“Duels between aspiring mages are perhaps my favorite perk of my post at Valdarthan’s Academy, trumped only by the glee I experience whenever I have the pleasure of witnessing the presumptuous ones discover their own limits.”

- Grand Summoner Myrek

Of course Ethan would’ve drawn number one, Percy thought, rolling his eyes as he watched the boy who’d given him a free ticket for involuntary skydiving saunter up to stand where Mrs. Balligan had indicated. His opponent—a scrawny boy with the same unfortunate luck in stature as Kollum, but without the benefit of the latter’s muscular build—did the same.

The cloaked woman returned to the podium, standing perpendicular to the two opponents, and waved her hand casually. Immediately, the two boys’ hands dropped to their waists, flipping open their deck boxes and drawing six cards to their gauntleted hands. It seemed like the scrawny boy was trying to draw more, to Ethan’s amusement, but no matter how he grasped at his waist, he couldn’t draw a seventh.

Suddenly, rainbow light flooded from both duelist’s deck boxes, swirling around them and forming into monsters behind them. Behind Ethan, a magnificent winged white steed with a single golden horn appeared, proudly displaying itself to the crowd of kids. They gawked at the pegasus, a faint chorus of ‘oohs’ rising up to its apparent pleasure.

Behind Ethan’s scrawny opponent, a large rabbit appeared half-buried in a den which materialized in the ground, four horns sticking out of its head like a crown. This time, the kids laughed. The rabbit didn’t seem to care, simply kicking its ear to scratch an itch.

“Their Monarchs,” the headmaster explained. “When you draw from your deck, you’ll instantly summon them into their Idle forms.”

Summon me! Silvaroth demanded excitedly. Let me out!

“But they can’t actually do anything just yet,” the headmaster continued to the dragon’s audible dismay. “A Monarch in its Idle form is only good for its Summoner’s protection. Well, that and the intimidation of your opponent.”

“Okay,” Percy said. “How do they protect you?”

Blask smiled. “An excellent question. And it will be answered by watching the duel.” He pointed toward the scrawny kid. “Mako there is currently in the flux.”

“In the flux?”

“It means he’ll go first,” the headmastter clarified. “You’ll learn it all in class, as I said, but the short of it is that mana is always in flux, and Mako was lucky enough that it gravitated to him when the two of them drew their cards.”

A disgusting concept, Silvaroth spat.

The scrawny boy—Mako—selected a card from his hand, examining it thoroughly. Apparently deciding against it, he traded it for another card from his hand and read that one.

Ethan raised his hands in a mocking gesture, asking something that couldn’t be heard from inside. Mako looked up, as though surprised, then pushed the card against the silver gauntlet on his other hand.

A vivid indigo energy erupted from his fist, forming a portal of sorts around his fingers. From within, a crystalline blue jelly oozed out of it and launched itself onto the grass before him. It glowed, forming into a large mound. A face grew from within, two smaller holes above one large one. The liquid seemed to flow, the face constantly forming within the waterfall of slime.

“Oh,” the headmaster commented casually. “That’s a Glowing Slime. A rather strong initial Summon for an applicant. A shame we can’t see it in action yet. I wonder what your friend Ethan will answer with.”

“He’s not my friend.”

Blask chuckled.

Mako waved his hand, Ethan smirking as he drew a card from his deck. He examined his cards, opening a portal of his own. Vines surged forth, crashing into the ground and diving underneath before erupting back out and swirling around into a ball.

The headmaster did not seem impressed. “A ball of vines? I can’t say I’m familiar with many plant-based cards, but it can’t be all too powerful given the boy is only working with one mana this turn.”

Ethan nodded smugly, passing the turn to his opponent Mako. The other boy shrugged, drew a card—this time with ease—then waved his hand at the plant and called out to his slime. The flowing mass of ooze sprouted two arms, pulling itself across the ground toward the other monster. Grass steamed where the slime passed over it, the nature withering under its touch, blackening.

Then, the creature encompassed the ball of vines, eroding away at its targets natural shell. The slime bubbled, the thick vines within shriveling up and pulling away.

After a moment, the slime suddenly flew back toward Mako in pieces as though it had been blasted away by a gust of wind. It landed before its Summoner, the pieces pulling back together and reforming into the amorphous blob.

Across the field, Ethan’s plant Summon wilted, the vines peeling back revealing a condensed figure within. A small person with green skin, red hair, and large black eyes crouched in the middle of the pile of dead vines, looking around and baring its sharp needly teeth at anything that moved.

“Ahh, a plantling, then?” Headmaster Blask inquired, stroking his chin. “I wonder what it’s capable of. Evidently, it at least possesses a barrier of some kind to fend off attackers.”

Mako examined his hand, apparently not finding anything of value to play. He waved his hand, passing the turn. Just before Ethan could move, however, the slime seemed to contract, a yellow energy floating into the air around it. Mako frowned at the display. Then his eyes went wide as he came to a realization.

“He forgot to collect his Res,” Blask stated, shaking his head. With a sigh, he turned to Percy. “Don’t forget to collect your Res. You do that, you surrender the match. Especially at a level like this, where your Monarchs are key to your victory.”

