Serulia nodded with a serious expression. "Very well then, I will show you what Virlyd, as well as the other five, are capable of. Do not assume that only the former is a threat, however. The other five have also emerged victorious for a reason. They are strong and won't be defeated easily either. In fact, given that everybody knows that Virlyd is the strongest, they might all just focus on targeting him and eliminating him all at once."

Cæ nodded with a serious expression. "I think this is likely as well. It also depends on their individual personalities as well, however. Of course…"

He shook his head. "I don't think that will make it any less likely that he will be the one to be selected as the tentative candidate, personally."

She nodded. "Because the Student Council recognizes that this asymmetry can be used to warp the results, leading to somebody who is not the most fit to win, the winner is not directly the representative for the Elendir Institute of Magic. The Student Council will likely deliberate, barring the members who have a conflict of interest in the matter, such as yourself, Virlyd, and Silian."

"It will all come down to performance," Cæ remarked. "The way that this tournament is structured isn't optimal if their choices were close. For example, if they had two or three students at the very top who were all almost equal, then choosing one representative out of them would become almost impossible in such a structure. All manner of circumstances could skew the outcome away from the strongest."

Ideally, a round robin where all participants faced off against all other participants would be the most ideal, but that would have taken all, considering the number of applicants there were and the fact that there were three match-ups per round.

"However, because Virlyd is almost guaranteed to be the strongest in the eyes of everybody watching, there really isn't a need to go with something this tiring," Cæ remarked knowingly. "This format is still good enough for testing if there was someone truly able to defeat Virlyd."

Cæ knew because he was there in the committee session that discussed and deliberated on the selection process.

"In that case…" Serulia pondered aloud. "Tricks or numbers will not sway the estimation in your favor. The only way you can possibly win is if you fight Virlyd on all your own and win."

Cæ nodded. "Pretty much. But…"

He clenched his fist.

"I don't think I have a high probability of victory against Virlyd in a head-on battle at the moment."

She simply gazed at him with a serious expression, not replying.

Indeed, even if she wanted Cæ to win the fight to save the honor of her family that had been tarnished by her defeat, she too was rational and knowledgeable enough to know that Cæ wasn't the largest favorite compared to Virlyd.

"He's strong," Cæ spoke with a solemn tone. "Truly strong."

"You are correct," she replied, pulling out a file from her briefcase. "However, that doesn't mean you have no chance of victory."

She handed him the file.

Her heavy, light blue eye bore deep into his stormy gray eyes.

"If you prepare well enough, if you leverage this knowledge well enough, then you may very well be able to win. It won't be easy; you can be certain that his family has collected information on you and has even sent him a brief analysis and breakdown on you and what is most optimal. But…"

Her tone softened.

"It is still possible for you to win this fight."

Cæ gazed into her eyes in silence before accepting the file.

STEP

He got up, moving towards her and taking a seat next to her.

"If you truly are serious about doing what you can to ensure that your family name is not dishonored, then help me come up with something that might be able to defeat him."

"…Hmph, to think that you would use this to try and squeeze even more value out of me," her tone became a little petulant.

"Are you unwilling?" Cæ raised an eyebrow as his gaze returned to the thick document that contained all the data on Virlyd. "You shouldn't. If you came up with a strategy to deal with me, then you surely have a strategy for dealing with Virlyd, no?"

"I did," she admitted. "But it isn't applicable to you because it leverages illusion magic, and it leverages the fact that nobody knew that I had mastered broad-based illusions, which I will have you know is extraordinary for my age!"

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He turned to her with a hint of respect in his gray eyes.

"Your illusions were truly powerful. You are extraordinary, Serulia. If not for your mistake…"

He shook his head.

"I'm not sure I would have won that."

His tone was serious.

Serulia found herself slightly flustered in the face of his sincerity. "W-Well, as long as you understand that. Coming back to the point. I evaluated that my only chance of victory was that he underestimated me in combat as merely an invisibility specialist and let his guard down after I showed him an illusion of me getting defeated."

Indeed, that was the only kind of thing that would allow her to possibly defeat him. Her attacks were far too weak to possibly do anything against his defense. On top of that, the power that Virlyd had displayed had already exceeded anything that she could possibly deal with. He could easily wipe her out of the combat arena, illusions or not.

Cæ knew that if he wanted a realistic chance of defeating Virlyd and also becoming the chosen candidate, he would need to develop a similar strategy against Virlyd. One that leveraged his greatest strengths and used them in a way that made his victory guaranteed.

Then it begged the question.

"What are my greatest strengths?"

