The Tales of Draconic Warlock

In the next two hours, a total of five of my matches were over and that is for today. Yeah, there are almost five hundred students from the Royal Academy. There is no way all matches can be done in a day.

My first five matches are clubbed together but the other five that were held tomorrow weren't. There is a significant gap between each match. So, tomorrow my matches would start in the morning and would go till late noon.

As there was not much to do for today, I started watching matches of others.

There are some decent ones. If not for my cheat-like abilities, I am sure that they would have been at the top. Yes, I am talking about her, Malia Hasker, the daughter of Count Hasker.

In these five years, we barely spoke with each other, but she would always give me the eye, which says that she would beat me and take the first place. There is a lot of competition in her eyes.

Unlike that bastard Dorian, who was jealous of others even though he got a cheat in the form of a system, Malia is not like that. She may be cold to others, but that was not because she was looking down on others or something bad like that.

Being cold to others, it's just who she is. She wouldn't open up easily to others but I know that she made a friend, Jasmine.

Once I stumbled on to their meeting in the academy, and I saw Malia smiling. It was the first time that I saw her genuinely smile and that was two years ago.

Of course, Malia and Jasmine heard my arrival and Malia threatened me to not reveal anything about that incident and I never told a soul. It was not because I was afraid of her threat. No, everyone has their own secrets.

They have the right to privacy in their lives. Intruding into other people's lives, just to satisfy our curiosity or because we are bored is not a good thing.

I respect other's right to privacy and she specifically asked I would honour that, though she asked me in a threatening way.

Anyway, I got to watch two of Malia's matches and she she easily defeated her opponents. Sure they are not from our class, who are the only ones that can stand against her or me for a few seconds at this point but I couldn't help but clap her for the performance.

The defeats were swift and elegant. Even though she defeated her opponents easily, there was no hint of arrogance in her, only the cold demeanour of not caring as usual.

It was not her matches that I watched. I hopped from one match to another. There are many geniuses in the academy. Though I have fought with almost all of my classmates but that was a year ago.

In this last year, many transformed into better fighters than they were before.

I know, my opponents failed to make an impact on me as they would lose quickly when they were matched against me but I was forced to watch other matches as well.

The way they fought, either it is crude or snobbish. Very few are honed very well in combat but that scenario has changed. Many students from the Royal Academy now look like polished gems. I don't know the reason behind the transformation but they have changed a lot.

Maybe it was because those noble families saw that their children were becoming useless and with the graduation exam observed by many prominent members of the kingdom, they may not like losing faces.

The families may have made it stricter for those arrogant noble brats but I see a few commoner students are doing well too. They don't have any families to provide resources like noble families nor they would have known beforehand that many powerhouses of the kingdom would be watching their performances.

I think, either the monster tide that happened some time ago was a wake-up call to everyone or they may be in dire need to improve themselves or lose everything. Whatever the reason might be, many pulled themselves up in the last year.

I easily defeated my first five opponents as they were from lower classes but the next five were from my own class, who seemed to have improved a lot. I would love to examine properly how much they improved, though not to an extent that it may backfire on me.

Luckily Malia was not fighting me in any of those five matches. We have sparred in the first two years but were never matched against each other in exams.

I believe that the matches were not random as the academy says. I believe they are decided beforehand. I don't think that the academy wants its best students to lose their top positions easily. Sure, others can claim the positions but the academy would not make it easy.

Losing a match could cost a position for the top talents. Losing the position means, they would receive less resources to improve and that means a further decrease in ranks and so on.

The academy though appearing as a fair one, is not totally fair. I mean no one would be totally fair and impartial. The academy is there to provide possibilities for talents to become the future pillars of society. It was their only function, not to remove the differences in society.

So once they observe that a few are talented, they would make sure that they get the best resources to become a safeguard for the kingdom.

If me or Malia fight each other in the graduation exam, then one of us would lose a match. I don't think that the academy would let that happen.

Sure, we would give the best match but a loss is still a loss.

My head hurts thinking about those. Let's see other matches, as I have to wait until all matches of the students are over.

---

It was late evening before the matches for the day were completed.

Once all the duels scheduled for the day were over, everyone returned to their own academies. Yeah, the middle-aged man named Orthos, chafferoned us back to the academy in one piece.

Tomorrow would be the same and also the end of duels. After that, the only part of the exam that remains would be Dungeon Diving.

What and where about that part, no one has any idea. Not even a small rumour about that. We can only wait till the exam start.