In the past two weeks and more, Rui had beaten all the small and medium fries with ease. The theory he had come up with had turned out to be remarkably accurate. He hadn't run into a single top-level Martial Apprentice at all in the past two weeks. But he suspected that to change soon, the number of mid-level Martial Apprentices were almost running out, any time now he would begin being pit against the top tier Martial Apprentices.
His prediction had come to be true.
Suddenly, the doors to the facility opened, drawing the attention of the contestants and staff members.
What drew their attention was the force of mind that they'd felt. Squire Kyrie, who was the head supervisor of the preliminary contest walked in. Behind her, a team of support staff members pushed in a rolling notice board.
"Martial Apprentices." She addressed all of them. "Gather around."
Everyone wordlessly heeded, curious as to what was going on.
"The preliminary contest has reached its final stretch." She remarked. "A representative needs to be chosen soon. Thus, the Martial Academy has expedited the scheduling and has pre-scheduled all the remaining matches of the preliminary contest."
She waved her hand, gesturing at the notice board as the staff unveiled it. "All remaining matches have been scheduled. We will provide all of you with a timetable containing the schedules of your own battles. You will be expected to appear ten minutes before your match. Failing to appear at the scheduled time will result in an automatic loss, so do not be tardy. You will have access to healing and rejuvenation potions, so do not be tardy, there will be no second chances."
The announcement caused a wave of tension to spread through the crowd. The staff member immediately began handing the Martial Apprentices their timetables, it was far too inconvenient to skim through the dozens of matchups scheduled every day looking for one's own each day.
"This..." Rui subconsciously murmured as he glanced at his own timetable.
From that day forth, he was scheduled to have only one fight per day. But that wasn't the eye-drawing part.
Each of his opponents were people who had perfect scores!
All wins and zero losses.
This was explicit confirmation of his observation. This would not have been possible if these Martial Apprentices had faced each other at some point. They, like him, had probably built the perfect record mopping up the lower and mid-tier Martial Apprentices of the Academy.
At the very beginning of the preliminary contest, there were nineteen Martial Apprentices with perfect scores. However, since then seven of them had lost atleast one match breaking their win streak. These Martial Apprentices weren't weak, but were clearly one notch below those that had managed to remain unbeaten from the very start.
Rui grew excited, as a grin crept onto his face.
This was where the true battle for the representative would begin!
Everybody knew that the first twenty days of the preliminary contest was merely to filter out the losers who never had a chance in the first place. The scoreboard after twenty days would reveal the elite few that had a realistic chance of being chosen as a representative.
Rui skimmed through the list of names he would be fighting.
Eleven fights in eleven days.
These were the strongest of the strongest. Most of them came from illustrious Martial families in the Martial communities. Nel and Rui being one of the few exceptions.
What he found curious was that his very last match was scheduled against Kane.
And his second-to-last match was scheduled against Nel.
He was scheduled to fight Fae six days from then.
These three were the most threatening to him all out of all of the eleven.
He was curious about when these three would be fighting against each other. He skimmed through the notice board, looking for fights that had two of these three. Quickly noting them and their order.
Kane's battle with Nel was just one day prior to his. Rui was glad that two of his three most difficult opponents were as further away as possible, allowing him to gather all the data he could possibly want. In the past nineteen days, he had carefully observed as many fights of all of them as he could, especially Kane and Nel, since these two freaks deviated too much from conventional.
He had keenly observed their tactics, approach, tendencies and quirks, reactions and responses, strengths and weaknesses. Growing more and more prepared to fight them.
The reason he had focused on Kane and Nel in particular more than Fae was because his previous knowledge on Fae not as outdated as his previous knowledge on Kane and Nel.
He never had any information on Nel in the first place, thus it became much more imperative to gather information on him.
As for Kane, a lot of the old information Rui did have was now simply outdated, or at the very least needed some updating. This was the power of the Void Step technique. This technique singlehandedly changed the entire equation and the entire game! Now, all of a sudden he needed to be extremely careful fighting him, not just because of the Void Step technique, because old information might end up causing his downfall. At the very least, until he was able to account for the Void Step technique, he would need to forget everything he knew about Kane.
All in all, he had a tough time ahead of him.
"Our match is scheduled last huh?" Kane frowned. "That's funny."
"The remaining matches are not going to be easy." Fae noted. "These Martial Apprentices are no jokes, even if I'm confident of victory."
Rui nodded. If he was not careful, one of these might just pull a victory from under his feet!