The attack contained the fruits of all of Cæ's labor in the battle. The painstaking preparations and time that he had needed to defeat Virlyd had taken a lot of energy, patience, and even luck. It had also taken great perseverance, for his focus and concentration never once wavered despite the fact that he was being pummeled by Virlyd's attacks once it was just the two of them.

BOOOM!

And it had successfully landed on Virlyd with a tremendous force, blasting him before dragging the dazed Virlyd across the combat arena, threatening to knock him out of the arena.

SKKK…!

Virlyd gritted his teeth as he skidded across the arena, using spontaneous body-casting to do his best to defend against the attack and prevent himself from falling out of the combat arena. Because of how much he had been caught off-guard, there was no time to use even a magic circle, limiting him to the quickest and also the weakest form of magic casting.

While his mana-motive force was truly the strongest, the gap in their means of magic casting was also quite enormous. Cæ has charged his spell for over ten minutes while Virlyd's defenses had been forced to be conjured spontaneously atop his passive defenses.

Despite that, Virlyd was not one to go down easily.

SKKK…

He slowed down as the attack pushed him towards the edge of the combat arena, and he activated a niche in Martial Magic known as friction magic, using it to gain leverage on the combat arena and further bleed the momentum and power of the attack.

His expression hardened as his eyes flared with determination, even as he ignored his groaning joints and his burning skin from the fire magic that Cæ had added. While the heaven and earth magic added to it leveraged the very world to push him out. The darkness magic hampered his vision, making it difficult for him to see what Cæ was up to while all his strength was gone into defending against his attack.

And yet, not even that was enough to overcome Virlyd.

THUD

At the very edge of the combat arena, he managed to bleed all the momentum out of the spell, leaving him on the very verge of collapsing outside.

And that was when Cæ swiftly emerged from behind the fading spell, launching himself at VIrlyd with all the magic he could conjure.

BAM!

His right shoulder slammed into Virlyd's torso, shoving him with not just all the magical power he could conjure but also all the physical power he could conjure.

Under any other circumstances, the attack would have been meaningless before Virlyd's might.

His defenses were solid and unyielding, proven by the fact that he withstood an onslaught from the next six strongest mages in the magicademy.

And yet, when used at the right time and the right place, it could be the difference between victory and defeat.

And indeed, it was.

THUD

Virlyd's eyes widened with shock as he was toppled over, falling outside the boundary of the vertir combat arena. His expression crumbled with a stunned bewilderment and disbelief as he slowly glanced down the boundary before him and Cæ within it, gazing at him with an expression of exhaustion.

Cæ's face was bruised, wounded, and cut.

Blood trickled down his face from his head while his silver hair was dyed red at its base.

And yet, his stormy gray eyes remained sharp with a calm intensity.

He never once lost his cool or gave up after witnessing Virlyd's power. Even when it was just the two of them, the probability of defeat was extremely high in the eyes of almost everybody watching the battle.

He simply made the absolute most of what he had at hand and constructed an unfolding of events that worked in his favor.

"We have a victor! Cæ is the winner of the Vertir Combat Contest Selection Tournament!"

The announcer's voice broke the stunned silence in the vertir as the students were broken out of their spell, immediately erupting into an uproar and a thundering applause.

"HE WON! HE ACTUALLY DID IT!"

"WHERE WERE THE BASTARDS WHO TOLD ME IT WAS IMPOSSIBLE?! DON'T HIDE!"

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"I CAN'T BELIEVE THAT HE MANAGED TO PULL A VICTORY OFF IN A ONE-ON-ONE AGAINST VIRLYD!"

To say the air was charged with a jubilant electricity that tingled at the skin was an understatement. Not a single student watching the battle could even maintain their calm or composure. Even though they had gotten bored with all the darkness midway through the, the rapid sequence of events that unfolded at the very last was so shocking that not a single person could bring themselves to believe it even though they saw it unfold with their own very eyes.

"You did it…!" Serulia's light blue eyes brimmed with amazement.

Her expression lit up with admiration as she simply smiled at him with affection.

She had been even more concerned than Cæ about the outcome of his own battle, and whether the strategy that he had come up with was truly enough to take down Virlyd.

"I underestimated him."

What he had come up with exceeded her expectations of him. He took pride in her strategic thinking, but the fact that Cæ was able to come up with this in less than twenty-four hours of preparation with information on the very last evening before the final round was proof that he was extremely gifted mentally.

Her eyes softened as her smile grew more gentle.

"You are amazing, Cæ."

Initially, she hadn't planned on remaining in contact with him after the match.

But now, she felt that he was truly someone worth befriending.

"HE WON!" Kelton exploded, standing up in the audience as he pumped the air. "HE WON BABYYYY!!! WOOOHOOO!!!"

