The academy’s curses were suspended for the whole week, not really sure of how much the battles would last. There was never a determined a certain time for them. They could last just a second or they could last days. Either way, the principal decided a week was good enough time to finish the entire roll of students.

The halls were empty and way too silent. Way more silent than every other day.

This year, the battle was going to be legendary. There were at least three Lee’s from the main line of the family that were participating and a few more that didn’t belong to it directly but were still powerful and respected enemies. There was only a Cho that belonged to the direct line of his family this time, though, but there were way more Cho participants that were still way more strong of what they thought.

Something that made the families recognize themselves was the way they treated their powers and abilities.

The Lee’s, weren’t discreet about what they could do and their technique was to intimidate to avoid people from attacking. Scaring everyone from the beginning was easier so they didn’t have to go under useless battles.

The Cho’s though, had another set of mind. While the Lee’s, their main enemy, displayed their abilities to everyone, they would keep them for themselves and limit their usage to only needed situations. Even in battles, the Cho’s were knows to procrastinate the use of their abilities until it was only necessary. Their fights would mainly consist in body to body fights.

Lee’s were feared because everyone knew what they were capable of. And Cho’s were feared because no one knew what they were capable of.

It was mandatory to participate in the battle. All the students had to fight until there was only one winner.

Of course, knowing there were such powerful participants in the battle, many of them decided to just not train at all ever since the beginning. It wasn’t worth fighting knowing they would lose.

So it was decided that the third place would get a bigger price than the very first one.

Knowing the logistics of the battle, no one was sure who they would fight next. The only way Hyukjae had to know who his opponent was, was reaching the final round. And he was sure Kyuhyun would reach it and one of them would, as well. There could be a coincidence as well, though, that one of them would fight Kyuhyun in the first round.

That would be too much asking.

…………………………………

The academy’s arena was divided into almost fifty different sections, so that many different battles would be happening at the same time. That way, the whole process would be faster. The arena was big enough to hold at least ten thousand people sitting.

Being about 500 students, the first round would consist of almost 250 fights, many of them lasting only a few seconds because there were many students who would only be there to give up and avoid any kind of fight.

As soon as Kyuhyun arrived to the arena, he sighed deeply and looked up. His father was there, with his wife and almost the entire family, if not that all of them were there, watching over him carefully.

Everything was way too silent for his liking. It was as the calm before the storm and he wasn’t sure if he liked the idea of it. He looked to the other side of the arena, where the Lee’s were supposed to be and although he had not all the information about the family, he was sure there were a lot of them in there.

There were allies on each side of the arena and the neutral families were all over the space, occupying it carelessly. Kyuhyun’s block consisted in a group of 128 people. 64 would pass to the next round. He finally saw the roll of students in his block. None of them were the Lees. So that meant Kyuhyun wouldn’t fight against them until the final round, if he could make it to that point.

Looking at the names, Kyuhyun sighed softly. His allies weren’t that many in his block, which would mean they won’t let him win as easily as he wished.

When there was a battle as important as that, with important participants, allies are meant to fight the other part to tire them up until the end of the event. If Kyuhyun were to fight one of his allies, that would mean the other would give up without him wasting energy. But if Kyuhyun were to fight against a Lee ally, then they would fight as hard as he could to tire Kyuhyun out. That way they would have advantages.

His block was the third one, so he had to wait for the other two to finish their battles to go against his first opponent. “Class E, huh?” He chuckled. Even if the other showed up, they would probably not even fight and just give up, not minding if he was an ally or not. Classes E usually didn’t have intentions of winning the battles, since they only wanted to get away from it already.

“Are