Start of the tournament

Waking up early in the morning as he always did, Tom found three new elements had appeared in his [status], only two of them were welcome.

"How the hell did that-... I guess it does make sense on some level."

Tom had somehow obtained [Self-defence: royal knight academy of Laurence], the same sort of self-defence, along with [Offensive magic: royal Laurence intelligence bureau] which was Lizzy's prefered style of offence focused on extremely close range casting and positioning oneself well inside the enemies strike range, sticking as close as possible to make it as awkward as possible for them to counterattack.

It would seem that all the training and mock battles Tom had suffered was finally starting to pay off. Although Tom passed this off as somewhat normal progress it was anything but, if any aspiring martial artists would hear he believed his own blistering advancement was anything other than the norm they would cry tears of blood.

"In any case, new [skill's] are always great. The real issue is that…"

Looking at his own [conditions], Tom once again confirmed that the more problematic condition was still there, but not only was it still present, it had also gained a few levels and [Contact with a follower of the **** *** **'****] was now at 5 out of 10.

(If anything, the increased experience should be a good thing, but it is pretty ominous…)

Without putting any deeper thoughts into it, Tom emptied his head of all unnecessary thoughts and prepared for the upcoming tournament.

Although it was called a tournament, the yearly exposition matches in the Laurance magic academy was more of a chance for students to show their families and other influential nobles what they had learned during the semester doing a series of mock battles and static fire demonstrations. The first part of the festivities was static fire demonstrations conducted in front of a large audience, specifically powerful nobles from the country and diplomats from outside.

Among the attendants was Tom's father, although he most likely wasn't there to see how his bastard son was doing, but to mingle with the other nobles. Making his way to the training field to do his normal morning training com warmup, Tom found the field already buzzing with activity as rows of spectator seating and targets were being set up for the first event of the day.

"Ah, Tom!"

Worse yet, Elizabeth spotted Tom before he could find another place to warm up. With spring in her step, the energetic young noblewoman briefly looked like a puppy, or that's at least what Tom saw when he was trying to escape reality.

"Are you also going to take part in the festivities?"

"Yeah, the academy wants me to perform and wow their rich and gullible sponsors before they support my independence."

"My family is one of those rich and gullible sponsors, a major one at that…"

Immediately having forgotten who he was talking to, Tom was lucky that Elizabeth hardly took his words as an insult, instead her perfect smile turned slightly wry as she elaborated further.

"I heard from my mother that father only donate because the list of top sponsors are published each year and it brings prestige to be in the top 10."

(Ah, this is what the adventurers referred to as a dick measuring contest isn't it? I should properly not tell that to miss Warren…)

"Anyway, what are you doing here this early? Are you also competing Elizabeth?"

Shaking off his unnecessary thoughts with a bit of small talk, Tom made Elizabeth's smile bloom even further as he shifted the conversation over towards her. In love or not, if there was something a rich noblewoman loved it was talking about herself and what was on her mind.

"Yeah that's right, I'm part of the student organizers so I've been running around all morning preparing. What's worse it has been decided that I am up first in a bit."

Showing a rare crack in her perfect smile, it was clear to even Tom that Elizabeth was nervous about having to go up first.

"In that case do you want to clear your head before starting? I find it easier to cast spells after having warmed up a bit."

Realizing Tom was inviting her to warm up together, Elizabeth's smile turned even more deadly as she raised her voice in slight excitement.

"For sure!... Ah, sorry, I'll go get my staff."

Slightly embarrassed that she had raised her voice, Elizabeth quickly ran off to find her staff as another person Tom really didn't want to meet popped up out of nowhere.

"I trust you're ready to show some impressive results, bastard or not you still represent the Laplace family so remember to present yourself as such."

It was the same stiff butler that had come for Tom just after his mother had been put in the ground, his blue eyes and pure white eyebrows still clearly viewed Tom as nothing more than a piece of trash. Malice aside, the butler still somewhat managed to fulfil his duties and quickly returned to his master's side, said master didn't even bother to look at Tom as he was far more busy talking with other nobles to even notice his son was staring a hole into his back.

"S-sorry for the wait, there's a training area over there."

Returning slightly out of breath with a staff almost as tall as herself crowded with a large blue [catalyst], Elizabeth's smile made most of Tom's malice towards his sorry excuse for a father evaporate. Following Elizabeth to a quiet corner of the training field with a pair of slightly charred training dummies, Tom started softening up his mana and moving it around in his body.

"Wow, a-are you always that fast at preparing Tom?"

Being one of the best students in their class, Elizabeth immediately noticed the movement of mana within Tom's core.

"Yeah, Lizzy would beat the shit of me if I couldn't prepare this fast, is it that unusual?"

"Y-yeah it is, with that fast a readiness I almost mistook you for one of the veteran knights from my family's domain…"

(Oh yeah, it isn't normal for students of this academy to have live combat experience, so that makes sense…)

While Tom had somewhat been aware of what the rest of his class had been doing while he hunted monsters, the opersid wasn't necessarily true.

"I'm relatively sure it is because Lizzy made me learn strengthening magic, if you try and soften up the mass of mana within your core and circulate it around I find it easier to also cast spells."

"Move it around the entire body? Okay, I'll try…"

Closing her eyes to focus, Elizabeth began moving her not inconsiderable mass of mana around inside her body. Slowly at first, Elizabeth felt her mana heat up as it moved in sync with her slow and controlled breathing, then it gradually reached the phase where she would start moving the mana out in her arms, but instead, she started moving it throughout her entire body. Settling down to a calm and relaxed rhythm in her newfound method of mana circulation, Elizabeth extended her staff as she opened her eyes with newfound focus as she pointed the faintly glowing [catalyst] at the tip of her staff towards the poor target dummy that had been deemed too ugly to get destroyed in front of the academy's sponsors.

