[ The Administrator ]

Part II Chapter 31 - Teammates

***Lynett***

Alright, this isn't so bad.

I've trained Vivian the whole afternoon and so far, it's going pretty well.

I decided to start her training with a puddle.

While it's true that water is omnipresent in the environment, it's almost never under its 'traditional form'. And that's a problem. Because the less pure it is and the harder it is to control. To begin with, water is almost never pure. Since it dissolves many materials, water is almost never just water. But the more it is mixed with other elements and the more adulterated the mana in it is, making it harder to control.

Vivian has no problem with clean water, but this one puddle is already making things harder for her. Still, she's going to have to learn to go past that, as there is definitely going to be more than just a little bit of dirt mixed in the water of living beings. It's not like she has absolutely no control over it though. The puddle is reacting to her mana, and she can somewhat form a waterball with it. Somewhat. To be honest, it's not exactly a ball. It has an undefined shape, but at least, all the water is clustered together. For a first day, it's really not so bad.

It's been a few hours since she started this exercise and I could feel her mana depleting, so I decided to call off our private magic lesson for the day. Exhausted, Vivian collapsed on the ground when I finally signaled her to stop.

"You're an even harsher teacher than Mrs. Borge," she said, half-joking.

"Well, you're not doing too badly," I grinned.

"But will I really be able to defeat Lucius at this rate?"

"Of course," I assured her, "I told you, didn't I? You'll be ready by the end of the week."

Although not completely convinced, Vivian gave me a half-smile. I extended my hand for her to take it and helped her up.

"You and I are going to be invincible," I told her, "the upcoming tournament will be a piece of cake!"

At that moment, I felt her slightly loosening her grasp as she looked at me, her eyes wide-open. Something's wrong.

"You... don't want to?"

Thinking about it, I never really asked her if she was willing to join the competition. She agreed to form a team with me, but that was for the school's group tests only. She never said anything about the tournament. And those are two completely different things. In the tournament, there will be no wooden swords, no dummies, no magical defense to protect us. We will be in a real battle situation, against real people. Blood will flow, students will get hurt, and although extremely rare, participating could even result in death. This is not something I can force her to take part of if she doesn't want to.

"It's not that I don't want to," Vivian eventually explained herself, "but as we are now, we can't really join the competition."

I tilted my head, raising an eyebrow.

"Lynett, have you read the general terms and conditions of participation for the tournament?" She asked as she read my expression.

She means the stuff that is always at least five pages long to basically say nothing? Yeah, I never read that. As Vivian took my silence for a no, she gave me a weak smile.

"As I thought," she sighed. "You know, the first part of the competition are group trials. You need a team to enter the tournament."

I frowned.