Cardinal: God Spell

The finals today would put an end to the first stage of the selection process for the school's representatives at the Divine Tower, after all, the reason the whole school was allowed to see these fights was to enable them to plan for how they would challenge each of the winners and potentially take their spots- However, this was also the ultimate stage for each finalist to overwhelm their opponent to the degree that they are dissuaded from even attempting to challenge a given student for their pass to challenge the Divine Tower.

The Second stage that would give them the pass to challenge the Divine Tower is the month-long challenge period that all the pass holders have to survive before they are given the physical pass to go to the Divine Tower, The final stage of challenging the Divine Tower would only be apparent once one got to the place themselves. Rapidly, the school gathered in the stands to witness the match today and of all the spectators present today, Class 1E came here today, hoping to God that Sora fluked his way into the finals and wasn't still stronger than them even after they denied him resources.

On one end of the stage, Sora stood in his school uniform with a bored look on his face as he observed Xiao FeiFei, thanks to the benefits that the Elite class brought she had already climbed to the intermediate stage over the past two months and planned to use this match to debut her new skill-set, it was just unfortunate for her that Sora also planned to debut one of his tricks today. 

The match started and Xiao Feifei immediately cast her Intermediate Plant spell [Advanced] Thorny Vine, multiple inch-thick rope-like vines shot out of the ground around her, covered from top to bottom in Inch long steel thorns. The Vines all shot out at Sora's position just for a flash of lightning to stop in front of Xiao Feifei as Sora emerged from it, landing a perfect Lightning-powered Calf Kick to stagger his opponent and make her fall forward. Sora then transitioned into a clean lightning-powered Karate Drill kick, the back kick. Sora then spun and once again sent a lightning-powered kick up at Feifei's face as she hunched over in pain and mild paralysis, sending her airborne before finally running out of electricity on his initial casting of Thunder Stride: Dash. Xiao Feifei lost consciousness the moment Sora's foot connected to her face and her body slumped in the air before she hit the ground and her Thorny Vines spell wilted.

The crowd was in absolute uproar at what they had just witnessed with most being for vastly different reasons. Some wondered how Sora managed to cast a lightning spell without any buffs despite still having the aura of a basic mage, Others wondered how he used the Lightning element to increase his speed like that wondering if he was using some kind of movement equipment. The other group were the guys and girls in the 1st year who were outraged by the fact that Sora hit the year group 'Goddess' in the face so blatantly, they were furious that he dared harm her when she had done nothing to offend him before today.

Sora didn't acknowledge a single one of the jeers directed at him but instead did this, "If you have a problem with me you have a whole month to legally do something about it, pull up or fuck off I don't care which... Just don't come crying later when you are on the receiving end of a basic spell that knocked out an intermediate mage in 1 exchange", Sora said before turning back the way he came and leaving the stage, he wouldn't be receiving his Divine Tower Pass until they got back to Campus anyway so there was no need to waste his time dilly-dallying around this tournament that he quite frankly couldn't care less about anymore.

The Jeering got worse until the next two combatants were presented, making it a battle of seconds years next; In all of the controversy and jeering people forgot that this was actually a competition and technically Sora had secured a win for what was assumed to be the weakest overall group of all of the finalist groups. Now, the strongest of the second years was going to be fighting another Second year on behalf of that same group after they already secured the opening round. It looked like Group 4 might have a chance of winning this tournament as a whole. 

Marcus stepped onto the stage and shook his head in pity when he saw Han Yunji standing across from him with a difficult look on his face. Ignoring the fact that until he developed some more Yunji was still a purely damage-dealing mage, The raw damage he dealt paled in comparison to the firepower that Marcus had in his arsenal, and on top of that Marcus had some crowd control ability that showed it's worth even in a tournament like the Divine Tower Trial.

The match started and Yunji wasted no time launching 2 fireballs at Marcus while backing off just for Marcus to run through them in his [Perfect] Spirit Beast Manifestation with the fire damage Immunity the pugilist race had, and Launch a Lava fist at Yunji who was retreating, The Team 1 representative barely managed to finish casting his Intermediate Cursed spell, Destructive Curse Arrow when the attack was within range and when he launched it, the spell collided with Marcu's Lava fist and lost out, reducing the power slightly but still letting Yunji get blasted away.

Yunji was stopped mid-air and dragged towards the rapidly approaching Marcus by a seemingly invisible force, he was then hit with a mid-air close line, Before Marcus followed up with a point-blank Lava fist that smashed Yunji into the pavement of the raised platform, completing what every person in the stadium unanimously, yet silently, agreed was simply a Public execution of one of Team 1's member, Han Yunji.

Marcus equally couldn't care less about whatever backlash he would get for overdoing it in his duel against Yunji, like Sora, he was setting a precedent and a warning for anyone with the nerve to try and challenge him for his Divine Tower Pass over the next month- Just like that the first 2 matches of the tournament ended in quickfire fashion, so much so that the crowd was beginning to think that Team 4 would sweep the finals entirely. 

