17 Tournament II

Magnus was a lot stronger than before, to the point where even he was surprised. He didn't even have to use the Growth Function of the system. All of his gains were solely due to training with Jin and the Academy.

Then again, thinking back to his training with Jin, Magnus felt his stomach start to pain a little. He was so filled with determination and eagerness that he was able to train with Jin every day, even though now that he thought about it, he questioned how he was able to do so.

On top of the exhausting guidance of his professors, he was also trained for the rest of every day by Jin, and their training sessions consisted of him just getting beaten up while in his 'Berserk' state.

Jin had told him that that was the best form of training. Since while berserk, he wasn't able to think whatsoever, and there was no technique required, since he always fought in the best way possible, the best training Jin could do was to just beat him up while berserk. Every. Single. Day.

However, the training with Jin regarding being able to control his berserk form was still for naught, as he was still unable to control even the slightest bit of being berserk. But that didn't mean that there was no progress regarding his berserk state.

Even though his berserk state wasn't exactly… intelligent, it still had rational thoughts and fought while calculating every move. That proved that he was able to learn, even while being berserk, and the only way to teach 'it' was to keep punching him in its weak points.

Obviously, even though he fought magnificently, there was a difference between technique and strength. Even if he fought flawlessly, it wasn't hard for Jin to create an opening and batter him to a near-death state.

And then, Jin had observed that the next time he went berserk, he was able to defend against the same attack as last time, which clearly meant that he was learning.

And so, just by getting 'beaten up', Magnus was able to increase the overall level of combat while in his berserk state, while also increasing his stats permanently.

One thing that really stood out in his status though, was his Energy Stat. It seemed that opening a part of his 'blocked' circuit, helped his Mana truly circulate. The mana in his body was able to freely flow through his unblocked meridians, and he was able to use it to a certain extent, even though that was supposed to be technically impossible without a full circuit, according to professor Lilith.

Aside from that, there were the changes caused by the 'Mental Rebirth' from that day. Although, frankly speaking, he didn't actually feel any changes to himself or his body, other than the addition of being able to go berserk, many things had changed in his status.

He also had the skill, 'Psychosis', that he still had no idea how to use, even when berserk.

Also, there was an addition of one more trait. It was the trait, [Mana Stream], that had a progress number after it. The number was relative to how unblocked it was, and it seemed that he still had around two-thirds left, for him to completely unblock the mana stream in his body. He couldn't wait until then.

*Sigh*

Magnus threw the bottle in the trash and walked over to one of the screens on the wall that was glowing. A mini-portal had appeared next to it. On the screen, a man had started talking,

"All contestants of this year's Academy-conducted 'Tournament', may step inside the portal, where they will be sorted accordingly into various different arena halls.

All necessary information will be further briefed there."

Magnus slung his backpack behind one of his shoulders, before walking up to the queue behind the mini-portal, it seemed that there were mini-portals like these all over the building, as there wasn't too much of a queue on the one he was standing on.

Magnus was taken to a room with a thousand people, however, no one was paying attention to the room, they were paying more attention to what was in front of them. It was a large, arena-like structure.

It looked like the Colosseum from legends and was surrounded by rooms just like theirs.

"Room 28, full." A man wearing a uniform said, talking through a mic to someone else.

"Alright everyone, follow me, you will be led to your individual sparring ground, where you will be faced against an incoming wave of creatures. I'm sure you know this is going to be a life and death situation, and you can only choose to leave after a wave has ended, not during one. The waves will go on infinitely, and it will go on from weak creatures to even Monsters depending on how far you progress.

Just scream that you give up once a wave is over, and you will be taken out and healed if necessary. Any questions?"

The man was intimidating, he had a scary, battle-hardened aura. Magnus inferenced that he was probably a Hunter, who fought against these Monsters on the daily.

"What about the prizes for the top 10 and below?"

"Ah, right. About that, this year, the rewards for the top 10 and below aren't going to be revealed to anyone who hasn't reached that position. Any other questions?"

