Once he got over the shock of getting such a valuable item, Villin immediately fed it his crystals. When he pushed them against the holder they dimmed before crumbling, turning into tiny pieces of rock.

The number forty then appeared on the holder. Seeing how long the number was he briefly considered selling it before changing his mind. Selling such a thing in the first grade wouldn’t be easy and the teacher might even get offended because of it.

Once he put his thoughts in order again he quickly headed for his room before he started practicing Cut and Crease. He did find it a bit of a shame that he couldn’t practice with a complete piece of paper since he figures he should be able to control that decently.

At this point, he could fold the piece he had rapidly twice. He also tried turning it into a spike and he had a decent amount of success in that area. Despite this he had already decided not to use that form, it simply wasn’t fast enough to change between a spike and a paper so he dropped it for now. Even with a normal piece of paper, you could deliver a cut.

He practiced for about half an hour before he had to head toward the Cut and Crease training ground. When he arrived everyone but himself seemed to have arrived. Aiden and Pierson seemed to be casually talking on the left side while Amelia was strolling around the right side.

When he was noticed Amelia immediately seemed to perk up. “There you are Villin, are you ready to compete against Pierson? Do you think you can beat him?”

Villin frowned a bit before talking “Good to see you to Amelia. I haven’t seen him use magic before so how would I know?”

Realizing she was somewhat rude she apologized before asking him “Alright so do you have a plan yet? If not we can formulate one together!”

“I suppose I do have a plan. But please do remember I’ve only just started and what I can do is extremely limited so it’s not as if I can do anything truly extraordinary,” he said shrugging, making it seem like he wasn’t nervous at all.

Amelia looked at her watch for a moment before speaking loudly, so that Pierson and Aiden could hear her too. “It’s time for the competition, might the best magus win!”

The duo came toward them, Pierson stood a few meters in front of Villin while Aiden stepped before Amelia.

“I’m sorry to say Amelia but you don’t stand any chance at winning this time around! I’ve gotten quite the talented seedling I’ll let you know!”

Amelia simply harrumphed. She didn’t feel like engaging in banter this time around and so she said in a loud face “May the game begin!”

And just like that, the competition started. Villin had decided to keep using half a sheet of paper since he didn’t have time to practice with a full one. Aiden, on the other hand, was using a full one, folded in order to form a spike.

Defense Versus Offense. Villin didn’t use his paper carelessly since he knew Pierson’s spike would be faster and only a single cut was required for the match to be over.

Both men had their paper floating before them but in the end, it was Pierson who made the first move.

With a wave of his hand, his spike shot forward! Or hold on… wait what?

There were only five meters in between the two men so Villin expected the paper to reach him in a second as he instantly folded his paper once, moving it onto location. Yet it took a full five seconds. Villin figured that even if he hadn’t defended or dodged, it was unlikely the paper would’ve even been able to draw blood.

Seeing the look on Villin’s face Amelia burst into laughter, meanwhile, Aiden looked extremely grim.

When Villin used his paper to push back Pierson’s spike he had a look at him, there had to be some sort of trick. Pierson’s face looked constipated, as if he was exerting an extreme amount of pressure. This made Villin look behind him in worry, thinking he might have a second spike somewhere.

Yet there was nothing. Villin had also been completely ignoring the bystanders to the point he didn’t even hear Amelia’s laughter.

Sensing a possible trap, Villin made a tough decision, and so the paper he was controlling tore into two even smaller pieces. This increased the difficulty of moving them by multiple folds but he didn’t want to leave himself undefended.

Amelia looked rather impressed now as she already believed the fight to be over. Villin moved one of his papers over to Pierson but just as the paper had passed the halfway point, the situation changed.

Amelia, who was already thinking of things to say to mock Aiden suddenly had a look of shock and worry on her face, while Aiden, who previously faked looking concerned had a look of confidence on his face.

Pierson gulped in nervousness. The amount of effort he was putting in was truly extraordinary and if he didn’t have an ‘Undine’ bloodline he wouldn’t have been able to exert so much control over his magic power. Yet even now he felt the extreme difficulty of his task.

He moved the spike before his face before slowly shooting it toward the piece of paper heading for him, hindering it.

He had done it, he was about to beat the mortalborn Villin.

Unbeknownst to most, Pierson had actually been controlling two pieces of paper from the get go. One was the spike he had used before while the other was a tiny spike, one that would probably break apart at once if it were to be blocked. As soon as the duel started he had sneakily sent the tiny spike up to the ceiling following Aiden’s advice.

Then, when he attacked with his large spike, the tiny spike followed, well over three meters above.

To be able to control the paper from such a distance no matter the amount of magic power and his bloodline increasing his control, was pushing him to his very limits.

Now, when Villin’s defenses were paper-thin, he let gravity take the little spike downward, giving it a little push so that it headed straight for Villin’s cheek.

His plan would’ve worked, were it not that he gave himself away. When Villin saw Pierson’s relieved expression, he knew something had happened and so, knowing he might not have enough time to look around, he let go over his control of the paper he was attacking with and expelled magic power over all of his upper body.

He managed to keep some control of this power up to ten centimeters away from his body, hence he was just in time to noticed a foreign magic power penetrating his expelled magic above his head.

He immediately jumped backward, his reactions were just quick enough as he saw the spike passing just in front of his eye.

When Pierson saw his attack failed, he couldn’t keep himself from fainting any longer as he fell to the ground.

“Pierson no longer has any paper under his control so Villin wins!” Amelia exclaimed with an excited expression.