One of the workers at the hotel had already come to greet us before our caretakers to carry our bags and lead us to the main waiting area.

The lady with black hair and red eyes lead us through the reception hall where we were given a basic rundown of everything in the hotel. We then moved through a corridor into a pool area that currently didn’t have any water.

This central area gave one access to both the eating area, the bar, and the actual rooms, with more recreational buildings further down.

As I entered the large waiting area I instantly noticed how the children seemed to divide themselves into four major groups.

The children with noble backgrounds, similar to my sister and I, had a crest placed somewhere noticeable on their bodies.

For my sisters, it was on the cloth belts they wore around their dresses, and for me, it was simply on both shoulders of my dress shirt.

That being said none of us felt like we really fit into that group.

The next significant groups were those from the church.

There were seven major churches around the six great continents but in our country in particular there are only three which had significant influence, those being the Exceed church, the church of Reality and Magic, as well as the Deus Cluster.

While their religions were different their lived experience growing up in a church with certain expectations was not and since the beliefs of the different churches were compatible with each other all of these people gathered in one large section near the top left of the pool area.

Of course, even within that group people from the same church were more often than not grouped together with little but noticeable overlap.

The third and to me the most dangerous were the military brats.

These were children who were either the kids of prominent military figures, kids who had significant potential from birth who were bought, adopted, or otherwise sent to the military at an early age, and finally the people specifically born to join due to special programs.

These guys were born and raised to be killing machines with an education whose quality was equal to that of the nobles if a lot less personalized.

This was simultaneously their greatest strength and their greatest weakness.

One needed to remember that this was a sporting event, not a combat one meaning the vast majority of the things they had been learning their entire lives would actually be useless in this endeavor.

The fourth group was the people that actually earned the right to be here. This group could be further divided into two main sections, the relatively poor and the extremely poor.

The relatively poor were the children of wealthy merchants and the like who could afford to give their children a basic education and a diet that didn’t leave them malnourished.

Then there were the people who were uneducated and whose next meal was mostly dependent on whether they were able to win something here or not.

Unlike the people from the previous three groups who mostly got her by recommendation, these people had to go through many preliminary competitions against people just like them to get to the position they are in now.

They were all the best of the best the poor in this country had to offer, they were all far more experienced than the rest of us having to go through many events similar to this one to get here, and most importantly of all they were hungry.

Unlike the rest of us who were here for prestige, recognition and to maybe get something good at the end of it all winning or losing for people in the fourth group may literally determine whether or not they can survive the next winter depending on how bad their situation was.

“So where are you planning on going?” Rina looked at me wondering what she should be doing right now.

This was the first time she left the house in her entire life and it was in a massive crowd. It must have been overwhelming for both of them but Emma was a lot better at hiding it.

“I’m going to go around talking to people in the poor group, I may pivot into the religious group later. Overall I'm looking for stragglers who don’t seem to know anyone.” I said in a bored tone.

“I figure they will be easier to talk to than the people in established groups. Remember that the goal for today is to form connections with people who have potential and to gain information on potential future rivals. I think I will have the easiest time doing that talking to people one on one.”

Both my sisters simply nodded at me seeming to understand.

As I moved to join one of the major groups my sisters slowly followed behind me.

“No, no no… I’m going in alone,” I commanded.

“What? Why? We’re supposed to be doing this together aren’t we?” Rina continued speaking being the voice of Emma who seemed to just be staring at random people with a dead expression ever since we got here.

“It's extremely intimidating going to a bunch of lone strangers as a group of three meaning it would be harder to get information. In this situation splitting up means we can get a lot more information a lot faster”

“So what the hell are we supposed to do?” Rina piped up with clear worry in her eyes.

“I don't really know it's up to you?” after the saddest look of pleading I had ever seen appeared in her eyes I corrected my statement.

“You can either copy my methodology trying to talk to stragglers, or you could stand around in an open area waiting for someone to come to you”

“You may not have enough life experience yet to know this but for better or for worse people tend to like approaching pretty girls who don’t seem to be doing anything”.

Giving her a concrete plan to follow seemed to calm her down. She grabbed Emma by the hand and stood around staring at people with an intense look as if beckoning them to come to her.

I highly doubted that this execution of my strategy would be the most effective but she was trying her best and that must have counted for something.

***

After walking a good distance away from my sisters, I looked around the room to see if anyone was interested to talk to who wasn’t already in an established group.

After searching for about ten minutes I realized just how overwhelming this task was going to be.

When I first entered this waiting area with my sisters I had something to focus on and attach myself to.

Now that I was alone in a cluster with hundreds of other children a sickening sense of claustrophobia took over my mind.