"Fly."

As Elizabeth's eye's sharpened and the runes engraved on her staff started glowing, a two-meter long lance made out of water appeared out of thin air and hurtled itself towards the target dummy. Impaling the target in the chest, the mass of water transformed into a mass of spikes, piercing the dummy from the inside out and briefly turning it into an improvised avant-garde coat hanger before the water lost its form and dissipated.

(Oh wow, that was brutal… Then again, I don't really feel like I can complain.)

Glancing over at Elizabeth's spell as he was preparing his own, Tom clenched his fist around his [catalyst] and loaded it with mana.

One second, the slightly singed target dummy existed, the next second it was replaced with a 40-centimetre wide sphere containing all of the said target dummies.

(I never got to test this spell out on account that it would ruin any chance of salvaging a monster core from the corpse but I'm glad it worked as I imagined.)

"Well done kiddos, but reel it in for now, the show is about to start."

Appearing out of nowhere like a spectre, Lizzy placed a hand on both Elizabeth and Tom's shoulder with her usual fox-like grin plastered all over her face. Seeing that this was a somewhat important day, Lizzy had also done the bare minimum to address her normal and outright sloppy appearance. Her usual large, blood-stained cloak was nowhere to be found and she had at least done somewhat of an attempt to tame her usually messy and naturally curling hair.

"I-instructor, please don't scare me like that all the time!"

Blushing quite a bit after having given out a tiny shriek, Elizabeth puffed up her cheeks as she complained about her instructor's behaviour.

"You make that so hard by offering that expression all the time kiddo, now go get ready, you're up first."

"Ah, right!"

Having shooed Elizabeth away, Lizzy fixed her attention sole, favourite vic-, I mean student. Leaning the entirety of her weight on Tom's back, Lizzy pressed her often well hidden and considerable 'assets' onto him as she leaned in close and whispered into his ear.

"Hey~"

"W-what?"

As Lizzy's breath tickled Tom's right ear and warmed up his cheek, he had no trouble imagining the huge, absolutely massive, shit-eating grin his instructor was wearing at the moment.

"You were pretty lovey-dovey with miss Warren just now, weren't you?~ You sly puppy~"

"That's really not what ha-"

"You sly puppy~"

"No it rea-"

"Carnivore~♡"

"Would you listen to wh-"

"Ah~♡ No~♡"

Realizing he was not getting through to his instructor in any way shape or form, Tom chose the only option now that all diplomatic channels had been closed.

Violence.

"Hey- Aw!"

First distracting, then flicking his instructor in the face, Tom soon found himself in a much worse situation than where he began.

-

After a lengthy speech from the headmaster, the static fire demonstrations started as lengthy incantations were followed by flashy displays of destruction and opulence, few students like Elizabeth chose to focus purely on practical and lethal spells, but those were the exception, not the rule.

"... Wow this is dull."

"Yeah…"

Dan and Aura who had joined as spectators on the sidelines together with the still restrained Tom could hardly contain their boredom brought on by the overly flashy and opulent spells more concerned with perfectly displaying their noble crest than how effective the spell itself was.

"Well, most of these fine little lords and ladies are not likely to ever do anything else than displaying their family crest to boost morale before a battle, so their focus is a little different…"

It was clear from Lizzy's tone of voice that she also found the display boring, but having been an 'instructor' in the academy for some time already she had gotten considerably better at hiding her emotions on the matter. As the event steadily dragged on, the noble spectators gradually lost interest in what was going on on the field, instead of focusing more on talks between themselves as the lower ranking students took to the field.

"Oh, you're up around now kiddo."

Somewhat knowing the program, Lizzy recognized it was around the time for Tom to appear.

"Go level the field."

With a cold tone in her voice, Lizzy reminded Tom that he needed to perform adequately, although most of the spectators had turned their attention away, some still keenly waited for Tom to appear.

"... Will do."

"Break a leg."

"Yeah, show them how it's done!"

With reassurance from both Dan and Aura that were both thoroughly bored of the current display, Tom increased the speed at which he circulated his mana. As Tom had continued to slowly circulate his mana at all the time he was on standby, he had already drawn a few eyes from the audience, but as the speed of his circulation sped up the more sensitive mana users in the audience also started paying attention.

"Hey, who is that?"

"... Don't know, he's not from any of the prominent families."

Standing about 10 meters from his designated target, Tom tuned out all the noise around him.

(Lizzy said to level the place, so I might as well try and go all out…)

Although Tom had attempted to create larger spells before, he had improved vastly since then.

This was a great chance to find out just how much.

Extending his hand towards the target dummy, time seemed to come to a halt, then the target seemingly disappeared, but Tom wasn't done yet.

Switching his focus to the field as a whole, Tom rapidly loaded his [catalyst] again before stomping the ground as the rest of the targets disappeared with a loud thump.

If one were to look a little bit closer at the now seemingly empty field, it was possible to spot the now extremely compressed former targets, each of them no larger than a fingernail.

(Ah, I'm dizzy…)

Having expended three-fourths of his total mana, Tom felt a headache coming as his legs were shaking. Realizing it had suddenly gotten very quiet, Tom turned around to find most if not all of the spectator's eyes were on him.

"It is so nice to meet all of you, my name is Tom, I'm an independent adventurer."

"That little fucking shitstain."

Barely managing to control himself through sheer force of will, head of the Laplace family, Sebastian Lapace's entire face was dyed red in anger. Turning to his butler, Sebastian kept his voice down so the surrounding nobles wouldn't hear him.

"Remind that little shit why he is even here."

"At your will, my lord."