Although the crowd felt a bit down, everyone was still eager to test themselves, and hopefully, win a reward.

After about half an hour, Magnus was led to a room inside the 'Colosseum' like structure. Even though the Colosseum was gigantic, it didn't seem like it could provide for large rooms for hundreds of thousands of people to fight.

'It seems like this was enchanted by the Academy, to make it larger, I wonder how those formations even work.'

While Magnus was standing idly inside a white-colored, box-like room, that was actually really large, with more than enough space to fight, he heard a distinct, feminine voice coming from who-knows-where.

"Wave 1. Starting."

He observed a small opening in the middle of the room getting created, where something was coming out of the portal, jumping out of the entrance.

Magnus looked over at the small creature in front of him. He recognized it, it was a creature from the Cat family, since it had feline features, and yet, it seemed to be from another world entirely since it looked nothing like any of the cat family wild beasts on Earth.

'It seems like all the creatures were probably taken from the Gates.'

Magnus looked at the creature, who also looked back at him, with an intense glare.

Although all of this was very, very new to him, he just stayed quiet and made his predictions about how everything worked. That's just the way he was, he had grown up being taught that his opinion was irrelevant and it was better for him to stay shut.

So, even though this situation was completely unfamiliar to him, he stayed calm as he stared at the creature in front of him.

It was a so-called 'Nemean Lion', the Lion growled at him, as it slowly approached Magnus. Even though it came from the gates, it was but a Beast and not a Monster, and he didn't need to worry too much.

He didn't have any reservations about aiming to kill this beast, and all that came after it. It was a kill or be killed situation, and the lion finally made its move after prowling around for a couple of minutes.

It jumped onto Magnus, and he immediately counter-attacked by blocking its oncoming paw with a side sweep of his arm, after which he kicked upwards with all of his strength onto the exposed stomach of the beast. His combat system showed him that that was the best possible move, and it said that the weakest spots of the Nemean Lion were its unprotected organs inside its stomach.

The stomach of the lion folded after his kick, after all, Magnus's vitality and strength were nothing to scoff at anymore. The lion retreated a couple of meters, before dashing towards Magnus once again, this time attacking with its ferocious fangs, that aimed for his torso as well.

Magnus had no sort of weapon or armor, unlike many of the richer students, and when he asked Jin about any sort of weaponry, Jin had told him it would be better to fight bare-handed since that was the way he trained and how he learned to fight at the 'Combat' class.

Magnus dashed towards it as well, not faltering in the least, which made the lion lose its confidence, but barely managed to maintain its momentum, it opened its mouth wide open now aiming to bite Magnus's head off, which was a bad move. Magnus had immediately pulled his knee up and slammed it into the lower jaw of the beast, making it bite its own tongue and parts of its mouth.

Magnus didn't stop there, he kept on with his attack, and upper-cut the jaw of the lion even harder, which made a cracking sound ring across the entire room.

*CRACK*

The lion let a whimper as it faltered, seemingly extremely hurt by Magnus's attack. It was obvious he had just broken its jaw, and the lion's mouth was now hanging wide open, and it was now unable to close it.

Magnus walked towards the Lion, slowly.

"Sorry, mister lion. This is the way it ends, this is the law of the jungle. Goodbye."

That was the last thing the lion heard before its neck was chopped by Magnus, using all of his strength, and even utilizing a little Aether, to make it as painless as possible.

*Whimper*

The lion let out a small sound, before falling asleep, forever.

Magnus obviously chose to continue and waited for the next wave to start. He also looked at his growth function that had rung.'

Meanwhile,

In another building, not too far away. A man was sitting on a chair, staring at the woman, who was his secretary, who had just rushed in and entered without knocking.

"Haah. Haaah."

Looking at the woman, who he was about to berate for entering without permission, he stopped, seeing that she was short of breath, presumably from running for quite a while, to get some information to him.

"What is it?"

"Reporting sir, please excuse the intrusion, this is important information. Haah. I hope you excuse th-"

"Oh just go ahead already."

