Meanwhile, back in the arena…

“Aaaand they’re off! As you can see on your screens, the contestants have been scattered in a pine forest. Their first task will be to reunite with their respective teammates. The first team to do so receives a large number of points!”

The announcer gestured wildly with his arms at each of his declarations, working the crows as best he could.

As the tall man spoke, the screens changed, showing an archer hiding in a tree, launching a purple bolt at another contestant, catching him off guard and knocking him out.

“Would you look at this! First blood has been drawn! One of the contestants, a female archer, has decided to prioritize hunting the other contestants instead! Her target, a spearman, has been taken out of the round in one shot. Unless his teammate gains enough points on their own, his team will fail. Don’t worry, contestants will be pulled out of the forest before they accrue any lethal wounds. Our experts are making sure everyone stays safe.”

The next moment, the screen changed again, revealing three separate contestants sinking into a puddle of black goop. They were desperately trying to escape, but failing horribly. All the while, the perpetrator of this incident, a young man with black curls stands and laughs, amused by a spectacle of his own creation.

“Another display of power! This young man is a seeded participant, named Karon, which is why you won’t have seen him in the previous round. Using his versatile ‘oil magic’, he has caught three other contestants, knocking them out of the tournament.”

Over the next few minutes, the screen kept showing highlights from different battles around the forest, some of which were actually close. Because the arena couldn’t keep up with every battle, some powerful contestants had all their knock-outs shown off in a row.

A warrior used powerful torrents of water to defeat one opponent after the other, while another sent small, bright balls of fire at his opponents, which looked like small suns. Both turned out to be seeded participants, according to the announcer.

There were a few more notable cases, one of which caused controversy among the crowd.

At a certain point, the screen had shown off a classer wielding a large, two handed sword, as thick as a tree trunk. He was wearing expensive armor, and his attitude made the crowd think he would be defeating his opponent momentarily. He was faced with a young man with long black hair and a more balanced two handed sword.

“Aha! Another battle, about to erupt between a wealthy knight and his opponent! Let’s see who…”

Before the announcer could even finish his sentence, the black-haired man turned into smoke and disappeared. A split-second later he reappeared near the knight, knocking him out in one strike. For a moment, the turn of events stunned the crowd, before they started cheering again as usual.

To the announcer’s credit, he regained his composure very quickly.

“What a turn of events! The black knight used a powerful movement skill and considerable strength to dominate his opponent! Now that I take a closer look, I can tell you that this knight is also one of the seeded participants!”

A moment later, the screen started to show the knight knocking more people out. Various warriors and mages tried to get the upper hand, but they were all defeated quickly. On top of that, this black knight seemed to travel by leaving behind strange black explosions. Furthermore, each of the knight’s skills seemed to have a similar color.

Bit by bit, the crowd seemed to get curious about this man’s class and affinity. It had to be a rare one, for it to share its color with the dark affinity.

Eventually, as the knight defeated opponent after opponent, curiosity turned into suspicion, before the crowd started to clamor for answers.

The announcer was left with no choice but to try and calm them down. He had his hand to his ear, so it was obvious he was receiving instructions from higher-ups.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I know you’re all dying to know our young star’s affinity, and I am happy to announce that the higher-ups have provided an answer. The seeded participant in question, Arthur, possesses the dark affinity, as you might have guessed. However, in no wau is he insane, thanks to a system error during his awakening. Think about it, have you ever heard of a warrior with the dark affinity, rather than a mage?”

At this declaration, the crowd erupted into murmurs. While the populace of Roa was used to hearing about strange classes and skills in legends, dark affinity holders had always been evil, exclusively. Then again, system errors weren’t unheard off, either.

“People of Roa and beyond, rest assured that Arthur’s identity and skills have been confirmed by some of the wisest people in the kingdom, for your safety. This even includes the king himself!”

As the announcer said this, the young man on the screen could be seen knocking out another opponent with a pitch-black sword arc, nearly tearing him in half.

“Oh dear…” the announcer muttered, before the screen changed again, revealing two swordswomen reuniting.

With a sigh of relief, the announcer turned the audience’s attention away from the previous topic.

“The first team has reunited! Since they are the first team to assemble, they will be assigned the team designation A1 and be given 300 points on top of their previous 100!”

The crowd forgot about the previous issue and got riled up by the rapidly changing situation, as crowds tended to do. Over the next few hours, more and more teams started to unite.

Team A2, the second to unite, was made up of the oil wizard Karon, as well as a normal looking man, that moved very quickly through the trees. Despite his speed, he could only be described as ordinary-looking in every other way. The announcer was sure they were both seeded participants, for some reason.

Team A3 consisted of the water-controlling swordsman and, surprisingly, Arthur, the black knight. Both were seeded participants, just like the previous team.