Cæ gazed at the unopened document before him as he fell into thought.

He wanted to have some clarity as to what he was looking for when he skimmed through Virlyd's combat profile.

For that, he needed to have an idea of what his solution would need to incorporate in order to set him apart from the rest.

"Your magic activation speed is abnormally high," she remarked thoughtfully. "Your magic activates a tiny split-second after the eidos is triggered, which is just very impressive. It makes you a menace in combat as it allows you to overwhelm your opponents with speed without compromising power."

Cæ nodded as his stormy gray eyes grew hazy with thought. "I can also double-cast. I can also have the six elements. However, I'm not entirely sure how to utilize these together."

He was also good at close-quarters combat. But he didn't think that he had an advantage over Virlyd in this portion, who had mastered martial magic.

Cæ heaved a sigh, shaking his head before returning his attention to the document.

"Then, let's begin."

He immediately began reading through all the material that Virlyd's magic profile contained.

With each passing page, however, Cæ's expression only increasingly grew grim.

Virlyd was a monster.

What immediately stood out was the fact that he was at the very pinnacle of the apprentice rank in terms of the two fundamental parameters and of magic: eidos mastery and mana-motive force. His numbers were very close to enough to meet the standards of a senior mage.

So much so that it was quite likely that in a year or two, he would become a senior mage officially, being an entire rank above apprentices like Cæ and Serulia.

That meant that his magic was monstrously powerful and incredibly complex.

He could cast a huge number of magic spells with no loss to individual power or could cast an incredibly complex spell with tremendous power, all in the blink of an eye.

"He specializes in martial and domain magic; I knew that, but to think that he would be this good at it…" Cæ remarked with a stunned tone.

He was so good at it that he had once been asked to serve as the stand-in professor by the Elendir Institute of Magic for martial magic training when Professor Mercile had not been able to make it on short notice. Considering how high the standards were for the Elendir Institute of Magic, there was no doubt that it spoke to his ridiculous mastery of the fields.

"His combat style is what you need to focus on," Serulia explained. "His martial magic makes him unstoppable in close quarters. Normally, for martial magic, this means that he shouldn't be good at long-range combat that normal combat mages specialize in, but that's where his domain magic comes in."

Cæ nodded as he skimmed through the data.

"The domain magic eliminates the range limits of his martial magic," he remarked with a knowing tone. "That allows him to become unstoppable at all ranges. Damn, is he not just the strongest apprentice mage at this point?"

"No."

Cæ's eyes widened at her solemn response. "Then, who…?"

"Well, even putting aside the rest of the world…" she continued. "He is the strongest senior student this year. Last year, he was the second strongest."

"What…?" Cæ's tone was one of bewilderment. "There was someone even stronger than him?"

She nodded.

"His name is Kiram. He graduated from the Senior Program last year as a senior mage and joined the Elendir Magicorps," she explained with a musing tone. "He was undoubtedly the strongest. To the point that only Virlyd and perhaps President Mileila could possibly hold a candle to him. This was despite being only twenty-one years old. He was a true genius in magic. In comparison, Virlyd, brilliant as he is, isn't that special among elite talents."

"…Incredible." Cæ heaved an overwhelmed sigh, returning to the profile to understand exactly what kind of a mage he was dealing with.

He had mastered combat healing magic, the kind that Cæ had only begun learning in class over the past ten days.

He had mastered the Fundamental Form of Automation and excelled at it, something Cæ had yet to even learn. It meant that his magic could function without his will. On top of that, he could body cast all his magic while his supreme mana-motive force ensured that they weren't weak at all.

He was more experienced than Cæ by a huge degree, with many years of training and practical experience, and was blessed with resources thanks to his affluent background. He had great foundations in other fields as well, with a lot of combat divination magic and even some combat alchemy.

He had mastered higher Fundamental Forms that Cæ didn't even know existed, making him unable to even understand what he was even capable of at full power.

Cæ recalled once thinking that he would need his pure magic to defeat Virlyd.

But in this case…

'I'm not entirely certain I can defeat him even if I deploy my pure magic.'

For one, he wasn't even sure how strong he was with it due to not having once used it since enrolling for the Elendir Institute of Magic. It was simply too dangerous, and his paranoia had been validated when he had received multiple confirmations that the Elendir Institute of Magic, or rather Headmistress Lenolia, was keeping a close eye on him.

But on top of that, pure magic merely gave him an astronomical advantage in eidos mastery, but Virlyd had a massive advantage in mana-motive force, as well as virtually every other parameter.

He was dealing with someone who was an absolute unit in every conceivable manner.

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