Free for all fight
Then those twenty-five would proceed onto the final stage of the competition, which involved a series of knockout fights and other competitions.
And the five who managed to advance to the final stage, were the ones that would be chosen as the year's elite students.
However, how they performed in the final round of the event, was that would determine their elite ranks or positions, while the winner of the final round, would unsurprisingly become the new rank one student of the academy.
Most students didn't really care much about the knockout stages, all they cared about was passing this second phase, and then advancing to the next stage.
Whether they performed poorly or not in the last stage of the event didn't really matter, since they would become elite students anyway. Even if it was just rank 25, that was more than enough honor to them.