Cal - An Academy Life of Competition

Graduating from Malkorth Academy of Magic was an achievement very few would ever accomplish. Perhaps one or two in each year of graduates. Maybe as many as a whole handful in a particularly fruitful year when the level of those students who had attended was truly outstanding. Some years there were even none. But in the eyes of the academy even that was a success. Because everyone who fell became more power for those who would come after.

At Malkorth Academy, they believed that true power could only blossom from competition. When people are placed in opposition, when they want to beat someone, that is when a person's true strength would shine, when their basic instinctual ability to overcome would rise up like a mountain trying to pierce through the clouds above. At Malkorth, everyone wanted to beat everyone. They wanted to be the last one standing.

The first spells anyone was ever taught at Malkorth, was transfiguration. The ability to transform one thing into another. A needle into a matchstick. A rat into a bird.

A person into a object.

But a soul is not so easily contained within an inanimate shell. It begins to seep out through the cracks, little rivulets of power dripping out into the world around them as the soul inside the container rages against their transformation, or stews within their cell waiting for the time they become capable once again to stride the world anew. And any magician worth their craft new that those drops of power were not something to be wasted.

That was why, despite the deep rooted competition engraved into every aspect of life at Malkorth, there was rarely any deaths to speak of, despite the incredible number of youths equipped with more magic than sense, who could surely find ample ways to their new powers if given the choice. Why waste the resource? An opponent killed was an opponent wasted. Transformation was a far more preferable outcome.

Through transformation, every opponent defeated became a battery, another source of power to draw on. Or even more. More often than not, unique abilities were those that strained the most against the bonds of transformation, and so were the ones most easily harnessed. Why bother spending years learning Charm Magic, when transforming a Succubus could get you much the same result? Transforming a single elf might only let you extend your life so far, but what if you transformed dozens of elves?

Life at Malkorth was well and truly Survival of the Fittest. You either rose to the top on the backs of your defeated classmates, or you became a tool by which others could rise.

Cal observed from across the room as some of the hottest girls in the entire class lounged together, idly chatting about something or other while the polished off the pastries and other light snacks they had gotten themselves for lunch.

They knew they were hot too. There was no way to miss it with how they looked out at the rest of the room every chance they could get, drinking in the sights of so many of their classmates barely above drooling over them. Half of the things they did were just to tease everyone observing them more. Don't we look tempting. Don't you just want to come over here and claim the four hottest girls in class as your own personal toys. That was what they were trying to tell everyone in the room. Trying to lure someone over to try and have a go at them.

But despite how hot they were, how absolutely great it would feel to know you owned them, and the utter delight it would be to personally transform each and everyone one of them into a part of your own personal armoury, no one dared approach. After all, everyone who was that stupid in the class had already become part of their own collections. He could even spot a few of their transformed former classmates. Those shoes. That earring. The necklace one was wearing, with the chain just short enough that the pendant on it hovered just above her cleavage, tantalisingly close but just out of reach. And those were just the ones Cal recognised.

Their year had begun with over three hundred potential mages entering the hallowed halls of Malkorth Academy of magic, significantly above the average intake they usually had. The teacher had been overjoyed at the introduction ceremony, speaking about just how powerful whoever ended up left would be when they had potentially two hundred and ninety nine sacrifices with which to fuel their magic.

Over the course of the first month, about one hundred of their class was already transformed, and almost two dozen was to those four alone. They were definitely the strongest group in the entire year right now, even if there might have been one or two who could match up to them individually.

It just made them all the more tempting. The desire to be the one who finally wiped those smug smiles off of their faces. To watch those grins twist into alarm as they were reduced to nothing more than an object. It was oh so tempting. His dick twitched beneath the table at the very image of it in his mind. But he held firm. He ate his bread and downed the slightly sour milk that was his lunch allowance. Just another way Malkorth encouraged competition. The more of your classmates you owned, the better the food you were allowed. So while those four feasted on pastries and wine, he had crusty bread and milk that had begun to turn.

The price of not having claimed a single soul yet.

He turned his eyes away from temptation and to the rest of the room. There were plenty of people in the same situation as he was. With still more than half the class remaining, people like him with no possessions to their name were still in the majority for now. But they would start dwindling away very soon. Keeping your head down could only work so long before it just made you an easy target. Trying to stay out of trouble would mean nothing when confronted by someone with a dozen transformed classmates to leach from.

This class was going to descend into a veritable bloodbath very soon. It was honestly amazing it hadn't happened already. But just one more push and all the bottom feeders like him were going to start eating each other alive. So he needed to get ahead of the curve. Pick a target and transform them before someone got the same idea about him.

A kitsune could be great, with their natural talent for illusion and fire magic. Elves could grant extended lives or talent with nature based magics. A succubus would be amazing if he could manage it, but in all likelihood they were probably off the table, either because their natural charm magic would make it impossible for him to get one over on them, or more likely every succubus had probably already claimed a classmate as their possession and he wasn't in a position where he could even think about punching up right now.

No. With all their advantages, anything beyond another human was probably off the cards for him right now. But they could still be good. Humans could interbreed with pretty much anything. Who knows what secret bloodlines a victim could have that would suddenly accelerate him into the big leagues? And even if they were as standard as they come, extra magic to work with was always good right?

As he looked over the class he idly noted the strange gender imbalance the class possessed. The original three hundred of them had leaned slightly in favour of women, but now the scales were far more one sided. It was like the men were practically being hunted down and eliminated first. Maybe the sayings about men being lead along to their dooms by their dicks was true. A pretty face and the promises of some action and they would walk right into the honey trap.

Just another thing that put him above the rest then. Cal was not going to go quietly to his doom for a little bit of pussy. He was going to take every single person in this room. In this school. And when he graduated top of the class, he'd be a mage for the ages. Up there with Myrrdin.

His eyes settled on a certain figure as she shuffled out of the dining hall with barely a glance cast her way from anyone else. That lack of awareness was why he was going to arise on top. He quickly shovelled the last of his dry bread into his mouth and washed it down with the milk. He was out of the room a few seconds later, hot on the heels of his first target.