364 Chapter 364: Docked

I glanced around at the other representatives who had gathered in the docks that was specified in the email. All of us had gathered here today for the fourth stage of the second qualifying round, and there was a mix of excitement, anxiety, glee, triumph and fear among the students milling about. Already I saw some people approaching each other to form alliances and scheme with each other to pick out specific targets.

There were a few who glanced in my direction and I knew that they were intending to eliminate me as soon as possible. If this was the typical web novel, their reasoning would be the cliché stupid "because he is trash", which made absolutely no sense when you thought about it. If I was truly trash, then they wouldn't waste time trying to get rid of me, and instead focus on the more dangerous opponents who actually posed a sizeable threat to their title challenge.

Nope, they were targeting me because they were highly aware of how dangerous I could be, with my summoning ability. Most of them had witnessed firsthand how I arrived in the Olympus City Hall atop the back of a dragon (Draco). Combine that with my reputation, they knew that they had to eliminate me before I could summon my big guns…or I would essentially dominate the stage. Well, not dominate as one-sidedly as you would imagine – there was still the chance that all the other representatives would gang up on me had overwhelm my strongest Constellation spirits and Celestial Guardians with sheer numbers. No matter how powerful I was, there was no way my individual pool of mana could compare to the combined mana total of almost fifty other students'.

Fortunately, ever since the location was revealed last night, I had – along with Harrison and the rest of my team – come up with what I hoped was a decent plan.

Glancing at the environment, I took note of what I could use to my advantage. The docks, as we called them, was a collection of piers and jetties built upon the Arctic shore. Despite the perpetual cold, the sea wasn't completely frozen because saltwater had a lower freezing point than pure water (about negative four degrees Celsius as opposed to zero degress Celsius). Even if the sea was frozen, it was still traversable. Usually, only the surface of the sea was frozen, so the shipping companies used a special type of ships called Icebreakers to plow through the icy surface. Using hulls that were strengthened both magically and technologically, they could shatter even the thickest of ice and sail through the frozen seas that embraced Aurora City's snowy shores.

The setting for today's stage was the entire dock area, which included the warehouses where the goods shipped by sea were stored before being delivered via transport to their respective destinations. There was a small shipyard where shipwrights and technicians could effect minor repairs and refittings for damaged and battered ships, either through technological or arcane means. That would make for a decent battleground. Then there were the various piers, where ships were anchored, slightly bobbing in the gentle waves, or held extremely still because their keels had been frozen in place by the icy sea.

In other words, plenty of hiding places. This would have benefited Cody more if he wanted to subscribe to his usual stealth and assassin techniques, hiding in the shadows, only to lunge out and catch an unsuspecting prey by surprise.

"The rules are simple," the tournament staff was informing us. "Don't leave the stipulated area, no killing allowed, no action with malicious intent allowed either. Those who are knocked unconscious will be automatically eliminated."

If you were wondering how they would know when someone was knocked unconscious, well…I could explain that with one word. Magic. Almost like a virtual reality simulation, the moment someone lost consciousness, he or she would be automatically teleported out of here.

Consulting the holographic map that had been emailed to me via my smartphone, I took note of the stipulated area and smiled when I remembered that it included a large swathe of the sea. In other words, as long as I was within the boundary, I could take cover under the sea if I had to. That made things a lot easier.

My friends had laughed when I suggested the idea yesterday.

"You're kidding, right?" Craig had asked. I had shaken my head.

"Nope. I'm dead serious. I should be able to make use of the underwater environment to my advantage."

Dong Fang Yue Chu had guffawed as well, but for different reasons.

"That's a crazy plan, but I like it! I can't wait to see what the expressions of the other representatives will be like when they find out you've been hiding underwater all this time!"

"Yeah."

"Hmm…" Harrison had pondered on my suggestion, having taken it more seriously than the others. "That sounds like a good plan. Remember, there are two ways to gain points. One is by eliminating others – you earn a number of points for each person you defeat. The second is the order in which you remain – meaning, the longer you survive, the more points you gained. As you recall, the last 10 remaining gain an extra 10 points each."

Of course, the only way to end up being the last 10 was to eliminate others, so we couldn't just hide and avoid conflict totally. In fact, the amount of points we received from defeating other participants were significant, to the point that it was possible to score more points than the last ten survivors, provided you took out a lot more opponents than they did, and they didn't actually actively participate in combat. Of course, that was unlikely, considering how greedy everyone was for points, and only the teans with the top twelve tallies would qualify for the knock-out stages. There was too much at stake to play safely and passively.

"It's just for as long as until I can summon my Constellation spirits or Celestial Guardians," I had assured my friends, who looked unconvinced.

"We'll trust you." To everyone'e surprise, it was Pearl. She nodded fiercely. "We are the ones who asked you to do this…to represent us for this stage. We are the ones who said that we will be counting on you. We will believe in whatever strategy you have come up with."

I had smiled, relieved. Now that I had gotten their approval, I could begin to employ my strategy. I called it…Operation Seasick. I was going hide in the sea until everyone got sick of looking for me. Just when they thought they were safe, I would emerge from the frozen waves with my chosen Constellation spirit – serving as a stand-in for the ubiquitous sea monster – and strike fear into their hearts. Or to be more precise, strike that sickening feeling in their hearts where they regretted not having dove into the sea to search for me.