The next match-up was between two crowd-control mages in the form of Leonardo Colston of Team 4, and Carlos Shin of Team 1, both having awakened the Poison Element among two others. This match, however, was also the first one that the crowd unanimously decided was going to Team 1 as all of Carlos' elements, excluding poison, perfectly countered Leonardo's elements. Both challengers walked onto the stage with serious looks on their faces as they prepared to show the world their stuff- Daunting as it was Leonardo wasn't going to swallow his pride as a mage by surrendering, it didn't matter if his opponent was superior in his speciality, or even that the other elements his opponent had countered his other elements this wasn't the first time he was faced with ridiculous odds and it wouldn't be the last.

{{AN: For convenience, I will refer to Leonardo as Leo unless necessary to do otherwise}}

The match started and as expected Carlos double-cast his Scent of confusion and Wind path to forcefully spread his basic poison spell in Leo's direction, it was his go-to opener in a fight and often worked more than people would expect, at that point, Carlos then cast his advanced wind spell, {Perfect} wind wings and took to the skies- much to Leo's annoyance. Leo managed to evade Carlos' opener by using shadow hop to appear beneath Carlos, but the wing mage quickly used his Intermediate light spell, Great Flash to disperse the shadows that Leo would have used for his next combination.

While Carlos was too high up to trigger his spell's blinding effect, it disoriented Leo for a few moments while also clearing the shadows that Leo needed as a source for his shadow magic spells. In his daze, Leo was his by a healthy dose of Carlos' Scent of Fatigue funnelled down to him through yet another wind path. Leo's stamina was beginning to drop and with it, his spell-casting speed also dropped- Leo barely knew what was going on before he took three Wind Blades to the chest and was blasted back 15 yards, crashing to the floor with 3 open gash wounds on his chest.

From the dust, Carlos raised with his spell, Leo placed his palm on Carlos' restored shadow and immediately cast his advanced shadow spell, [Lesser] Shadow puppet. Against another shadow mage, this trick would have been cute at best, but with another spell, constantly active while also trying to keep himself balanced, Carlos' defences were just lax enough that he didn't notice the shadowy miasma covered the entire middle of his back. Leo Shadow hopped from Carlos' shadow on the ground, to the one on his aiming to grab him and freeze him mid-air but Carlos finally noticed and channelled his Advanced light spell [Perfect] Burning Light through himself, not only making Leo's Ice spell miss its target but shooting Leo off of his back and into the open sky, his territory.

Once in the air, Leo was vulnerable and Carlos spared no effort assaulting the Shadow mage with wind blades and wind paths to keep him airborne, only slashing Leo into the ground once he was certain Leo had lost consciousness. Carlos landed without as much as a scratch on him before walking off of the stage and leaving Leo to survive by his means. Team 1 had won a match and Carlos had won himself 1 of the 3 remaining Divine Tower Passes left in the tournament, 1 that Sora had half a mind to challenge him for.

The next match was going to be a particularly entertaining one to observe, on one end there stood the publicly acknowledged undisputed strongest none Elite student of the 4th year and by extension the school- If one considered the fact that the Elite students were meant to serve as an emergency military force in China should things go awry and remove them from the equation entirely, Jun Wie of Team 4 was the Interstellar Magic Academy's strongest student without question.

Jun Wie's opponent was an equally formidable mage as despite being unable to awaken another element after the basic level he clawed his way up to the Elite class of the fourth year and secured himself the title of the Battle God of the Elites after single-handedly holding every single Top 5 Elite student to a draw with nothing but his talent for fighting and the wind element- The even more publicly acknowledged weakest element of all in terms of Power when one reached the pinnacle of magic.

It was the Mightiest Mortal of Team 4 versus the Battle God of Team 1 going head to head in the second to final match of the entire tournament for the 4th of 5 Divine Tower Passes. The ground of the Platform rippled at a spot as Jun Wie emerged from the earth and walked away from his Earth ripple spell before stopping it-Matching Jun Wie's energy, Wenqing emerged from the aftermath of a twister dropping from the sky and hitting the platform opposite Jun Wie setting the stage for a very interesting fight.

As both Combatants prepared, Wenqing used [Perfect]Wind Wings from the jump and followed up by creating a pair of clawed gauntlets from the air using [Perfect] Solid Air while Jun Wie used his [Perfect Inner Spirit Manifestation to equip his armour-like Rhino spirit before arming it with his [Perfect] Rock Fist spell. Both mages went for the same main choice of attack with the only variation one might see being in the more intricate parts of their respective fighting styles. It was the manifestation of a Chieftain class Rhoni Beast man versus an Entry level profound Wind mage, and the crowd could not have been more hyped for it.