Assembled Cast

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Late evening. After training.

"Daamn I'm beat!" Greg stretched his body in various ways as he walked out of the flat Arena training field.

It was not just him, all around, the 2nd string members were walking away in an exhausted manner after they were done with a full standard match to close out their first training day.

In his game, Irvine together with another improvised 7-man team managed to secure a win not by destroying the enemy's towers but by eliminating the other side's Solvers first.

Going purely by the tower sections' solved, Irvine's team just then might have even been outscored 2-1.

But after seeing Irvine's performance during the Single Tower Marathon, his team which was composed of 2 Fielders and him as a Solver suggested this strategy instead.

Although it had been a bit rough around the edges, in the end they had managed to secure a win after aggressively going after their Solvers' HP with the three of them.

'That one Solver's not very good in positioning so it's easier to whittle away at his HP... His solving speed's pretty decent though...' Right now, Irvine was in the middle of reflecting on that last match.

By his evaluation of 'decent', Irvine had meant that it was faster than the current him.

Irvine himself had long realized that because he had not chosen a Solver-related Ability for his Gene Mod, there would be a limit to his development in terms of his tower solving speed in the future.

But that limit had not yet been reached for his current self. That was why he was not planning to slack off even in this aspect.

"If I wanted my playing style and position to be accepted by the world, I'll have to up my solving speed to at least that of an average Pro League solver within these 3 years..." He estimated.

This was a very tall order. Especially for someone like Irvine who didn't have Abilities such as [Overload] or the others to help boost one's performance in solving towers.

Compared to that, even the most average of pro solver in the OPL used to be a great player during his/her time in college. Otherwise, they wouldn't even get drafted in the first place.

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From behind, Derrick and Greg were watching Irvine who looked like he was spacing out, with full curiosities.

The man in question was looking down with a hand on his chin as if he was very deep in his own thought.

"What do you suppose he's thinking about?" Greg whispered to Derrick who's standing by his side.

"Absolutely no idea..."

Thankfully, before Greg could try to guess any further, Irvine seemed to notice their gazes and approached them himself.

"Hey guys. Great timing." He greeted.

"What is it Lang?" Derrick replied to him cordially.

"Do you think the coaches will let me borrow a tower back to my dorm room? Are there procedures for borrowing equipment?"

"..." Derrick quickly turned speechless.

"Uwah, he's thinking of practicing after practice... He really only got training in his brain." Greg's look towards Irvine was filled with genuine concerns at this moment.

'Being told something like that by this guy gives a very peculiar feeling...' Even Irvine had a weird look on his face when he stared at the bulky muscles on Greg's body after hearing such a statement.

Actually, Derrick and Greg's reaction to Irvine's weird inquiry was rather justified.

He himself might not have realized this during this past 4 months because he's so caught up in his daily training and school which had left him with very little free time.

But ever since his return, Irvine truly had had no other hobbies or pastimes except for Battle Arena.

What little free time he'd had this past months were spent either with his family, teaching Althea about the sport, or watching past college matches and Arena news to catch up.

And though all those were interesting for him, everything was done with either one purpose or another in mind, never had he done some activities simply for the sake of enjoying it ever since his return.

For high school and college students especially, this kind of daily routines might seem a little over-the-top. After all, even the most dedicated and hard-working college athletes had something they did to unwind.

Nevertheless, except for Althea, no others had seen the entirety of Irvine's daily life. So to Derrick and Greg, this little glimpse of dedications had just been something of a quirk that they'd discovered about this new teammate of theirs.

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"You can't take out training-use equipment because they're expensive props, even the coaches need to sign some stuff out whenever they bring them out onto the field." Derrick tried to explain.

"I see..."

"But you know, there're fixed towers you can use for practice in the training room of the Arena Facility!" He then continued before Irvine could have enough time to get disappointed.

"That's the mansion-like building on the side of the university's stadium right?"

