29 Grant

*KNOCK* *KNOCK*

A loud knocking sound reverberated from outside the door of a spacious office.

"Come in."

*swing*

Just as the permission to enter was given, a relatively young man with messy bed hair swung the door wide open with a foolish grin on his face.

"Well, you certainly look chirpy this morning." Inside the room, an above 40-year-old man with spiky hair and sideburns that connected itself to his beard spoke with a smile directed at his uninvited guest.

"John."

In front of him, John Lambert leaned on one side of the guest seat, tapping away the folder in his hand against his shoulder while trying to look smug.

"Good morning head coach! And why wouldn't I be, just thinking about my huge bonus at the end of the year is enough to keep this smile for a couple more months to come."

"You know what could make that bonus grow even higher, if we actually win the Silver Crown Tournament this year."

As the ace of the talent scouts division, many of the current players inside the Ravenville Illusions' roster had gone through John to enroll into the University.

Which meant that if those players did exceptionally well in competitions, they would also be counted as his contributions towards the university to a certain extent.

And the higher his contribution was, the higher his holiday bonuses would be!

"Well, Silver Crown's main tournament only starts next semester so it won't necessarily make my bonus this year grow--"

"HMM?"

"I'm kidding!!" The head coach's raised voice had caused the usually easygoing John to flinch and stood up straight,

"But seriously, shouldn't we be focusing more on this semester's Warrior Crown first?" He asked.

"Heh, I suppose you're right."

Warrior Crown was the tournament that filled the odd-numbered semesters before the Silver Crown each year.

With thousands of colleges and universities in the Station, only less than 300 of them made up the entirety of Olympus Tier-1 league.

They were the schools that're considered to be of the highest collegiate level in sports.

But even amongst those hundreds, only 54 schools could be eligible for the Silver Crown Tournament every year. 18 from each of the Sectors.

And this was where the Warrior Crown Tournament came into play.

The Warrior Crown served as a sort of Sectoral qualifiers for the coveted Silver Crown, held regionally between each of the 21 cities of Olympus with a round robin format.

One school would go against every other Tier-1 schools in their city, and only the ones with the highest win-lose rates would then continue to represent their school in the Silver Crown Tournament.

Naturally, with 21 cities and 54 slots, each city would have more than a single Tier-1 college that qualify for the main tournament. The number of spots given to every city differed depending on the size and number of schools within them.

But the Warrior Crown's round robin would always be the decisive start of it all.

.

"...Of course, I'm not neglecting the Warrior Crown." The head coach put some emphasize on his words,

"Getting one of the spots for Zeta City is a matter of course, but becoming this city's 'King' is also a must!"

"Certainly." John also turned serious at the head coach's declaration, 'The city's King title... The one reserved for the best schools in each city during the Warrior Crown Tournament.'

*sigh*

"And why must Zeta City be this competitive, with Verdante and Eastern Zeta in our midst as well." John sigh with complaints.

"...Thankfully enough, it seems the God of Arena is smiling on us this season." Hearing his sigh, the head coach didn't get angry but in turn gave a rare cunning smile.

"Oh, how so?"

"Haven't you seen the new season's landscape? It was announced a couple days ago."

"Eheh, I've been busy myself. You know, scouting our enemies and all that."

"Keep telling yourself that."

"...So what is it? The new battleground."

*TAP*

The head coach pull out a stack of maps, blueprints, and photos from his drawer. Putting them on his desk as he answered,

"Ruined City Block."

"!"

"Oho~ Really now?" John walked towards the files with interest after hearing the news.

'This is great news for us!'

For the Illusions, the more complicated the outside variables within the field were, the better it would be for them to implement unique and unconventional tactics that was their specialties.

'And nothing spelled more variables than a combination of indoor and outdoor environment in a terrain. This might just be the year!' John couldn't hide the smile on his face.

"...Well still, helping our team win is not my department, it's yours." He jokingly replied, "Hope you'll show me your stuff coach Lark, otherwise I'll be disappointed."

John of all people would know that even though the man in front of him looked prim and proper, his cunning mind and craftiness made him and the Illusions one of the most undesirable team to cross-path with every year.

"I intend to, but not all of my cards are on the table yet, first..."

"How's our lovely fresh new bloods this year, today is the time they come to register right? It's high time we all get acquainted with each other."

"Well, that's what I'm coming here to tell you about, here's the complete list. You haven't seen it yet, have you?" John handed over the folder in his hand to him.

"Not yet. But I am excited when you told me the news back in May..." Head coach Lark smiled widely while taking it,

"I really must congratulate you on a recruitment well done this time, John. Now Eastern Zeta is not the only one having Starseed on their team."

.

.

Irvine stood in front of a gigantic gateway of the campus.

The gate adorned itself with the classical style of mankind's era of nobility, encircling the wide 2-lane road that led into the large campus ground with its mouth.

On the center-top of the gate, the similarly huge black metallic fonts was plastered in all its grandeur.

[Ravenville University]

The logo of a lone black feather could be seen in-between the two words on the front.

"Private schools really don't hold back with their imposing styles." He muttered to himself.

It was very much different to the formal design of his public college in the past.

*PING*

Just as Irvine was about to walk through the gate, the ringing sound of his mobile device brought his steps to a stop.

He looked at the incoming chat message on his phone through the notification screen, and suddenly couldn't help himself but to show a clear and expectant smile.

[I'm going for it Lang! First the Fighter Crown and then on to the Bronze!!]

Irvine could feel the determination of the sender from the message.

It was Grant Dunn. The other Ace player of Greenwood High along with himself.

After getting the Arena Athlete License, Irvine had continued to attend high school as usual until the time of graduation.

