Chapter 838: The Thinning Round [GT Ranking Bonus Chapter]
As Asher and the rest entered, their eyes met the frenzied fans who were already prepared for the next round. Asher heard his name more times than he could count, and he could only nod in their direction as he came to a stop at a random place within the open space, his expression remaining as calm as ever.
He glanced around, others from the various Empires were already there. Arianna, Acker, Isaac, Theodore, Hilton, Zis, and the rest of the notable names.
When he looked around, he found they were already glancing in his direction as though they had finally understood how he had acquired two million points.
Asher simply smiled in their direction and said nothing. He already knew that everyone would look for information on him, so he wasn’t surprised. But the funniest part was that these geniuses still looked at him with confidence in their eyes, despite knowing he had defeated Xal’Thar, a Rank 7 Emovira.
Asher broke eye contact, his eyes rose towards the sky, but he didn’t see the two eccentric commentators, so he simply stood in silence as he knew that the moment they appeared, the next round would immediately commence.
The moment it struck 9 a.m., both Thomasinho and AlyxAtlas appeared in a blip as though they had always been there but had merely been invisible to the naked eye.
Thomasinho raised his microphone with a smile as he spoke, "I trust I need no introduction, and neither do my partner nor these genius students before you," his voice booming from every loudspeaker.
"We’ve all returned for the next round. For the next adrenaline. For the next dopamine," AlyxAtlas spoke. "And I ask, ARE WE READY FOR ANOTHER FUCKING RIDE?"
"WE ARE!!!!" the live attendees shouted with renewed intensity.
"Then open your eyes, folks. This round shall be more blood-pumping. It shall be more peak. It shall be more exhilarating. So get your coins ready and bet to your heart’s content!!!!!" Thomasinho shouted as he remained floating in the air.
Neither Thomasinho nor AlyxAtlas spoke for a moment. They simply remained silent as they basked in the shouts and chants of the live spectators. They did this shit for the dopamine and the stimulation that came from it, and they fucking loved it. It was addictive to them, and neither of them had any intention of hiding that fact.
After two minutes of euphoria, they began to speak about the next round.
"The second round of the Inter-Empire Competition shall be called The Thinning Round. In simple terms, this round shall separate the Monsters from ordinary geniuses," Thomasinho began to speak as he introduced the name of the second round.
"And just like the first round, this round will also be point-based. And needless to say, this round is nothing like the first round just because they both use the point ranking system," AlyxAtlas followed up smoothly.
"And just like I said earlier, The Thinning Round is to separate the Monsters from ordinary geniuses, meaning that in this round, only sixteen of you will qualify for the next round," Thomasinho stated with a wide grin on his face.
The students below couldn’t help but narrow their eyes. Sixteen out of fifty people might seem like a lot, but to them, it wasn’t. They were all geniuses. But even amongst geniuses, monsters existed. Meaning that the sixteen slots weren’t even exactly sixteen, but more like twelve to ten slots after removing the monstrous students from the equation entirely.
It was insane to them... although it seemed like nothing compared to fifty students qualifying from over a thousand students, that round was understandable, as people knew there was no way everyone could participate in the main tournament.
"The Thinning Round shall be team-based. Since the total number of students here is fifty, you shall be split into twenty-five teams of two," AlyxAtlas followed up.
Hearing this, Asher immediately frowned. He had guessed something like this just yesterday, and it was now officially happening. Now it seemed advancing to the next round involved pulling a teammate who could either help you or pull you down.
Asher wasn’t the only one frowning; everyone was. Imagine being disqualified because of someone you didn’t even know. It was simply preposterous. But what could they do? Argue? Shout? Go on strike?
"We will get to how two students will be grouped into a team later. For now, we will focus more on the rules," AlyxAtlas spoke again, not caring about the students’ dislike for this round. It simply made it all the more entertaining.
"Now, back to the rules," Thomasinho stated. "The next round will involve endless waves of enemies. The more you and your partner kill, the more points you gain. The moment you kill the last being of any wave, the next wave immediately resumes without giving you any time to rest or breathe," his tone calm and grounded.
"Now, here is the kicker," AlyxAtlas said, "if this was just another endless killing event, then this would be no different from the first round. So here, you aren’t allowed to directly attack other students or teams. But you can do so indirectly, by redirecting the attacks of your enemies to hit another student, or by swapping positions with another student, thereby dodging an attack that was supposed to land on you, or even by leading an enemy to the location of another student. Anything goes, as long as it isn’t a direct attack from you on another student," she explained.
The students fell into thought as their minds spun with different ways they could play around with these rules and get other people eliminated.
"And like I said earlier, we only need sixteen students, meaning once only sixteen students remain in the rankings, The Thinning Round automatically ends," Thomasinho explained. "But that doesn’t mean we would sit here and wait forever for the numbers to drop to sixteen students or eight teams. In twenty-four hours, if there are more than sixteen students on the rankings, The Thinning Round automatically ends."
He paused as he gazed down at the students’ reactions as though he was loving every bit of their expressions. And indeed, he was.
"But we said this is a team-based round, so your points will be calculated in teams too. During this round, the team score is calculated by adding Student A’s and Student B’s personal scores together, then dividing the resulting number by two," AlyxAtlas began to explain the point system in greater detail.
"And to clarify, if one student from a team is eliminated, it doesn’t mean the other student gets eliminated automatically. Instead, the remaining student receives a punishment by having their team score multiplied by 0.5," Thomasinho stated with a smirk.
His words immediately caused various expressions to darken. After all, if their team score was twenty thousand (20,000), multiplying that number by 0.5 would immediately reduce their score to ten thousand (10,000) points. This would force them to protect their teammates because if they lost anyone, it meant they would instantly lose half of their total points without exception.
A heavy punishment.
Imagine being paired with dead weight and then being punished because your dead weight couldn’t protect themselves.
