Extra's Path To Demon King-Chapter 17: Masked Competition

"I do not know what the word 'Badass' means, but I shall take it as a compliment, Young Master," stated the butler in a slightly arrogant tone right next to Axel.

Axel jumped up in surprise, seeing the old man appear right beside from that distance out of nowhere, Axel asked him, "What phase is that beast?"

"3rd phase," stated the butler curtly.

Axel showed a surprised expression as he asked, "Aren't you a second phase?"

"Yes, I am, but it's not too difficult for seekers to kill beasts of higher phase, especially these types of beasts which only have physical strength."

Axel disagreed. "You completely overpowered it even in physical strength. Not to mention, I feel like the reason I saw afterimages of your movements is because you purposefully slowed yourself down, maybe? And I also think you could have killed it a lot sooner but took things slowly to let me witness everything more clearly."

The butler showed a surprised expression and said, "You're mostly right, except for the movement part. It's one of my movement techniques, which sometimes come in handy, and what do you think the reason I showed you this?"

Axel thought for a few moments before answering, "The power of a 2nd phase Seeker?"

"Yes and no. What you need to understand is that there are monsters beyond monsters in this world. No Seeker is weak, no matter what advantage they may have had as their birthright; this is only more true for those in the higher phases of power. I know you probably think that I am far stronger than William, but you are wrong. Yes, I can overpower him and would be able to kill him if we go all out, but the power of his pure destruction will also leave me in a near-death state," stated the butler.

"I have to admit, you're progress has been almost unbelievable in this little amount of time, especially after you came back from that little trip of yours. Though I don't know what you are hiding or what lucky encounter you may have had there, we are not interested in it either. What you need to do is to never become arrogant."

"The nobles may act arrogant, haughty, sometimes even foolishly blinded by their status. But they are Snakes in the form of sheep. They hide their true nature and power. The nobles' children aren't weaklings as well. They are trained very well from a young age."

Axel nodded seriously at that, he knew how dangerous this world was. Just his first treasure hunt brought him to a near-death state, and everything that happened there altogether even made him mentally unstable.

Then they both came back to the mansion and the butler told him that there was no need for any training in the remaining days. But Axel had to keep the bracelets on him till the day of the competition. After coming back, he gave order to Neil to gather all information on the competition, he even instructed him to get any valuable information about the competition from the underground organization.

While Axel himself kept thinking about all the training he did and the things he learned,

Exercises, movements, flexibility, attack stances, postures, training with increased weights on all four limbs, enduring pressure and killing intent emitted by a 2nd phase Seeker, using other senses thoroughly, witnessing a battle between a 2nd phase Seeker and a 3rd phase beast.

The next day, Axel reviewed the information brought back by Neil, the competition is held for the middle and low ranking members of the three factions, there is a limited number of students that each of the three great kingdoms can send to the academy. Not to mention the competition also lets commoners compete to get into the academy. The royal family later on adds the talented commoners to its army.

The high ranking members of the each faction and the royal's automatically get a spot on the academy. Its also possible to purchase academy spots with a lot of resources but its amount is so high that most of the families prefer to let their children compete and win a spot for the academy on their own.

'The Unified Human Academy can be said to be the greatest heritage of the human lands. It has a very long history. The three founding emperors of the three great kingdoms, with the help of a powerful Elven mage, created the academy. They also bound their bloodlines and kingdoms with a binding vow, that as long as their kingdom and bloodlines exist, they must do their utmost to operate the academy successfully and continue to nurture the future generations of humans. This vow is maintained strictly by the Prime Nexus."

Even though over the years the three great kingdoms had many conflicts or wars with each other. The tradition of the academy remained. Every 10 years, the academy would open once, and only those of age of 15-20 can get into it.

There are countless more rules in place, and the great kingdoms have no choice but to follow those rules to the letter, or their rulership would be put at risk. A total of only 1000 students can be admitted to the academy at one time. 300 from each of the three great kingdoms and 100 from the 6 minor kingdoms in total.

Each great kingdoms hold a competition in their lands, and the 4th competition is held between the 6 lower kingdoms for 100 spots. Axel needs to get into the top 250 in the Suncrest kingdoms competition since 50 spots are reserved for the royals, high-nobles, and top merchants' heirs.

The competition itself has some rules in place, for example. Every competitor will compete while wearing a mask given by the authorities that will hide their real identity, they will have a codename by which they will be called. For that reason the competition is mostly called by the public as the Masked competition.

The reason for wearing the masks goes two ways: the noble families like to hide as much as possible about their promising prospects from the public's eyes, and the commoners can fight without fear of offending noble families.

But that's obviously a facade to appease the general public, any commoner who is talented enough ends up being recruited by the royals or the high-nobles or top merchants. That's just the way things are. The competition itself is divided into 2 parts, written and practical.

The written part is just an empty requirement to know some basic knowledge about the Suncrest kingdoms' history and operations, etc. The practical part is individual battles. No killing is allowed, and purposefully causing major injuries is also prohibited.

Most of the useful information came from the underground organization obviously. They also provided some more information for the first process of competition. At the beginning of the event every time there is a need to eliminate most participants since there is always more than 10,000 people trying to join in the competition to try their luck.

A mass elimination is done, after which less than 3000 participants remain. It's unknown how it will be done, but the information itself is helpful nonetheless. As for entering the competition itself, you need a token from one of the countless authorities of the great kingdom, whether it may be an organization, merchants, nobles, some powerhouse, or someone from the army.

Those tokens are distributed to various organizations by the royal family of Suncrest to pass them onto promising individuals but they are prohibited to sell them or provide the tokens in exchange for something in return. An agreement is done with the help of Prime Nexus for the tokens to be only passed down to worthy individuals.

The Merchants and nobles joining the competition are an exception to these strict rules. The tokens they receive are free to be used by them however they see fit. This is their inherent privilege.

Axel was called to his father's office 5 days before the competition. He was drinking tea while sitting on the sofa while his father continued to sign and read one paper after another. After a while, his father, Daniel, asked, "So, how do you feel? Do you think you're prepared enough?"

"To be honest, I don't know. I did my best in the 7 months since I woke up," answered Axel.

His father nodded with a smile and said, "Well, I didn't expect you to show this much growth in such a little time, I saw many of your sparring's with Vargas. I must say it's not bad. I'm sorry, I was the one who told your instructors to not go easy on you."

Axel smiled slightly and said, "It's fine, it only helped me grow stronger even though I still don't like being beaten like that."

Daniel showed a surprised expression, and on the inside, he could not help but feel happy that his son had matured so much and put in so much effort to grow stronger.

"Thanks for understanding this old man, Son. But you should still be careful and not become arrogant. None of the heirs of the prominent families are weak. In this world, the moment you stop growing, others get above you by stepping on your head."

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"The only justice and truth in this world is power, absolute power," stated Daniel seriously to his son.