Chapter 98 Cards And Points

Zavier's team consisted of a tall and beautiful woman, and an average looking boy who seemed a little sturdy.

The girl was named Rebecca while the boy was called Andrew.

Rebecca had a slender waist. Zavier thought to himself that it was so small that he might even be able to grab it with only one hand. Her slender body only accentuated her perky breasts and the bulging chest even further. As a high school student, assets like that were basically top tier. Her figure was something girls her age would kill for.

However Zavier didn't find her to be very enticing. Even Calista had seemed more charming to him when compared with Rebecca. The reason for that was the dressing that she had done. It was overly flashy like an arrogant peacock had come out to dance among the common birds. It was extravagant and downright flashy to the point of being blinding. Most of all, he abhorred the expressions on her face as if standing along with them was tarnishing her reputation or like she was being forced to step into dung. She had folded her arms around herself in an attempt to shield herself from the disease that commoners suffered from.

Zavier was disgusted by such people the most. They had ego for blood and shit for brains and yet pretended to be the most noble existences in the world.

Zavier took one look at her and understood what kind of a person she was. So he didn't need to associate himself much to her. He greeted her before turning to the more honest looking person among the two.

Andrew had no distinguishing features, or an exceedingly handsome appearance. He had one of those common faces that one would come across while walking around the street every day. But due to that Zavier felt that he might have known Andrew from somewhere. Although that wasn't possible, Zavier still managed to cultivate goodwill towards the boy just based on that feeling.

Though Andrew looked plain, he had quite a sturdy physique and looked fit. It looked like he worked out a lot and had paid a lot of attention to the development of his physique. Either that or he was naturally gifted with such a marvellous physique.

Zavier liked this person based on his gut feeling. Zavier felt that this person could be trusted. More than his gut feeling, it was because Andrew did not hide his goodwill at all. He was the kind of person that expressed his feelings on his face at all time. Zavier was thankful that he had not come across a calculating and manipulating bastard and had instead found a genuinely good guy.

On the other hand, Rebecca couldn't have been more different from Andrew. Her every action, her bearing, her attitude, the choice of her words and even her gaze spoke of her arrogance and pride. Rebecca was never even a little bit interested in the other two teammates. She had already set herself on the highest pedestal and had judged everyone else to be worthless.

Zavier wondered if there even was a limit to her self-indulgence. She was too self-important to even have asked them of their abilities. Being an arrogant bitch, she had already assumed that they wouldn't be any use to her so she hadn't even considered getting to know them from the get go.

Zavier wondered if she had even heard their names but didn't bother with her. With a character as lousy as that, Zavier had already disqualified her from the list of potential people that he wanted to get to know and befriend. She just didn't seem to be worth it.

Therefore, he didn't stop her show and let her carry on being playing the noble among commoners.

"You two, listen up carefully. I am not interested in you or what little abilities you have. Just make sure that you don't get in my way. I won't forgive you even if you luckily ended up in my team somehow. You should really thank your god for this fortune. Thanks to your luck you are almost guaranteed to succeed."

Zavier knew why she was behaving in this way. He had already recognized her to be from Caesar High School that was the most prominent institution for high schoolers in the world. It was not because Zavier had researched about his competitors but because she was wearing their badge after all. It was hard not to miss where she came from. Maybe that was what she wanted in the first place looking at her smug expression.

Zavier though disliked the girl up to the core; he still had to acknowledge that she had to have a certain level of skill to get a recommendation from Caesar High School.

As to why Rebecca was already treating them like they were low level country bumpkins was because the teams were being built based on balance and since she was one of the strongest contenders, she had assumed that there would not be anyone stronger than her in the team so that the balance could still be maintained.

How could she have known that she really did have a monster in her team but had been classified lower based on his average low score in the school? His strength far surpassed what the University had assessed through heir means.

"Since you know where I come from, you should know your place and don't hold me back. For the rest of the game, you two can simply stand behind me while I handle everything. It will be a free ride for you so be thankful and don't get hurt by overestimating yourself."

Zavier wanted to punch her in her face but held himself back. He understood her hidden meaning. She wanted to be the one to collect all the points while they will have nothing in their cards. The team points mattered but the performance would definitely be judged based on individual points since the teams were only temporary.

Zavier knew that from her perspective this was probably the most logical strategy since they were too weak to hold on their cards in her eyes. But Zavier still felt that she was too rude for not even explaining herself properly.

Zavier could only curse himself for having an atrociously bad luck for teaming up with a bitch like Rebecca. The more he listened to her, the more she got on his nerves. If it had been anywhere else, he would have already stuffed her mouth shut.

Since he was having trouble handling Rebecca and her shitty attitude, Zavier decided to sneak away.