But, because of his busy lifestyle of chasing after Stage-2 and developing his new techniques, Irvine had spent less and less time with his high school's Arena team and focused more and more on training himself at the Orthos Gym.

This, in turn, had caused him to also have less time interacting with this supposed close friend of his in the school.

The last time they had played a match together was right before graduation. And in that match, Irvine's performance had caused all the team members of Greenwood high to turn slack-jawed from the shock.

It was even more so for Grant who had known Irvine for longer period of time.

The news of his friend getting a license and becoming a Starseed was already surreal enough when he'd gotten wind of it, but when he'd realized that he's already left out in the dust in terms of skill and growth, Grant had suddenly felt a sense of loss with himself.

If Irvine's performance was the standard for an athlete to make it as a pro, Grant had thought that he wouldn't have had any chance even if he'd tried harder. Not with his talent at least.

In that moment, He was starting to lean more and more towards getting a real college degree and working normally for his future. Even though he'd have to give up on Arena, at least his future life would be more secure than betting on himself becoming a pro after college, right?

It was not until he remembered Irvine's words in their single tower match before the exam did he start thinking differently.

(I'm not going to tell you to go all-in with Arena like me, but Grant... You HAVE the talent. You should at least think about it.)

When he'd recalled those words, he became conflicted once again.

Going through the same dilemma day-in and day-out, Grant had eventually decided to stake himself a little bit more and stick with Arena by trusting Irvine's judgement on him.

At that time, Grant had actually already received a partial athletic scholarship offer from a non-tiered business college that had been trying to get into Tier-2.

But after he'd made up his mind, he had decisively torn apart his agreement letter and choose to enter a real Tier-2 college through the regular route instead with the permission of his father.

Grant's plan was to apply to their Arena team as a walk-in! Working his way up to get a scholarship in later semesters from his performance during practice.

This had been the path that Irvine had taken in his first timeline.

Colleges in the tiered leagues obviously wouldn't mind giving scholarships to players who'd shown more potentials than their scouted athletes. That's why the schools' teams didn't exclusively open their doors to just the invited students.

The opposite also held true for the other side. When an invited player performed below the team's expectations, they could just as easily get their scholarships revoked from next semester onward.

The life of an athlete was always filled with competition every single day.

.

When Irvine had finished reading the message, he felt rather glad not just for his friend but for him personally as well.

Arena was hard. But Grant was a player with good potential to go pro in his eyes.

Of course, whether or not the man himself could carry it out would depend solely through his own efforts, that's why the only thing Irvine had done was give his honest opinion to him.

[Good luck. Let's hope we'll meet each other in the Pro League or even sooner!] He typed in his reply.

Though it was relatively rare, there were cases of exceptional Tier-2 players getting poached by Tier-1 college scouts. Though many players who're not confident in their skills wouldn't accept such an offer.

They were shining in the Tier-2 league, why would they risk going to Tier-1 where the competitions to attract the pro scouts' eyes were even harder.

"...Either way, people with real abilities and great mentality will thrive while others won't. The pro scouts are not blind." Irvine spoke to himself when he'd thought up to here.

The Fighter and Bronze Crown that Grant had talked about in his message had referred to the tournaments which were the Tier-2 equivalent of the Warrior and Silver Crown in the Tier-1 league.

If Grant had said that he was aiming for them, it meant that he would also go all-in with aiming for the Olympus Pro League as his end goal.

After all, The starting members and participants of Crown Tournaments would have their study times cut even shorter than usual. Which would make it that much harder for people to compete in grades on their classes.

"Good luck Grant." He mumbled one last time before putting both his phone and the matters aside.

Right now, the two of them are walking on different roads with one playing in the Tier-1 and the other in Tier-2.

It might be possible for the two of them to cross paths in the future, but that was not something that's going to happen within a short time. At least not for this season.

.

.

The administration building inside the Ravenville University's campus was relatively busy today with the long holiday coming to an end.

Two kinds of people comprising of both staffs and student athletes made up 80% of the people inside the wide hall.

In preparation of the new academic year, some of the spacious area within the hall had already been repurposed to contain several tables and chairs lining up in a row to ease the flow of the registration process for new students.

Most of the grunt works of leading this process were actually done by the older students from different committees of the student body. The real school staffs which were fewer in numbers were, in turn, tasked with managing and supervising the whole activity.

.

At one of the makeshift registration counter, a couple of male and female university students were chatting together as they waited for the next person to register this morning.

*Huff*

"It's busier than I thought! Good thing it was only for half-a-day for the next 2 days right?" The female university student spoke to the guy beside her.

"Are you kidding me, this is busy to you? The people here today are only the athletic scholarship students with little paperwork." The more senior-looking male student to her side retorted harshly to her complaint,

"You should really look forward to 2 weeks from now when ALL the new students are coming... Uhehehehehe..."

"Eek... W, we'll still get extra credit though right."

"Yeah, many jobs give extra credits and even a little allowance. And if you ask the other seniors, they will all tell you that this one is not worth it."

"T, then why are you volunteering here too?"

"You don't understand... I NEED the credits."

"..."

.

Before the two of them could continue their chats, another person approached their desk from the entrance of the building.

Although the people coming today were only the athletic scholarship students, with all the different sports in the university, it actually amounted to quite a number of people, especially when there're only 2 counters for registration.

Just in the past 2 hours alone, they had already handled more than a dozen new students' registrations from start to finish.

In her mind, the female university student was cursing the disciplines of all these star athletes who just had to come early to register.

'Okay, don't pout! Keep the smile!' She firmly told herself off in her heart.

"Hello! Are you here to register?"

"Good morning. Yes, my name is Irvine Lang."