Without another word, Leo piled a million wizard coins inside the shop, picked up the two pieces of equipment without bargaining, and left.
Was that price high?
No, not at all.
Energy crystals were treasures that even money could not always buy. They normally cost 150,000 wizard coins each, but with the tournament approaching, all resources were rising in price. An increase to 200,000 each was perfectly normal.
Three energy crystals came to 600,000, leaving 400,000 for the two pieces of equipment.
Not only was 400,000 a normal price, Leo reckoned Skye had given him a considerable discount. Otherwise, even asking him for 1.2 million would have been reasonable.
The high total price only meant that these were not pieces of equipment ordinary wizard apprentices could afford to use, especially the energy crystals, which were originally intended for official wizards.
While back at the Purple Flame Academy, Leo also asked around and learned plenty of details about the tournament.
Of the six wizard academies, the Black Skull Wizard Academy had the greatest strength and the most members, and was the common enemy of the other five academies.
Among the wizard apprentices, everyone considered the Black Skull Academy the instigator of the conflict and an enemy that had to be defeated.
The remaining five were the Purple Flame Wizard Academy, the Big Ben Wizard Academy, the Heluoluo Wizard Academy, the Soul Death Knell Wizard Academy, and the Whisper Secret Realm Wizard Academy.
All five wizard academies bordered the Black Skull Wizard Academy. One could say that they surrounded it; otherwise, the Black Skull Wizard Academy would not have targeted these five academies for plunder.
This tournament would take place within the Black Skull Wizard Academy's sphere of influence, in a designated zone with a total area of several hundred thousand square kilometers.
It would last ten years. To ensure the tournament remained rigorous, properly conducted, and free from interference, over a thousand wizards of Level One and above from the six academies would supervise it, with guardian wizards of the Wizard Will also serving as witnesses!
The publicly stated reason was that Black Skull had wantonly plundered civilians from the other five academies. To avoid widening the conflict and escalating the war, the fighting would be confined to wizard apprentices, with the final victory determined by the number of survivors.
If the Black Skull Wizard Academy won, the Purple Flame Academy and the other four academies could no longer pursue the matter of the plundered civilians.
If the Black Skull Academy failed to take first place, it would count as a loss, and it would have to compensate the other five academies!
As for the wizard apprentices who survived the battlefield, not only would they not have to surrender their spoils, the academies would also offer them valuable rewards.
The Purple Flame Academy's reward was a guaranteed advancement to Level One Formal Wizard for the top ten!
Those ranked below tenth would also receive various treasures and wizard coins!
Seeing such rewards, Leo was tempted. He was now a peak wizard apprentice himself and had reached the level required to attempt advancement to Level One Formal Wizard. He could start considering and researching how to advance.
Although Leo knew the academy would surely guarantee his advancement, far too many wizard apprentices had failed to advance, and he could not help feeling uneasy. Once you possessed power, you deeply resented having your fate controlled by others.
Besides, the academy would recoup its investment in him a hundredfold!
So, apart from the academy's arrangements, Leo also needed to prepare an advancement plan of his own!
Now that an opportunity for guaranteed advancement lay before him, Leo would have been lying if he said he was not tempted!
"Heh, does someone who can place in the top ten under these conditions still need the academy to protect their advancement? What a freak."
Benji's sour voice rang out in Leo's mind. At some point, this demigod from another world seemed to have become possessed by a lemon spirit, finding something to be sour about in everything he saw.
Still, he had a point. Leo reckoned that anyone who could place among the academy's top ten in a melee involving sixty thousand wizard apprentices would need combat strength on Alice's level.
Would they still need the academy's protection to advance?
If even someone on Alice's level needed outside intervention to advance, how many wizard apprentices could possibly advance?
From refining various potions to selling them to Skye and finally returning to Tiyama City, Leo had spent over half a year. Now, only a little over a year remained before the tournament began.
"That's not enough time to do much. I might as well discuss and research elemental wizardry with Samatchi."
So when Leo appeared before Samatchi wearing wizard robes and holding a wizard's staff, Samatchi froze, then pointed at him and burst out laughing. He had seen through Leo's devious idea.
Put simply, he would impersonate an elemental wizard, then draw his greatsword and hack away once his opponent took the bait.
Who would have imagined that beneath those elemental wizard robes was a body-refining wizard covered in bulging muscles?!!!
Time passed in silence. When Alice appeared before Leo again, he had the fleeting impression that their last meeting had been only yesterday.
In reality, it had been two years ago!
"Is it time?" Leo asked, putting away his wizard book.
"Yes." Alice nodded.
Their twenty years of guarding Tiyama City were over. The end of their guard assignment also meant the tournament had begun!
Leo took out his Purple Flame Academy badge and pinned it to his chest. A single-use teleportation array was inscribed inside the badge, allowing academy apprentices in different locations to be transported to the tournament battlefield.
There was no one to see them off. Even Gru had not come. As spatial fluctuations arose, Leo and Alice vanished from Tiyama City in an instant.