HE communicated with the clones that he had already positioned nearby and switched his consciousness with the one having the necromancer system. He had left his clone to listen to the bullshit being spouted by Rebecca and instructed that one keep doing as Rebecca suggested.

Meanwhile, he was looking at a team of his own. He had already taken over the clone with the necromancer system, but the clone with the mage system and the perception system to enter the forest along with him ahead of time.

They had already known about the contents of the test and had no one holding them back from entering the forest on their own.

On top of that, no one would be able to know that it was him since his clone was already standing there with his team waiting for the test to begin.

The storage system that the system had could be shared among the clones so it wasn't too difficult to hide the card in the storage so that it could be accessed by all the clones and the original in tandem.

This made their lives easy as they didn't have to miss out on any of the points whether the task was completed by the clones or by the original didn't matter at all.

As soon as his original body had gotten a hold of the card, his clones could begin harvesting points by entering the Dark forest earlier than the rest.

Zavier found the two clones in the forest and the Zaviers formed a team of their own. They started to clear off the tasks from the list one by one and the point total began to increase little by little.

The first task they managed to check off the list was to find a hidden box in a random tree in the forest. Lucky for Zavier that he had brought out the clone with the perception system who used his Time-Space eye and found the box that was located in a hole in one of the inconspicuous looking trees after a short while.

Zavier took out the card from the storage space and out it over the box. As soon as he did, the point total on the card increased from a Zero to five.

Zavier could almost figure out what was going to happen from that moment onwards. This card was going to be the most precious possession on any person and everyone is going to be willing to kill for it.

While Zavier was busy point hunting, someone was shocked by what was happening. Had Zavier known that he was being monitored in real time through the point total, he might have refrained from beginning earlier than the rest.

Mabel had been sitting in front of the screen that was currently showing the names of the participants and the number of points that they had. She knew that the point total couldn't change before the test began but somehow she had seen one of them jump from zero to five while taking a random glance at it.

At first she was quite surprised since she had yet to allow the students to enter the venue and she was quite sure that all the teams were still in the gymnasium. But then an excited grin spread all over her face as if she was enjoying the development.

Mabel was not someone who would call something like this as cheating. She felt that if the person was really capable of pulling off such a feat than that was the truly capable person. Therefore, she didn't report anything to anyone. She just sat there and monitored the point total of the students.

As she continued to look, her facial expressions changed to that of someone who was quite intrigued about something.

"This competition is turning out to be quite exciting."

There was a smirk on her face like that of a child who had found something good for the very first time.

After all the teams had been grouped up and were done reading the instructions and the list of the tasks, Mabel appeared at the podium once again but this time not a single soul dared to not listen to her.

Seeing that everyone was focused, Mabel started to speak in a voice that seemed a little excited to Calista.

"Since all of you have found your team members, the competition will now begin. All of you need to move out within the minute because the timer will start without you if you fail to enter the Dark forest by then."

There was a rush of footsteps and flurry of movement before the gym looked as eerily silent as the graveyards.

Calista and some of the teachers were the only ones who had remained. Still Calista found this oddly uncomfortable. She started walking in the direction of her friend slowly in order to join up with her until her students needed her again. But until then she was free to watch it all with her old friend.

….

Zavier had a white glow on his hand that was turning sharper by the second. Of course the glow was none other than the cold blaze that Zavier was quite proficient at wielding. Zavier was using it to conjure up a blade that was both hot and sharp at the same time; a flaming sword that could cut through anything like a hot knife through butter.

As if to prove that point, the head of a wind wolf went rolling in front of him but not a single drop of blood was spilled. It was because the wound had been cauterized at the same time as it was cut off.

This was one of the tasks that the list had on it. He brought the card and placed it on the dead body of the headless world and gained another 20 points. Both Zavier and his clone with the Magus system could use Cold Blaze and Blood Blade if needed so there was no difficulty in dealing with the beasts at all. Some of the tasks mentioned on the list were none other than to hunt different kinds of beasts. The bounty on wind wolf was one of those tasks.

Zavier had already collected a hundred and fifty points through the completion of the tasks but there was something that he was dreading more by the second. It was that while people like him were busy collecting points, someone out there would start to hunt them for the points since it was the easiest way to go about it. He wanted to believe that there was a tiny possibility that none of those involved would follow that path but he knew how humans were and the evil that they were capable of even when they had no power, like in his previous world.

This was a world full of magic so the evil that the humans were capable of would only be magnified. Zavier only hoped that he was wrong and stopped thinking about it.

In the meanwhile, the collection of points was going too smoothly. After fighting the S rank mages in his previous mission, not to mention the monsters he had to face, this difficulty was basically child's play to Zavier. This was not enough to even make him break a sweat.

