Until today, she always had the plan to marry Azzy. As Claire is standing on her path, she planned to kill her once the league is over despite how her mother was completely against it.
But, now, her heart suddenly started to beat for someone else who was clearly beneath her status or strength.
Trying to hypnotize herself that everything was a dream, she fell into sleep at around 5 in the morning.
As a result, she woke up in the afternoon.
After freshening up and changing her clothes, which she had in her storage card, she then came downstairs to find Affea alone watching the television.
She greeted her. "Afternoon, Auntie…"
Affea responded with a smile, "Oh, you are up. The food is still warm. Go and have lunch first. You didn't eat anything last night."
"Um, where is Azrael?" Estella slowly asked her.
"He went to the academy to meet his master," replied Affea.
Estella hesitated for a couple of seconds and then asked her, "what about Gideon?"
"Oh, he was picked up by his master, early in the morning, for some special training." Affea didn't hide anything. He told her everything that Azzy told her.
Estella fell into silence for a while. The disappointment was clearly written on her face and Affea caught it quickly. She asked, "Are you alright?"
Estella shook her head and forced out a smile, "nothing. I just remembered that I need to return to Moon City for an urgent matter." She left quickly without having lunch.
<strong>About half a month later;</strong>
More than two weeks passed away since that incident. During this time, Estella returned to her home. At first, she was lost in thoughts, constantly worried about Gideon's situation.
But, as she couldn't send any messages to him and Azzy claimed that he wasn't in touch with Gideon either, she decided to train with her clan elders.
As for the Pendant of Selene, she informed her mother that it is a fake that is used by the Dragon Clan to abduct her. Poor Cedar, whose life was spared by Azzy and turned into a mortal, was killed by the Dragon Clan's elites to appease the Moon Clan.
The other factions of the Dragon clan also took this to an advantage and officially threw away the Metal Dragon family out of the race. Eventually, Red Dragon Clan's heir, a 67-year-old Moldof Ravillon became the Patriarch of the clan.
In the meantime, Team Unknown, which is also one of the top-8 teams, withdrew from the competition as the Kuru Clan decided to postpone the plan of exiting the council of Hidden Clans to the next century.
As a result, the organizing committee allegedly did a favor to the hosting academy, making Team Silver the opponent of Team Unknown. This means that Team Silver, which is the main team of the Central Academy will go straight to the Semi-finals without any battle.
There are some who also think that it might be a coincidence but none of the top-8 teams cared too much because all of them wanted to become the champion. Because Team Twilight is a team with new faces and ages below 16, most of the scouts were naturally interested in them.
In the meantime, Leah made it to the top 8 in the solo category, and Team Miare (Claire &Mia) also made it top top-8 of the duo category.
After giving a 6-day break for the contestants of the junior division, Top-8 battles of all the categories are going to be conducted at the Main Arena of the Central Academy. As for the senior division battles, they will only start after the junior division world league is concluded.
<strong>November 4th, 1994;</strong>
<strong>Central Academy of Arcana, Silver City;</strong>
By 9 in the morning, the main arena was completely filled with more than 250 thousand spectators. Of them, there are elite scouts, VIPs, several powerful individuals who are curious, and even a few kings and princes of royal families all over the continent.
To support Azzy's team, his master, his foster family, biological father, and some students from the academy managed to buy tickets and sat somewhere in the crowd. There are also professors from the Eternal institutions who attended to witness the win of their team. The more Twilight does better, the more publicity their academy will have.
Surprisingly for Azzy's supporters, Neal appeared on the battle platform with a mic, "Hello, Welcome to Quarterfinals of the World League Junior, 1994."
With a smile on his face, he introduced himself, "My name is Neal and I'm the Proctor of today's match."
His good looks surely attracted the female audience for sure. But, that isn't the main point anyway.
Neal then continued, "Before we proceed to the matches, let us see the Quarterfinalists who will battle for the top-4 spots."
The large screens displayed the names of the teams and the match fixtures, which were kept secret until now.
<strong>Group Category:</strong>
Team Twilight vs Team Rebirth
Team Abel vs Team Dragoria
Team Unknown vs Team Silver
Team Helios vs Team Freyles
*
<strong>Duo Category:</strong>
Team ACT vs Team Red Spider
Team Ash vs Team Abnormal
Team Miare vs Team Sunrise
Team Hercules vs Team Drake
**
<strong>Solo Category:</strong>
Prince vs Ashoka
Leah Pendragon vs Laurel
Velez Garcia vs Thyme Shrew
Evan Lyptus vs Luciana Hearth
***
Looking at the fixtures from one of the waiting rooms where television screens were installed for the Quarterfinalists to watch, members of Team Rebirth became serious.
Their Captain still remembered the humiliation they faced during the time of registration. She clapped twice to gain the attention of her teammates and spoke, "Guys, this is it. Today, we are going all out and crushing them no matter what. Everyone knows what to do."
Meanwhile, in another waiting room, Azzy found some familiar names like Luciana Hearth, who was the captain of the Phoenix Academy's team in the junior Champions League. Then, there's Prince, who is runner-up in the 1992 edition World league and the winner in the 1993 Edition.
Apart from those two, there appeared to be someone else with Garcia's surname. Azzy recognized the name. During his training period at the stairs, his master Avia Night (older version) had once mentioned that originally, before he came to the clan, there were several contenders to become the heir of the Death Clan but of them, only two were at the forefront.
One is the Crescent clan's Gredor who had the support of many clans. The other is Velez Garcia, the second prince of Freyles who also had Death Energy. However, unlike Gredor Crescent, he wasn't liked by anyone in the clan because he was born outside the clan and so were his ancestors. Then, there is Avia's personal hatred against him. Azzy doesn't know the details though.
Anyway, Azzy wasn't participating in solo battles. So, it doesn't matter to him. Not to mention, he was confident that Leah would win in the end.
After a while, their names were called and the staff member entered the room to inform the team.
"Let's go…" Claire led everyone to the battle platform. By the time both of the teams got there, the barrier was already erected over the platform.
Looking at both of the teams from above the sky, Neal announced, "same rules as before. Activated skill cards of any type and modern weapons of mass destruction are prohibited. Deliberate Killing is prohibited unless a participant refuses to admit defeat even though his/her situation becomes obvious to everyone.
But, here is where the rules will be different from the previous round."
The new rules weren't a secret to either participants or the spectators except for clueless first-timers.
As everyone stared at Neal, he continued to speak, "Usually those who get outside the barrier will be out of the battle. If an Arcana beast/tool/plant knowingly or unknowingly exits the barrier, the user must dismiss it in ten seconds, or else, the Proctor will take the action and kill it.
This rule will be slightly modified from now onwards.
As soon as the participants don't touch the ground, if they can return to the barrier within ten seconds from the moment they exited the barrier, they can rejoin the battle.
While this applies to their Arcana too, their time limit is five seconds. However, the Arcana spirit is considered out of the barrier only if its entire body is outside.
The next rule is that a participant can exit the barrier only three times. But, Arcana doesn't have any limitations."
Feeling that she was the one who benefited from this rule, the most, Estella nodded with a satisfactory smile on her face.
The source of this c𝐨ntent is freewe(b)nov𝒆l