Lars heard Parzival stepping in for the Revy and Argent families and he frowned.
"I though the field marshal was supposed to not show favoritism to any faction?", he said trying to test the waters.
The field marshal glared at Lars for a second before he focused his attention back on the platform, not without saying.
"If you wish to brag in my presence made sure you have the capital to".
Leaving aside that little exchange between the Half Emperors, the screens mirrored Stella again, surprising the spectators one more time.
"As you already noticed the referees didn't follow the process to randomly select two participants in the previous match, the reason is because we'll have a special event today, a tag battle!".
"This match will be centered in deciding who will be the captain for the second year's exploration team, as well as the first rank position for the rest of the year".
As one would expect, let alone the students in the stands, even some of the low ranked teachers, the Arch ranks and other staff of the academy were surprised by Stella's declaration.
The academy has been following the system of challenges for so much time, that they couldn't imagine why would they change it so suddenly, but since it didn't affect them who held the first rank position until the inter-academic, no one said anything, Half Emperors bever do things for nothing so they must have their own reasons.
Stella then pointed at the arena's left side where three people was getting up the platform.
"The first team is leaded by the current first rank, Samuel Jolbaris, the ninth ranked Caleb Allier and the tenth ranked Harald Faresh".
Half of the screen mirrored the three mentioned before, Samuel was practically the definition of the main branch of the Jolbaris family, orange hair and tigerlike ears and tail, he was wearing light metal armor over and from the very beginning he had his weapon in his hand, a long spear.
Caleb Allier had a certain air of pride around him today, he sometimes gazed at the bench and seeing Calant still wearing some bandages on the parts of his body were Gina's ice trident pierced, he couldn't help but inwardly smile, also he was wearing an attire similar to Calant and leather armor, as for his weapon of choice he was holding a saber on his left arm.
The third participant, Harald Faresh is the only one that has yet to fight so far, as a member of the Faresh family he had a bull's head and a tall bulky constitution, he was wearing heavy metal armor an had a double handed war ax on his back.
Once they were on the platform, the other half of the screens mirrored the members of the other team as Stella continued with the presentation.
"Leading the other team, the second ranked Arianna Argent, the third ranked Lana Ramir and the recently ascended fourth ranked Gina Leeris".
Although Stella did her best to not let her happy mood show in her face, a small smile still flourished in her face as she mentioned the words "recently ascended" followed by her little sister's name.
Arianna was the first to got up the platform, she was using light metal armor over a blouse and a skirt, her weapon was another halberd but unlike the one she used yesterday, this one had more material while still being of the same quality as the other weapons provided by the academy for the tournament, it was done like that probably to resist more than one impact.
Lana followed not to long after, besides her casual clothes she wore a chest plate and a leather skirt adorned with little metal decorations, something that caught Daimon's attention was that her hair had a different color, unlike the previous dark brown color, today it had a faint light green tone which deepened towards the ends, the same applied for the small areas where scales covered her skin on her arms, neck and tail.
Last but not least Gina, she was basically a younger version of stella, she had grayish messy hair and feline like ears and tail of the same color with some black spots giving her away as a member of the snow leopard race, she was wearing a leather armor to not limit the movements of her body, today she was properly wielding a weapon, a metal trident to be exact.
Stella then proceeded to mention the rules that were added for the team battle.
"Besides knocking out the opponents, leaving them out of combat or forcing them to forfeit, if the leader of the respective team gets eliminated, the whole team will immediately lose, also to not drag things too much, the battle will be limited to twenty minutes".
Seeing Stella nodding at them, the referee gave the greenlight thus marking the start of the second event of the day.
Not even a second later a large amount of steam suddenly appeared on the platform, the spectators looked at the origin of it and saw a wave of flames clashing with a wall of ice in the exact middle of the platform.
Gina glared at Harald as her trident was shoved on the ground, while at the same time the head of Harald's war ax was also touching the platform, ice and flames were leaking from both of the weapons.
