Chapter 180: Alliance of Noobs
Translator: Double_L Editor: Hitesh_
The next day was London Military Academy’s turn. Their situation was slightly better than Cruxs’, but still, only managed to win one more round throughout the tournament. However, the students of London Military Academy were quite happy. At least, they were not the one with the lowest points.
Clearly, the Academy of Capth was filled with aces and elites, as they had sent out different candidates in the same categories, and those new candidates were still able to win round after round, not to mention those were not even the strongest ones.
Nevertheless, everyone knew that London Military Academy would be weaker.
Washington Military Academy was scheduled to take on Capth on day three. They were, in fact, top-notch amongst all A-Ranked academies. Washington Military Academy had always been drooling to become the next S-Ranked academy, and they had always been known as Capth’s greatest rival.
The arena was already fully packed early in the morning. Everyone was expecting an exciting tournament.
As usual, the tournament began with the Survival Challenge, and Washington Military Academy already demonstrated a surprising performance; the challengers might have lost, yet they were able to pressure their opponents by a close score of 2:3. The other A-Ranked academies instantly saw a ray of hope; perhaps, Washington Military Academy would really be able to cause a miracle.
Washington Military Academy suffered another loss in Intel Programming Battle. Yet, they bounced back by successfully obtaining a breathtaking victory in Heavy Armed Brawl and scored one point finally! It was not an ordinary point because it was a proof of them winning the whole category. Apparently, the candidate named Ali was born with an extraordinary physical strength, which then led him to become the super-elite, and also the hidden ace of Washington Military Academy. However, the uneasy surprise had heightened the awareness of Capth.
Students from the other academies were deeply encouraged by that round. They finally realized that Capth was not as invincible as it seemed like!
Meanwhile, Jia Gang, who lost that round, was deeply saddened by his carelessness. He blamed himself of underestimating the funny-looking fella, and in the end, he was bitten back by his own ego.
Just as the candidates of Washington Military Academy saw a ray of hope, Capth decided to send out Bisu for Battlecraft Combat, as it was time for him to "warm-up". In a flash, he managed to defeat three opponents in a row with his superb controlling maneuvers. The matches were so quick that his poor opponents didn’t even get to see what really happened.
It was totally outrageous! Yet to Bisu, those were nothing compared to his usual warm-ups.
Both Bisu and Flash were crowned as the living legends of Battlecraft Combat, and no one would be surprised if both of them would become two outstanding fleet captains in the future, or perhaps they would even create their own histories.
The excitement of Washington Military Academy immediately died down; they were completely overwhelmed by Capth’s dominating capabilities.
The tournament was followed up by the long-awaited METAL Combat, and Wally successfully won four times in a row without breaking a sweat, showing no mercy to the guests. In the end, Washington Military Academy managed to score only one point like Cruxs.
The Academy of Capth was indeed an indestructible fortress.
Nevertheless, Washington Military Academy was still able to shake the arrogance of Capth. At least they had managed to force Capth to send out their aces and exhausted them a little bit; but nothing more than that. What’s worse, that wasn’t even Capth’s strongest formation.
On day four, To-So Military Academy’s fate was even more depressing; they suffered a devastating humiliation of 0:10. Obviously, Washington Military Academy’s surprising performances had triggered their alertness and bloodthirstiness, but To-So Military Academy was the one to suffer in the end.
Students of the A-Ranked academies who were pretty confident a few days ago were utterly crushed after day four; the humiliation was unbearable. Without a doubt, every academy had recruited quite a few talents of their own. However, they had forgotten that elite "head-hunting" was not a difficult task in the era of talents blooming across the continent, and being one of the best S-Ranked academies, Capth would never miss a chance of recruiting their own aces as well. Regardless of Capth or the other A-Ranked academies, everyone had been busy all year round, recruiting talents and aces for the sake of their fame and glory.
Halmond didn’t show up during the competition against To-So Military Academy; there was no point of him being in the arena since the outcome was not a suspense at all. However, he was very excited about facing Samantha’s team, a team led by someone who was one of his best students. And to be honest, he was actually overjoyed by the rivalry between him and his former student!
Anyhow, people seemed not quite interested in the final tournament. The Ayrlarng-Bernabeu Alliance sounded quite weak to most of them. After all, two weak parties teaming up would only make themselves even weaker! Moreover, there was no way that the alliance would be able to do better than Washington Military Academy.
Only a handful of Capth’s students showed up, as most of them were already bored of watching their team owning every single academy, not to mention their aces might not be participating since the alliance was too weak for them to get involved.
Any match would have its own spectators if a tournament were held in some ordinary academy. However, this time the tournament was held in Capth, and due to the pride of enrolling in an S-Ranked academy, the students of Capth were quite "picky" when it came to battle matches.
Yet, unlike how the others reacted, Capth’s team seemed to be paying attention to the alliance. Perhaps it was due to Ma Xiaoru’s presence, or perhaps it was because Samantha was a former student of Capth, even Vice Principal Halmond had shown up.
As for the other academies, apparently, only Cruxs’ team showed up in the spectating area. Yet no one knew if they were here to see the alliance got humiliated or for other purposes. Clearly the rest of the academies had given up on them.
Samantha led the team into the arena; this too was the only day she showed up. Obviously, she knew that the matches during the earlier days were not worth her time at all, since that wasn’t Capth’s true performances.