Truthfully, it was going to be difficult for them to look for me in the sea, not unless they were ice mages. Even I wasn't very confident that I would be able to pull this off if I hadn't done that last-minute training and learned ice magic next to that Thousand-year-old Ice Essence in the Den of Dragons last week or so. Ever since that fateful event, I had spent a good portion of my waking moments trying to hone my ice magic, even when I was participating in the mission to rescue Anastasia. Okay, it was difficult to practice ice magic in the wilderness, but I managed to squeeze a couple of hours of revision during my breaks, when I wasn't on shift.

Even when I was accompanying Redfield to search for Ana in the forest, I was occasionally casting ice magic so as to commit them to muscle memory or something similar. In this case, I guess it would be spiritual memory?

"If there are no other questions," the tournament staff declared, his stern tone dragging me back to the present. "Then we shall begin. You can all disperse and take up your positions."

"!!"

Almost as if by the snap of his fingers, all the representatives disappeared. We were completely invisible to each other. This was the segment of the match where we were essentially given a brief period of protection, so that the match wouldn't immediately erupt into a violent free-for-all right from the start. This "grace period" was meant for us to take up whatever positions we thought were advantageous, and allowed us to begin employing whatever strategies we came up with the night before. If we happened to materialize right next to each other, we could either begin small skirmishes – which would attract other students to our location – or we could quietly strike alliances. Most people would do the latter because, well, if you guys chose the same position to start off with, chances were you probably thought alike and would work well together.

Of course, there were those predetermined alliances – people who had already discussed and formed alliances before the match – who had already agreed on their meeting places beforehand. If they didn't suspect it to be a trap, they would proceed to that meeting place so that they could start off as a team as soon as possible.

There were cases where the proposals of such alliances were traps, and the mastermind would seize the chance to eliminate his or her would-be partners immediately, once the stage officially began. Thankfully, such cases were rare, because it usually meant that the school the representative belonged to would be blacklisted and singled out for retaliation, especially in the later stages. Nobody would trust the school and form alliances with them again, not just for this year's tournament but for future ones as well. Such shallow victories for a single stage just weren't worth it.

I had an inkling that most of the students would hide themselves aboard ships and the like, seeking refuge within those immense vessels and looking for an opportunity to strike. Unfortunately, as I said earlier, passive play was not encouraged, so the majority of them wouldn't bother to hide and wait, or they would risk losing out on points, especially if nobody passed by the ships they were concealed in. Furthermore, there was the destructible environments rule. I wasn't sure how they did it, but this was just a replica of the real Aurora Docks, which were still operating normally in real-time. This wasn't virtual reality, but an alternative space created through magic. Though the rule said no killing, the truth was that no one was going to die in the space (which was why we were not allowed to leave the stipulated site) because of the boundary fields set up to ensure that no one would die from an unfortunate accident.

With that in mind, the destructible environments rule allowed participants to…well, destroy the environment. So we could blow up ships, demolish the warehouses and destroy the jetties. Pretty fun stuff – I bet this was what DICE wanted to do with Battlefield 4 but couldn't quite accomplish. Too bad, I guess.

Glancing at the timer, I saw that the countdown had begun. It was best to quickly move before the grace period was over. I jogged toward the beach, took a deep breath, and then stepped atop the ice. The surface of the sea had totally frozen over from the sub-zero temperatures, and despite my winter gear I still couldn't help but shiver from the cold. Mastering ice magic didn't make me immune to the cold, just more resistant to it.

Glancing around, I saw that there was no hole where I could dive through, no liquid portion for me to plunge under. I didn't want to break a hole through the ice in such an obvious, visible place out in the open. While it was unlikely that anyone would glance in the direction of the frozen sea and study it in great detail, I wasn't going to take any chances. A hole in the ice would be an immediate giveaway that someone had tampered with the ice and decided to take a dive. After all, water mages could survive underwater for a long time, without needing to come up for air. I was not a true water mage, but the basic water spells I had learned were more than enough to help me breathe underwater longer than a regular person.

So instead, I went under one of the jetties, where I was completely obscured from the view of anyone on the surface. Taking a deep breath, I drew my sword and cut a hole through the ice, prying it loose as quietly as possible. Closing my eyes, I steeled myself before I reluctantly lowered myself into the ice-cold sea below the ice.

"Ugh…!"

My body instantly locked up, my teeth chattering violently as I shivered from the intense cold. Despite my protective mana keeping me relatively dry, I still wasn't able to keep the cold from totally seeping past my magical defenses. I could, of course, increase the amount of mana I was infusing my protective aura with, but that ran the risk of not only exhausting myself and depleting my mana reserves at an unsustainable rate, but also rendering me much easier to detect. I had to lower my mana emanation to the absolute minimum if I wanted to escape any form of detection. And given the skills of the participants in the area, I wasn't sure if that was even realistic. However, more than escaping detection, I was concerned with preserving as much mana as possible. Mana conservation was my goal, not stealth. I was never good at stealth, and I wasn't even going to try.

Moreover, I would be inevitably emitting mana as I cast my powerful summoning spells. No matter what the spell, it cost mana, and thus there was no way to contain the mana emission when I cast it. The upside, fortunately, was that these mana emissions were pretty vague and difficult to pinpoint, and also that there would be almost fifty other students casting their own spells at the same time. With so many mana flares and signatures all over the docks, mine would just be another ripple in a huge lake. Even if they noticed my mana emissions, those would be swamped up by countless other emissions, and by the time they eliminated enough of each other to notice that something was not quite right, and the emanations were coming from a weird direction, it would be too late. I would already be able to summon something spectacular.

I controlled my breathing underwater and stabilized myself while floating almost helplessly in the freezing waters, and waited for the stage to begin.