Chapter 44: Tournament (Part 1)

"First, let us introduce ourselves," I said, sitting at the end of the table.

We were all sitting at the table of the library, attentively listening to one another.

"I will go first," I said, "I am Auguste, dropped by my parents to a nice orphanage, and is neutral to everything that doesn't harm me or my family. I love my family, very much so, especially Alexander. Your turn, Scarlet."

I unknowingly became the leader of the team, which is understandable, since I was the one who introduced the idea of forming a team.

"Hello!" She said in a high-pitched and enthusiastic voice, "I am Scarlet Imperium. I love my grandfather, and I hate cold people! Cold people always try to act cool for some reason, and it annoys me! And me and Alice are BFFs!"

Imperium… I've heard that last name somewhere.

I nodded, and said, "How about you?" I pointed at the brown-haired teen.

He sighed, and just obeyed, "I am Randy Evans. I love bombs, bombs, and bombs. I hate obnoxious people."

That was rather lacking enthusiasm.

I nodded, and then turned to Alice, "Since Scarlet and I already know you, you don't have to introduce yourself if you don't want to." I said, knowing that Alice has anxiety problems.

She nodded hesitantly, and said, "I-I'll introduce m-myself, since you all d-did."

"I a-am Alice, l-like Auguste, I a-also grew up i-in the same o-orphanage. I l-like reading books, a-and I love my f-family."

"Good job, Alice. Now, let's get to the main topic; what will be our plan for the rank battles?" I said, getting serious now.

The rank battles can take place on 2 different maps; the City and the Mountains. There could've been more maps if the sect didn't live underground.

These arena maps were artificially created by the sect elders somewhere in the sect, and they are used for the occasional rank battles. The weaker teams usually get to pick which arena they are going to fight and which weather they would use for the map.

The elders use illusion magic to change the weather in the arena and can give it a sense of realism.

The mountain arena is hard to travel through. Every disciple needs to tread carefully, or anything in there could injure the disciples so badly that the elders would decide to disqualify them.

The city arena's terrain is way different than the mountain arena though. It is flat, easy to move around the buildings, but it is harder to hide there than in the mountains.

Randi raised an eyebrow, and said, "Hmm, I say, we plant bomb traps all over the arena once we land. It doesn't matter whether it is the mountain or the city arena, bombs would annihilate every contestant in the rank battles!" He started to get a little preachy at the end.

I shook my head, "No, it's too flashy. I don't want to attract attention at the moment the only reason I want to join the rank battles is that I just want to live in peace for some years until I am strong enough in District 7, where there would be no risk of being kicked out of the sect unless I do something that goes against its laws. I say that we just use minor martial arts and magic spells so that we could pretend that we struggled in the fight."

Randy sweatdropped, and said, "But we WOULD struggle. Most of us here haven't had any fighting experience, and I don't believe that the granddaughter of the previous grand elder has gone out of the sect to fight many different kinds of people. I don't believe that Alice can fight because of how frail she is. And Auguste, do you have any proof that you can fight? You say things about holding back when holding back would only make us lose the rank battles since we are so weak!"

I stared at him for a few seconds and chuckled.

He furrowed his eyebrows, "What's so funny?"

"I am laughing because you think that I am weak. It's not 'we', it is just you three. I can handle the entire rank battles, alone, yet here I am, extending my hands for your help to make me look weak in front of thousands of audiences. Look, if you are indeed as weak as you said you are, then that's fine. We can make it look like that we struggled to get our victory when in reality, we had an easier time than everyone. Besides, what could you lose to show a bit of optimism? Trust me, I am not as weak as I look."

Hesitantly, he said, "Then what is your plan?"

I replied, "We will use dirty tricks to win the competition next week, and the rank battles the next. I will give you guys small sacks of sleeping glasses to eliminate a large portion of contestants, every time. Meanwhile, I will use myself as the bait to lure a large number of disciples to the sleeping gases. Fortunately, I am immune to the poison I created, which makes this even more perfect!"

They all nodded, having no complaints about the plan.

Poisons are not banned in the rank battles since it is also a part of a strategy. But most teams don't use poison for the fear of being seen as mere cowards. In fact, only a small percentage of teams use dirty tricks in rank battles and, even then, they always score lower points because, well, they were dumb.

But I am not afraid to use dirty tricks to reach whatever goal I have. Next week, I won't use my spells, just pure strength. All of the contestants are foundation establishment cultivators anyway, how hard is it to beat them all to submission?

So, we all agreed to use dirty tricks and that's that.

Now, I just wait.

(A Week Later)

*Crowd Cheers*

Thousands of people sat in the stadium, attentively watching the mana screen in front of them, cheering as they saw the group of disciples come out in the middle of the large stadium.

(Note: These civilians are cultivators, but they didn't have enough talent to achieve higher in the sect, so they decided to become normal people, at least as normal as they can get)

""Woooohh!"" They cheered.

I looked around me and my team, only to see 400 D-Class disciples here for the same reason; to advance to C-Class.

Approximately 100 teams are participating in this event, including me, and only 10 teams will be able to advance to the real rank battles.

You see, to decide who to choose for the top 10, we must first compete in this large stage, team versus another team.

And of course, there is a bracket.

All of the 100 participating teams will fight against each other in a 1 v 1 fight, and only until 50 teams remain will we be able to ascend to the semi-finals.

In the semi-finals, 5 teams will be put in a single stage and have them all fight each other.

After the semi-finals, there will be the rank battles.

10 teams of D-Class disciples will be dropped into one of the two maps, and only the last standing team will win and advance to C-Class.

Sticking with my team, I looked around me, trying to see if there are people here that I know besides my team.

Thankfully, no one here is someone I know personally. I could see the monkey brothers though, with another blonde monkey added to their team. Maybe I could harass them? Nah, I will never fall as low as to harass some people for the minor inconveniences they made… you actually think I'll do that? Hah! Never!

I'll harass them later if they can make it into the rank battles.