Chapter 389: Sign from the heavens
Throughout the 5th week, Blake’s fight with Dustin was the only eventful thing that happened, but even at that, most students weren’t hoping for the next week to come.
This was because the sixth week was test week and since the beginning of their time in school, they had always lost someone in all of the events.
This made the students wonder if they would be the next to die.
“Any idea of what the test would be?” Blake asked his friends as they all made their way to the battleground.
“Nope, even I don’t know.” Luciano answered.
They had all received announcements that they should all gather at the battleground, but they hadn’t been told a single detail about their test.
When they got to the battleground they waited for 10 minutes before Professor Gibson and Instructor Zirrack walked out of a warp gate.
…..
“Today is test day. Just like previous tests, it would be a team test, but the difference is that your teammates would be picked at random. This is to assess your performance when working with unknown people, just like in the outside world.” Professor Gibson explained.
Although he gave his own explanation, most students thought that the school wanted to prevent teams like that of Blake, Damon, and Serhan from dominating the entire team test.
“During the test, you would be randomly paired with 4 students to go against another random team of 5 with a time limit of 5 minutes.”
“Each opponent that is eliminated would grant 1k points to each member of the team. As for the one that eliminates the opponent, he or she would get an extra 500 points.”
“When the 5 minutes timer is over, everyone that had survived would be randomly paired with people that passed.” Professor Gibson explained before going over to the rules of the exercise.
“There are only 2 rules. The first is that you are not allowed to intentionally attack your teammate if not you would be disqualified. The second is that the use of artifacts is not prohibited.” Professor Gibson was against making the test dangerous, so he decided to make it more realistic.
Although artifacts gave people an extra boost it was still considered part of their strength in the outside world.
‘I am actually shocked that the school decided to take a safe approach to our test. Professor Gibson taking over might actually be a blessing in disguise.’ Blake thought.
With the rules explained, the random selection began. Blake was paired with 3 1st year students and 1 single demoted 2nd-year student.
Apart from Blake, every single one of them was below rank 40, but they weren’t bothered about losing because of his presence.
The said couldn’t be said about the enemies. They were part of the hundreds of students praying not to be matched against Blake, but they turned out to be the most unfortunate.
Everyone knew it was a matter of time till they met Blake because he would surely make it to the finals. So for them to meet him in the 1st round was more than unfortunate.
The 26 teams quickly took their position at the 13 different battlegrounds, as they waited for the signal to start.
[I think I have a theory as to why Zirrack has been the referee in all your matches.] The system said out of nowhere.
‘And that is?’
[We all know that almost all the top-ranking demoted 2nd-year students are nobles, and we have heard stories about them using underhand schemes to keep commoners below them.]
[So since everyone knows you are only going after nobles, what if Zirrack had always volunteered in order to prevent noble Professors from tampering with your matches.] The system said.
‘That makes a lot of sense.’ Blake thought.
Although all of his matches were always spectated by almost everyone, the spectators were all champions. If a demigod or someone above was to interfere in any match, no one would have a clue except him.
The problem was that even if he complained after losing, no one would believe him because they would think he was giving excuses. 𝑏𝑑𝘯𝑜𝘷𝑙．𝑐𝘰𝘮
Once everything was set, Instructor Zirrack flew up into the air before giving the signal for the matches to begin.
“Begin!”
‘Anything I should take note of?’ The other team hadn’t made any move and he knew why. So he wasn’t in a hurry to eliminate them.
[Nope, you have nothing to worry about concerning the enemies, but you should be careful of your teammates.] The system said.
‘Of course, I trust no one except the 4 of them.’ Blake said as he activated lightning reinforcement.
“Seems like he is coming alone. We might actually have a chan…” Before the leader could complete his sentence, Blake was already in front of him.
He saw Blake’s hand reaching for his face, but before he could even react he had already lost consciousness.
BOOM!
Blake slammed the head of the team leader on the ground knocking him unconscious and causing the golden barrier to protect him.
“You were saying?” Blake smirked as he dodged the sword slash coming from the right before grabbing the head of the demoted second-year student and releasing volts of electricity.
On turning to the rest of the teammates, Blake couldn’t help but facepalm.
The eyes of the 3 first-year students were filled with fear as they couldn’t decide whether to attack or give themselves a less painful elimination by committing ‘suicide’.
‘Why do I feel that a lot of people have gotten PTSD because of me?’ Blake couldn’t help but pity them.
“You guys can just walk out of the battlefield, I won’t attack.” Blake said.
“Thank you.” The 3 students said as they immediately ran out.
‘When did so many weaklings enter the elite class?!’ Instructor Zirrack was pissed at the students that decided to chicken out instead of going out with a fight.
If only the 3 could read his mind, they would reconsider their decision because their next combat class would be worse than hell.
‘It’s not as if they are useless, it’s just that when facing Blake almost everyone is useless.’ Professor Gibson thought as Blake’s match ended in less than a minute.
‘I would have said this wasn’t the best of test ideas, but previous results show he dominates no matter the situation.’
‘The only solution would be to create a class above the elite class, but that would mean there would be only 3 students there.’ Professor Gibson shook his head as he focused on other matches.
‘I wonder who I would get paired against.’ Blake thought as he took a sit while he waited for the other matches to end.
After 4 more minutes, all matches were halted. Most matches had ended with the opposing team being completely wiped out, while a few of the matches had ended with 1 or 2 surviving.
The first round had reduced the teams from 26 to 13. The round alone had wiped out most of the low rankers leaving extremely lucky ones like those paired with Blake.
“Because there are 13 teams left, those who don’t make it into the first 12 teams would be given 5k points each.” Professor Gibson announced.
For low rankers who would be lucky enough, this would good news, but for top rankers, it was more of a disadvantage.
For people like Blake who could get 7.5k points from a match, being given only 5k would put them behind others in point ranking.
Soon the random selection began, Blake was assigned to Layla, Esmeralda, and 2 other demoted 2nd year students.
“Long time no team.” Blake said the females who were part of his team in their 1st ever team test.
“Yup!” Esmeralda said.
“Since we will most likely get eliminated before or by you, can you leave for us some points?” Layla said, but that was when Dustin, Ansgar, Vlad, and 2 other demoted 2nd years.
“Is this a sign from the heavens? The most unbearable people coincidentally ended up in one team.” Blake chuckled, causing his opponents to deeply frown.
“Forget what I said, you can have as many points as possible.” Layla retracted her statement because neither she nor Esmeralda could take on Dustin and Vlad.
Also, she wasn’t sure about the 2 demoted 2nd years in their team, so they would most likely have to depend on Blake.
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