Looking at the lady who had come all this way at probably top speed, and then proceeded to waste time like this, he interrupted the pleasantries and asked for the reason she was here.

"Sir, it's regarding the Gate."

The man stood up, he had a bad feeling right now.

"It's… it's showing unstable fluctuations."

"WHAT. How, that's…. Impossible, that's impossible. It's a dormant gate. That's not possible, this is-. Are you sure this is accurate information? What's the scale of the fluctuations? Threat level? What are the actions taken? Everything, tell me everything. FAST."

"Haah. Yes sir. This is the first time a dormant gate has re-fluctuated, after communication with the representatives of the other gates, ours isn't the only one. Hah. Something is happening. There are 8 in total, including ours. Hahh."

Still gasping for breath, she was interrupted once again.

"Eight. Wait, you don't mean to say-"

"Hah. Yes sir, all of the eight gates that have reported this, are the International Threat Level Gates."

"What. That's… that's really bad news. Oh no. The tournament... The students of the Academy are still… Eight gates? That's at least...Fuck, it's a Critical… Argh, not good."

The man struggled to form words, he was an intelligent man, after all, it would be hard to get to his position if he wasn't, but there were so many thoughts going through his head right now, he had a hard time staying composed.

"This is bad, really bad. Any observations? Movements from any of the gates? And tell me the actions taken so far, along with the scale, hurry up, please. Fuck."

She paid no attention to the vulgar language uttered by the man, after all, the woman was in an anxious state as well, and he was her superior.

"Uh, scale… This is unprecedented sir, the movements are unable to be measured, there is an unknown transformation taking place to the Gates. They cannot be entered, and the energy exhibited is even higher than the Incursion.

Also, about the fluctuations, take a look, sir, I can't explain this properly."

The woman showed the man in front of her an image that was displayed using her ring, which showed a screen on the air.

Various information was displayed, each of which made the man's face darken further.

"Contact… uhh, FUCK. Contact all the major rankers in the vicinity, ask for any help from anyone with high strength. Also, contact the Alliance, report our position, and request for immediate reinforcements, and broadcast this everywhere.

Fuck, the tournament, cancel it, contact the Headmaster, ask for support."

Even though he was panicking, the man-made all the proper decisions, and was able to make rational judgments.

"FUCK. Go do all that, I'll take care of the tournament, but contact the headmaster after the Alliance."

It didn't take long for a loud, buzzing sound to ring across the entire complex, along with red lights flashing everywhere. The man dressed himself in a suit as he walked and then proceeded to jump hundreds of meters at once. It seemed that he wasn't weak either.

Meanwhile, Magnus was still in the room. The tournament hadn't been canceled yet, in fact, it was still going strong.

"Wave 38. Starting."

Magnus had long since realized this was a recorded message. After each wave, Magnus was given a small break of a couple of minutes to rest. However, that break time was reduced with each wave.

Magnus thought back to wave 1, which was by far the easiest, after which the number of creatures was added by one. The second wave had two creatures, and the third one had three of them.

However, that didn't mean he was currently facing 38 of them. After the tenth round, much to his surprise, he wasn't assaulted by 11 wild beasts. It had seemed that that was the limit of wild beasts.

The eleventh round contained a Monster. That's right, an actual, low-level monster. That was Magnus's first time-fighting anything that had the capacity to use mana.

Magnus didn't hold back in the slightest and easily won. After 10 waves of combat, he was able to efficiently wipe out all of the beasts he was faced against, and even against Monsters, he was able to use that experience to attack with resolve, and was cold-blooded against them.

Magnus was currently covered with blood, however, even after 38 waves, barely any of that was his.

He had long since fought against 10 low leveled Monsters and beat them as well. In fact, he had even long since fought against 10 Monsters, which were of a level higher to the low-level ones.

Before the tournament, when he was memorizing information, he had also come across a listing of the ranking of strength for creatures that were classified as monsters.

The first level and weakest of them were normal animals and creatures like pets or domestic animals, used as food for the civilians.

