Cheryl Maximus (1)

At half past ten in the morning, all ten classes had completed the second round.

The students who participated in this round all changed their clothes and returned to the stands area of their class, sitting with their classmates. The whole video of the match was now available online, showing how fast was the Ministry of Education in taking action. Therefore, some students were accessing to the video to show to their class leader.

While the students were watching and commenting on the video at their stands area, the big guests were having a debate about the rankings at their own stands area as well.

As mentioned before, the evaluation criteria for this round included: (1) Creative strategy, (2) Time to complete the mission, and (3) The number of members remaining that the time mission completed.

If temporarily not taking number (1) into account, then Class K led by Angus and Class A led by Cheryl were the two classes having the best performance. But the result of two classes made the judges very confused in deciding which one would rank First: Class K ranked first in terms of time, but they lost two members; Class A ranked second in terms of time, but they has all ten members remained.

Apart from those two classes, Class F led by Drake came third in terms of time, and lost three members. With this result, Drake certainly ranked at the third place. The other seven classes all completed later than Class F and had lost at least five members or more, so they would probably rank in the fourth to tenth.

Only the ranking of Angus and Cheryl was undecided yet.

"I think the disciple of Eugene should rank First! His strategy is more coherent and careful!" A big guest spoke up.

"How could you say that? The little Cheryl used a legendary skill! It's- legendary-skill!!!" Another big guest argued.

The group of big guests who was supporting Angus thought that his strategy was not new, but very reasonable in a real battle.

Because of time pressure, he divided the team into three small groups to save time searching, especially three teams all had an outstanding member who was able to lead the team and handle situations when Leader was not present.

In the situation which all students had not know about area's conditions yet, if he split up the team right at the beginning, surely there would be some members got confused and worried when facing with attacking traps. So first, he let the team go together to get used to the terrain and traps, and how to deal with them. After the group had been familiar with the situation, Angus divided them into three small groups to act. The practice of dividing into three groups helped Class K save search time significantly.

Beside that, the way that Angus divided tasks and his signal classification were smarter than other team leaders.

Most Class Leaders divided their team into two small groups: flag-finding group and flagpole-finding group, and there were only two types of signals: target found signal and help signal. Meanwhile, Angus assigned all three of his groups the same task: finding both flag and flagpole. If a group found one of the targets, use a signal to notify the other two groups. Signals were also divided into three clear ones: flag, flagpole, and help.

In the situation where it was impossible to communicate among the groups, suppose that a group was assigned to find the flag but what they found was the flagpole, meanwhile, they only had two types of signals: target found and help. Some members who were not flexible would get confused. They didn't know how to send a signal to tell the leader exactly what they had found, so they either randomly gave a signal, or sent someone out across the forest to find the Class Leader and report, thus wasting more time ➡ This situation had occurred with the three classes H, E, G.

Not to mention that this Angus teenager was so careful that he asked teammates to gave a signal three times, to distinguish it from the pitfalls in the area.

It can be said that he was a smart and careful young dragonman!

Some even emphasized that in the situation where his team didn't have members with a special ability like the 'sensing-ability' boy of Drake's team, or the one with formation performing ability like Cheryl, but Angus could still achieve such impressive result, then he deserved to be ranked first.

On the other side, the supporters of Cheryl thought that she should be the First rank, and the main reason obviously came from the legendary skill "Formation", including "Teleport" and "Force Field".

Those people argued that, although Cheryl took more time than Angus to complete the mission, in return, she helped Class A preserve the number of members.

In addition, she was unlucky to be in the team who firstly found the flag like Angus, but thanks to her own talents, she used "Teleport" to move between the two groups, greatly shortening the time and completing the mission at second place in terms of time.

On the other hand, the fact that the flag-finding team of Class A didn't fight with the scorpion right after encountering it but they quickly retreated and signaled for Cheryl to teleport, this showed that Cheryl had foreseen the situation and had advance instructions to her teammates. Therefore, in terms of being smart and careful, she was no less than Angus!

The strategy including two types of formations – which were legendary skill, meeting the criteria of "unique and creative". The number of members was preserved at the time mission completed. There was already two criteria scored the maximum, only losing to Angus on the time criterion, therefore, Cheryl deserved to be the First.

It should be added that the supporters of Cheryl were mostly the big guests who were from the Army. Meanwhile, Angus supporters mostly come from... from the political side.

Don't get it wrong, the politicians didn't know anything about Angus! The reason they stood on his side was just –

Ahem, it was just because Cheryl was the daughter of the Big Boss of the Army!!!

