“What a fight! What-A-FIGHT! What an incredible fight! Please, dear audience, let’s cheer for both parties! Jason Lin and Laura Jensen, what you just did perfectly exemplified the spirit our founders wanted to see and encourage in our students when they started building this school, and enshrined the rules for student duel, even when they were faced with the harshest of criticisms and mockery. Let’s give them a round of applause!” Professor Barnes’ excitement was palpable, and the audience was mostly receptive and he had to increase his volume in order to make his announcements heard: “Now, let’s proceed to the next round!”

The metal cage started spinning again, and two silver balls were soon thrown out of the metal cage. Professor Barnes caught the two metal balls and read them, with all of the audience waiting for him to tell them the result of the next face-off.

But before Professor Barnes could announce the result, there was a big piece of cloud that suddenly appeared in the sky, almost right above the student duel ring. Professor Barnes noticed the cloud and stared up at the cloud as if he was waiting for something. Same did a lot of students in the audience.

“What was that? ” Thomas asked.

“That’s an emergency announcement. I read it in the academy’s introduction manual.” Aimee answered with a frown: “Something happened?”

“All students and faculty, please immediately return to gather in the common auditorium or the auditoriums in your respective houses.” The voice of the Principal, whose name neither Caroline nor Jason remembered came from the cloud: “We have an emergency announcement. I repeat: All students and faculty, please immediately return to gather in the common auditorium or the auditoriums in your respective houses. We have an emergency announcement.”

“You heard the principal. Go now! We will continue with the student duel later.” Professor Barnes put the two metal balls in one of his pockets and clapped his hands to remind the audience, then he walked over to Caroline, Jason, Aimee and Thomas: “Alright, nice job all. You really showed your strength. But we’ll need to continue another time. Be even better prepared next time, and keep a low profile if you can, alright? And the random face-off strategy is really genius, huge kudos to that.”

“Thank you Professor.” Jason said, raising his broken lance: “What should I do about this though?”

“Don’t worry, these practice weapons for lance break all the time. Just bring it to the armory and provide a written explanation.” Professor Barnes laughed out low and extended his hand at the direction of the common auditorium: “Now go. ”

All four of them followed the crowd and headed to the nearest auditorium, which was the common auditorium. A huge screen like those in movie theaters was hanging on the wall, with the principal and four professors or school administrative leaders behind him.

“What’s the principal’s name again? I’ve practically never heard anything of him since I’ve been here.” Caroline asked.

“It’s uh… Professor Hawke?” even Aimee, who seemed to be relatively well-read on the general information about the academy was not sure of her answer.

“Hello, students, thank you for coming. Our announcement is urgent, so we will cut to the chase.” the principal said to all the students and faculties standing in front of the screen: “This emergency announcement is about the upcoming fireworks festival and the competition. Let me provide everyone listening with a little bit of background. About a few months ago, the government was alerted that there was some forbidden or heavily restricted toxic and corruptive material circulating in the underground black market. And as they moved on their investigation, they had the conclusion that this might have been a coordinated effort to sabotage the normal market for a lot of material that is commonly used for potions, arrays and even weapons crafting.

“And just now, we received an urgent alert from the government, that some of the material had flown into the market of all the material that was used for the fireworks that are on sale in our campus and could have polluted the fireworks. Currently known forbidden materials that are suspected to have corrupted our fireworks include powder of swamp serpent teeth, power of spinal and tail bones of Kandera Wyvern, pellets of Kekugora Mushroom and unpurified deep volcanic obsidian. Being exposed to these materials, especially through inhaling, would cause severe long term and even permanent damage to the victim’s internal energy flow and reserves, their meridians and brains.

“So as measures of caution, I hereby announce that the firework festival, and all sales of fireworks and related material are suspended indefinitely, and all possessions of fireworks and related materials be subject to inspection. We wish all students and faculties to fully cooperate with these measures, for the sake of the safety and health of everyone in the academy. Detailed information regarding these measures will soon be announced. But first things first, we encourage everyone who has purchased fireworks to submit your possessions for inspection and schedule a thorough health checkup with the academy’s health department.”

Students in the auditorium immediately started chattering and complaining. While Caroline and the group did not participate in the firework festival at all, so they were about to leave the auditorium.

“... And all professors that are managing and supervising student activities, please see to it that all of these activities are able to proceed with related safety measures in mind, and halt if necessary. The academy will also be asking all of you for help on implementing these measures and enforcing our rules of safety and health.”

“Too bad. I was kinda looking forward to it.” Jason sighed.