"Cæ did it!" Natana gasped with disbelief. "But he looks so beat up!"

"YES!!!" Melia erupted with delight and ecstasy. "I knew it!"

Silian, standing at the furthest railing of the vertir, simply directed a deep, intense gaze at Cæ, before walking away silently.

And yet, Cæ's attention was not drawn by the erupting crowds.

Instead, his stormy gray eyes remained fixed on Virlyd.

The giant boulder of a man was bruised across his gargantuan body, but hadn't sustained anything more than a minor injury despite the attack that Cæ had launched at him.

His eyes remained fixed with a grave light in them while his expression grew severe.

"Huff…" he heaved a deep, long breath, before standing up, gazing straight into Cæ's eyes.

"Congratulations, Cæ." A small smile emerged on his otherwise inscrutable face as his burly hand reached out. "This is your victory."

Cæ simply gazed at him silently.

"…Thank you."

CLASP

The two men shook hands before Virlyd silently departed from the combat arena, refusing medical treatment.

THUD

Cæ simply fell back, sitting down as he struggled to catch his breath while a team of healers came rushing to him, immediately tending to his wounds. The audience, on the other hand, began chanting his name in excitement at his victory while waves spread across the student body.

He simply found himself closing his eyes, enjoying the suffusion of relief that the healing magic gave him.

"Congratulations."

A firm, yet feminine voice drew his attention as he found himself looking at the student council president.

Mileila smiled at him with genuine amazement.

Her green eyes bore into his with an even deeper interest.

"It seems I have to eat my words back. I had told you that you could not defeat Virlyd, and it appeared that my patronizing words have come back to bite me."

Her tone contained a hint of embarrassment.

Cæ simply shook his head.

"I don't think I can beat him one-on-one."

Now that Cæ had actually battled him, he knew this with complete certainty and confidence. The fact that he had barely managed to pull a victory in what was effectively a six-versus-one battle was hardly something that he could feel proud about and let get to his head.

Virlyd was of an entirely different caliber from him.

Mileila's smile grew complicated.

"And therein lies the problem, doesn't it?"

Cæ threw a knowing gaze at her.

"You can't have someone who isn't the strongest represent the magicademy."

She heaved a tired sigh as she watched the students slowly disperse from the vertir with excitement and enthusiasm.

"In the first place, this battle only happened because he insisted on holding a formal selection process." She heaved a tired sigh. "Otherwise, I would have never even considered it. He is the strongest in the magicademy, aside from myself, perhaps."

Cæ raised an eyebrow as he directed a curious gaze.

He had heard that she was his only equal plenty of times, making him curious about her power.

"I don't think the student council will approve of you as our contestant, Cæ," she informed him with a complicated expression. "You may have won an unexpected victory, but the fact that you are not the strongest means that people will still vote for Virlyd out of the seven of you finalists."

Cæ heaved a deep breath as he got up once his healing was concluded, stretching as he cracked his knuckles. He gazed straight at the sky as he felt the warmth of the morning Sun as it tended towards the center of the sky.

"We can discuss this at length later, Mileila," he informed her with a tired tone. "I'm exhausted… I'd really like to rest for some time today."

She smiled at him.

"Of course. I will see you at tomorrow's student council meeting then. Get some rest. You have truly done well, no matter what happens."

She left him after bidding goodbye, while Cæ slowly made his way out of the vertir, only to find his young friends waiting for him outside.

"Cæ!" Kelton grinned at him with excitement. "You did i,t man!"

THWACK

He smacked Cæ on the shoulder hard, earning a chid from Natana.

"Don't hit him like that!" she cajoled him. "He just got out of a fight! He's tired! Ah, that was a great fight, big brother Cæ."

"Congratulations, Cæ." Melia gazed at him with a sincere smile. "You were amazing. I had no doubt that you would win."

"Thanks." Cæ's expression softened as he lightly nodded.

"It seems as though my intelligence was extremely useful, was it not?" Serulia simply folded her arms.

An uncharacteristic, wry smile emerged on Cæ's face for just the briefest of moments.

"Thank you for all your help," Cæ informed with a grateful tone. "And I apologize for doubting your sincerity. I wouldn't have been able to win this battle without your sincerity, Serulia."

"Hmph, as long as you understand how great the Vritra Family is," she averted her gaze as the dark skin of her cheeks flushed red. "Also… Thank you."

Cæ tilted his head.

"For what?"

"…For winning."

She gazed at him with a shy expression.

"You protected my family's face by not losing here. You protected my face. So… thank you."

"Ah…" Cæ recalled the original reason she had even approached him in the first place after their battle. "I might still not get chosen as a candidate even then, so I wouldn't thank me just yet."

He ignored the predicted outrage from his friends as he simply went back to his dorm room, getting some good rest for the rest of the day.

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