Zavier was even wondering whether the difficulty of the test had been lowered slightly since this was the first time that the test was being conducted. Because the way it was going, Zavier didn't feel any difficulty whatsoever.

As he was lost in thought, his Time-Space eye witnessed some people closing in on his position. From their formation it was easy to see what they were trying to do. They wanted to box him in and surround him from all sides.

Zavier felt a little angry at what these people were trying to do and he knew that the thing that he was afraid of had already started happening. Although he wasn't worried that a couple of idiots would want to try and snatch his card, he still cared about his fellow students from Merion High especially when two of them were his cousins. He was especially worried about Nadia since she had always been the pampered one. He wondered if she would be able to handle something like this.

In order to confirm his suspicions, he concentrated his mana and used his normal "Repel" spell on the bushes surrounding him because he had already seen the three idiots hiding in them all around him.

As soon as he released the skill, a shockwave spread through his vicinity and managed to send them all reeling out of the bushes.

There were three in total and did not look very intimidating. They had average build and did not look like the bully stereotypes. Still Zavier had to make sure what their intentions were.

"What the hell are you three doing?"

"Nothing, we just wanted to see how you took care of the wind wolf."

One of them who was surprisingly fast on the uptake knew that they were in a pinch and decided to improvise. Of course, from the expressions of the other two, Zavier was sure that he was lying.

"You better not doubt my intelligence. Since you came here to witness how to kill the wind wolf, let me throw you to one as I have already demonstrated how to take one down. What do you think about that?"

This was the last nail in the coffin and the three deflated like a punctured balloon.

"It seems like you are ready to tell me the truth now. And believe me that if I so much as just feel that you are lying to me, so help me god, I really will throw you to the wolves and I will make sure that they take really big bites out of you before you are rescued by the university; that is if there really is such a thing and university really cares about your puny little lives."

"No….no…please don't do that. We didn't mean any harm. We saw you taking down the wind world earlier and thought that you must have a huge number of points. I swear we just wanted your card. We never wanted to hurt you at all."

"Taking my card would have been worse than killing me at this juncture. Let me show you how that feels. I promise I won't hurt you either if you hand me those cards right now,"

The heart of the contest wasn't the collection of enough points. It was to eliminate all those you could before the start of the next round. This round's difficulty was based on the level of internal conflict. The more infighting there was, the more difficult the tasks would truly become.

After all, it all became meaningless as soon as someone managed to snatch the card that held all your points.

Therefore, you either had to be strong enough to defend your card from all enemies or you had to be prepared to snatch them from others.

…

In the monitoring room Calista had managed to join up with Mabel and was busy watching the results with her.

She was surprised by how thorough the university was acting this time.

"You really have outdone yourself this time, throwing my students into the turmoil of your making. I especially liked your announcement about the second round. Way to make this competition interesting. If I am right you must have been the one to make the rules this year. You must have received a lot of compliments for this."

Mabel was unable to figure out whether Calista was scolding her or complimenting her. She was having a headache listening to her and she already knew that Calista was only joking so she didn't take it to heart. Still she had to retort with something at the very least. She couldn't just let Calista one up her like this.

"Nah...The interesting one here is not me but the students you have brought along this time. Of all the people, the boy that you brought along was the first one to get points. But guess what, he got his first points when the test had not even started yet. Tell me, how did he do that?"

Mabel had thought that Calista would be surprised after hearing about it but to her astonishment, it felt as if Calista already knew something about it.

"What? You knew about how he managed to pull it off?"

Calista didn't exactly know how Zavier had done it but she was not about to be surprised about anything that the boy did because she had already seen the miracles that he was capable of.

She had seen him dying twice at least and he had come back every time to save them all over again. It was as if he had infinite lives or something that he continued to sacrifice himself to save others.

Therefore, she would not put anything past him at this point. That was the reason that she wasn't too shocked after hearing what he had done this time. Her lack of surprise had caused Mabel to think as if Calista had somehow helped him out.

? "Don't think too much. That kid has his means. Even I don't' know how powerful he is. Believe me or not, but up until a few months ago, he was someone who couldn't wield a bit of magic. I don't know if he was pretending or hiding from something, but he only revealed his power a few months back. Isn't that intriguing?"

Of course, Calista only mentioned the things that she could and didn't recount the surprises that he had brought them during the mission. After all, the details regarding that were still top secret and she could not willingly reveal any of that.

The more she talked the more sparkly Mabel's eyes became. She was excited to see the surprises he would bring to the competition. She was happy that someone like that had participated in the competition, otherwise the monitoring would have been quite boring for her.

Both of them talked about Zavier for a bit after which they focused on the monitor again that was displaying the point total of each individual. Mabel felt that this was a tedious and boring job so she was thankful that Calista was here to keep her company for the duration of it.