Chapter 5: Seeded Examinees

Chapter 5: Seeded Examinees

"Holy shit! Who said that this Shye Crowley guy would lose quickly?!"

"Damn! I saw this Jason guy finish off his opponent within 3 minutes but he got finished off in 2 minutes?!"

"I'll remember this guy...Examinee number 352, Shye Crowley!"

Shye himself was shocked at how fast he was able to beat Jason Wilshire.

He had a small amount of hope that he would be able to beat his next opponent because of his recent upgrade but who would've thought that he would win in such a dominant manner?

Shye wanted to jump like a child and celebrate but for some reason, something inside him told him not to do that because it would be "uncool".

So instead, he followed his instincts. Shye simply turned around without saying anything.

[Congratulations! You've earned 21 points!]

"Shit, did you see that? He didn't even care about his quick victory. He must've known he would win easily!"

"Is this guy another dark horse?! Why did no one tell us about this Shye Crowley?!"

Shye was getting very giddy because of all the attention he was getting. Today was the first time that he was admired by people so he couldn't help but feel excited.

However, again, something inside him tells him to not do anything uncool so he simply took a deep breath and calmed himself down.

"Phew...Calm down...The assessment is not over yet."

After taking a few deep breaths, Shye opened the system again. He currently has 180 points which is enough for 9 attribute upgrades.

However, when he tried to upgrade the strength attribute to 11, he was deducted 40 points instead.

"W-What? Why did it deduct 40 points this time? Now I only have 100 points left..."

Shye was confused so he tried to upgrade the agility attribute with his remaining points. He managed to successfully upgrade it to 10 but he only had 20 points left after that.

Again, for some reason, the system was asking for 40 points to upgrade the agility attribute to 11.

"Oh...maybe every time I upgrade an attribute past 10, I will need double the amount of points to upgrade? Oh well, I'll just put the remaining points to dexterity and see how it goes."

Shye speculated. However, he didn't mind because he was very grateful that he even had a system like this.

Fortunately, he managed to squeeze out a win after trading blow for blow due to his superior strength.

He only earned a total of 80 points in those two fights because of his somewhat questionable performance against the guy who was good at parrying.

"That was close...Good thing I still managed to win...Seems like I need to improve my dexterity as well or I'll lose."

Shye quickly spent all of his points to raise his dexterity stat from 4 to 8.

He then walked towards the bulletin board to see the progress of the third assessment.

"I'm already in the top 32 huh? I didn't even dream of entering the top 100 but thanks to the system, I'm doing so well...Thank you old man Sanada for giving me this chance..."

Shye thought to himself.

He then checked who his next opponent was and as expected, it was a seeded examinee. Most of the ordinary examinees were already out of the tournament.

The top 32 consists of mostly the 20 seeded examinees and the 10 dark horses so aside from Shye, there was only one more ordinary examinee in the mock tournament.

"Examinee number 352, Shye Crowley, and examinee number 16, Alexander Smith, please proceed to sparring grounds number eight."

After hearing that he was called, he proceeded to the assigned training grounds with a serious face.

While on the way, he couldn't help but think about his opponent.

"16th strongest out of all the seeded examinees huh? I'm pretty lucky to not run into the single-digit examinees."

After a few minutes of walking, he finally reached sparring grounds number eight.

His opponent wasn't there yet so he entered the sparring grounds first. As he was taking deep breaths to improve his concentration, his opponent, Alexander Smith, finally arrived.

He arrogantly walked toward the middle of the sparring grounds without even looking at Shye.

Once he arrived, he even said something rude out loud.

"How did I get paired up with a commoner like this? How unpleasant. No one will be impressed even if I beat this no-name guy. Tch, how unlucky."

Shye didn't mind his arrogant attitude though, because he already expected that most of the seeded examinees would be arrogant.

"Same rules! Ten...nine...eight...seven...six...five...four...three...two...one...Begin!"