"Yep, many of our 1st string players spend the night there more often than their own dorms." Greg added, "There's a curfew for us, but it's not for another couple hours, wanna go?"

*nod*

Irvine nodded to confirm, "I'm going but... you're coming as well?"

"...Oh right, why am I going too? Dammit, I get restless seeing you so diligent!" Greg finally noticed that he was about to scrap his resting plan for the day.

In the end, He turned to Derrick for his opinion. The two of them were students of the same major so they had booked the same dorm room with each other for this semester.

"..."

"Ah hell! I'll just do some more cooling down then." Derrick shook his head helplessly.

"Thanks for the company." Irvine smiled wryly at the two of them, "It's good timing for me to scan myself too, my sister's been bugging me for it."

"Hoo, now this I gotta see!" Derrick perked himself up at the mention of scan.

"More importantly, you have a sister? Is she pretty?" Greg's interest was piqued as well, albeit for a different reason.

"Dude... That's so wrong."

Seeing as Irvine himself had just turned 18 early in the year, it's safe to assume that his sister's still a minor at this point in time. Which prompted Derrick to look weirdly at Greg.

"It's just a question!"

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*chatter* *chatter*

At some point, the three's conversation had become loud enough for the surrounding people to overhear them.

And as expected, when they heard that Irvine's gonna practice a bit more inside the Arena facility building, some of the other members began to approach them as well.

"What's this, what's this? Our Starseed's gonna do a scan?"

"Shall we go too? We can shoot some pool before the curfew."

"I wanna see his solving speed."

Before long, most of the players who're still around at the time began to crowd together and surround the three of them.

With some of the female players deciding to come as well, it seemed that the rest of the guys who'd been planning to go back to rest were slowly becoming hesitant to miss this unplanned get-together of the 2nd strings.

In the end, a group of almost 10 people could be seen walking towards the lit-up mansion in the distance not far away from the training fields.

"Heh, you sure become popular real fast Lang!" Derrick just grinned at him after seeing the spectacle happening to them.

"The more the merrier I suppose."

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Unbeknownst to the 2nd string members coming, inside the Arena facility's conference room on the 1st floor, an informal meeting was being held by both the 3rd year regulars and the coaches.

The slit-eyed Clint Silver was connecting his tablet wirelessly to the room's projector and were showing the recordings of first day of training for the new recruits to everyone else in the room.

*BUZZ* *BUZZ*

The video played for a while with frequent fast-forwarding through the breaks and the briefings in-between.

It continued to play until eventually, the coaches had seen enough and paused the recordings in the middle to move on with the discussions. They didn't really have the time to watch the whole thing during this meeting.

"So these are all of them?" One of the coaches who had been present for the 2nd string training asked.

"Almost. There're a few who're absent today, but the total will still end up around 10 or so new students." Clint replied casually.

"Not including future walk-ins right?"

"Right. A rough guesstimate will be around 20 people after we get some walk-ins and hold a tryout after school starts."

"As usual, we should expect some to leave during the season, so that gives us a final estimate of 15 people for this year's batch."

Top Tier-1 school like Ravenville University usually had between 40-60 players between their 3 strings. As such, each batch would consist of around 10-20 people every year.

By this comparison, their current yield of fresh meats in this new academic year was nothing too good or too bad either. It was right on the average.

"How do you think they are coach?" Clint asked curiously.

As experienced as he was, he would still defer to the Ravenville's coaches when it came to evaluating these new recruits.

In his eyes, he could only see weak hatchlings running around all over the place.

"..."

Some of the coaches started reviewing the footage in their minds after hearing his question.

"Not bad. That one and that one over there, their specs might even be higher then Wallace or Clayton during their freshmen year." The coaches discussed with each other and jotted down some names before handing it over to Clint.

"These 6 players, try to push them harder tomorrow and see their limits will you Silver?"

"Aye aye." Clint jokingly saluted from his seat.

It was their duties to teach and beat these new rookies into shape for the duration of this training camp.

