Delia sat alone in the stands surrounded by hundreds of other nervous partic.i.p.ants. She hadn"t come with anyone, since her father had disappeared again, and the area was far too large to find those she knew. After all, it was a stadium that housed tens of millions of people, she didn"t even have any idea who knew she was fighting and who didn"t.Because of the size of the arena, it could hold hundreds of battle royales at once. However, it didn"t for the sake of entertainment and allowing the audience to take in as much action as possible. This meant that Delia"s group would often be a kilometer or more of distance apart from any other battle royales taking place at that time.
Maybe the worse part about this was how difficult it was to tell who was fighting when for casual spectators. Clans had access to the numbers that corresponded to partic.i.p.ants, and as such could know when their contestants were partic.i.p.ating. But, Delia didn"t have this luxury. In the end, she could only search the monitors for her own number so she knew when she would be fighting. Other than that, she couldn"t contact anyone. She could only hope that she would eventually be grouped together with someone she knew so that they could head to a seating area together.
The only exceptions to this rule were those outstanding characters that the monitors often focused on. The six beauties were often the subject of much love, so the monitors often showed their appearances, making sure that the crowd knew when they were fighting.
The same was true of the top 20 rankers, of course not including the top ten, or eleven, that were sitting out.
Then there were miscellaneous and rising stars like Caedlum, Vidar and most definitely Thor.
Ava was partic.i.p.ating in the world tournament as well, and she too had made it through the first two rounds. However, the more she searched out for Tammy, the less of her she found. Tammy was Ava"s entire motivation for this tournament. Ava had been dead set on getting revenge with her own hands for her supposed best-friend"s betrayal. But… It seemed like Tammy had purposefully decided not to partic.i.p.ate – instead watching her elder brother Thor sweep through his rounds with his usual deadpan expression.
This only made Ava all the more angry.
Her twin blades, only a bit shorter than Arios", swirled in her delicate hands and her blazing red hair waved wildly in the wind. She wasn"t nearly as domineering as the others, but she was still amongst the best meridian formation experts and, as such, managed to climb her way to the top 2 500.
That said, there was another motivating factor pushing her along with Delia. Neither liked how Dyon was being treated. They had settled on the same solution as Ri and Madeleine. They were going to rank as highly as possible to find an opportunity to refute everything they had heard. And the only way to do this was to perform outstandingly.
Delia"s thoughts were interrupted by the flashing of the number plate she had received at the beginning of all of this. "It seems it"s time…"
Delia was among the first group of five battle royales to go out. She knew this was a good opportunity for her friends to spot her.
This round was to narrow 2 500 to 200. Afterwards, there would be a ma.s.sive battle royale of 2 300 to decide the last 790. However, no one wanted to be a part of that final group.
Although it wasn"t said, unlike the previous rounds, this final round would have extra obstacles that the others hadn"t had. This final round was painted as a final chance, but in reality, it was a ma.s.sacre. It was cruel and simply not humane.
Delia, though, didn"t seem nervous. She was giving off a constant and radiating cold even in her base form now. It seemed as though her const.i.tution would burst out at any moment. The truth was, Delia couldn"t even tell which was the real her anymore. But, what she did know, was that her const.i.tution was her ticket to her final round.
"Just 24 enemies left…"
Delia lightly jumped and landed onto a large white platform. It was an odd construction because the platform itself actually hung on an array as opposed to being planted onto the ground. It was likely to test for "outs" – which was essentially to eliminate those who fell out of the arena without the bias of refs. This was again another testament to the "fairness" the Cavositas wanted to show.
That said, outs wouldn"t be how they decided the final rounds, it was only to make the battle royales quicker.
The crowd began to cheer much to Delia"s confusion. But, when she looked around at her opponents, she immediately understood.
One of the six beauties, Kami Aiko had lightly landed on the same platform as Delia.
She was a seductive beauty with short bob-cut hair. She wore a short kimono, but it seemed to deviate wildly from the usual conservative and silhouetted focus of the usual kimono.
Hers was a light blue and was so short that her legs were nearly in full display. Aside from that, the sleeves were so long and drooping that not only were her hands not visible, but they also surpa.s.sed the length of its skirt. The only semblance of an arm that could be seen was by the short blades that were just barely in view at the ends of her sleeves.
The crowd reacted almost violently to the appearance of this beauty. But then, boos started to reign down almost immediately with the appearance of a young man with pale grey to green hair – it was hard to tell.
He landed right beside Aiko and grabbed her waist domineeringly, almost as though to let everyone know that she was his.
That said, his move didn"t go over so well for him as a blade found its way mere inches from his throat.
"Hey, hey, we have the same goal, don"t we beauty?" The young man chuckled as he jumped away under the boos of the crowd. "How could you treat someone from your own planet such a way, we should be comrades."
"Watch your hands Elric, or I"ll be sure to tell Jace about this." Aiko still had smile on her face, but it was decidedly cold. Her delicate features seemed more dangerous than they should be.
"The Clyte brothers share all things," Elric patted his chest righteously, "Why shouldn"t I be able to have a taste of my brother"s woman?"
"Keep talking and see if I don"t cut your tongue from your mouth." Aiko turned away.
Delia"s brows furrowed. Not because of the interaction, she couldn"t have cared less. But, the Clyte name was something she very much had reservations about… Was this the same clan that took her mother away? Was her mother here? Was she watching?
Delia"s eyes darted around as though to look for something, but she suddenly felt a chill creep up her spine. When she looked up, she found three cold gazes on her.
One made perfect sense. It was a sister from the Niveus sect. In fact, it was a senior sister who had just recently stepped into the essence gathering level. Delia didn"t have much of an impression of her, but she didn"t know that she called herself Lilac.
But, what truly confused Delia was that the two members of Planet Naiad that had been arguing before, Aiko and Elric, had focused their gazes on her as well.
Everyone in their group seemed to pick up on this, only the crowd seemed completely oblivious and continued to cheer as loudly as before.
The referee for their battle royale noticed this as well, but there was nothing he could do. These were the cards she was dealt. If she didn"t want to deal with it, she still had the option of jumping off of the arena. But, the question was… Would she have the time?