The crowd cheered as time went on and more and more people encountered each other. Asher had defeated two more participants himself.
Although it was a representative tournament, not many students had entered it. Many were nervous and were not adequately taught to compete with those with special training.
For them, entering seemed like a waste of time, and they would eventually learn and could compete with other privileged students. The World Academy was even better than what an elite family could offer since it had all types of knowledge gathered in one place.
Elite families may have one specialty where they outclass the World Academy, such as Nathaniel Von Greville, who was known as a sword god, and nobody could dare say they could teach Asher better than what he could have learned from Nathan.
The total count of students, including both boys and girls, was around 100, with half of them being boys and the other half being girls.
These participants were the ones who were taught or thought they had a chance at winning. Other than getting injured, which can be treated free of cost by the World Academy, there was no real risk.
As the timer hit the 1-hour mark, Alyssa checked her bracelet and said, “Hmm, 1 hour left. Let’s get moving.” She carefully hovered down the tree.
“Let’s hope I can reach there before the tournament ends and have enough time to fight,” she did a deep breath as she channeled her mana and went straight ahead towards the direction of the final location.
Her eyes became a bit dull, and her skin a bit paler, but she was fine as she went deeper into the forest. The terrain was not a problem for her since she was not actually touching the ground. It was just her feet that seemed like they did touch to others if they did not look too carefully.
As time went on, Asher defeated 5 more participants, bringing his total number of tokens to 17. But most of Asher’s fights were not being shown on the big screen due to the way he was defeating the other participants.
After his fight with Alan, he was not exactly in a good mood. Not seeing Asher fighting made Lucas sad, but David, who noticed Lucas’s look, said that he would watch Asher when all the participants arrived near the final location.
While most of the focus was now on Matthew and Kevin, who were like Asher defeating all their opponents quite skillfully.
“It seems that the participant Matthew is giving his all and not letting Kevin take the lead for his second place,” Gazil commented.
Matthew was a swordsman, and although he was not as excellent as Asher, it was enough for him to defeat other participants with relative ease.
“14,” Matthew muttered as he looked at his bracelet.
He had short brownish-black hair with a decently handsome face but not enough to be compared with Kevin. He was as tall as Kevin but smaller than Asher.
Matthew sat down and regained his stamina since fighting 5 people till now took a toll on his stamina. But after a few minutes, he got up and went deeper because he wanted the extra tokens that the person on the special zone in the final location would get.
In the girls’ tournament, both Elena and Amelia were fighting different participants and gaining tokens. Many people were cheering and were surprised by the performance of both of them.
Although Elena was actively using her mana, she was making sure she recovered enough before going further towards the final location. While Amelia was keeping both her mana and stamina in check.
Elena had now come close to Amelia with her total count nearing 18, while Amelia was at 19. They both had luck eliminating people with two or more tokens.
While Eva was having a much easier time fighting as nobody she encountered had enough firepower to break her barriers, maintaining so many barriers would usually be difficult for a person of her rank. However, her superb mental capacities allowed her to achieve these results, and the fact that she had a talent in barrier-related magic helped her greatly.
The time was ticking and now only 30 minutes were left, and more and more people were getting eliminated. Some of the people got sad after their son or daughter got eliminated, but they were still happy for them for getting selected into the World Academy.
In the Greville VIP room, everyone was happy as Asher and Amelia were still dominating the leaderboard. Livia was cheering and jumping around as Amelia defeated more and more people.
As the tournament was going on, the leaderboard remained the same, and there were still no changes in it.
*BAM*
A fireball hit a tree, but it was not powerful enough to make the tree fall.
“Damn it,” the boy cursed.
Kevin jumped around carefully, making sure that none of the spells hit him. He knew that going on the fights would get even tougher, so he didn’t want any injury that could affect his performance later.
Kevin thrust his spear, but the boy dodged the thrust. However, he could not block Kevin’s second attack as he spun his spear and hit him from the side, injuring his insides and making the barrier activate.
“Huff,” Kevin breathed heavily as he recovered from his fight.
“I am quite close,” Kevin said as he looked at the change in direction as he went forward.
He stopped, knowing that he should recover his stamina a bit.
“I hope nobody else has eliminated that bastard already,” Kevin clenched his fist, remembering Asher.
“Make sure you win, Elena,” Kevin said as he leaned his back toward the tree to rest a bit.
Somewhere else,
“Wow, who did you encounter to end up like this?” Sam ducked down to see a participant who had a broken arm and a broken leg.
The guy barely opened his eyes as he was in pain. He looked at the dark-haired boy, almost freaking out, but he saw his eyes were pale green, not red, so he recovered his breathing.
“Red eyes, argh,” he spoke, but his face showed how much pain he was in.
“Hmm, let’s change our path for now,” Sam looked ahead and changed his path a bit, leaving the already eliminated boy behind.
The boy looked at Sam and closed his eyes as he lost his conciousness. The test conductors appeared right after Sam left. They were waiting for Sam to leave the area before taking the boy to medical facilities.
Sam was just behind Asher’s tracks, and if he went in the similar direction, he would have faced Asher before the final location, so he changed his tracks.
“Give me a good show, you guys,” Sam smirked as he remembered Kevin saying something about the heir of Greville at their waiting room.
He wanted to take advantage of their fights and hit them when they were at their weakest.
The timer was decreasing, and Asher arrived at the final location first as he looked at the small stone platform with the World Academy insignia on it.
“Special Zone,” Asher muttered to himself.
He looked around and saw the open field he was standing in. There was no place to hide and attack the guy on the special zone. This meant that the only way to attack someone was to do it without any cover.
It seemed like whoever thought of this tournament wanted many confrontations at the same time. This would result in people teaming together to defeat others.
“It seems Asher Greville is the first one to arrive at the final location!” the camera showed Asher walking around the open grassland.
“And it seems that Kevin Whiteheart and our second-place participant, Matthew, will arrive soon,” he spoke as the screen displayed an eagle view, showing that neither of them was too far from the open field.
“The girls are a bit far from their final location. It seems we will finally see some changes in the leaderboard!” Gazil spoke.
“Right now, as you can see on the screen, the scores are not too far apart from each other,” Gazil said.
————————————–
Leaderboard
1. Amelia Von Greville – 23
2. Elena Rothschild – 21
3. Eva williams – 19
4. Venessa Baker – 16
5. Ria Adler – 15
—————————————
————————————
Leaderboard
1. Asher Von Greville – 22
2. Matthew – 20
3. Kevin Whiteheart – 19
4. Sam Allister – 16
5. Damian Seymour – 15
————————————–
The audience is closely watched the leaderboard, and the same people have maintained their top 5 spots without getting eliminated until now.
While at the final location,
Kevin was the second participant to arrive, and just after him was Matthew. Kevin looked around and saw the special zone, with Asher sitting right beside the platform, not on it.
“Arrogant bastard, let’s see how long you can behave that way,” Kevin said as he spun his spear around and went towards Asher.
ƥαṇdα- ηθνε|·ƈθm
“So he is Asher Greville,” he spoke, as he saw a black-haired boy sitting with his sword beside him.