The day dragged on and started to darken as they waited for their turn. Similar to First Celestial who was the opening match, since Dark Moon was the next highest ranked college meant to appear to day, they were arranged as the last match of the day.
Therefore, Kain and the others had to suffer through watching dozens of matches that were quite boring considering that most of them were either one-sided beat downs, or even the stronger side was not particularly impressive to Kain.
However, there were a few shocking developments, surprisingly a second-year from a college ranked only in the 40s managed to win the 1-vs-1 match against the second-year representative of the 13th ranked college.
Admittedly, the loss probably happened due to the conceit of the stronger side not sending out their strongest student, however it was the only case of the underdog winning a match that day so it was memorable.
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One of the professors travelling with them said that the likely cause for the victory seems to be due to that underdog student awakening a gift recently that increased the power of his contracts’ flames and added an almost corrosive property to them. It was an extremely useful gift if paired well with suitable contracts.
However, the professor said that the low-ranked college would likely not be able to hold on to him after exposing him on this stage.
Looking around Kain could see some members in the front rows of the audience, likely staff and scouts collecting information for various schools, rushing from their seats with hungry expressions.
Although, the boy would be nothing special enough to specially recruit among the top 5 colleges, many others would probably offer lucrative conditions in order to recruit him into their school for the next year.
Finally, it was the turn of Dark Moon College when the sun had already long left the sky.
By this point, Kain’s eyelids felt heavy enough that he almost could even be bothered to make his way to the side of the arena where participants on standby should be waiting as their colleagues fought on stage.
Unfortunately, none of the professors seemed sympathetic to his reasoning that his presence wasn’t even necessary for this first match since he wasn’t even participating unless the unlikely happened and Soren, Ranya and Kairos some how lost to opponents far weaker than them.
Instead Kain was forcefully dragged to the side of the stage half propped up by Kairos while almost pulling a muscle in his jaw from yawning so hard.
Thump
Placing Kain roughly on one of the benches next to the stage, Kairos stomped off to register his attendance for the 3-vs-3 battle that would be taking place. Thankfully, since by default all of their participants were automatically slated to take part in the 5-vs-5, should it come to that, Kain didn’t have to move from his new spot.
However, despite his strong urge to nap, the grogginess gradually faded from Kain’s mind once in front of the crowd. Not due to the excitement from the atmosphere—even the crowd had begun to lost most of its energy as the day progressed, although the atmosphere picked back up slightly at the appearance of Dark Moon.
And it was also not due to the anticipation of their team’s debut match—their was no suspense for this match and its not like he was participating either.
‘Ugh…’ Glancing around Kain realized the real ulterior motive of the professors and why they insisted on Kain appearing at the side of the stage.
Despite Kain not participating. Despite the actual participants climbing the stage to partake in the match at right that moment. Despite the fact that Soren was a member of the ROYAL FAMILY!
‘Why the hell are you all watching ME?!’
Everywhere Kain looked at least half of the cameras and audience members that should be watching the stage, instead had their gazes stuck on his figure. Under the watchful eyes of practically the entire nation, naturally it was impossible to fall asleep.
As Kain’s expression contorted in irritation, he saw that all of the attending professors of Dark Moon had a smug expression on their faces.
Despite the real height of the buzz from his discovery of the Lumifin evolution having subsided months ago, it still looks like many in the audience were surprised by the “genius” boy that took practically the entire nation be storm.
In fact, Kain didn’t know this, but while the interest in him seemed to have died down on the surface, at least based on the number of news articles about him, mentions of Kain in informal media spaces such as in forums was still quite strong.
In fact, Kain even had his own fan page (as well as an anti-fan one).
Kain had been unaware of this attention due to him not spending much time online…but the college was not. In fact, they were subtly supporting the spread of his name online and some staff would even occasionally “slip up” and leak interesting information about him online to ensure that interest in him never fully died.
After all, every year there is a new beast-taming genius…but they had been using Kain’s name to attract significant attention to the evolutionary planning department as well.
What was the use of this?
Well many spiritual creatures had more difficult evolutionary conditions, or even a following evolutionary form wasn’t even known.
Therefore, many individuals took a great interest in Kain’s supposed ‘gift’ and abilities as a planner that may help their spiritual contracts reach new heights.
The increase in planner requests Kain had received over the months were unknowingly already screened by the College, in reality hundreds of individuals had made inquiries about him.
The Dean of the Planner department at Dark Moon watching the broadcast at home, couldn’t help but smile broadly and develop a ruddy complexion at the repeated focus of the camera on Kain’s figure.
‘Ahh…you truly are the best signboard for our department…’ He thought while staring at Kain’s face with so much affection that Kain would surely shudder in disgust if he were to see the expression in person.