Chapter 2004 Before the Tournament
Days passed.
Rumors about Riwan spread far and wide.
Even to the other academies. Nobody knew how Riwan took revenge, but since just like him the seniors who bullied him also stayed in the medicine hall for seven days, they believed that he took the revenge.
Some other seniors who also liked picking on juniors wanted to find out the information.
But Riwan is still a hot topic and they couldn't do much. As for the instructors, they couldn't be heavy handed when dealing with this, after all Riwan was the victim of bullying for which they turn a blind eye to, so they couldn't just force him to answer stuff.
But there is one category of people that managed to find some courage to talk to Riwan in those seven days. They needed courage because they are also victims of bullying, just like Riwan. And just like that, the three cards that Riwan needed to give were given away.
And in those seven days, even before the seniors recovered these three people contacted the agent of the Flaming skull organization and gave out their assignments.
Out of those three, only one of them took the option of executing the revenge himself, the remaining two decided to leave it to the flaming skull.
The first person received cubes with names engraved on them. He didn't use them immediately though, he decided to wait up for a while and in the meantime, the remaining two people watched as their revenges were executed.
And even that happened through cubes only.
No one knew how the Flaming skull made those cubes, but they are effective. Very effective.
And these three people also got six cards. Three for distribution and three for their personal use.
When Riwan was asked by other victims about how they can take revenge themselves, he couldn't say anything anymore. He doesn't have anymore cards, but he gave them the names of the three recipients of his own cards.
And the new victims managed to get cards of their own.
Every day, more and more seniors and in some case freshmen are being targeted in peculiar way. Some are being permanently crippled, some are being temporarily damaged, some small petty revenge and some massive blood debts.
These were being settled.
But even with all these incidents happening, it is still on the downlow.
Because the reason these victims were victims of bullying is because they are ignorable by the top dogs, both students and the teachers. They don't have any attention on them because of their limited competence and activity.
So, when another mediocre but relatively stronger person spots them, they would take out their own anger over their own insecurities on this overlooked category of people.
Even if some instructors smelled something fishy, they couldn't focus on it too much. Because they had to focus on the training of their own students.
Training for the first Open Tournament.
This time the Apollo Academy took the lead and everyone is excited to see how it is going to be. After all, for the freshmen this is another thing that could mark their reputation within this region of the academy realm.
Two days before the tournament.
Pearl is in her secret room looking at the reports and started thinking out loud.
"All the marked targets are disturbed just as I planned. Vidyut did a great job with his list. White did the same, the only problem is we couldn't get to Sam.
That guy didn't even come out of the academy that often. Even when he came, no one knew when he came out and where he went. He would only show himself when he came back.
As if he is taunting the watcher that he went out and came back without the watcher even noticing.
This is irritating.
White didn't even get a chance to execute the plans on Sam.
"There is not much we can do. The tournament is in two days. Let's just hope our plans are working."
After that, she came out of that secret room and met with White and Vidyut in the courtyard.
"So, the open tournaments are a very important steps for us. This would be the best time for us to crush the spirits of the other academies during the inter academy tournament. We need to win the whole thing.
In this tournament our academy should be the most dominant one. All our team members will participate and whenever they have to fight the other academies, they will always be at full force.
I commissioned a few special medicines based on their affinities and body types. These are recovery medicines tailor made for all the members on our team. They can be on their last legs, barely breathing, but they will still recover.
I got the recipes from the Hub and made one of our genius medicine makers to make them. She is also part of our team by the way, but I will introduce her to you guys later.
Our goal in this tournament is to get the top three spots between us three. It doesn't matter in what order we hold those spots as long as us three are the ones holding them.
I also marked? few members who have potential to be the seed candidates without our academy. Keep a track on their performance and if they qualify, then we would add them into our plan and from the next tournament they would start occupying from the fourth place onwards."
Pearl kept on discussing their plans that day.
One day before the tournament, Sam who was inside the dorm meditating leisurely felt a jolt as he had some unexpected visitors back in the hub.
He went into the deep meditative state and his consciousness opened eyes back in the hub as Joker's projection.
"I didn't expect that the Dean Pyre and Elders would grace with their presence today. I thought all of you would be very busy with the tournament preparations."
It is none other than the Dean of the Apollo academy and his elders who came to the hub.
"We are here because of those preparations only. We need your help with something."
"Oh, please tell."
"Every year during open tournaments most of the participants would be the students of their own academy. And very few cream of the crop candidates from other academies would participate. This wouldn't be a problem usually as we can host all of them and facilitate the tournament within the academy grounds.
But this year, I am guessing because of Hub's addition to the region, there are many people who are feeling confident with the immense growth they had.
The number of applications for entry from other academies are way past any of our expectations and since we didn't know of this in advance, we didn't make adequate preparations.
We can still do it, but one of our elders gave an idea."
The dean turned to one of the elders who was standing beside the Dean."
"We would like to use the simulation room for the initial testing. Since you said that we could simulate our own battles, I am think if it is possible to simulate the same battle for all the candidates in the tournament?
If it does, they will all fight the same battle and after calculating their scores, we will pick the top 16 and proceed with a proper tournament as usual.
Since there are hundreds of simulation rooms, I am sure we can walk through the candidates easily and the preliminary round would be over by afternoon if we start at the dawn."
Sam who heard this was surprised and amused at the same time. He didn't think that these people would adapt to the Hub's existence so well and so fast.
He actually expected some resistance. After all, Hub kind of makes these students teach themselves without the academy's help. As long as they learn here, earn some money through hunting or other methods in the other realms and buy the necessary resources, they are set. They don't need the academy at all.
Maybe the academies wanted to see the coexistence of these two or they didn't even realize this at all. To think they would already use hub in one of their tournaments is insane.
But Sam didn't see why he should not let them use the hub.
"It would be a tough thing to do, since the hub is originally not made for that. But I guess it is fine. The problem is you should compensate me in some way. I don't do anything for free."
"Of course, what would you like?"
"Resources. Resources are all I need."
"We can discuss further then. Maybe, you can calculate the estimated revenue for that time period and we will compensate the same amount in resources, maybe a bit more as a token of appreciation for stopping your business because of us."
"Sure, we can definitely discuss that. Now if you tell me what your requirements are, then I would be happy to set up the simulation."
"We might need your help even that. We are looking for some special beasts that are not exactly native to this place."
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