Chapter 2293: Formation Finals
Sam immediately escaped as soon as his token turn yellow again.
It didn"t take long before it turned green though. One of the shadow mice attacked another opponent far away from his current location while Sam is escaping. As he hid himself, the people who are trying to hunt him down regrouped to figure out who among them is Sam"s current opponent.
It took an hour to figure out and confirm that they got the right one.
Once again, they embarked on a search. Of course, Sam appeared again that too in front of a completely different member far away from his opponent. A message immediately spread among the rest of the group while they started chasing him.
"We have eyes on Sam. We are chasing him now. Where is Sam"s opponent? Is he on the west side?"
"No. He is on the east side, Sam might just flee and hide in a different location before he can make it to the west side."
"We can"t wait and let go of this opportunity. Eliminate him. Inform the elders."
That is the small discussion among themselves and soon the message did reach the elders. The rest of the elders targeted this one elder.
"What are you guys looking at? I already lost two candidates. This would be the third one. He is also a decent prospect. I cannot just let him go. And this is his final year in second grade. He should have broken through long ago, but only stayed because of this contest.
I cannot do that to him."
"Then what about your academy"s ranking?
You yourself said that he is only a decent prospect. You are obviously not counting on him. He is also only partic.i.p.ating in Solo combat, in which he is definitely not going to win. I doubt he will even reach top 16.
But that Sam will push all the top ten rankings in the formation contest to the down. Not just that, the team from the gamble academy is also performing beyond anyone"s expectations.
If we don"t knock him down a beg right now, your academy"s plan will definitely go down the drain. I don"t think one candidate is that big of a sacrifice for capturing this guy." "Still..."
"We already agreed to do this. You cannot backdown now."
"But my damage is obviously higher."
"It is not that big of a deal. The two remaining candidates are the prospects to reach top 16, you can keep them. This is the last time, we are going to eliminate your candidate."
After some more discussion, the elder finally buckled.
However, it is already too late by then. In fact, even if they reacted immediately in the very next second, they would have still been too late. Because Sam had already planned this out. The moment his opponent was eliminated, the shadow mice already landed an attack.
The elder who grudgingly let go of his third candidate immediately got the news that his fourth candidate was attacked.
"f.u.c.kING h.e.l.l!!!"
He screamed on top of his lungs. His academy is not really that high up in the rankings to begin with. They are a relatively smaller academy that is not even part of the major regions. They are planning to increase their rank a bit high up and already partnered up with various norse academies.
Now, he is regretting it.
He was ecstatic as he managed to bring two candidates that could do well in solo combat, but they are the only ones left now and one of them is already engaged with Sam.
As much as he wanted to act confident because of the cultivation level superiority his student has over Sam, he couldn"t bring himself to.
His student is not the first candidate that targeted Sam with cultivation superiority on their side, but they are all dead.
Now he is not confident that his candidate will stay alive.
He immediately took out his communication token and said.
"Rinky, do not fight with Sam. Stop the pursuit immediately and go to hiding. Stay hidden as long as possible, until you get into top 16. Use the turtlesh.e.l.l strategy that we discussed." While the other elders gave him frowning looks, he brushed it off without even a courtesy nod as he walked away.
The first crack in the alliance is there. In fact, that might just be all Sam needs at the moment. If the other party is going to hide, then he can walk in the open and just finish his compet.i.tions in peace.
The next day.
Sam walked to the entrance of the academy.
The shadow mouse is keeping tabs on his target and he is completely out of everyone"s sight. So, he leisurely went to the compet.i.tion.
There are only ten people left and the final compet.i.tion is going to happen in the formation castle.
The same formation castle that was used in the freshman compet.i.tion. Of course, the formations would be changed and the whole thing will be updated to meet the requirements.
Sam is looking forward to this.
Soon, everyone including the elders all gathered in the open-air auditorium.
"Congratulations on reaching the top ten. You have already proven that you are the best of the best among your peers and contributed greatly to your academies as well.
Now, let"s talk about the final round of the formation compet.i.tion.
The winner"s academy will get one thousand academy points. They are of no use to the students, but are there to a.s.sign a numerical value to the position of the academy.
These points significantly impact the ranking of the academy. Anyway, that"s besides the point. All ten of you will gain rewards directly from the academy realm based on your rankings.
You can decide these rankings easily in this compet.i.tion though. Now, all of you will be sent into the formation castle, at different corners. The castle is full of formation traps. There would be illusions, obstacles and some other hindrances that are not even related to the formations. You could even lose your life if you are a bit too negligent.
Your task is to navigate through this castle and try to find each other. You will be fighting against each other. You can use traps that you set up yourself, or you can manipulate the
threats inside to attack others.
Whoever stays there the longest wins.
The only condition is that you cannot use your combat skills to attack others. You can only use formations and formations alone. Not even inscriptions or any object that has pre-made inscriptions can be used for this challenge.
Apart from that, there are several other rewards hidden in various spots of the castle. Finders
keepers.
There is no time limit for this round of compet.i.tion.
Stay as long as you want. However, do realize that with pa.s.sing time the challenges in the formation castle will be harder and harder. If you stay long enough you might even encounter third grade level traps or even fourth grade level illusions.
So, stay at your own risk.
And unless you are the last member there in the castle, you will not be brought out without
you forfeiting or dying.
Keep that in mind.
Also, no foul play. Dean Olaf and all the elders from the other academies are all watching the compet.i.tion. They are monitoring it. The formation of the castle itself might kick you out if you do something that you shouldn"t be doing.
Finally, all the best."
The elder stopped yapping and without even seeing if the students understood all the information, he just waved his hand and sent them all into the formation castle.
Sam arrived in the castle and found himself in a dimly lit room.
There is no door or ventilation. He activated his energy vision. Luckily it is not obstructed like
when he was in the illusion tower.
He could see a thin energy barrier covering the walls. The energy network of the barrier is a bit odd. He couldn"t identify the energy source or the formation nodes that are keeping this
barrier intact.
After some examination he concluded that the nodes are outside.
That means, he cannot interact with the nodes from here directly, but has to find a way to get
out of here.
That too with formations.
Sam went into a deep thought, not because he doesn"t have a way to figure this out, rather he has too many ways and he doesn"t know how to deal with this at the moment.
He came to a conclusion pretty quickly. He placed a formation with normal nodes on one side, but he didn"t complete the formation, only one gap is there. A gap for just one node. On the
other side of the room, he started placing another formation.
Once again with just one node blank.
Both of these formations are combined with s.p.a.ce element and another one is gravity formation. Both of them have one node each missing. And the position of those two nodes is
actually the same.
Sam took out a formation node in that place.
Both formations glowed and the whole room started vibrating.