I wasn’t good with crowds, they always had the effect of bringing up my anxiety levels.

When I was younger and had to go to school every day I had developed an entire arsenal of techniques to distract myself from the crowds of people I had to deal with daily and had gotten quite good at calming myself down.

Ironically when I became an adult it became a lot more difficult to deal with because as an adult you have way more freedom to just not interact with people especially if you have money meaning that I had been out of practice in the socializing department for years.

Looking back at my other childhood I had to remind myself to focus on positive thoughts, remember that people don’t actually care about me and what your going through and finally remember to act first and think later.

Your instincts are actually pretty good it's only when you start overthinking things that you mess up most of the time.

Calming myself down I began to think about what was the best thing for me to be doing currently.

‘What did it really mean to form connections with ‘useful’ people

Just like my siblings and I anyone here could have an incredibly strong class, a family ability, or cultivated some other form of skill or knowledge that made them amazing.

There was even a form of talent here that no one in my family possessed which was an affinity to the elements.

Right now standing all around me were the future great alchemists, politicians, worriers, practitioners and so much more of our country and the entire continent if they chose to take their talents elsewhere in the future.

Even if one didn’t show a particular talent now who was to say that they wouldn’t be able to show it in the future?

For me to be able to separate the wheat from the chaff with any semblance of a logical system was impossible so I simply relied on my instincts to complete the task.

I always had a strange intuition allowing me to predict the futures of others though I typically predicted negative outcomes rather than positive ones.

Looking around I eventually saw a girl around my age sitting in a corner by herself near some flowers mumbling something to herself.

She wore a ragged dress that was a size too big for her that seemed to have been green once upon a time before repeated washing over the years turned it a light shade of gray.

She gave off a sense of innocence, for a lack of a better term.

Not the innocence typically associated with childhood. An imminent sense of subservience or even defeat aimed toward the world itself was the best way I could describe the feeling I was getting from her in words.

Her hair was cut short and neatly combed, her skin was both pale and sick, and her overall unimpressive facial features and frame made her seem like even the weakest gust of wind would take her away without her being able to do anything about it. Everything except for her eyes.

Her eyes stared at the floor as if they were made of strong, sturdy, and unflinching marble.

It contained a will that was not forceful but unbreakable being able to withstand any disaster that crossed them.

I had no idea what the little girl had gone through or what she would become in the future but I felt something deep in my very soul pulling me closer to her.

Eventually, I bit the bullet and went up to her to introduce myself.

“Hey, my name is Norman what's yours?” that greeting was a bit of a classic but it still got the job done.

As the girl finally glanced up from the ground to look at me I finally got a good look at her iris, they were a beautiful shade of emerald green and I felt in my heart that I made the right choice in walking up to her.

That was until she just continued to stare into my eyes for a good ten minutes without saying anything or changing her expression.

Thinking that she didn’t hear me the first time, I said my name again.

“Hello, my name is Norman what's yours?”

The girl's eyes seem to open a slight bit larger before answering.

“My name is Taylor, why have you been staring at me?”

“Because after I greeted you, you started staring into my eyes for ten minutes straight,” I said with a light laugh trying to create a fun atmosphere.

I wasn’t really good in social situations but something I picked up over the years was that when in doubt laughing always seemed to get you out of even the worse social failures.

“You were already staring at me for twelve minutes before you walked up to me. Why was that?” She asked with unflinching eyes and a light girly voice.

Ever since she raised her head when I originally spoke with her she didn't move a single muscle except to speak.

Similar to my sisters she enjoyed staring, the difference was my sisters stared at others with intent while this girl's eyes seemed to be completely empty when looking at me as if she was staring at something way off in another world rather than my actual face.

“How can you prove that I was staring at you when you were looking down the entire time before I came up to you?”

“I don't see how me staring downwards hampers my ability to see”

“So what were you looking at before you spotted me?” I tried to smoothly divert the topic in as natural of a way as I could considering the circumstances.

“I was analyzing”

“Interesting, and did you find anyone interesting?” I tried to build on top of her last statement to keep the conversation moving something despite her dead-end answer. The topic of interesting people was the entire reason I was here in the first place so getting free information would help.

“Yes,”

I looked her in her eyes to signal her to continue talking but she just stared at me without saying a word.

Eventually, she broke eye contact looking into the distance before whispering.

“Please leave” the soft voice commanded me without a shred of emotion.

“Did you see someone in the distance coming towards us?” I for the last time tried to grab hold of the conversation.

“Yes” was all she said and continued to stare at me after she looked back in my direction.

Seeing as she was no longer interested in conversing I simply left hoping that the next person I came across would be willing to have a more impactful conversation.