71 In learning, efficiency is the key.

Now that Sofia got there, going and doing the same thing as she is a no-go.

There are only a few things that can be done while keeping that surface identity of the weaker end.

For now, I'll stay in a corner and try to find some way to unlock the students' soul strength.

If everyone is back to their previous, stronger states thanks to me, I'll acquire a good following.

I have two leads to follow to reach that goal. My first lead is that we can still manipulate our souls, my second lead is that we can still use our soul energy with our seed.

If we can still feel our souls and still have energy, why are our souls powerless?

[Sofia]

-Hey, want me to teach you how to get stronger? That's what we intended to do as soon as we got up, but we didn't expect the Director to stop us from interfering.

The first thing I need to do once I'm there is to do some damage control.

I just want everyone to connect the dots later on. They all are some pretty social people, so they are deemed to talk about my previous non-interference and my current interference.

It's going to limit the tarnishing of my public image that was done by being selected as "Student Council" by the Director, and allow me to continue to place myself as a savior.

Having the ability to arrive here first, I also don't doubt DarkSasuke already started working against me in my back.

On the opposite of Anna who needs me to survive, DarkSasuke just agreed on a temporary peace.

It also seems whatever he did worked pretty well. Anna getting more people than me alone was to be expected, but no fewer people went to Kawaii1 and Kawaii2 than went towards me. It means he did what he could to undermine my reputation rather than build his own.

As of now, this doesn't collide with my objective of being a leader in the eyes of the people, but it might collide at the worst possible time. People follow the strongest, but they also tend to want to overthrow the strongest. If my public image gets too bad, I might be overthrown.

But it won't be a problem if I play my pawns well.

What I can assume to be the only one to know about is the power of influence the seed gives me.

If they knew, there is no way DarkSasuke would let me teach the seed to so many people, and even with her life threatened, there is no way Anna wouldn't look conflicted.

[Anna]

When I get on the floating island, a single look around me allows me to know what happened. It's been a while I noticed DarkSasuke working against Sofia. Nothing forces me to inform Sofia of it, and so long as it doesn't work against me, I won't interfere.

If at first, my position in people's eyes was similar to Sofia, it quickly shifted to one similar to DarkSasuke. I'm reaping similar benefits with a much stronger starting popularity.

It didn't take me long to know of DarkSasuke's little meeting. And it also didn't take me long to make a decision about it.

I'll have some "friends" I trust sent to listen in.

Depending on what DarkSasuke plans to do with it, I'll act differently.

If he intends to plan a revolt against Sofia, I'll plan one that will use his as a cover and a stepping stone. If he intends to prepare an assassination plan, I'll also take that occasion to kill him. In all cases, I will know of his plan and be prepared to use it to my advantage.

[Sofia]

By the time I finished teaching my seed, it's soon to be time for the next batch to be thrown.

I then have a bit of time to think about what to do with these students.

I can't be bothered to tailor a different kind of manipulation for each, so I have to think about one that could be used for all of them.

One common point with everyone's vision of me is fear. No matter whether it is backed by logic, everyone feels fear towards people with power.

Then I should use that fear. I need them to pray at me or my object.

One would think they need a reason to pray, but this is where the manipulation can be used.

I just need to make them believe strongly that believing in me strongly alleviates their fears.

It'll have several advantages.

The first will be that the more they believe, the more they'll want to believe.

The second is that once they believe in me fully, they cannot feel any fear for themselves, as their entire lives would revolve around me. They then would do anything out of fear for me, rather than from me.

There are great chances that most wouldn't reach that stage, but chances are like anything, they can be manipulated. With enough time, I'll get them all to believe in me more than they believe in their own existence.

[11 / Jack]

The strength ranking of everyone was long established by the time the next batch is to be thrown.

The way it was estimated in such a short time is pretty simple.

A branched tournament wouldn't be able to rank everyone without mistake, as such, we had everyone fight as many rounds as necessary with different opponents and compared the results. Once someone entered for sure the top 1/3rd (such any result against at least 2/3rd of the other participants, removed people included, could be estimated), they were qualified. If someone was for sure in the bottom 1/3rd, we removed them from the tournament. It allowed for increased speed. We also didn't have people fight when they had strongly dissimilar results with a common opponent, such as one winning easily and the other losing easily, as the comparison alone was enough to determine the strongest of both.

[1]

Before the end of the small cycle, 1/3rd of the participant definitely entered the top 1/3rd, so there was no need to continue.

[Moar]

Throwing batches away really starts to get boring, they are prepared for everything and they even solved the problem of estimating strength… If I was a bad player, I would definitely modify the rules, but I won't. I'll just work around them. Let's just keep some consistency for a while.

[Sofia]

The next batch arrived, and I did the exact same thing as with the previous one.

It seems like some kind of routine started to establish itself.

It's a weird sensation, as everything the Director did so far seemed to go against routine. I'm pretty sure something will happen soon. I'm pretty sure it's going to happen before the next batch reaches the library.

He probably wouldn't let us save them.

[37]

In everything I did, I always believed in efficiency.

Efficiency has always been at the center of my life, and now it seems to be time for me to use it.

[1] This is actually my own variant of the Swiss tournament model. With beings who can manipulate huge amounts of data in a short time, this is the best way I could think of to rank them. This being in another world, I couldn't mention the Bradley-Terry model, but look it up if you're interested in the subject