Both of them had the elements which centered on large area of effect spells, and both of them tried to give their respective teams a certain advantage which ended in a clash between fire and ice.
Lana laughed before jumping towards Samuel, an emerald like crystal covered her right hand as she punched frontwards.
"Booom!", her little fist clashed against an invisible wall, making pieces of rocks and silk fly all over the place, but at the same time giving Samuel a chance to dodge her attack without any problem.
Lana raised an eyebrow at Caleb, she clenched her fist and the now two meter tall and four-meter-wide earth wall completely crumbled apart releasing her fist.
The next thing the people on the stands saw were a yellow and blue source of light colliding a few meters separated from the other four participants.
Blue and yellow lightnings crackled as Arianna's halberd clashed against Samuel's spear, both were lightning users and used weapons with similar designs, if there were to be a difference it was that Arianna is a mage while Samuel is a knight and yet there wasn't an obvious winner in their exchange.
"Mm?", both Arianna and Samuel looked upwards just to see a fire ball which was aimed at Arianna being cancelled by an ice spear which was aimed at Samuel, then as if it was discussed beforehand, Caleb's saber covered earth which was invisible a split of a second ago, was blocked by Lana who appeared in a blink, using her arm which was covered by a thin layer of a light green crystal.
Sparks flew all over the place due to the impact and the thermic wave made both of the parties distance from each other to regroup with their respective team members, so far both parties had a decent performance, their long ranged attackers aimed for the captain of the other team blocking each other in the process.
Lana wasn't the type to use sneak attacks but she was fast enough and her body was tough enough to easily intercept Caleb, as for the captains, their only duty was to fight each other to decide a winner while leaving the support to their respective teammates.
"Humph".
"Humph".
Both captains snorted and this time they aimed at the long-range opponents, Gina left the metal trident on the ground near her and instead formed one with her strange red colored ice.
Samuel aimed the tip of his spear at her chest but Gina skillfully dodged and trapped the spear with the prongs of her ice trident.
'You fell for it bitch', thought Samuel, ice is made of water and water is a good conductor of electricity, so he simply used his battle aura which was lightning oriented to cover his spear.
Just as he was imagining Gina's body being assaulted by strong currents of electricity, he felt something obstructing his battle aura.
"No way!", he shouted seeing that when his lightning touched the ice trident, it was stopped cold.
"You Jolbaris bastards think too high of yourselves", mumbled Gina as she applied some strength on her arms pining Samuel's spear on ground.
She then immediately formed another trident ant swing it towards Samuel who managed to dodge it, or that's what he believed, until he felt a slight cold sensation on his left cheek.
Samuel touched his left cheek and saw a few drops of blood staining his fingers which made him give Gina a hateful gaze, unfortunately he had no time to get back at her for scratching his face because a loud sound followed by the platform trembling drew his attention.
"Haaaa!", at the back area of the platform, Arianna's halberd clashed against Harald's body which had grown to be about three meters tall, her lightning dispelled the flames which were covering him and the impact made him fall on his ass.
He looked at the armor on his arm which he used to block Arianna's attack and his pupils contracted, the whole thing was now dent inwards, although he didn't suffer any cut, his arm was a bit numb.
"God damn it, Caleb do your fucking job!", shouted Samuel, while Harald was basically a living tank with a high defense thanks to his sturdy body and a high offense thanks to his fire magic.
Lightning mages were his perfect counter, he wasn't fast enough to react on time to Arianna's attacks and lightning has the best piercing property of all the elements too, so his defenses were useless against her.
"Shut up, do I look like I'm fooling around!", answered Caleb as he dodged Lana's tail whip, his eyes had a terrified expression as he saw a deep scar appearing on the platform where he was previously standing.
While his illusions tricked her from afar, there was a two meter "killing zone" around her, where she somehow could feel his attacks, and she simply obliterated them with her bare hands.