At the same moment, tens of thousands of wizard apprentices from different locations across the six academies vanished together. All teleportations were complete!
Inside the tournament zone,
Leo had only just recovered from the dizziness of spatial teleportation when he sensed Alice's icy aura erupt nearby.
"Ice Seal."
Alice's cold, emotionless voice rang out low.
Leo sprang forward as swiftly as a cheetah, just in time to see Alice wave her staff and freeze all seven wizard apprentices who had just teleported in.
Beneath the ice, the shock and terror on the seven wizard apprentices' faces were still visible. Perhaps they had never dreamed they would run into a peak wizard apprentice the moment they arrived, without even a chance to fight back.
Alice lowered her staff and glanced at Leo. He understood at once and waved his hand. Tiny bolts of lightning erupted around the seven frozen wizard apprentices, instantly blasting the seven ice sculptures apart.
Leo found the wizardry rings and academy badges among the ice fragments scattered across the ground, then eagerly handed them all to Alice.
Wizardry rings were spatial rings. Everything obtained during the tournament belonged to the individual who acquired it. This was one of the academies' methods of forcibly concentrating resources.
The academy badges, meanwhile, served as proof of the number killed. However many academy badges someone held at the end of the ten years would prove how many wizard apprentices they had killed.
These seven badges depicted a great bell rippling with waves of energy, the emblem of the Big Ben Wizard Academy.
During the tournament, although the Black Skull Academy was the common enemy of the other five academies, those five were not friends either. Even members of the same academy were not necessarily teammates.
Simply put, anyone other than yourself could be an enemy.
Having long since learned the tournament's true nature from Gru, Leo was already prepared. He simply did not know whether the wizard apprentices kept in the dark were ready to face attacks from their own academy.
The slaughter began.
When the sixty thousand wizard apprentices recovered from teleportation, the slaughter began.
The attacks were indiscriminate. The moment anyone spotted a wizard apprentice, they raised their staff and attacked.
The number of wizard apprentices began to fall. Once the first wave of slaughter passed, all the surviving wizard apprentices carefully concealed themselves.
"Which way do we go?" Leo asked Alice.
With a top-tier wizard apprentice like Alice around, Leo naturally intended to cling tightly to her thigh.
Alice said nothing. After briefly sensing her surroundings, she rushed off in one direction.
Alice moved incredibly fast, giving off no aura at all. Her body seemed to float forward without making the slightest sound. If Leo had not still been able to see her, he would have been completely unable to sense her.
Leo was inwardly astonished. Was this the ability that had allowed Alice to protect him in secret for so long without him noticing anything?
It truly was uncanny.
Boom!
While speeding forward, Alice suddenly raised her staff and blasted a large tree, sending hundreds of ice arrows surging forth.
A piercing whistle tore through the air. The targeted tree was instantly blasted apart. Alice's attack was so powerful that it shattered an entire patch of surrounding trees as well.
Scarlet blood appeared among the wood fragments.
It was half a corpse.
And from another tree a short distance away, another half of a body, its aura weakened to the extreme, suddenly fell out.
The half-bodied wizard apprentice, who was not yet dead, stared at Alice in disbelief, his terrified gaze as though he were looking at a demon.
"Don't kill me. I can hand over my academy badge and wizardry ring."
As he spoke, the wizard apprentice with only half a body left quickly removed his academy badge and wizardry ring and threw them over.
Alice did not pick them up. She looked at Leo.
Leo smiled at the half-bodied wizard apprentice, his smile full of goodwill.
Just as the half-bodied wizard apprentice thought Alice had agreed and smiled back at Leo, countless electric arcs suddenly crackled around him.
In an instant, the half-bodied wizard apprentice was electrocuted into charcoal.
Alice gave a rare, slight nod, marking her first acknowledgment of Leo.
Wizards had no need for softheartedness. A softhearted wizard was doomed to a short life!
Alice had orders from the academy to protect Leo, but she did not want the person she protected to be useless!
"Oh, a wizard apprentice from the Black Skull Academy. No wonder he was so good at hiding."
Leo picked up the academy badge from the ground and looked at it. A black skull was depicted on it. This had been a wizard apprentice from the Black Skull Academy, the strongest of the six academies.
Had this wizard apprentice not encountered Alice, he might have survived to the end. Even now, Leo had no idea what sort of wizardry he had used to merge with the tree without leaking the slightest trace of his aura. Even under Alice's sudden ambush, half his body had managed to escape the attack's range.
Had this Black Skull Academy wizard apprentice ambushed Leo, he might well have succeeded. Leo could not have detected him at all!
"The Black Skull Academy is better at killing, and they're a cut above us in strength. Be careful."
Perhaps Leo's decisiveness had earned Alice's approval, for she offered him a rare warning.
"Thank you."
Leo rubbed the staff in his hand, having already raised his vigilance to its highest level.
Wizards had all manner of strange methods. Even with Alice there, his safety was not completely guaranteed. He could not let his guard down under any circumstances. He had to keep his fate in his own hands.