In the battle to choose the top 8, Lucian found himself against one of the favourites for the noble side, Issei Claus. Issei had won all of his matches very easily. With his mastery of his family's secret sword art, "Heavenly Delusion" and his family's legendary sword, "Falonture" he became insanely strong for a 12 year old.

His opponent on the other hand didn't have any such weapon or a secret art. So it looked like he was at a huge disadvantage. But Lucian had performed the best for the combat test so Issei was still very cautious of him.

As soon as the match started he used one of the abilities of his sword and sent a flying slash toward him. While Lucian was busy dodging it he used the ability of his footwear "swift steps" and his own skill "rapid dash". Not only that, he even used a wind magic spell "wind flow" to increase his speed to extreme and attacked Lucian from his blind spot with a quick horizontal slash.

But Lucian was a veteran of battlefields. His instincts were giving his danger signal so as soon as he jumped to dodge the flying slash, he followed his instincts and blocked his left side with the sword. He was able to block Issei's swift attack but his posture was completely broken. Issei's aim was not to defeat Lucian with his last attack but to break his posture and he succeeded in doing so. It was the perfect time to use his ace.

{Heavenly Delusion: Second form - Dream of Paradise}

The heavenly delusion swords first form specialised in stacking several attacks together to increase the strength of a single attack. And the second form could make the blade invisible and undetectable. So Issei was sure Lucian would definitely get hurt by this attack. But suddenly Issei's body froze for a second and within that amount of time, he was able to dodge the attack.

The reason why Issei froze for a second was because he suddenly felt a dense killing intent strong enough to almost stop his breathing. Before he could get back to his senses and attack once again he again felt the killing intent, this time even stronger than before. Even tho he tried his best to move his body, his body was not listening to him at all.

This time it was Lucian who went on the offence and used a skill called {war trample} and {heavy blade}. At the very last moments, just before the attack was going to hurt him, he was somehow able to move his body with sheer willpower and clumsily blocked the attack but Lucian didn't stop his attack and sent his sword flying. Then he kicked his unarmed opponent in the guts and made him fall. Then he held his own swing on Issei's neck to declare his victory.

After his loss, as Issei was living the stage with a depressed look and heavy heart, Elena appeared before his and just like with Noel told him something in his ear. After that she disappeared again and along with her she had also taken away Issei's depression. He was now slightly smiling as he went to the sitting area.

...

Andric was fighting against a count's son named Hanz Jerok who was wearing glasses and a very expensive looking black suit. He looked like a refined young master. If anyone said he came to a ball instead of the fighting arena, everyone would believe it. But under this facade he was very vicious. He used poisons and hidden weapons to fight. Not only that he was also an expert when it comes to using conversation to get into his opponent's head.

So, to use this weapon of his to its fullest potential, he started to talk. But before he could speak anything a black barrier appeared in his neck area and it soon broke. But a second barrier appeared soon after and it was able to block the attack. All the hair on his body stood up in fear as he almost lost his life while he was just going to talk.

But he soon composed himself and looked at Andric who had gone back to his previous position with confidence and said -

"I'm wearing a special defensive artifact given to me by duke Ion which could automatically stop any attack from hurting me. If your attack power is not above a certain level then you're helpless against it. And after doing some little research on you, and from that research I found out that you definitely don't meet the requirements to break this artifact's barrier. So, be a good little assassin and accept your defeat."

Andric didn't bother with his speech and was busy analysing the artifact to find any flaws. After not getting any reply Hanz started throwing several spells toward him completely ignoring his defence as he was sure that Andric would not be able to hurt him at all. Andric dodged all the spells and hidden weapons and tried several more different types of attacks to get past the barrier but failed every single time.

Hanz also didn't stop ridiculing him even tho he was also unable to hit Andric at all. But after the match went on for about ten minutes and everyone was getting bored a change happened. The second barrier broke for the first time. And after a few more minutes the third barrier also broke followed by the fourth one.

When the battle had reached the 30 minutes mark and Hanz's face was getting paler and paler finally the fifth and the last barrier also broke. As soon as that happened Hanz found himself teleported out of the stage as he had gotten a fetal injury on the stage.

Andric had a special skill that allowed him to increase his damage against something that has been hit with his attack. The damage could not increase indefinitely but if given enough time he could even hurt a level 199 individual with his attack. And as his level increased the power of the skill would also increase. And that was the exact skill that allowed his to break Hanz's turtle shell defence and to her his victory. Even tho the match took time it was evident that without the defensive artifact Hanz was absolutely no match for Andric.

...

As for Shuri, she again went all out from the very beginning and summoned Magestro against her opponent who was a noble girl called Shella Astein. The girl was from a baron house and had a low nobility so she was given a special artifact to restrict the spirits. But the nobles had underestimated Magestro and even tho he got a bit weaker by the artifact he was still stronger than Shella. Shuri also supported him with her own magic so she was able to get her ticket for the top 8 quite easily.

Rose faced a massive roadblock on her path in the form of her childhood rival, Darek Norn who was also from a marquis family. He had ice affinity and had always seen Rose as his rival. His skills with magic were almost equal to Rose but as ice was not a very offensive element his score for the first test was lower than her. But he had beaten Rose in the next two rounds scoring higher than her in both.

If it was 2 days ago, then there was a big chance that Rose would have lost. But after getting advice from Elena she had improved quite a lot. In her last match she didn't have to use her trump card but here she started the match with her trump card. Darek did the same by using his strongest spell.

{Little Star}

{Permafrost}

And after the clash of two spells it was proven that Rose's spell was stronger and she was able to win just after a single clash.

And for the highest ranker Colette, she just used a single spell once again but with more mana than last time and that was enough to destroy the countermeasure prepared by the noble as she got the victory.

So all five of them were able to get to the top 8. Now there was a very high chance for the friends to become enemies. So, what would happen in the future?

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