With the events unfolding earlier, the crowd of individuals who were still trying to sign up their students remained in line while the rest all quickly went inside the stadium before breaking off into groups of those who were entered into the tournament taken in one way while their teachers or masters were taken the other way by the coliseum"s staff.The morning went by rather quickly, as it was finally time for the Griffin Academy students to sign up for the tournament one by one. There was a rather affordable entrance fee for each child, and the dean quickly paid the entire amount by himself. If the dean was going to be stingy about such a thing, then Griffin Academy would never be able to recruit even the weakest children to study.
And so just like everyone else before them, Lance and the rest of the students broke off from the teachers and the dean as they were escorted to their own small room within the coliseum. Once they were situated, they all felt that the pressure they had felt early was lifted at least for the time being.
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"The dean really put a lot of trust into us, so we need to do our part and at least survive the first preliminary round. Out of all of us present here, I think Lance might be our best bet in order to make a new name for Griffin Academy." a student named Zack told the rest as they all settled in and sat with one another.
"That is not true, I am sure that you have all heard, but there will be a handful of 4th rank mystic experts partaking in this tournament. Even though I have at least a chance going against a 3rd rank mystic expert, it is not like I would be able to stand a chance against a 4th ranked mystic."
"I do not want to worry any of you, but I haven"t broken into the 2nd rank as a mystic because I think that for whatever reason, I either need a way to absorb a large amount of mana in a very short period of time, or I must push myself extremely hard in a battle. If I do not breakthrough soon, it is hard to say if I could survive fighting against an experienced 3rd rank mystic even with my trump card being that I am pursuing the path as a dual master." Lance told the group with a sour look on his face.
Seeing the dean betting something which was clearly his most precious item for this group of students and Lance to get further into the tournament compared to a top tier academy made his stomach turn. It was possible that Lance would breakthrough into the 2nd rank of the mystic path during this first preliminary round, but it wouldn"t mean that he would feel safe doing so.
When breaking through into a higher rank, experts are incredibly vulnerable to an enemy"s attack. Therefore, if Lance"s only chance to breakthrough was when he was surrounded by countless demonic beasts in an area, it would be equivalent to gambling on his life compared to just breaking through into the next rank while situated in the academy.
Hearing Lance"s explanation as if he had absolutely no confidence made the surrounding students feel rather gloomy as the atmosphere in the room became rather thick. However, after a brief moment of time, a female student responded to Lance"s words by slapping him across the face. Hitting Lance without holding back across the face made everyone jump up and afraid of what would come next.
"How dare you step on our Griffin Academy"s pride and ability to compete with all of our compet.i.tors just because you think that walking down the path towards immortality should be easier!" the female student shouted in Lance"s face as a tear slowly streamed down her eye followed by many more.
"Not just you, but everyone here has their own struggles and stories about how they weren"t born into the best of circ.u.mstances or how since they could walk, they had to work diligently just to get by. But here you are, the one person in our group who could get the furthest because you still somehow worked harder than all of us here, are telling us that we shouldn"t believe in ourselves or you?"
"If needed, I would lay down my life for our academy because without it, I wouldn"t have the means to send some money back to my family in our village so that my parents and little brother could eat. I do not know what your home is like, but for you to stomp over not just us, but the dean and the help he has given to each of us it not something that I could condone!"
Listening to a fellow student of his and feeling the pain she felt, caused Lance to shed a single tear before raising his hand up. "You are right, I will make sure that I will bring glory to our academy and need you all to feel the same way. These preliminary rounds will test us all like we have never been tested before and the slightest doubt in our hearts may as well cost us our lives." he told the students as the female student who had slapped him sat back down.