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"Don't you think it'd be better for us to train and prepare for the season rather than playing around with the rookies? I mean it's fine if we can train as well but this is just--"

"--Boring. I agree, at this rate we won't have enough time to prepare for the Crowns."

Suddenly, two guys with identical faces sitting side-by-side commented on the day's training from behind Clint's seat.

One of them cut in and finished the other's words as if it was the most natural thing to do.

"...Could you stop finishing my sentences? That's not even what I'm trying to say." The first guy quickly turned to his other half with irritation on his face.

"You never get to the point when talking, I just helped you bringing it home."

"..."

Just like Clint, these twins were part of Ravenville's 3rd year regulars in the 1st string.

Today, they were one of the people taking part in keeping watch for the new recruits training alongside him.

Dan and Dennis Young.

The pair both had short jet black hairs and eyes that were usually found in people of Asian descent.

The coaches, of course, had anticipated the arrivals of such complaints.

Every year, the 3rd year regulars always came to them with the same concerns after their first day of handling the rookie freshmen.

"We can't do that. Developing the next generation is as important as winning the championships. If we neglect that in favor of just training the last season's regulars, this year might be our last time participating in the Silver Crown."

One of the coaches stepped forward and answered the Youngs.

"There you have it you annoying twins, let's move on. How's our very own 2nd string? And that one Starseed too..." Clint brought the sidetracked topic to an end to continue the meeting.

Being their senior of 1 batch for over a year, Clint already knew very well Derrick and Greg's capabilities along with the few other top 2nd strings. Personally, he was more interested on the new recruit Irvine's skills.

Unlike the coaches, he hadn't been briefed about anything regarding Irvine just yet.

*clears throat*

"Well, for that matter, it won't be us telling you about it."

"Huh? Then--"

*click*

As if it had been rehearsed beforehand, the door to their conference room was suddenly opened from the outside with precise timing, interrupting Clint's next words.

"I'll take it over from here ladies and gentlemen. Thanks for the hard work."

From the other side, Lark walked in with the same suit he'd worn during his afternoon speech for the new recruits.

Behind him stood several people led by a short-haired woman with intense facial expression and fierce demeanour.

"Ah, Head Coach and Captain both. Good evening! And the rest of the seniors as well..." Clint promptly greeted the people coming into the room, still with a casual tone.

"I've seen enough of the footage and notes regarding the 2nd string's first day of training. I'll share it with you all momentarily, but first things first..."

"Anything you wish to say? Your first day as the Illusions' Captain and all." Head Coach Lark addressed the greetings from the 3rd years and turned towards the short-haired girl behind him.

"Haa? What's there to say?" The girl lifted one of her eyebrows at him as if Lark was asking her to do something weird.

"Anything."

"Hm, well--"

"...Don't mess it up this year or I'll handle you myself." At the end, she gave a gesture of slicing her neck with her thumb.

"..."

The girl's threatening gesture had seemed like a joke, but her eyes were not smiling at all. Making the people in the room not know how to react at all.

This was their team Captain for this year's Illusions, Renee Morgan.

"...Baron, anything you wanna say?" She turned to her side, where a hulking, more than 2 meters tall bald guy were standing straight with a sharp look on his face.

"No..."

"Then you can continue Head Coach."

*SIGH*

"Right." Lark shook his head helplessly at the attitudes of this new Captain and Vice Captain of his.

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Up to here, the 3rd years and coaches had been talking about the new recruits they're going to raise for the next year. But the next item in the agenda was something different.

They'll be discussing about the people who would be filling in for the empty positions in the regulars and the 1st string.

In other words, the prospective new Ravenville Illusions who're going to struggle for this season's Crowns.

Creation of a new team, new dynamics. And most importantly, recovering from the losses given by the graduating seniors and coming out stronger.

They would all start with this one meeting.

"First order of business..." Coming to the front, Lark put down the folders in his hand on the podium in front of the projector screen.

"The 5th Starseed, Medea Dormer."

"...Huh?"