Finally, there was team A9, which only had a single participant left, yet despite this rose to the second spot on the leaderboards. Apparently, the sun warrior’s team counted as ‘reunited’ when he reached the last known location of his teammate, where a marker, only visible to him to keep things fair, was left. Unbeknownst to the sun warrior, his teammate had been the first victim of the dark knight’s rampage.

This coincidence, combined with their respective classes, made the crowd look forward to an eventual confrontation between light and dark. This was only a tournament, but the poetic justice of a knight avenging his fallen comrade was just a little too romantic to deny, especially since the announcer played this up to get the crowd riled up. Surprisingly, a few members of the crowd were rooting for the perceived villain, the dark knight, in this case.

Now that a few hours had passed and the leaderboard had solidified, the time for a second trial had come.

“Ladies and gentlemen! The second phase of the round will now begin! ‘Packages’ with points will fall down from the sky! It will be up to the contestants to secure those packages, by force, if necessary!”

A few dozen minutes later, when the first package dropped, the crowd witnessed the true difference between seeded participants and normal contestants for the first time, as, in multiple locations, entire groups of contestants were wiped out by lone classers.

Karon had covered an entire battleground in oil, even hiding it underground, before igniting it, setting many contestants ablaze. The rest were already weakened from their previous fight, because Karon had waited for the fights to intensify before intervening himself.

The water swordsman, who was revealed to be Cerion Rass, Duke Rass’ successor, had similarly wiped out his opponents without working up a sweat. A giant wave was all it took to defeat weaker opponents, while he outmatched the remaining, stronger, opponents.

Curiously, several point packages seemed to disappear straight from under the noses of certain teams. At first, the spectators had complained about a mistake, but the announcer revealed that a contestant had the ability to turn invisible.

Another example of a powerful contestant was Peter Arcellus, the sun knight. He didn’t even bother with theatrics and annihilated entire teams, one explosion at a time. He scowled as he did so, declaring them all to be ‘too weak’, over and over.

Finally, there was the black knight, who was tearing into his own opponents with a smile. He forced certain teams to surrender and used strange black spinning winds to cut the rest apart, making him nearly invincible. Compared to the other seeded participants, his focus seemed to be on defense, because the other contestant couldn’t get any attacks past his spinning winds.

Typhoons, burning fields of oil, exploding suns and black storms…

With each battle, a realization set in more and more for the spectators. The realization that not every classer of the same tier was equal.

Meanwhile, back in the forest…

I looked to the sky and found another ball of light in the sky. A few bright lights had already landed, so unless Cerion was occupying one of them, those were already lost causes. I tried to prioritize the brighter lights to get more points, but they were rarer. The nearest one would take at least a few minutes to get to, and would have landed already by the time I got there. My best bet was to plan ahead and guess when certain lights would land. I then made a path in my head to go from one to the other.

A minute later, I found myself near a big boulder, where a light was just about to touch down. Three teams were fighting for ownership of the points, but I didn’t bother putting up a show like last time and just charged at them without a word.

One of the teams, made up of two archers dual-wielding daggers for close range combat, must have seen my previous fights, because they ran away as soon as they saw me. The other two teams were surprised by their actions, but didn’t follow suit. I barreled at them, starting my maelstrom as I flew. Before they knew what was happening they were cut apart and teleported away.

I waited for a while for the points to descend and touched the package when it landed.

Event notification: Package opened. 250 points awarded.

I grit my teeth. Only 250 points. Hopefully, I would have more luck with the next package.

Like that, I continued my routine for a few dozen minutes, gaining another 750 points total and wiping out three more teams, before I took a small break to check the leaderboard.

Leaderboard:

Team A3: 7900 points.

Team A2: 6700 points.

Team A9: 4650 points.

Team B5: 3400 points.

Team A7: 3200 points.

Team B2: 3050 points.

Team C9: 2850 points.

Team A1: 2600 points.

Team E3: 2350 points.

Team D5: 2100 points.

I noticed that the leaderboard had mostly stayed the same, with the exception that team E3 had taken C2’s place at number nine and that A2 and A9 had switched spots. On top of that, the point difference between the two was quite large, while the difference between us and second place was smaller.

As I moved to leave in search of more points, I noticed a bright light appear in the treeline. Out of instinct, I used Aura step to launch myself away. Good thing I did so, too, because a moment later a bright light passed by my previous location and flew into a tree, exploding with a giant shockwave which forced me to back up a few steps. The blast left a pretty large scorched crater behind, so I could guess that getting hit by that would hurt me quite a bit, despite my stats.

At the light’s point of origin, someone chuckled.

“Oh, you dodged that? Looks like I found a strong one this time…”

Feeling like I had been put on the back foot, I frowned and drew my sword from its scabbard.