CHAPTER 176: First Segment. (Part-4)

The previous Match allowed everyone to register Halbor among the Tournament's high-end Alpha Chosen.

Those who kept track of the noticed that Halbor was ranked 1st in the entire Trial World with Lv.44.

Only a few keen ones knew Halbor wasn't there before Round-2, not even at the bottom rankings.

Since there were no monsters on the Tournament Island, increasing one's Level was not feasible. For Halbor to level up even under such circumstances pointed towards exploiting a loophole in the System.

That was what most of the spectators believed and the most discussed topic. When the racket reached his ears, Felarial laughed at their foolishness because, as someone who roamed half a Mega Cluster, he very well would have heard about it if there was such thing as a 'loophole' in the System.

Unlike those greenhorn Alpha Chosen, he was well aware of what or rather who was behind Halbor's meteoric rise in Level.

Back when he used an information-type skill to peek at Jay's Status, he noticed the steady inflow of Life Energy.

That alone was enough for him to deduce that Jay must have possessed a Scrounger-type ability, which allows one to gain Life Energy through others' efforts.

Urzo's was one such Innate Talent as it lets him leech off 10% Life Energy earnings of whom he planted Possession seeds on.

Such abilities were rare in the System-assimilated Universe but not scarce. Felarial himself came across a few who had such abilities.

His guess was not far off, but little did he know that Jay has a Soul A.I, which allows not a share but the entirety of the corpse-integrated monsters' Life Energy earnings.

Upon winning a Match, the Falud Team's prior Evaluation Score of 492,500 grew to 738,750. That was a whole 50% increment.

If they were ranked according to the new Score, their rank would have climbed nine positions and replaced the 6th ranking team.

But no such change occurred since the rank shuffling would only take after the First Segment.

Soon, the second Match began with the top two teams of Group-B, the Silephe Team (Rank-3) and the Geigawa Team (Rank-11).

While the latter team sent their strongest, a Tier-3 Low-Phase member, the former team did the same despite that being unnecessary.

After all, the one who climbed the stage was ranked 14th in the .

Despite being at Tier-3 Mid-Phase, Vorqen has combat power that exceeded the Tier-3 High-Phase.

For someone like him to be the first combatant was overkill. After all, their opponent team only had three Tier-3 Low-Phase members, whereas their team had two at Mid-Phase and two at Low-Phase of Tier-3, and that was after excluding Vorqen.

With a count of five, their team has the highest number of Tier-3 members, second only to the Earth team.

Even then, they didn't take it easy on the weaker team. It had to do with the rewards for winning matches.

With five teams in every Group, each team will have four Matches. Winning each Match would grant them 50% of their accumulated Evaluation Score.

As long as any team wins all four Matches, their Score would rise by four-fold.

With that in mind, Vorqen didn't want to give any chance to the opponent team, especially after watching Vral almost take down Halbor.

Soon, the 1st Bout began and before his opponent could do anything, Vorqen snapped his fingers once, and his opponent shrieked with his palms tightly pressing down on his ears.

The second snap brought his opponent to his knees, and with the third one, his opponent screamed his lungs out before falling unconscious.

The entire Bout didn't take more than ten seconds before ending with a one-sided victory.

From Vorqen's performance in the previous two Rounds, everyone had some clue of his 'Sound-type Innate Talent', but watching the Geigawa team's leader fall without even putting up a fight had left quite an impact on the spectators.

That was even more so for the Geigawa team members. They didn't continue with the 2nd Bout and directly admitted defeat, allowing Silephe Team to win the 2nd Match.

Before climbing down the stage, Vorqen looked towards the leader of the Tilephe team and threw a taunting gaze at him.

To which the other end responded with a scoff and a spit to the ground.

None of that came as a surprise to the onlookers since the feud between those two teams was an open secret.

As the technologically advanced life planets that hail from the same 'Star System', Silephe and Tilephe had their share of disputes over the resources, to the point that neither was willing to reconcile with one other.

The appearance of a brand new resource in the form of the Trial World had once again ignited their already volatile relationship.

Shortly, Felarial announced the two teams from Group-C for the 3rd Match.

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Earth Team (Rank-1) vs Owlite Team (Rank-6)

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The order in which the Matches were held, the pattern became apparent to all.

The first matches in each Group were between the top two teams in their respective Groups, making them the most important ones among all the 50 Matches in the First Segment.

That implied the first five matches would be the major deciding factor in revealing the Top-10 Teams of the Tournament.

The last nine teams, to be exact, since to everyone, the Earth team reserved the 1st position.

Everyone knew which team would win the 3rd Match, but they looked forward to the fight the Owlite team could put up against the top-ranking team.

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Author Note: I intentionally didn't go into details about Vorqen's Innate Talent and abilities. I will go into it when an intense fight unfolds between him and the Tilephe team leader.

And, After Earth vs Owlite, there will only be two big Matches left.

Group-D: 'Tilephe Team vs Polyphaga Team' and Group-E: 'Atlanis Team vs Ragath Team'.