Supreme Monarch

The moment Syphilia exited the meeting room, the smile on her face suddenly disappeared and a slight frown could be seen. She walked with wild strides and forceful steps. Her pace was abnormally fast in that dress that even the guards behind her had to break into a jog in order to keep up with her.

'What is with that guy, I thought it would be fun to tease him a bit but how could he just ignore me like that... And why, why did I feel so intimidated... Not to mention he was only a Tier 3 magic caster, so how?'

She continued to storm down the hallway and everyone that met her gaze instantly and instinctively stepped aside and bowed even though she was currently on a floor that only higher-ranking members were allowed in.

'Could it be that he lied to me?. But I didn't sense anything, damn this isn't fun at all.'

She proceeded down the hall and took a turn. There were two more similarly dressed guards standing by the sides of a large door by the end of the hallway. The moment they saw her approaching with that expression on her face, they quickly opened the doors for her and hurriedly stepped aside.

Storming into her office, Syphilia went over to the sofa at the side of the room and sat on it still feeling irritated as she crossed her slender legs while tapping her nails on the wooden end of the sofa's armrest.

Her thoughts ran rampant for a while before a maid rushed over and offered her a cold glass of wine. Taking a gulp, she downed the entire glass and let out a long breath. Her troubled mind finally calming down.

"There's nothing better to take the edge off than a nice glass of fine wine."

Saying that she then took several deep breaths and slowly relaxed her nerves. There was no point in her getting even more agitated over something that had already passed and could not be changed.

She may have been a high-ranking demon but she was also a part succubus, meaning she wasn't a pureblood. However, being a noble made her racial traits or abilities even stronger than those of full-fledged succubus.

Meaning, she had all the racial skills and abilities of a succubus and could use them even better than any full-fledged succubus out there. Back in the meeting room, she had passively used the racial skill sexual Inducement on the hooded man earlier but surprisingly hadn't gotten any reaction out of him.

She had even tried to use her innate ability Perfect Seduction — which was a higher grade than the Charm person spell — to entice the man but to no avail. The only people that should be able to resist her abilities were supposed to be people stronger than her but the man had said he was only at the Tier 3 level which didn't make much sense to her.

Why would someone willingly lie to the magic institute? Even if their starting ranks would not change, someone with high potential would immediately receive an invite to the magic academy which was a massive honor for commoners.

Learning magic was not an easy task, in fact, most would call it a hobby for the rich as everything that had to do with magic was ridiculously expensive. Not to mention the fact that there were a lot of things that even money alone couldn't buy.

Thinking of the possible reasons why he had done this, Syphilia could not figure him out. There was a chance he was actually telling the truth but just had an item that gave him enough resistance to resist her abilities. Perhaps he was only capable of using Tier 3 spells but was a higher-tiered magic swordsman or warrior.

Or perhaps he was simply lying and had an agenda. The possibilities were endless and it was hard for her to narrow it down without any information to go on. Things like this frustrated her as she never liked to be blindsided, always wanting to hold a better hand against her opponents.

Yes. she now regarded this man as her opponent even though she had no idea what he looked like under that hood. 'I was wondering why little Rio would give out his recommendation so easily but maybe there was something else to it that I'm not seeing. Damn, this is infuriating.'

She sat at the edge of the sofa, unknowingly biting her nails when suddenly an idea flashed into her mind.

"Kal!"

"Yes, lady Syphilia."

"I need you to do me a favor."

••••••••••

••••••••••

"Lightning."

Casting her spell, a silvery-white bolt of lightning jumped off of Nadine's outstretched fingertips and spurts out in a straight line as it pierced a hole through the head of the wooden puppet more than 30 meters away.

*Clap *Clap *Clap...

A gentle then sudden and rapid applause came from the side where quite a few spectators from the guild stood as they marveled in awe at Nadine's flawless performance. Most of them were also Tier 3 mages and only a few were Tier 2 and tier 1 so they were aware of how hard it was to so accurately aim a lightning spell.

While the spell travels in a straight line, its movements were sporadic in nature. The discharge of electricity follows in a zigzag path towards its target, slightly branching at various locations. This irregular motion was hard to predict so it was difficult to have pinpoint accuracy when using the spell, only being able to get a general direction.

However, Nadine had fired three lightning spells and had hit the heads of all three wooden dolls without fail. While this was only a demonstration, they felt the need to score her and had all given her a perfect score.

Well, most of these were semi-biased as most of the men present simply found her attractive and could no longer give any fair judgments.

The guild did not prohibit anyone from watching the demonstration and had only sent a few of their top members to affirm the level of the spells used. However, most of the mages and hunters that had nothing better to do and saw the pair enter the practice hall quickly ran in hoping to see something good.

Tyler seeing this sighed inwardly. If he had known he would've done his demonstration first when the crowd wasn't much, now, however, he felt like no matter what he did, the men spectating would surely give him a bad score as they didn't speak anything good about him.