“Oh yeah, I forgot to ask. What’s Res?” the boy asked, causing the dragon to make another snippy comment.

If you’d asked that question of me when I was still in a corporeal form, I’d have forgone your riddling challenge and eaten you immediately. Seriously… What kind of a cruel joke is this?

“Something you’ll learn more about in the Academy,” Headmaster Blask repeated. He seemed to enjoy telling Percy he’d learn more about things later. “Elemental Resource, though most just call it Res. A Summoner must collect it from their Summons after they produce it each turn. That boy, Mako, moved too quickly. He should’ve waited just a moment. Suffice it to say, without Res, you can’t cast any spells or summon your Monarch.”

Percy nodded, vowing to never forget to collect the resource. He hated looking like a fool, especially when it came to developing or enacting competitive strategies.

Ethan smiled. With a flourish, he drew a card from his deck box, swinging it around in front of himself as if to show off. Percy thought he looked like an idiot. He added the card to his hand and gestured to the slime. The plantling—as Blask had called it—dashed forward, leaping over Mako’s slime and screaming as it came down toward him, hand tipped with sharp fingernails, poised to strike. Mako stumbled back, falling to the ground and raising his hands defensively.

Percy would’ve missed it if he’d blinked. In an instant, the giant rabbit behind Mako burst from the ground, zipping around him and leaping into the trajectory of the plantling. Its hand came down, cutting through the rabbit’s fur but barely leaving any marks. Still, the creature squealed, glaring at the monster that had damaged it and watching as the plantling jumped back to Ethan’s side of the field before it returned to its den.

The headmaster’s eyebrows rose. “Fascinating,” he remarked. “I’d never have expected one of our new applicants to have obtained such a loyal Monarch so soon. Hmm, he may lose this duel, but I foresee our Mako there becoming a formidable mage.”

Percy was confused. “Was… the bunny not supposed to do that?”

“Hmm? Oh. Well, usually the Monarchs just allow the magic to do its job. They don’t typically try to stop the attack.”

Ethan’s smirk never left as he reached out with his open hand and pulled in toward himself. A faint viridian haze that Percy hadn’t noticed against all the other greens on the field suddenly shot toward him, flowing toward his gauntlet and vanishing into it.

He looked at his hand again, shrugged, then passed the turn to Mako. The other boy had gotten back to his feet, seemingly stunned that he was still alive. He shakily drew a card from his deck box, reading the cards in his hand and placing one against his gauntlet.

The indigo portal within his fist once again, and Percy realized something he hadn’t noticed before. A monster emerged from within the portal, but the card which had been used to summon it was gone.

He asked the man behind the desk about it.

“Ah, that’s right. My apologies; there’s a reason I’m a headmaster and not an instructor, you see. You can’t see it from here, but those cards have formed into small orbs of light around the boys’ wrists. You’ll see it during your own duel. There’s also an indicator of how much Mana your Monarch has given to you on the gauntlet which appears as a number. A metric some ancient mage calculated for our convenience.”

Percy examined his gauntlet, turning it around and staring at the metal plates that overlapped to form the piece rising up his arm. It didn’t seem very special—just a fancy silver glove of metal.

“Oh, here we go,” Blask commented, seemingly having forgotten the conversation. He was glancing out the window with an excited grin, tapping a finger rhythmically to his lips.

Outside, the creature Mako was summoning had fully formed. A big white bear, its fur lined with silver streaks, rose to stand next to the slime, the first Summon now oozing the same yellow energy as before. Mako repeated Ethan’s motion, absorbing the energy into his gauntlet.

He pointed, and the slime repeated its action from earlier, pulling itself across the field and engulfing the tiny plantling within itself. The smaller creature screamed, bubbles rising to the surface of the ooze before it shattered into a burst of light, the fragments of magic firing towards Ethan and vanishing into his deckbox.

“The card will reform within the box, given time.”

For the first time, Mako smiled. He seemed confident now, and this time pointed directly at Ethan. Percy didn’t expect anything to happen. He’d only just summoned the large bear, after all, and Percy was under the impression that the Summons needed to wait a turn to attack, for whatever reason. But instead, the bear roared, unsheathing long silver claws and dashing towards Mako’s opponent. Enraged, the bear charged head-first towards its target.

A translucent wall of white magic appeared, swirling into existence just a foot before the monster reached Ethan, the bear crashing into it and furiously raking its claws against it. Ethan flinched. The pegasus behind him merely fluffed its wings.

“That’s the normal occurrence,” Blask pointed out. “As I said before, the Monarchs typically let the magic do the work, absorbing the damage for them.”

Pah, Silvaroth spat. A weakling. I respect the rabbit far more. Never let magic be your crutch, Percy. When you need it most, it will fail you.

The boy gulped. He hoped Silvaroth was speaking out of contempt rather than experience. He didn’t want to imagine the havoc that would be wrought if the card holding Silvaroth suddenly stopped working, the dragon set free in the middle of a crowd of kids.

For some reason, he had the clearest image of the beast breathing fire toward the sky and roaring, “What smells delicious and reeks of fear, which flees from me screaming, yet brings me cheer? That’s right, small humans, the answer to my fine riddle is you!”

If possible, Percy would plan to excuse himself to use the restroom before that happened.