They were followed by wild beasts that were influenced by the mana of Earth and had somewhat mutated into stronger creatures. They were what he fought against in the first 10 rounds, except those were from the gates, and had a slightly stronger and aggressive fighting style.

Although these creatures had mutated due to mana, they were unable to use it, or even feel it.

After these beasts, Magnus finally got to fight Monsters. From rounds 11-20, Magnus had faced Low-Level Monsters. These were much stronger than the beasts preceding them. Low-level monsters were able to somewhat conduct mana throughout their bodies to strengthen bits of it or to slightly improve certain characteristics they might have had.

Although at first, Magnus had a pretty hard time fighting against them, he soon got used to dealing with them, and it wasn't much of a challenge.

Although a spectator might have described it that way, the truth was slightly different. The reality was that this tournament was the best environment possible for Mangus's Growth Function in his system.

For example, if Magnus was placed against a wave with the difficulty of wave 30, right after wave 1, there was a really large chance he would die. Even if he did survive, he would have struggled and would be on the verge of death.

However, the Magnus after wave 29, was able to take care of wave 30 fairly easily, albeit it wasn't easy.

This was all due to the Growth Function. Although Magnus had trained himself multiple times and by various methods, it had never been able to reach how much he had been able to grow in just a couple of hours.

They had been informed prior to the tournament that time was enchanted to flow at half the speed in here, so that meant it barely even took a couple of hours for Magnus to reach a much higher level of strength.

After the low-level monsters, came the Medium Level ones. These ones, too, were way stronger than the low-level ones. Magnus understood why Jin had told him why he would struggle to fight against them without going berserk. However, one thing Jin had no idea of, and couldn't predict, was Magnus's growth function. When placed in this sort of scenario is where Magnus could grow the most, even more than training for months.

In the end, Magnus still had multiple tricks up his sleeves that he hadn't shown Jin. It wasn't that he didn't trust Jin, after all, it would be extremely ungrateful of him if he didn't, and Magnus really appreciated all that Jin had done for him.

However, it was Jin himself who had told Magnus to keep a few things to himself, and only him. He said it was never wise to expose all of your abilities, especially when he was selected by fate. He said it was a recipe for disaster.

So, Magnus was planning on completely surprising Jin, by completing as many waves as possible. Currently, he was incomparable to how he was before he had started the tournament.

All of his stats were much higher, and he had even gained a bunch of traits, most of whom his [Aether Physique] had absorbed.

"Haaaah"

Magnus wiped off the blood from his forehead as he sighed, and looked at the portal in front of him. It seemed like the next round was going to start. The break period this time was literally less than 30 seconds.

However, was it due to his stats increasing every time? Or was it because of one of the things in his status? Either way, Magnus felt even better than how he did before the tournament started.

And sure enough, out of the portal, eight creatures appeared.

Although Magnus had gotten more cold-blooded the more creatures he killed, to the point where he didn't feel a thing killing these monsters anymore. Seeing 8 of these High Leveled Monsters in front of him made him excited to fight.

High-Level Monsters were obviously the ones above the medium leveled ones. Just like all the other ones, they were much stronger than the ones before them. Even one of these monsters in front of him could probably handle around 5-10 medium leveled ones.

Nevertheless, his system was currently filled with different notifications as he didn't stop even for a bit.

The eight monsters in front of him had skin as hard as steel, and the him from 38 rounds ago wouldn't be able to break it no matter what he did, that much was obvious to him. And yet,

*Crack*

One kick and the skin of the beasts cracked intensely.

"Hehehe, c'mon, give me a challenge."

He said, standing on a pile of corpses, that now contained a fifth of the large room.

"Wave 38. Complete."

Magnus was awaiting the next wave to start when suddenly, something changed. He could feel it easily due to his energy circuit and other similar parts of his status.

The intensity of the pressure in the room increased. By a lot. He could feel something interacting with the matter in the room, increasing the overall kinetic energy, and he felt the room getting hotter.

He realized what it was almost instantly. Energy. There was a form of energy blasting out from somewhere. That was when the entire room turned red, and sirens rang out from everywhere.

"What?"