The Magician of Sound

"I want you to hold a group battle. Just once more," said Laura with a serious expression.

"Ho?!" Kai tried to see the hidden meaning behind this, but he couldn't come up with anything because he didn't really entangle himself with the matter in school.

"How are you going to do that? Don't tell me it will be us fighting a few groups?" Michelle seemed to have realized her true intention.

"Indeed. The moment your points return to zero, you can fight against the next top five groups in the academy. Before coming to a conclusion, I would like to explain everything first…" Laura stared at Kai, asking for his opinion.

"Okay."

"Certainly." Laura nodded. "And I am sure you already know this, but because they keep doing missions with your group, they, the Eagle Group, will become one of the top five groups. However, I understand if you don't want to fight them, so we can do the battle with only the other four.

"This way, the new students will be able to see the strength of the current top five and also your group. From what I have heard, your group is very different from any of us here to the point that not even my group can hold a candle against your group.

"Hence, even if I have graduated at that time, I would like to set up this group match. I have a few reasons for this. First, we can set up a minimum requirement for the new students, allowing them to see the top groups' strength.

"Second will be the strength of our ace, which is your group. Since your reputation has become well-known, the number of new students this year explodes. There are at least five times from our normal applicants, making the teachers do another round of elimination to select forty percent of them.

"The third reason is to make you their role model. As you might know, many have the same opinion as me, considering you as an outsider. Although your contribution is recorded in the media and government, the people haven't witnessed anything yet. Hence, they think you are only a scapegoat for the government to incite the eagerness of the new generation.

"The last reason is due to the pressure coming from the teachers and higher-ups in this school. I know that everything can be solved with your influence, but can you treat it as your contribution to this school?" She finished her explanation with a sigh.

Kai looked down while stroking his chin a few times, falling into deep thought. "I see. This is a peculiar situation. First of all, you want me to win against four top groups while showing my skills. At the same time, I need to pull my punches for a moment, so the four groups can show their skills, allowing the students to see the gap between them.

"Then, after everything is prepared, I will be defeating them. The problem is we won't have any agreement with the four groups and treat this as a scripted fight.

"No matter how good a scripted fight is, some might still see through it. That's why you want to hold this fight with this condition." Kai narrowed his eyes.

Laura admitted defeat and answered. "You are really… Never mind. Yes, that's the gist of the situation. But there is still an agreement between you and the four teams."

"And what would that be?"

"It's the reward in case you win. Have you forgotten it already, the reason why I proposed this?"

"Ah! Points."

"Yes. Because their points won't become zero like yours, they will have around a hundred thousand points before graduation. Even if we take only ten percent of their points, you will get at least forty thousand points in the case you win. This should be enough for you to return to your top one hundred positions."

Kai felt this proposal was not bad at all. The forty thousand points were slightly higher than the one he needed last year to enter the top one hundred, so it wasn't a bad fight to get all those points in a single match.

On the other hand, he also wanted to see how strong his group is compared to other groups. After all, they had fought against many battles at a far higher level, so he wanted to see the gap between them.

"And I have heard that Sofia Campbell will need to return to EU Base at that time, right? This means your group will only have four people, which is perfect. What do you think about this? One person fights one group." She smiled, offering a solution.

"There are two missing parts in your proposal earlier." Kai raised two fingers. "First will be the timing. If you have heard that Sofia Campbell will return, you must have heard that I also will go with her for a few months."

"Indeed. That's why I can speed up some things, allowing you to fight on the transition date. We can simply make a special announcement about your fight, and it will settle it. After all, I know that you won't like it if your group gets low treatment during your stay there." She thought for a moment. "There is approximately one month for the graduation to the first day of the school. We can choose a date within that one month, and you can choose it yourself. I will prepare the stage for you."

"Will the students come?"

"If it's only a battle between two top groups, half of them will surely come. However, this is different. This is your group fighting against four top groups. It will incite so much hype from them to the point, the new graduates, including me, will see that match before going to the army."

Seeing her confident face, Kai let out a sigh and agreed. "Alright. I will leave this matter to you."

"Sure." She nodded. "What is the second missing piece?"

"Evan's strength. Evan is our healer, so are you sure you want to consider him as our combatants?"

"Now that you mention it, I forgot that he could only use healing magic… Even all the attack magic he used will be converted to healing magic in the end." She facepalmed. "How could I forget about this… What a blunder."

"Well, there are two solutions. First, Evan and I will fight together. This way, it can still be counted as two people fighting two groups." Kai smiled. He remembered how Evan wanted to show his progress in the mission, so he believed he should be able to support him.

"Hmm… It can be considered as such, but it is a bit risky, don't you think?"

"I agree. But it will depend on the second solution." Kai smiled. "I will be training Evan to be strong enough to defeat the whole group. I don't know what will happen, but even if he loses, no one will speak ill about him. After all, I am sure he will put up a great fight before that."

"Indeed. With his identity as a healer, it's normal to be regarded as a great fighter if he can put up a great fight against a top group." She agreed.

"Still, I am wondering why you went all the way to set up this fight…" Kai furrowed her eyebrows, finding something odd about this whole thing.

Although it looked like she wanted to mess him up with this arrangement, Kai knew that her intention was pure. She truly wanted to help him.

If she answered she just wanted to help all students as the president, Kai would doubt it.

However, the next thing they saw shocked him and Michelle.

Laura looked away embarrassedly. There was a tinge red on her cheek as her face became hot. "We-well, you and your group have been together with Eagle Group, right? I just want to thank you."

It took them a whole minute to process her words before Kai and Michelle exchanged looks and chuckled.

The reason turned out to be Tommy. He had been showing huge progress in his strength during the collaboration between the Lion Group and Eagle Group.

"Wha—" The president became flustered as she waved both hands as if telling them to forget it, but her mouth said otherwise. "But he is still not good enough. He needs to learn more and keep increasing his strength. And there is this—"

She kept talking for a few minutes before she realized what she had done and looked down while covering her face with her hands. "—Uah! What did I just say… Please forget about it. Don't let him know."

"This girl is that, right…" Kai glanced at Michelle with a smug smile.

"Yeah… Shockingly, yeah."

"There you have it… She just wants the best for him, albeit it looks like she is ordering him around. It looks that way though. And you know what? She can't stop talking about him when we gather in this place, ugh, her voice is killing me." Her assistant finally opened her mouth while patting her head. "There there…"

"Wha— You are bullying me. Uuuhh…"

"President Laura… Shall we have a bet?" Kai smirked.

"A bet?" Her face was still red, and her eyes kept wandering away, trying to hide her embarrassment.

"Yeah. Each of my group will fight against one group without any help. If the top groups manage to defeat even a single of us, you can consider this as my loss. I will hide this from Tommy. But if we win, I want you to have a date with Tommy and tell him the truth. This can be served as a motivation for my group as well... So, how is it? Since Evan is joining as a solo participant like me and the others, the odds are against me." Kai smirked.

Michelle sighed inwardly, knowing that Kai wanted to help Tommy because he was a member of Eagle Group.

"I—" Laura didn't know whether she should accept it or not. But considering he might tell Tommy the truth, she nodded while pouting. "I agree."