This tournament surely was a big deal in Atlantis. I had never seen so many people gathered for a tournament like this.
Maybe it was because the Royal Academy came into Atlantis and took part in this tournament, but the stadium was filled right to the brim with people shouting and cheering on their favorites.
We were currently in some kind locker room where the teams would get ready to go in and fight against one another. All the participants were gathered in this locker room, however, everyone stayed in their corner eying the other teams with serious gazes.
I couldn’t see the Ocean Outlaws’ team, but I wasn’t too worried about it as I somewhat trusted the information I had gotten from Finn. He had been so scared of me that the chances of him lying were practically zero.
Nevertheless, I had gotten a run through of the rules of the tournament as soon as I had arrived to the stadium with the rest of my students. We were just a little bit late, so they were quite impatient with us, guiding us directly to the locker room where we were staying currently.
“So, did everyone understand how this will go down?” I asked to make sure.
“Uh…could you repeat them one last time?” Darla asked.
I sighed but still did it either way. “It’s quite simple. This tournament is a team-based tournament where we will face other teams, such as Oliver’s class. One person will step up on the arena and will face one person. If you win, another person from the opposite team will come up while you will stay in the arena, and it will continue until either team runs out of fighters. The team who still has fighters will win, obviously.”
This time, all the students nodded their heads repeatedly.
“Who’s our opponent for the first match?” Olivia, Ava’s daughter, said as she raised her hand as high as she possibly could.
Before I could even attempt to answer, a sickly man approached us with a wicked smile on his face.
That man was Oliver.
“It’s us. You will face us in the very first round, which means that you’ll be able to go back to sleep quickly,” Oliver said as he giggled a little because he had heard of me oversleeping.
“Hm, that wouldn’t be too bad, but I don’t think that will happen.”
I looked proudly behind him at the students behind him, and none of them were impressive to my eyes. I knew that all of them were summoners, so I couldn’t judge them from their physiques. But, I couldn’t feel anything remotely dangerous for most of my students being emitted from them. Well, there was one of them who gave off quite a bit of aura, but he was the only one. The others were average…well, average compared to the Apex class.
“I’m not too sure why you’re so confident, but, uh…good luck?” I said with a shrug. “You’ll clearly need it.”
Oliver just laughed straight at my face for some reason.
However, I honestly couldn’t understand why he was so confident. There had to be something, but I looked at his students and there wasn’t anything that scared me in the least.
The test for my students on the very first day should be much worse than whatever this was. Those students couldn’t summon a Cyclops, I was sure of that much.
“Caedrel? Is that you? What are you doing here?” Someone else said on my right.
I didn’t even need to look in his direction to know the owner of that voice. It was someone who had spent most of last night with me at the auction house, Lurok. Finn was right beside him, eying him over and over again, indicating that he was his boss.
It seemed that my intuition had been the right one. Lurok really was the boss of the Ocean Outlaws. However, there was one thing that was once again weird.
Finn had told me that his boss was a person with a lot of strength and power, but Lurok wasn’t that whatsoever. He had connections, but in terms of pure fighting strength. He had to be lacking or maybe there was once again something that was escaping me like those eyes of his.
I knew there was a deep and complex power embeded into those eyes of his, and no matter how hard I tried to look into them and figure out what it was, the more confused I was. I would need to experience their power first hand to figure out what they could do.
Nevertheless, I shook my head and dismissed those thoughts.
“Oh, well I signed up my class to the tournament. I thought it would be good practice for them. What about you? What are you doing here? I thought you would be tired because of last night.”
Lurok frowned momentarily, seemingly thinking of a multitude of things. However, it only lasted a few seconds at most.
However, as much as Lurok was frowning, Finn, who was walking beside him, was the most confused of them all. I could see it on his face when I mentioned ‘last night.’ After all, Finn remembered being practically tortured for answers yesterday about his boss, but now…we had already met.
Something was wrong. At least, that’s what I figured was going through his mind.
‘Still, this tournament isn’t as useful as before for me,’ I thought in the back of my mind.
After all, I had learned yesterday that the chances of Lurok being involved with Perdere were extremely slim since he had no reaction to him mentioning the name before leaving, which even Zero hadn’t managed to cover up. Nevertheless, it was still an opportunity to see if he was linked to the appearance of the demon on the Atlantis soil.
“Lurok, care to make a bet with me?” I said with a smile as Oliver suddenly turned once more in my direction, furious.
“You already have a bet with me; why are you trying to make another one?”
“Can you stay silent for a second? Adults are talking.” A smirk formed on my face as I saw Oliver lose his mind, trying his best not to curse me.
Lurok also ignored Oliver as if he was completely invisible.
“What kind of bet?” He asked.
“The one who goes the furthest in the tournament has the right to ask all the questions he wants to the loser, and the loser has to answer all those questions truthfully.”
Lurok shook his head. “Three questions.”
‘I expected one.’
“Sure, three works.”
