Zavier was busy completing the tasks with his two clones who were both clad in masks and were using magic to alter their voices as well. Otherwise there would have been four Zaviers running around on the field.
Since he was currently in the body of a clone as well, he was wearing a mask as well. Three masked men with matching fashion made up for one hell of a team. If only the people knew that they were one and the same person, there would have been an uproar.
Zavier's attackers who had been asking for forgiveness up until a few moments ago were now busy trying to take him down with their lives on the line. The change had occurred just because he had asked them to hand over their cards since they had wanted to rob him earlier.
Their eyes had turned sharp at the mention of the card and they all rushed at him simultaneously to take him down.
Of course to an elephant, whether it was a single ant or a group didn't matter. The elephant crushed them all under its feet.
Zavier was soon standing above their dilapidated bodies suffering from various abrasions and cuts.
Zavier didn't even have to summon the two clones with him. He made mincemeat out of them in a second using just his physical strength and bodily speed. He didn't use any strengthening or acceleration spell either. He had yet to mobilize his mana at all but the idiots were already down for good.
He had not expected that the geniuses from a high school would be that weak.
In reality, Zavier was the weird one. The general strength of the average high schooler was just that much. He had become a monster compared to all those who were his age.
At most the high school students who were his age at average were only equivalent to an F rank mage at best. Those who were able to receive recommendations from their school were slightly better than the others and could be ranked equivalent to an E rank mage. Only those who were known as absolute monsters in the high school were considered to be equal in power to some D rank or C rank mages.
Zavier on the other hand had even fought against S rank mages while he was still in high school. Not many could boast about that. After he had learned Blood Blade, Zavier had become someone who was equivalent to a C rank mage. Conditionally, he could even go beyond that so Zavier was sure that he was among the top dogs of the batch of participants this time.
Zavier checked their trembling bodies and retrieved their cards from their pockets.
They could have avoided the beating if they had only handed it over at the beginning. That would have saved all of them the trouble but Zavier knew that it was only natural that they had resisted with all their might considering the fact that he was practically snatching their futures from them.
Zavier did not feel bad about it considering that they also wanted to do the same to him.
Zavier had managed to get his hands on their cards but when he looked at the total number of points the three had gathered, he was shell shocked because that number seemed to be an impossibility after so much time had passed.
"Looks like you runts really are the dregs of this competition considering that all of you are still stuck at zero points."
Zavier felt that it was only natural considering how easy it had been for him to beat them all on his own.
In reality, Zavier had misjudged them. The three were not the weakest amongst the participants at all. They were average at the very least.
The fact that they had no points at all meant that their points had been stolen which meant that the internal conflicts had begun a long time ago. Teams had become focused on grabbing the cards of others instead of trying to earn some points on their own.
Everyone liked a good shortcut. Since one was available, no one wanted to work hard enough to earn points when they could just snatch them from others who were busy earning them legitimately.
Zavier was starting to grow worried about the girls. Kacie, Shiranui and Dahila might have been girls but Zavier knew that they could handle themselves. He had worked with Dahila before and knew how resourceful she could be. Also she was smart so Zavier was sure that she would have figured everything out by now.
Kacie was too mature and would never fall for the tricks of the others. As for Shiranui, she was strong enough to handle herself.
That only left Nadia, his naughty little cousin who was the cause for his eternal worrying.
She had been the princess of the house and had never encountered situations like this before. Zavier wondered what she would do if someone tried to dupe her like that. Would she be able to hurt them back?
Zavier had always found her to be the nicest of the bunch. He was worried that someone would take advantage of her kindness.
Zavier ran around a bit and spread out his perception to find the girl as soon as possible but he could not find her no matter how hard he looked. This Dark Forest was too vast for him to cover alone in a short time.
Zavier mobilized his clones at the same time. They all headed in different directions within the Dark Forest. Their only order was to locate Nadia and to inform Zavier as soon as they did.
This was the fastest way of looking for her that Zavier could think of at the time. So after giving the orders to all the clones, he switched his consciousness back to the original body that was still travelling with Rebecca and Andrew.
Zavier felt like lashing out as soon as he saw the arrogant expression of Rebecca. He could not understand what she had that made her so damn narcissistic and prideful. No matter how great of a genius she might have been, she couldn't have been better than Valerie. So when even Valerie didn't act like that, what right did she have to behave in that manner and look down on everyone else?
She was getting on his nerves. The more he looked at her and her way of doing things, the more disgusted Zavier felt.
