Chapter 255: Chapter 255: Preparing for Battle

Knowing how high the stakes were for the final match against First Celestial Academy, both the students and the staff were more focused than ever during the strategy meeting.Based on the information compiled by the staff, there were two students in particular among the opponents that would need to watch out for.

The first was Tobias Blackheart, the younger brother of the Vice Captain Isolde Blackheart. S~eaʀᴄh the ηovelFire.ηet website on Google to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.

Tobias was relatively short, with a slim and almost childish build. His skin had a pale and delicate, almost translucent quality, contrasting with his dark, tousled hair that fell just above his eyes.

His large eyes were a deep, piercing shade of blue, with a hint of mischief lurking behind them. Tobias has delicate features—long lashes and a soft jawline—that give him an innocent look. However, despite his juvenile features that may disarm an unprepared opponent, he was one of the strongest first-years in the country.

Tobias' innocent features were in stark contrast to his affinity, which was reportedly to creatures with the rare infernal bloodline.

The infernal affinity is one of the rarest, and so far only the descendants of the Blackheart family have been reported to possess it. And even then it only appears in each generation a fraction of the time. Therefore, the Blackheart clan was both ecstatic and surprised when Tobias was able to awaken this rare affinity after his sister already had.

The origin of the infernal bloodline is not well understood, but it is believed to originate from another realm that in the legends was just termed "the underworld." Creatures with the infernal bloodline encompass pretty much all attributes, but due to the strength of the bloodline even if one has the matching elemental affinity, they will likely still be unable to form a contract with an infernal creature—similar to how a individual with a lower ranked fire-attribute affinity won't likely be able to bind a fire-attribute dragon. This is because the spiritual creature will be able to sense that their star space would not be able to transform to their standards, and will instead unconsciously reject them.

Interestingly, infernal creatures are practically impossible to find in the wild. Therefore, all of the infernal spiritual creatures that the Blackheart family currently possesses were born in a relic produced by their family's founder, and one of the 5 founders of the nation—Evan Blackheart. He'd apparently found an access point to the underworld and captured a wide variety of infernal spiritual creatures which were then transplanted to the relic owned by the Blackheart family. The opening to the underworld has since been sealed and any mention of its location in text has been completely wiped.

Unfortunately, Tobias hadn't had to reveal much of his strength in the previous battles. Therefore, the intelligence reports only had the appearances of 2 contracts, and not much detail on their abilities.

The first was a juvenile version of the current head of the Blackheart family's contracts. Therefore, the professors were able to provide a name for it. However, due to the Blackheart head also concealing his own contracts' abilities, not much more could be provided.

The species is called Abyssal Echo, and appeared like a floating, amorphous shape that shifted between various dark colors, with wisps of shadows trailing behind it.

The second contract appeared similar to the stereotypical image of a demon from texts back on earth. It was a large hulking creature with two horns, fans, black claws, and leathery wings. It's body radiated an intense heat, and its red skin was adorned with molten patterns—a Scorchwing Demon.

The other top student among the first years that Kain and the others had to watch out for was Thorian Draegor.

The Draegor family was a distant branch of the royal Lysander family, and the distant royal lineage could be seen in his shining golden hair.

In line with their relation to the royal family, occasionally their family would also have some of their descendants awaken a dragon affinity—although at a much lower frequency.

More often than not they'd possess affinities to lesser dragon-related species such as drakes, wyrms, wyverns, hydras, basilisks, etc. Discover more stories at мѵʟ

Based on the visible sneer on Soren's face that he made no attempt at concealing, Kain could sense that there was some kind of undercurrent of superiority present within the Lysander royal family that seemed to disdain any impure dragon-related species.

However, in Kain's opinion such disdain was not only unnecessary but also ridiculous. Although called "lesser" dragons, many of the rarer dragon relatives such as basilisks and hydras were even more powerful than the average pure-blooded dragon.

Since beast-tamers should only speak with their strength, the superiority complex Soren was showing right now while they were reading Thorian's profile was quite idiotic.

Thorian's affinity happens to be to the basilisk species.

Basilisks have eight legs, a more bulky build than the average dragon, and come in a variety of colours—often indicating their elemental affinity. Basilisks possess a single row of bony spines along their backs and a few have a curved horn atop their noses.

However, the most prominent feature of basilisks, are their almost toxic green eyes. Basilisks have the passive ability to petrify prey significantly weaker than them, turning weaker victims that make eye contact with them into porous stone statues.

The image of Thorian's first contract reveals a pale blue reptile with hundreds of red spikes of various sizes running from the tip of its nose to its tail. It was also unique from the average basilisk in that it had a massive horn-like spike at the end of its tail. It was reportedly the strongest and largest of his contracts, but hadn't really made any moves in the tournament yet, so its attributes were unknown. Even the current picture provided to them was quite blurry and had probably been taken secretly by a paid off member of the staff at First Celestial.

The second was slightly smaller, but still massive. Its scales were a dark grey with pitch black spikes, and reportedly had the dark-attribute.

Finally, the last contract was a bright orange-red, with pale yellow spikes that ran along its back. This one had appeared the most the tournament so far and had the fire-attribute.