"Oi, oi, isn't that young beast girl kinda amazing, she doesn't even seem tired after rapidly casting three tiers 3 spells in less than five seconds."

"I know right, she's pretty cute too. I just wanna rub those adorable ears of mine."

"Oi girl, ditch that gloomy bastard and come hang with us."

"Oh man she's glaring at us, that's kinda turning me on."

Stuff like that was what they said and didn't couldn't hope to receive any decent score no matter what he did. Well, again, this was not a test so whatever score they gave him would end up being useless and he really couldn't care less about what a bunch of middle age horny men thought of him.

Stepping forward to cast his spell, Tyler felt the gazes stare daggers at him but chose to ignore it as he prepared to cast his spell. After practicing every chance he got for a while now. He could pretty much control the output of his mana but since his Mana body was still damaged, there was always a chance of his mana going out of control which would probably kill him if he was careless. It was also why he didn't like losing control of his emotions as he tends to use his spells recklessly in that state, forgoing any idea of a consequence.

As Tyler watched the magic institute staffs finish setting up the three wooden dolls for him after taking away the ones that Nadine had damaged. He chantlessly cast a spell by using the silence metamagic but still spoke out loud, just enough for all in the room to clearly hear him.

"Giant FireBall."

Choosing the right tier 2 spell to use had been a nightmare as there weren't many that he could pass off as a Tier 3 spell. His original thoughts had been to use the magic arrows spell as that could be cast at Tier 3 and Tier 5 level as far as he knew. The only issue with that was, he had no idea how many arrows were normal for tier 3, hell he didn't even know how many were normal for Tier 2 and that was the level he was at.

While this was just a demonstration to the guild, it would surely raise questions he couldn't answer, if he ended up using the spell wrongly and someone very proficient in the spell was watching.

Not having anymore Tier 2 spells to lean on, he had to go back to his Tier 1 spell, and surprisingly enough, the simplest of all those spells had been his saving grace. The size of the Giant FireBall spell wasn't definite and thus, allowed a lot of room for failure. As long as Tyler controlled his Mana rightly, he should be able to fake it.

Working hard to adjust the output of his mana, a large reddish-yellow ball of flames formed rapidly in front of his fingertip and after reaching a diameter of about four feet, it shot out at the wooden doll and placed at the middle, and exploded upon impact, consuming both dolls at the side.

'Damn, that was slightly too much Mana. Did they notice?'

Carefully turning his head around to look at the spectators, he saw a few of them staring at the fiery scene he caused in awe, a few of them had the same stern and sour expression on their faces and the rest of them nodded In approval of his performance.

'Phew... I guess they didn't.'

After sighing in relief, Tyler nodded slightly at the staff members that rushed to put out the flames and clean up the hall. This place was one of the training halls that was located in the towers inside the magic institute.

While it was a lot smaller than the hall in the demon king's castle, It was still plenty impressive and unlike the one in the castle, this was fully furnished with tracing equipment and practice tools.

Impressive-looking weapons hung on the walls and could be borrowed by the guild members to be used only during practices although most would not practice with a weapon unfamiliar to them so they were only used when leading new skills or techniques.

Once the room was cleaned up the female staff member that had originally attended to him quickly ran over to escort him back to the main hall or lobby. Nodded at her request, they promptly turned around and walked away towards the door they had come in through. The spectators all seem to be headed back as well albeit reluctantly when someone suddenly wandered into the hall and with a smile on his face, he approached Tyler.

"Hahaha... That was an impressive demonstration. The two of you are already so refined, you definitely have some bright futures here in this guild."

Stopping before Tyler and Nadine who was only a few feet away from the door, he stretched an arm out, most likely wanting to shake hands with Tyler.

"And you are?"

"Ah forgive my rudeness, I'm used to people already recognizing me so my bad. I am known as Kal Vectil, the vice guild leader of this place."

The man was quite tall. Towering over Tyler with a height of around 6'6 or 6'7 and had broad shoulders to go with it. He had short and well-trimmed bright red hair and scarlet pupils with a cleanly shaven face and a somewhat handsome facial features. He wore a fine set of brownish-gold leather armor with metal inlaid and had a single two-handed long sword strapped to his waist.

Unlike the spectators around, it seemed like this man was not a pure mage but something like a magic swordsman. However, it was strange for a magic swordsman to not only join the magic institute but be in a position as high as a vice guild leader.

The fact that he was regarded so highly must've been thanks to his magic skills being superior to most mages. This was indeed the advantage of those gifted in magic and swordsmanship at the same time. With just a bit of hard work, he could be vastly superior to his peers matter what his potential was.

"I see... I am called Lix, this is Lilith."

Accepting the man's handshake, Tyler introduces himself and his partner, not wanting to be rude to his vice guild leader before he even starts as a member here.

With everything done, the two of them had already become Rank 1 copper magicians and would only need to return with the guild staff to get their badges, guild guide book, and basic gears.

However, they did not get the chance to do so as the next words that came out of Kal's mouth surprised everyone in the hall.

"Say, how bout we have a duel."