Yeah, the fight didn’t go so well since he had arrows sticking out of his butt, one for each cheek. The fight had gone exactly as planned. Unfortunately, it was a terrible plan that didn’t work.

When the fight started Micky charged with his monsters and the archers prenocked arrow flew true. It was annoying that an archer could knock their arrow in prep but a support class could buff, but hey who said he could have started channeling a strategic class damage spell before the fight started? Though if he had actually done that they would have started the fight immediately, taking it as consent.

No Squishy took the arrow trying to mitigate the damage as much as possible and it barely missed her core. Probably more because of the archer’s inaccuracy from the shifting target and because if he actually killed a tamed pet he would be booted and fined even if it was a slime. But the arrow hadn’t mitigated much of it’s speed and thus damage from knocking the slime out of the way. It simply pierced through the slime with a minor deviation… instead of piercing Mags heart, it hit her arm.

Things did not improve from there. Mags charged ahead valiently, of course. However the archer just needed to change his shot and skill to force her out of the way. She blocked as best she could but even with the fw buffs Micky could manage it was not enough and she was forced out of the way.

Then there was a clear shot at Micky. Micky had been following close behind mags because he would be nothing but a live target if he stood still. Unfortunately for him, he still was. Micky quickly dived to get back behind Mags but it wasn’t really enough. The archer then fired two shots from his shortbow in quick succession that hit each cheek. He aimed to shoot an arrow up Micky’s sphincter but the judge quickly called an end to the match and Micky had already given up. Micky wasn’t sure the archer would have stopped if the teacher wasn’t in the way. Especially since he high fived Archer the archer after he left the stage. Really, just fuck that guy.

Micky was tempted to use his status as a lordling and future noble to have him kicked out. However, he realized that it wouldn’t do him any good, and might actually hurt his interests and others if he did so. So he held back… and only used his powers for evil in other ways. Just because he was a noble didn’t mean he didn’t have other avenues to make sure Archer’s life wasn’t a living hell. Or at least that he was mildly annoyed but the random debuffs and problems he kept getting. After all, Archer wasn’t liked even by fellow ‘rankers’ as some of the top of the class had taken to calling themselves.

Archer was talking to some of his fellow archer buddy’s. The tanks and healers each had their own mutual clicks. The tanks were people everybody wanted to know decently well and the healers had a reciprocal relationship with tanks so they often had good connections. There were even several relationships that blossomed. The current ships were a pair of relationships between one of the handsome tank bros with his well defined body and one of the healer boys with a boyish charisma that screamed young exuberance. The other was a pair of women affectionately called ‘senpai-sama’ and ‘kohai-tan’. What was even more interesting was that these relationships were actually not mutually exclusive and the four of them were in a quasi-relationship itself. Often trading and pairing off. Another was that the ‘kohai-tan’ and the boyish… boy were the more active thirsty aggressors in the ships. They even worked together to sink any ship attempts to pirate their relationship with the other partners. Often forming fleets together to attack anyone interested in making waves. But these stormy ops weren’t very well known… except for the expert troublemakers the supports that is.

But the biggest action was not in the tanks vs healers click politics except on an individual basis. No, it was in the DPS departments. The supports were more, sycophants is a nice word, to the other clicks particularly the tanks and healers. The DPS however, were viscous and cruel to one another. Each style of DPS had made camps so as to not step on their own’s toes. However, archers and rogues were in a full on, all out war. Mages weren’t actively facing and other DPS due to their unrivaled AOE bombardments but the ranger and tamer aspects often fought them on turf wars. And by turf, for adventurers, meant the ‘good’ parties.

This meant that Archer, being a ranking archer, was a leader in that click. Though the leader wasn’t really worried about the click to begin with which made him the effective leader. Much to the pain in the ass to everybody else, and in Micky’s case literally.

Micky was quickly healed up after the incident that he will never talk about again! Of course, that did not stop other people from mocking him to his face about it. Prin was offended however. She might have laughed had Micky been able to defend himself. She knew quite a few warriors that would have deserved that treatment. However, as Micky was a support he had no way to defend himself, it was just downright bullying (which in a family of bandits she wouldn’t mind but it was her side getting bullied). Hell, they had even tried to take her lieges rear chastity if they weren’t stopped in time. So she made it a point to trounce any archer opponent she came across. Non of the archers she met were walking home… literally, though she didn’t cripple them. Because that would break the rules and Micky would be made if she got kicked out so soon!

Micky finished off his round robbin and as expected he did poorly. He was not in the seeded brackets. Instead, he was in the bottom bracket. If he won his way up through the bracket he could still face the top bracket. But that was only if he won everything. On the other hand, if the top seeds lost, they would then fight through the lower level brackets and could still fight back into the top bracket. In this way things were equal as far as power was concerned. As a support/tamer he was not expecting to win, or even get close. Worse, his next opponent was a mind mage.

Mind mage was a type of physical, or aspect mage, unlike color mages. The [Aprentice Mentalist] was a mage that specialized in mind magic. It was a magic that was almost as stigmatized as [Witch]s. However, there was a good reason why mind mages were stigmatized. Because they could actually invade your mind. They could even do things like control your body and force you to do things, or play with your memories. As one might expect it was all very creepy. However, they were not strictly regulated unlike blood magic. This was because mind mages like even Mikcy’s own buffs that forcefully manipulated emotions, were not invincible people that could enslave others. However, mind magic was much more subtle then Micky’s buffs/debuffs were. While the reason why blood magic was regulated and not allowed to practice without special permits and regulations was that in combination with things like curses and hexs from a witch they could be cast from anywhere and hit the target. Or at least that is what the nobility say anyway. However, considering that blood magic is used for settling most inheritance claims, and that most nobles have at least one employed at any given time, who knows?

So know Micky faced his first real opponent in the midterms tournament. He had a strategy and the mage wouldn’t be able to take on more than one opponent at a time. He was a little bit worried about having his mind read, but he hoped it wouldn’t be so easy to do. He had Squishy and mags spread out so that he couldn’t target them right away and they would each have a clear shot at attacking him. Or that was the plan anyway, Micky didn’t know much about Mind magic itself though, just the hearsay.