Such a good chance to tease, how could they let it go?

***

It could be said among the families having a bit of power in the capital, no one was unaware of the youngest daughter of the Maximus family. Anyway, the turmoil of the Maximus family that year was not small...

Cheryl Maximus.

The "well-known" mixed-blood in the capital, her father was the famous Commander-in-Chief Raymond Maximus of the Lava race, and her mother was an anonymous dragonwoman of the Lantern race.

According to the most basic records about Dragon races, just like their name, the Lantern race possessed a kind of small and weak fire.

If Lava and Blaze were considered to be two formidable races of the Fire style, then Lantern, Fume, and Heat belonged to the group of races that was not very respected.

In the old days, the Commander-In-Chief – at that time he was the young and talented Lieutenant General Raymond – in a greedy chase after the enemy, he fell into enemy's trap and was ambushed. Eventually, he managed to escape successfully, but he himself was also seriously injured. Luckily, he was saved by a young girl.

Since then, the love story script between the talented Lieutenant General and the young, anonymous girl in the wartime had started like that.

After returning home, Raymond told his family that he wanted to marry that kind girl.

At that time, marriage between different races in the same style was quite popular, howerver, big families like Maximus still wished to have marriage bond with strong races from big families to ensure the genetics of the next generation.

Or at least, it should be a "suitable alliance" (similarity of social background between bride and groom's families) marriage bond.

Therefore, the famous Maximus family from the powerful Lava race decided not to accept the anonymous girl from the weak Lantern race to become a member of their family. But the young Raymond, who could become a Lieutenant General at such young age, was not a feeble man. He was so resolute with his decision, even claiming that he would leave the clan if they forced him to marry someone else.

The Maximus family could not afford to lose a Lieutenant General, so they had no choice but accept that Lantern girl in a "satisfied face unwilling heart"(*).

The result of a "satisfied face unwilling heart" marriage from the husband's family was that – Okay, all of the good things, even luck, were thanks to Mr. Raymond and the strong Lava race genetics of the Maximus family; and all of the bad things, bad luck, were because of the anonymous wife from the weak Lantern race.

For example,

Every time Mr. Raymond went to a battle, if he won – it was surely because of his strong Lava blood. And if he fell – well, it was because he had a weak wife who didn't take good care of her husband and also brought him bad luck.

Or,

The eldest son Brian Maximus – whose genome test result was Lava, also he was one of the genius with the first successful transformation at the age of fourteen – the Maximus family said that this was thanks to the strong bloodline that Brian inherited from his father.

And the little daughter, Cheryl Maximus – whose genome test result confirmed that she was a mixed-blood of Lava and Lantern, and she transformed for the first time at sixteen, which was quite early compared to other young dragons – but the Maximus family still said that she had 'bad genetics' and blamed her mother for that.

Speaking of which, most of the hospitals in the capital and big cities had a genome testing device for married couples of different races to check and see which race their child belonged to. If the genome was inclined to a certain race of seventy five percent or more, the child would be identified as belonging to that race. If the genome was in the range of fifty - fifty, forty - sixty, thirty - seventy, or three blood lines and above, the child would be identified as a mixed-blood, a Metis.

With the genetic test result and his talent, Brian was chosen to be fostered for the position of inheritance of the Maximus family. And Cheryl, she became a character to be despised and forgotten.

Father was busy with army stuffs.

Brother was busy with the "fostering plan" from the clan.

Even Mother was also busy with chores and tasks demanded by the clan – of course, all were just "odds and ends" stuffs.

Almost no one knew how the youngest daughter of the Maximus was isolated by the children in the clan. It was not that Mr. Raymond and the brother Brian were that indifferent to Cheryl. They loved her so much. But as men, they had a typical way of thinking and behaving of men. Both of them made great efforts day by day, in the hope that their success could bring their beloveds respect from other people, as well as a better position in the big family.

But when they really stepped up to a high enough position, turning around, what they saw was his wife (mother) was still being despised, and the daughter (little sister) who already grown up became more and more distant.

Cheryl was different.

Being the one who was despised and criticized, she knew more than anyone what was the cause of that disregard.

The way of Mr. Raymond and Brian just show people clearer about the difference between the Lava husband and the Lantern wife, between the Lava older brother and the mixed-blood little sister.

So Cheryl chose a different way.

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(*) "Satisfied face unwilling heart" (Vietnamese: "Bằng mặt mà không bằng lòng"): In Vietnamese, we use this expression to express the feeling when we have to accept someone/ something we don't like/ want.