After Timothy withdrew the ten gold coins, the man gave him his entry pass with the date and name of the tournament with a small seal on it. Since it was a tournament that accepted all cultivators of the second rank, there was no need to do anything special with the entry pass other than verifying that the amount to enter the tournament had been received. "You will be called the Masked Fighter as you have requested, and just so you know over one hundred people are already signed up but since this tournament will begin in just over one week from now, we are expecting at least three hundred people to enter into this one including several nobles."
"You may think that the number of gold coins to enter per person would be considered low, but if three hundred people were to enter, we would still be making quite the profit off of the tournament even while subtracting the upfront operating costs and the grand prize. Just remember that if you want to remain anonymous, our coliseum is not completely responsible. We will hide your information the best to our ability but if your mask were to be removed for any reason by an opponent, that would be considered out of our control and we hope that you would understand."
And with everything finally settled, Timothy began to head back to the campus so that he could focus on preparing for the tournament. The man before Timothy left actually offered him some additional information on his competitors for an additional fee which was only five more gold coins. Calculating that the sword itself would only be worth roughly fifteen hundred gold coins, if three hundred people were to enter at ten gold coins each while also paying the five gold coins additional fee for insider information, the coliseum would have still made over three thousand gold coins in a single tournament!
Not only that, but the coliseum charged spectators only one gold coin to witness each tournament of this particular size and there would be at least two thousand spectators minimum. All Timothy could do was shiver at the fact that the coliseum was making out like bandits even though in theory Timothy would pay much more than just fifteen gold coins to enter since according to the data given to him on the other entrants so far, it seemed that only three potential opponents of his would be roughly even on just strength alone.
These three were all youths around his age and were all from high ranking organizations within the surrounding area. This meant that even if they matched him with strength alone, there was a good chance that they had access to very powerful techniques and other means concerning growing their power such as medical baths and pills which could also be used to increase one's body constitution instead of them needing to focus too much on physical training.
What bothered Timothy, was that he did have some fire element techniques in his arsenal, but otherwise he only had a movement technique which although very good, did not actually increase his strength while he had experience wielding a sword but the sword he had was only an ordinary one. In order to win the grand prize, it was not even an assumption but a fact that the other three that worried him slightly would be able to use higher quality weapons and armor similar to when he had to face off against Grant recently.
Timothy during the next few days worked very hard on his warrior training and even decided to skip many of his classes during the day. This was something that most students would be allowed to do for short periods of time if they were in the middle of breaking through a bottleneck that they were stuck on, so it did not bother anyone except his two roommates and the girls who looked forward to seeing him in person.
As the artifact had expected, during these few days, Timothy was able to slowly but surely breakthrough and officially became a rank two warrior. Being someone who was always putting a lot of pressure on himself to succeed, Timothy felt that he was proceeding rather slowly, but his master reassured him that he was doing just fine. For Timothy to become an official rank two dual expert at the age of thirteen actually meant that he would now be considered to be fairly formidable unless he were to take over four more years to breakthrough into rank three as either a mage or a warrior, then his overall potential would once more seem more on the average side concerning where he was.
Now that his training was finally over, Timothy chose to head to his first morning class he had in several days which surprised everyone present. When a warrior broke through to a higher rank, their bodies would go through a change when it came to both their muscles and overall height. Since Timothy had broken through to the second rank, he was now slightly more muscular and bulky and was now an entire ten centimeters taller. Along with his now long hair, he looked like he could pass for a fifteen year old and he just recently turned thirteen!
With so many female classmates always staring at him on campus since majority chose to remain in the Grey Imperial Academy to focus on their studies rather than heading into the city which meant he was the most muscular individual they would see regularly on the campus, Timothy had become bored and even somewhat unapproachable. There was however one girl who reminded him of a very close ally of his back on his home world that actually sacrificed herself to save his life and at the very last moment in tears, the two confessed their love for one another as she took her last breath in his arms.
The girl's name was Nora and she had long golden blonde hair and had a very captivating figure. The main reason other than her unrivaled beautiful looks and looking very similar to a past love that was lost during a war, was that Nora had a very protective and domineering personality. She was the only daughter of a military general who commanded a legion of over two hundred and fifty thousand soldiers in the northern region of the empire, and as such, no one would seek trouble from her.
Unlike that girl who was Ian's rival whose grandfather had to rely on his almost general rank in the military to uplift his own family but only could in his small area, Nora's father was in a much higher position within the military. There were different classes and ranks even for generals, and Nora's father was a rank eight warrior who was given permission by the Emperor himself to command the entire legion as he saw fit as long as it was in the best interest of the empire as a whole. Other generals would be able to command tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of men if a battle or even a campaign called for it, but only about five generals in the entire empire had the ability to do as they wished with such a high number of soldiers at their command.
On occasion, Nora would lock eyes with Timothy in the one class that they had together since she was now a rank two mage as well which made her qualified to attend the second year class. However, neither one was willing to make the first introduction and would only exchange some smiles towards each other. But today would be much different, for the first time since attending the Grey Imperial Academy, Nora approached a teenage boy in front of her entire class, and that boy was Timothy!