No matter how much annoying Zavier felt her to be, she was still within the normal range when it came to being prideful and narcissistic. The others who were as good as her had their eyes on the top of their heads and looked down at everyone else.
Zavier too understood this once he went through the memories of the time when he had been away in the body of his clone.
He found that during his absence, Rebecca had been using the two teammates for finding the locations where she could get more points. She would then ask them to lead her to the next location where she would complete the task to get points.
Since she would not let any of the two use their cards for the collection of the points, all the points of their team were with her. She had not allowed them to keep any of it.
Zavier felt like cursing himself for ordering the clone to follow after her in his absence. He was the one at fault for having become the scout for the self obsessed girl.
Although the total points of the team were calculated based on the total points on the cards of each member of the team, so whether they held it or Rebecca did not make any difference at all.
On paper they were still just as strong. The only drawback was that the entire spotlight was on her and the other two had been made to feel like burdens even though she had not allowed them to even demonstrate the extent of their abilities. At the very beginning she had proclaimed herself to be the all powerful team leader who did not even care whether they had any useful skill or not because she was so powerful that she could handle everything singlehandedly.
Zavier regretted not putting her in her place as soon as he had met her. Faced with her insufferable arrogance, Zavier had handed over the battlefield to one of his clones while he had gone on to complete tasks with his clones. But now he felt that he had made a mistake. If he had taken her down a notch at the very beginning, he wouldn't have been feeling this unease at the moment.
Still as insufferable and exhausting as it was; Zavier felt that based on her point of view what she had been doing was at least the logical decision and not just based on her arrogance and false ego. Since they were both weaklings in her eyes, it was only natural that she kept all the points with her as the safest place for it was with her in her narrow field of view.
Zavier felt that the girl was too focused on completing the tasks as if she didn't understand that they had to steal cards as well if they wanted to compete for the top spots.
They had to both steal cards and complete tasks in balance if they wanted to get ahead of the others who were following the same path. As the carnage had already started, Zavier was sure that the teams who were willing to be ruthless would be far ahead of them at the moment.
From the looks of her, Rebecca did not look like an idiot so Zavier was sure that Rebecca must have known about the situation as well. He waited for a while thinking that Rebecca might act but the moment never came. The girl was still busy trying to look for more tasks to complete. She was too engrossed in the map trying to figure out the location of the next task.
Zavier felt frustrated as he tried to break the news to her softly. He wanted to make sure that she heard about what she needed to do without thinking that she had done anything wrong up until that point but he didn't expect her response at all. It was definitely not what he had expected.
"I think you must already know but the essence of this competition isn't to complete enough tasks. I mean that it is important but not by that much. What I mean to say is that we can't possibly succeed if we just keep on completing tasks to gain points. We need to steal the cards as well since the game has already begun. It is the only way that we can beat the others."
Rebecca scoffed at Zavier as if he had uttered such nonsense that she was unable to gulp down.
"Did I ask for your opinion? Who do you think I am? Don't compare me to your common standards. I am the number one student of Caesar High School, got it? Not some useless school for gutless worms like you. I can win on my own. I don't need to resort to your underhanded schemes. Just my own strength will suffice if I want to excel in this competition. At the very least, I don't want to hear your opinion during it all so I would be thankful if you refrained from passing on such comments again."
Zavier finally understood how narcissistic she truly was. She really thought that she was capable of mowing down everything in her way no matter what just because she had never lost to anyone at Caesar High School. Zavier really just wanted to show her who was the boss here but Valerie had told him not to stand out too much just to attract attention. He calmed himself down thinking that there would be more occasions for him to confront her since more tests were waiting for them after the first one.
Unlike the other two, Zavier was highly perceptive of his surroundings at all times. His senses had become razor sharp thanks to the perception system. Zavier sensed movement in the periphery of their current location and was immediately on full alert unlike the other two teammates who from their expression were still clueless about the danger heading their way.
Zavier activated his Time Space eye and watched his surroundings with a critical eye. Soon he was able to notice various individuals closing in towards the three of them. He counted a total of six different signatures in his vicinity.
Since the others were still unaware and he feared that they would be caught by surprise, Zavier turned to Rebecca once again and tried to alert the snobbish girl once again of the incoming danger once again.
"I am not sure if you have noticed or not but there are at least six different individuals who are currently heading towards us and from the way they are moving their intentions might not be the purest."
Rebecca seemed a little annoyed at first but then she put on a serious expression as if she thought that there was no harm in listening to a worm every once in a while even if she did end up feeling exasperated in the end.