlight Essence to use Magma skills?"
"No, I used Moonlight Essence to turn it to Magma Essence to add a bit of Essence to my Magma core for the final attack," she said.
"Wha— you can do that?" he asked. "How does one Essence turn to another one?"
"Moonlight Essence is the closest thing to Pure essence. It has little trouble being absorbed by other cores," she said. "It takes some time, which was why I had to run around without using either Essence. I could've used Moonlight Essence, but I knew I couldn't win against you that way."
"This method, however, paid off beautifully," she said.
Allen remained stunned for a few moments before he finally said. "That's cheating!"
Alena chuckled a bit and got back up. Her Moonlight Essence core replaced her empty Magma Essence core and she could feel her fatigue lessen a little, even though it wasn't completely gone.
The crowds were still cheering, so she helped her brother get up as well and started waving at the crowd finally.
The host praised both of them, but the princess was given most of the praise. The members of the Blackhawk Academy were let into the stage, so they all came rushing in to celebrate the victory with the two of them.
Shana and Hyandus immediately arrived next to the prince and princess to protect them from the group of people that would want to hug them. They were doing their duty as a guard.
However, the prince tapped their shoulders and sent them away, letting the people all come to them with praises. He hugged whoever wanted to hug him, and shook hands with whoever wanted to shake hands.
He drifted more towards girls than boys, and the princess had to pull him away at the end. Ning got caught up in the cheers as well and people started praising him for getting 3rd in the finals.
After a bit of cheering, everyone was sent back to the stands as the final tally of the competition was made.
While the people already knew which Academy had won the overall competition, the final numbers were yet to be displayed. Once the tally was completed, the numbers were revealed.
Essence Heart Academy came last with 1452 points. As they had been disqualified from the final competition, they could not get any points at all.
Crimson Wings Academy came 9th with 1614 points. Most of their students had been disqualified early, so they couldn't get many points.
Frolane Academy came 8th with 1761 points. As an academy that carried the Empire's name, this was not the sort of result they wanted to have.
Light Dance Academy came 7th with 1933 points. As the host of the competition, people hoped they would do much better, but the competition was simply too stiff for them.
Ash Wind Academy came 6th with 2119 points. It was the first academy to cross the 2000 points threshold in the list.
Grand Will Academy came 5th with 2185 points. It was barely higher than the Ash Wind Academy but had managed to land itself in the 5th place.
Dream Dust Academy came 4th with 2269 points. They had done rather incredibly in the competition and had managed to gain quite some points. However, still, they hadn't managed to reach the final 3 on the list.
Blue Spark Academy came 3rd with 2447 points. For an Academy that had won the competition last year, they had barely managed to secure the top 3. If it was not for Essence Heart Academy's disqualification, this would not have been possible at all.
With 2794 points, a huge jump from the 3rd place, Peace World Academy had secured the 2nd spot. Thanks to its student reaching the top 4, it had managed to gain a significant amount of points, without which it wouldn't have reached here at all.
Finally, as everyone already knew, Blackhawk Academy won the entire tournament. And the number of points they had gathered to do so had left every single other academy in the dust.
Even with just 8 students taking part in a competition that allowed for 20, they had managed to acquire an amazing 3645 points, becoming one of the higher points earners in the history of the tournament.
