Chapter 472: The Tournament Kicks Off

When Joshua woke up early in the morning he was met with a system message window that surprised him. It wasn't normal for the system to do an announcement early in the morning, but seeing as it was the day of the tournament it was likely that the message was going to be about the procedures for how things were going to work. There was no way that the system expected everyone to be at the battle arena all ready to go at a specific time. The amount of people that signed up for the tournament were far too many along with the fact that there were definitely going to be spectators at the battle arena as well which would make things an even bigger mess.

Joshua heard a loud thump from the room across the hall which told him his sister had been woken up by the message as well. It was likely that the message had been sent to everyone at the exact same time which would explain his sister's reaction. The message must have done something to wake her up so it was important for them to read it now instead of waiting around or going back to sleep. Joshua got out of bed and stretched a bit before gathering some clothes and opening the message to read on his way to the bathroom. Seeing as how neither his mother nor father had jolted up out of bed it was clear that the message had only been sent out to contestants.

[Congratulations on being a participant in the first major local tournament of the battle arena system. This tournament will begin in three hours with the preliminary rounds that will trim down the thousands of participants that have signed up. Before that time you need to make sure that you have all your equipped gear in your inventory that you plan on using throughout the tournament. When it is time for the tournament to begin you will be transported to the waiting area via teleportation where you will wait for your match.]

When Joshua had read up to this part of the message he was relieved that the system had a decent way to resolve the log jam that would have happened if everyone had to head to the battle arena before the matches would begin. It also made sure everyone had time to get ready beforehand so that there wouldn't be anyone just showing up with no gear after being teleported. Joshua turned the shower on so he could continue to read the rest of the message while the water got hot.

[The tournament will be available to watch live in person at the battle arena and will also be broadcasted on the battle arena network for free throughout the entire process. Only seats in the battle arena itself will cost any system points. For those participating in the tournament you will be automatically disqualified if you are not in the hub city at the time that the system starts teleporting everyone to the battle arena. You will also be disqualified if your level or experience amounts are different from the time that you registered for the tournament.]

That was an easy way to root out some of the people that planned on trying to break the most obvious rule that the system had set up for the tournament. The broadcasting of the tournament wasn't a surprise to Joshua since it would bring a lot of attention to the battle arena and it explained why Garlin had said she would be watching some of the matches last night.

[The tournament will be a week-long event with the preliminaries taking up the first three days so that a bracket can be set up for the strongest explorers in the hub city. Each of the first three days will have everyone fighting at least five battles to judge whether or not you will make the final bracket and what position you will be placed in on the bracket. The fourth day will be spent finding out who the last few people will be to make the bracket while also figuring out the positioning of those that will have high seeding in the final bracket. The remaining three days will be spent going through the brackets until we come down to the winner of the tournament. The prizes for the tournament will be listed in full once the bracket has been finalized. Good luck to all participants.]

Joshua thought on all of the information he had gotten from the system message as he finished up his showering and got freshened up for the day. He didn't put on his gear just yet since he still had a few hours before things would get started. One of the main things Joshua noticed about the system message was something that wasn't focused on this tournament in particular. He noticed the fact that this tournament was called a local tournament which meant that there would eventually be tournaments on a larger scale. It would be interesting to fight against people from other hub cities that Joshua hadn't even been able to interact with up to this point outside of at the auction house in a limited way.

That thought was something Joshua was going to have to keep in mind for later, but when it came to the tournament Joshua realized from the system message just how many people were going to be involved in it. The fact that it would take three days just to get through the preliminaries and a fourth day to get the brackets set completely showed the sheer volume of people that had decided to enter this tournament. Five matches a day just to figure out seeding was going to be a lot, but Joshua was fairly sure the higher level fighters wouldn't be fighting against each other during the preliminaries. That was especially the case since they were planning to weed out the weaker participants as soon as possible.

It did catch Joshua's interest when the system message said something about a special way of figuring out the seeding on the fourth day, but for now Joshua was focused on the preliminaries. It would be a huge disappointment if his seeding got ruined because he underestimated someone early on and was forced to fight someone from his own guild earlier than he wanted simply because his seeding wasn't high enough.

After getting cleaned up Joshua headed to the kitchen to get some coffee started. He knew his mother would be down soon and would want some so he started it up before heading over to the television and seeing what was going on with the news stations when it came to the upcoming tournament. He wasn't surprised when he saw an advertisement for the tournament itself scrolling across the bottom of the screen even when the reporters were already discussing the tournament. The more guild friendly news station was discussing all sorts of known participants that were supposedly big names going into the tournament. Joshua wasn't surprised when his name was shown on the list of people that the news crew was discussing along with some other key alliance members.

When he turned over to the propaganda filled news station that was backed by the World Government Guild it was a similar situation, but the news crew seemed to be only focused on World Government Guild participants in the tournament along with participants from guilds or mercenary groups that were known to work alongside the world government guild. Either way both channels were describing who they figured were going to be the favorites to when the tournament. Joshua didn't watch either station for very long since he wanted to relax and focus instead of constantly thinking about his possible opponents in the future. This tournament was going to be a bit of a marathon instead of a sprint, so focusing on specific competition wasn't a good idea.

While thinking along those lines Joshua could suddenly smell food from the kitchen along with the coffee he had already set up for his mother. It didn't take very long before his mother came over and sat down next to him with a cup of coffee in hand as she started watching the television with him. At the time Joshua had already turned it to the channel that was broadcasting stuff for the battle arena. When the tournament started this channel would broadcast several of the different fights throughout the day, but at the moment it was basically just scrolling through the match venues while trying to get people to come out to the battle arena to see the event in person.

"So are you and dad going to come out to the battle arena to watch the two of us in the tournament or are you just going to watch from home?" Joshua questioned after a brief bout of silence. He knew that his mother still had to go work at the hospital for some parts of the week, but with Grace being able to split the work with her now she had more time to sit around and rest. Plus the hospital wouldn't be nearly as busy with most of the high level explorers entering the tournament instead of going out on expeditions and dungeon diving.

"Your father has decided that he won't go watch you guys in the tournament until the bracketed portion of the tournament starts. He said something stupid about not wanting to waste time watching you two take down small fries." She said with an annoyed glance towards the stairs where the topic of the discussion was starting to make his way down. "You know how I feel about watching you two fight, but I'll make sure to come see some of them when I'm not working at the hospital."

"I'll get through them quickly so you don't have to worry." Joshua said as his father walked over and sat down in a nearby chair. The man was stone faced and completely silent at the moment. Joshua knew his father only got like this whenever he or his sister were about to get into a match. In the past when his father fought on his own he was as boisterous as normal before one of his own matches, but when it came to his children it was like a switch had flipped.

Eventually Amy made her way down stairs too and they all had a nice breakfast before it started getting close to the time for the tournament to start. Joshua went ahead and got all of his gear on and counted down the time for when he would be teleported to the arena. When the time finally he came he took in a deep calming breath before he was taken away in a blink of an eye.