The Lone Dragon

"Well well well.. looks like we have some interesting company this time around. Were you able to see anything Shi Meng?"

Even the usually playful Jian Tan was shocked and puzzled.

Shi Meng, who was looking forward to observing Eluraa's extraordinary sword skills, was staring at the arena with his eyes wide open.

Nobody had seen what happened. The fight was over before they could blink their eyes.

"Hey Ling look at that! Bingo! I was right on target. We finally have an academy student in the top five. My intuitions were correct."

"She is an exceptional student. It should be interesting how she fares with the other blood academy students. I wonder how far she can go now" Max finally paid attention to the arena.

Eluraa's next opponent was the student who placed fifth in the blood academy combats.

After witnessing the previous fight, he was really nervous and dared not to underestimate his current opponent.

He hurriedly tried to come up with a strategy to counter Eluraa's insanely fast opening attack but was only drawing a blank.

Luckily for him, when the fight started, Eluraa did not perform any extraordinary moves and started the match with her normal backslash attack.

Though she did not use her movement mastery, Eluraa still had achieved first stage sword mastery and was fighting him as an equal.

She was not pushed behind like the other lower affinity students. Her blocking skills and dodging skills were also well trained and she was able to keep up with the blood academy student.

After an hour-long drawn-out battle, the blood academy student finally had a slip in his mental focus and left a small opening for Eluraa to attack.

She immediately took notice of this and successfully landed a critical strike knock out slash.

Though she had originally planned to win only one match and place fifth in the final five students, she completely forgot all about and was enjoying the pure thrill of the combat.

The fight finally ended and surprisingly the blood academy student was knocked out.

The whole arena burst with thunderous applause again and the instructors praised Eluraa's combat mastery.

On the front row, her remaining three opponents, Shi Meng, Reina and Jian, were staring at Eluraa, each with completely different thoughts.

Reina had noticed the attention Shi Meng was paying towards Eluraa and was jealous.

Jian Tan was wondering if his battle would also take an hour-long and was worried about the potential bruises.

And Shi Meng was interested and looking forward to seeing how Eluraa would fare in their battle.

Eluraa's next battle was with Reina and she knew this was going to be even harder than the previous one.

This time she had to lose. She had already stood out enough! Eluraa reminded herself.

Reina was also mentally preparing herself and the battle was about to start.

Soon, the eventful battle between the academy beauty and the ugly freak was about to start.

But all of a sudden, there was a huge noise, which interrupted the deep silence and attention which had penetrated the atmosphere.

Mystical symbols appeared near the arena and they flickered with a shining glow.

The two emissaries tasked with escorting the final five students on their first live field training arrived.

They directly teleported into the main arena hall and created a massive commotion.

Max, Lingtian and the other instructors immediately got up and welcomed them.

These two emissaries, Herald and Nidaros have been on a monster-hunting team continuously for five months now.

Training these fresh students and leading them on a small nearby monster hunt was basically a paid vacation for these two experts.

The current world was an extremely dangerous place with the different clans fighting for resources and protecting what is theirs.

The human clan's population was dwindling at a much faster rate because the ability to naturally absorb mana had almost disappeared, with only a fraction possessing high affinities.

On the contrary, every other clan was blessed with a heaven-defying mana affinity.

Humans had to constantly hunt and scavenge in order to protect themselves and make themselves stronger.

However, not everybody was equipped or allowed to participate in these hunts and searches.

There is an unofficial list of the top-ranked ten thousand experts.

Only if you have the skillset and strong levels of multiple attributes in comparison to these experts, you will be allowed to explore, scavenge and hunt for resources and magical creatures, without supervision.

This was an extremely strict restriction placed for one's own protection and no one dared to defy it.

On top of it, the strong experts guarding the borders of each establishment made it impossible for anyone to slip through.

Only the official transportation means, which usually involves teleportation or flying on a trained strong magical beast with expert escorts were allowed.

The two emissaries assigned to the blood academy hall this time were surprisingly ranked at seven hundred and eight hundred.

Even Lingtian dared not to be disrespectful towards them. They were extremely strong combat experts at their peak level, guarding humanity at the front lines.

"The official tournament matches hereby conclude and the final five students will be selected based on the fights so far" Lingtian quickly ended the tournament matches and started the grand closing ceremonies.

A huge feast was arranged with nutritious magical beast meat. Everyone happily dispersed and gathered in the main auditorium hall for the celebrations.

Reina was staring daggers at Eluraa and reluctantly left the combat stage. She was really looking forward to this battle to show her strength and put this lower affinity ugly freak in her place.

Shi Meng and Jian Tan also left reluctantly, but they were more curious about the two emissaries who arrived and were looking forward to their xenon bracelets.

The final five students list will soon be announced and the xenon bracelets would be awarded after the closing ceremonies.