Scarlet

I feel myself moving somewhere before the mist fades away, revealing a much smaller room filled with a lot of students. One that is in the shape of a large dome, with four large screens located in opposite locations on the ceiling of the dome, each facing inwards towards us and showing a magical reality.

At the same time, I find a woman quite literally flying in the air above us. And I immediately recognize her as a Class IV Guardian known as Viper, which was coined for her mostly due to her serpentine eyes, pet viper, and poison focused magic.

The woman is wearing a dark green magi-tech set of armor with a black and green viper wrapped around her neck like a scarf. The armor itself honestly looks more medieval in its style, with armor plating over all her vital areas with some sort of black metal highlighted with streaks of dark green.

“The tournament begins in five minutes,” the woman immediately begins to speak, her voice echoing throughout the dome and attracting the attention of anyone who wasn’t already looking at her. “You will all be earning points as you challenge and duel other students, with the specific amount of points per student listed here,” she pauses to point above her, where the rules from earlier are listed but with the exact points upscaled to be larger than the rest of it, “you can read the exact points given for what reason there without me telling you.”

Winning a duel will earn you three points. Losing a duel will lose you one point.Declining a duel will lose you two points.Having your challenge declined will earn you one points.

“You are all combat focused Guardians, so your duels will be simple one on one battles to the death or unconsciousness,” she continues while crossing her arms. “The first part of the tournament will last for three hours before all hundred and something of you are sent back to the main auditorium.”

Okay, this explanation is a lot easier to digest than that wall of text up there. And she said there are one hundred and something students in this dome? Interesting.

“To challenge another, simply touch them and press the button closer to your face on the earpiece you put in earlier,” she says, making me subconsciously reach up to the earpiece to find two buttons. One closer to my face, and the other further away. “The other button will allow you to challenge an individual selected at random within your dome. But I will warn you that just because you’re all in the same Class, doesn’t mean you’re all at the same level. Even if most of you are fresh Guardians who only recently contracted.”

Meaning there are probably quite a few people in here who are at a higher level than me.

“Do you know what the highest level individual in here is?” someone shouts from somewhere on the other side of the room, surprising me for a second.

That’s kind of a dumb question to ask, since the university doesn’t know our exact levels. Although I guess they can make a broad estimate based on mana.

Just as I expected, Viper narrows her eyes in the direction of the individual who asked the question before answering, “No, as the university does not know the exact level of its students. But if I had to make a guess, then I’d say the highest level is somewhere around level forty to level fifty.”

My eyebrows rise slightly before I feel the corner of my mouth twitching in the start of a smirk.

Not bad. Not bad at all.

I wonder who else in this room has a higher rarity Predator skill like me?

Thanks to my instincts, I can’t help but feel excited at the prospect of finding another Guardian to fight to the death with, even if it’s just in a magical reality where our bodies won’t be taking any damage at all. Outside of a headache for the one who loses should they die instead of getting knocked unconscious.

And what’s more, is the prospect of fighting someone around my level in a true deathmatch!

I can’t help but grin at that as I search through the students around me with both my eyes and my senses to find the strongest, only to cover my mouth when I realize how that might look to the others. Just seeing a girl with glowing red eyes grinning like a maniac.

Although the sight of a couple of the students here still wearing their uniforms quite literally backing away from me with a frightened look on their face kind of changes what I was assuming to be a creepy look to a terrifying one?

Am I really that scary?

“You’re a beautiful girl by Earth standards with glowing red eyes and a sinister looking outfit on who’s been shown on the internet gutting demons with her bare hands and going berserk,” Tar says, sounding entirely robotic while doing so.

Wait, is that how I’m really portrayed to them?!

I look around me to find a lot of the students who are wearing the university’s uniform backing away from me and moving to a group together, along with some students that are wearing the standard factory made magi-tech armor who join them.

Oh, come on! I can’t be that frightening, can I?

“You can,” Tar says in a sage-like voice instead of his usual robotic one, sounding like some old grandpa giving out advice to his granddaughter.

My eyes narrow at that, which only seems to spur some of the students away faster. But I immediately relax when I notice a dozen or so students looking my way with a fire in their eyes, likely wanting to challenge me to a duel.

I’m not the only one who’s being targeted though. There are several other students here that I actually recognize from the news and some of the videos I saw online over the past weeks. Each of which did some rather extraordinary stuff during their first Fractures as well, likely earning them some good Achievements too.

Although – while this may be my pride talking – I don’t think any of them have anything as good as me.

“No, while you are half pride demon, that isn’t just your pride talking,” Tar says, interrupting my thoughts again, “you are probably one of the strongest people in this room, even if about a dozen or so of these students out-level you.”

That has me smiling.

And the idea that I’ll be facing higher level Guardians too stokes the flames even more.

Tar suddenly sighs and says to me, “Please keep your instincts in check when it’s needed, alright? I don’t want you getting hurt or – much worse – dying because of your demonic instincts.”

That wipes the smile off of my face.

Right. Sorry.

“I’m not saying that feeling prideful and excited is a bad thing, and you usually do keep it contained, but just make sure that you keep an eye on it,” Tar adds, making me nod my head in response.

Now to wait for the tournament to begin.