The competition continued after a few minutes of break. They had shown their Mana Affinity, now it was time to do a mock battle against an automaton. All the magicians would have a choice of weapon they want and could take them out from the shelves prepared.

Beside each of the stages, there were two shelves full of different Mana Artifacts.

"That's about a hundred Grade A Mana Artifacts." Hector counted and noticed that there were 50 Mana Artifacts on each shelf.

He was surprised about the grades of each Mana Artifact. He had never seen such a large number of products with such high-grade so close to him.

This time, instead of Kyla going first, Avery Marshall had decided to volunteer and be done with it. Avery had been acknowledged as the strongest in terms of individual prowess.

She stood in front of the many Mana Artifacts and picked up a brown sword that seems to be made of wood. It has a simple design and seems to be very light.

The Mana Artifacts within the shelves weren't repetitive and a hundred weapons were different from each other. That was why just from the weapon selection itself, they were given 10 minutes to find their suitable artifacts and the battle itself would only be timed up to 15 minutes.

"I'll go with this." Avery said as she unhesitatingly brought the wooden sword to the stage.

"I wonder what type of Mana Artifact senior Avery picked up..." Kyla muttered but it seems that it was everyone's question in mind.

Luckily, the two announcers for this competition was doing their job. Only those within the stage would be unable to hear noises that could distract them.

"Yuferev from Virgan selected Stormfire Scepter. This Mana Artifact has difficulty controlling Mana Spells that leans towards wind, water, and fire. But he has an amazing Mana Affinity and won their national competition so it should be comfortable for him. Wait, it seems that all the participants in this round had ranked first within their country's competition."

"Is that right? Was it coincidence?"

"Haha. They all probably thought that winning the first round of mock battle would give them a boost in their morale."

"That made sense, although it was only a mock battle against automaton, they will all treat it seriously."

"Of course, these automatons were made by Sir Julian himself. They had to be careful on this."

The two announcers discussed the weapons and a bit of detail about the participant.

"Avery from Zairus selected a mass-produced Dawn Sword. An interesting choice. This sword was crafted for military's training and probably the most underwhelming Grade A Mana Artifact out there."

"It may be right but her confidence shows that within her hands, the sword would seem to accomplish anything. That lady must be a swords master to exude such aura."

"Look at Vittore from Maja, his choice of weapon was a gauntlet. That's Lite White Gauntlet made of rare materials from a sea beast. Weapons made of mana beast that lives within the sea was definitely something we would like to see."

"That's true, I didn't know that they place that here. Based on the record shown, there are only 10 of these guantlets. To think that four of them would be present here, the organizers had really made an amazing job." The announcer said as each stage had similar selections of weapons. It only means that three more of these gauntlets were on the shelves of other participant's stage.

"Now, looking at Kadeen's choice, it seems that he chose his favorite type of weapon, a staff. That should be Vampiric Staff but isn't it a weapon that was more effective against magicians? They will be fighting an automaton that couldn't feel any pain or someone that can be distracted by illusions easily, right?"

"Hmm... Your words are correct. I wonder what was our home team was thinking."

"Well, if we knew those details. They should be even more aware. I wonder what kind of tricks they would use this time."

"Right, they surely have plans on their side. We'll see once the battle started."

***

[ Photos of a complete laser gun were posted and spread out a bit online. It was originated within this country, Montego. ] The A.I. said before showing the photos of the laser gun. The A.I. had also kindly shown comments of people about the gun and seems that they aren't taking it seriously. It was then forgotten and left on the internet.

The photo was there three years ago and was posted by an unknown individual. The caption was a question asking if someone had seen any similar objects like these.

[ These are the latest information we have. Parts of grenade had been sent specifically to Zairus this day. Some ammunitions of rifle gun was also sent together with the grenade's part. The sender also indicates that they originated from this country. ]

"Why would it be sent there? Who received those?" Wallace curiously asked. He was aware that this place should be the origin, but to send it to a far country, he never expected that. The guns and grenades he had weren't similar to a common weapon made on Earth but were made by the Galactic Federation. Especially that photo of ammunition that even possesses markings of the federation.

[ It was sent to the Zairus Magician's Congress. Unable to tap on the current communications within Zairus due to limited resources. ]

"Oh? So you can do that? Right, it may be possible as you've mentioned that security was indeed weak." Wallace wasn't worried that they have those materials as it wouldn't seem to affect the bigger picture.

[ If we are able to directly connect to any Zairus' cell tower, we can easily gain more information. ]

"That wouldn't be very long..." Wallace concluded but the A.I. seems to have something more.

[ Online information or traces within the internet about the sent materials to Zairus were being deleted by all servers. ]

Wallace couldn't understand what was happening and could only guess. The materials from his weapon were probably sent to Zairus in secret but the photos were perhaps leaked and uploaded online. Then the Congress might've taken an action and quickly suppressed the information leak.

"What's going on? Why is it there? Only the Z-Company that was guarding the island should have access to those materials. Why would the Z-Company, a criminal organization, send such materials to the Congress. That's weird." Wallace shook his head and decided not to think too much. Once the A.I. had probably collected more information, he'll get some answers.

Wallace was nearing the Bluefields City so he decided to get updated on the competition that was happening at the time.

"Avery seems to be uninterested." Wallace noticed her eyes that doesn't seem to take the automaton seriously.

He watched the battle ensue and noticed the strength of the automaton was quite scary. If this was used in TMAC, probably only a few can manage to fight against it. Aside from these six from Zairus, Wallace couldn't think of magicians that could fight the automaton made by Julian. Probably only Vera from their Leonhearts could fight against it. Shirley and Hilda's wasn't that well-rounded yet to fight against these automatons as most of their ability heavily relied on the ability of their Mana Artifact.

"It looks difficult. If it was me before, I'd probably give up on this." Wallace said as he observed. He was impressed with how Avery was handling the automaton.

Avery was only parrying the attacks of the automaton and hadn't gone to the offensive. The magic she had used was probably just a movement spell. The automatons seem to be using several enhancement magic spells as well. There wasn't any other magic as it seems. Unfortunately, Wallace couldn't tell every detail with such a limited view in the battle.

The view was moved to another participant that was fighting the automaton.

"Eh? Are they fighting differently programmed automaton?" Wallace was surprised to see that the automatons that the others were fighting had been using Magic Spells. They were throwing strong spells to fight against the strong spells being thrown by the students.

Wallace watched the battle a bit more. After about three minutes more of battle, Wallace realized that the automatons were programmed to battle at the same level as what the students were showing.

"So that was why..." Wallace said because upon noticing the timer that was showing in the television. Other magicians probably thought that the 15 minutes mark was just there to limit the battle time so it wouldn't take too long. After all, there are still many events.

Some participants were even thinking that this 15 minutes was too long and had thoughts of finishing the automaton as quickly as possible. But these 15 minutes were probably there to save the students from exhaustion.

The automatons were too strong. These Mana Artifacts that were under the category of puppetry were made so as to respond depending on the strength of the magicians. This mock battle was to let everyone see the ability of these magicians within the 15 minutes timeframe.

"That's an amazing automaton. As expected of someone within the same generation of Aeolia. They do have scary abilities. I hope I could get one of those. It is definitely a lot more diverse than the automatons within the TMAC that was guarding the place.

'Oh, I shouldn't judge that quickly... I haven't seen those fight and only noticed that they just possess Magic Jammer.' Wallace remembered his encounter with the automatons during the TMAC.

The battle continued and Avery doesn't seem to sweat during the whole 15 minutes, unlike the others.