"Vice Principal Halmond, what sort of competition system shall we use this time?" Samantha addressed him in a formal manner. The clash between the teacher and the student was about to begin.
"I’ll leave that for you to decide, we’re not bothered at all!" Halmond laughed in confidence.
"Since this event was all about self-discovery and learning from each other, actually, I have an idea. Why don’t we imply KOF system for both Battlecraft Combat and METAL Combat?"
"So, you were saying, three wins out of five rounds for Battlecraft Combat, and four wins out of seven matches for METAL Combat?"
"Indeed, so that everyone would get a chance to learn from each other."
"Haha, it seems like you’re pretty confident today, Principal Samantha. Very well, I accept your idea!" Acknowledging that this method would only increase the winning rates of Capth, Halmond had no reasons to turn down Samantha’s idea.
Li Ruo-Er finally showed up at the arena, and everyone seemed to have gathered their attention on both Ma Xiaoru and her for today, not to mention the girls were even more attractive as they showed up in their uniforms.
Both girls looked at each other. Li Ruo-Er gave her opponent a relaxed and confident glance, like she knew she would win in the end. On the other hand, Ma Xiaoru kept her cool and stayed alert. In fact, their battle had already started the moment they saw each other. Only Tactics of the Enchantress users were able to demonstrate such psychokinetic "attacks". Both Li Ruo-Er and Ma Xiaoru seemed to have shown an outstanding mastery of Tactics of the Enchantress.
Round one would be S-Ranked difficulty Survival Challenge as always. Capth would be sending out Li Ruo-Er, Cisco, Terrance, Wang Ben, and Wally!
Students of Capth were stunned by the "luxurious" formation. Aside from Li Ruo-Er, there were both former second grader No.1 Cisco and the current second grader No.1 Terrance, first grader No.1 Wally and the incredible Wang Ben. Everyone wondered why would Halmond arrange the super formation that was normally used against another S-Ranked academy to fight against a team of weaklings. It was like he was trying to shoot down mosquitoes with machine guns.
"What a team, Principal Halmond!" Samantha was surprised too. She didn’t expect Halmond would get so serious in the first round.
"Likewise. Frankly, I’m saving the best for Ayrlarng because all of us appreciate your participation very much! May the best team win." If Halmond hadnt said that in a serious manner, the whole sentence would sound like an irony instead.
The spectating students were confused because Li Ruo-Er was clearly more than enough to handle Ma Xiaoru. Yet Wally, Terrance and Cisco’s participation seemed a bit too much…
Even though Cisco had lost his No.1 title, he was still an elite amongst second graders. However, he seemed to be emotionally traumatized after the fight with Einherjar Wannabe. Yet, Halmond didn’t give up on him. A talented person like him needed to learn how to bounce back from defeats, which was why Halmond arranged his participation in this round.
Nevertheless, Halmond was not able to understand Wang Ben. Clearly, he still cared a lot about Ayrlarng, but he insisted on fighting against them. At first, Halmond wondered if Wang Ben was trying to let them win, but he immediately excluded that idea because the kid was the son of the honorable General Hu Ben, and he wouldn’t disgrace his family for sure.
Meanwhile, students of Ayrlarng were obviously infuriated as they saw Wang Ben’s appearance.
Ayrlarng-Bernabeu Alliance would be sending out Ma Xiaoru, Wang Tong, Apache, Hu Yangxuan and Cao Yi.
Apparently, the students of Capth only knew Ma Xiaoru, and had no idea who the rest of the were. Although Apache had won before, that was a long time ago, and no one seemed to remember his name.
Both teams decided to only send in the best candidates, because the weaker ones definitely had no chance surviving the scenario with an S-Ranked difficulty. Meanwhile, the spectating students were thrilled. Everyone knew how precise was Principal Halmond’s observation. and this formation meant that the opponents were very strong!
The scenario was then randomly drawn, and everyone went silent when they saw the drawn map. Apparently, the scenario was absolutely insane; the difficulty was impossible to be exact. However, the spectators thought that the alliance was lucky in drawing that map, as it would be humiliating to suffer a defeat in an easy scenario instead.
All of the ten candidates were randomly placed at the edge of the map, and everyone was given the same set of equipment. This time, it would be a race towards the designated goal, and those who were unable to finish before time limit would be eliminated, just like how the military treated its soldiers who failed their given missions.
In tough challenges like this, candidates had no choice but to go head on with even more complicated Zergs, well-equipped with higher intelligence and stronger powers. However, some of the Zergs’ data was altered in order to make them slightly stronger. After all, tougher difficulty would be able to increase fighter’s chances of survival during real battles.
This time, all of the ten candidates didn’t rush off blindly, but they began after taking their time in checking the equipment and memorizing their routes.
Everyone was given a navigation system which was able to detect Zergs’ presence at some point. However, the screen of the navigation system was filled with red dots, which indicated Zergs. Hence, it was kind of useless in this scenario. If anyone of them were to encounter a horde of Zergs, he or she would be toasted for sure.
Nevertheless, the coaching teacher had provided the team with some tips on handling S-Ranked scenarios like this. But to Wang Tong, those "tips" were a bit too technical for him, not to mention all of them had to beat the time limit as well. In the end, the best method was to charge!