Boreas POV

After being given our backpacks of supplies, much to the displeasure of most of the nobles, we were immediately teleported away, and my team was in this random spot in the forest. We also had this wristband that got a special sensor that's linked to our body. We were given these magic sensors designed to detect threats.

If these sensors identified a potential danger, individuals would be swiftly teleported to safety, effectively removing them from the competition. Since it's linked to our bodies(somehow, don't question it), of course, it will trigger based on how much damage someone can take, so it'll be different for everyone.

But...I just realized that there might be a way to trick the sensors into eliminating our opponents without us having to lift a finger. We can essentially just release our inner mana recklessly and that could create the illusion of danger and trigger the sensors to teleport the others to safety, effectively removing them from the competition.

"Why don't you have a sword?" Eve asked, "We're not allowed to use our storage spell, you know?"

"Don't worry, I can just take one from our opponents."

"Do you not have a sword?" Matt asked

"I can lend you mine." Eve pointed to her rapier

"Nope, I can't use my own teammate's sword...besides, I can just use magic to construct a blade if it comes down to it, but I rather use my opponents."

"Wait, you seriously don't have one? Why?" Eve asked

"Sir Wiles said so."

"Were you that bad?"

"Yeah, he said that I should have at least won a spar right about now, so until I do, I won't get his approval to own my own sword."

3rd Person POV

As the battle royale unfolded on the island, academy staff members gathered in a command center overlooking the island, their eyes fixed on the different scenes. From their point, they observed the fierce clashes and different strategies adopted by the enrollees, taking note of standout performances and emerging talents.

Discussions ensued about potential surefire enrollees, students with reputations that boast about their exceptional skills and performance in and the staff has marked them as prime candidates for enrollment in the academy. The staff also made a bet on these candidates, those whose candidates go into the top 15 ranking at the end of all exams will have their resume prioritized as not all teachers are selected for the future top class, the "Elite Class".

These individuals showed remarkable prowess in magic, combat, and strategic thinking, demonstrating the qualities that the academy sought in its future mages. There were many candidates that got their interest, though one was a mysterious outlier.

Boreas Silver, despite the news of his genius being spread around like fire for a couple of months all those years back, the rumors surrounding him quieted down a lot after he studied under the sword saint, of course, there were other suspicions of the director for the youth program and the genius healer, Theodore, intervening and silencing the rumors, but most just speculated the news of Boreas being accepted as the sword saint's successor to be false as there were just no news surrounding Boreas coming out.

It doesn't help that the sword saint and the person in question were never seen in the village and with the people of that village being so defensive about the potential whereabouts of the sword saint, most nobles chose to disregard all those rumors. Boreas, now finally made a public appearance for the first time in years, but unlike the others, he has no weapons on him, and unlike everyone else being estimated to be around rank 3 in magic prowess, he's still only rank 2.

Most staff of the academy do believe the story of the sword saint teaching our protagonist, however, they do find the current situation to be very weird.

"Theodore, where is his sword?" a female voice spoke right behind Theodore

Theodore turned to see that it was the headmaster herself. She was Laurel Juniper Skywood, a beautiful elf that was rumored to be almost 110 years old, she looked to be around 30 or early 30s, 176 cm tall, with bronze skin tone, dark black hair, and green eyes. Elves are a human-like race that lived to be slightly over 300 at minimum. It would be longer for the headmaster as she was a rank 9 mage who was said to be approaching the last rank.

"He can't have his own custom sword yet." Theodore answered politely

"Why is that?" the headmaster asked

"Apparently...when I talked to Sir Griffin, he said that Boreas was so good with the sword that he somewhat matched him in light spars. So, the sword saint now spars with everything he has, outside of using sword aura, of course."

"What does that have to do with anything?"

"Boreas can use magic on top of that, and the sword saint plans on restricting him for now. So he can only use swords from his opponents, swords that were made to accommodate someone else, though he does possess an emergency sword to use for self-defense in case he needs it. He has focused on only the sword for all these years, and his magic is evaluated to be rank 2, but I wouldn't doubt his ingenuity, I'll put him up against any of the people there."

As the discussions continued, the academy's monitoring systems detected something unusual, a discrepancy in the life signatures within the barrier. While every enrollee and staff member had been meticulously accounted for during the teleportation process, there was an additional life signature that got caught up in the teleportation, and it wasn't ants or any animal that would be ignored by the monitoring system.

Perplexed by this unexpected development, the academy's staff swiftly reported the anomaly to Headmaster Skywood.

"Can we track it?" she asked

"We can." a staff answered, "But would it take a long while...should we suspend the activity? After all, there's many among this year's enrollees who were there during the attack all those years back at the original branch. There's a possibility that it may be the same people."

"It's only one person...we can handle this...send reinforcements to watch over the event, in case this person is a threat, we can eliminate them the moment they emerge, as for the monitoring staff, track it down."

The being whose life signature was exposed was now watching our protagonist and his team meeting another group as they trudged through the forest.