Chapter 196 Rigged Tournament

Near an oasis, in a hot desert region, space fluctuated and Ralph teleported out at a random spot. He looked around and saw nothing but yellow-colored sand everywhere and a small oasis a few hundred meters away from him. He walked towards the oasis and on his way, he saw not a single sign of any life. It felt weird.

Even in the most extreme and harsh conditions, there were some or the other signs of life but here there were none. This seemed a bit suspicious to Ralph. He had his guard up as he walked towards the oasis and tried his best to observe everything around him.

He reached the oasis and found there to be only a small hut, a small pond, and a few edible crops and fruits growing around. He walked into the hut and saw there to be nothing but a small note lying on the ground. He was extra cautious when found such a suspicious thing and slowly walked inside to see what the note was about.

Ralph got close to the note and finding no one to be around, slowly picked up the note to read what was on it. There was just one word written on it:

BEWARE!

‘Hmm?’

BOOM!

“KAKAKAKAKA!”

An explosion occurred from the inside of the pond, making the water evaporate and a big crater form in its place. The tremors caused due to the explosion made the small hut fly away.

Ralph wasn’t affected much as he was on guard. When he noticed the magical fluctuations, he cast a defensive barrier around himself and thus was unaffected despite the hut flying away.

Looking towards the source of the explosion and at the sound of someone’s crazed laughter, he saw a two-meter tall grey humanoid creature. It had its body covered in grey dust of some kind; had a necklace, bracelet, anklet, and belt made up of skull and bones on him and was letting out crazed laughter while charging towards Ralph.

Ralph had no idea about the strength of the creature running towards him. He ran away from him to play safe and while doing so willed the destruction elements around him and attacked the humanoid creature via the destruction flames.

The flames slightly melted whatever area they touched of the humanoid creature and noticing this, Ralph turned around and charged towards the humanoid creature. The destruction flames from earlier were just to test the prowess of the creature and watching how it caused damage despite being of low level, Ralph estimated the prowess of the creature to be roughly matching Rank 3.

Rank 3 weren’t a threat to him. Ralph’s prowess matched those of an average Rank 4. He could win against anyone of Rank 4 if he tried his best and using artifacts and other means, it was possible to defeat an average Rank 5 too.

Ralph fearlessly charged at the creature and willed the destruction elements around and attacked it. An intense battle began with the creature, with Ralph of course having the upper hand.

…

Central Plaza, Main Building.

Many students were gathered around the central plaza present at the center of the main building. The plaza had a big screen at one end—present on an elevated platform and a large area were present in front of it where many students were standing and watching the live stream of the tournament.

They weren’t really watching it live, however. It was just the highlights of important events being shown to them. Watching around ten thousand first-years trying to survive and their every movement at every second was not possible for these students who were just mortals(below Rank 6).

Another reason for them not being able to see it was that the dimension where the tournament was being held had its time accelerated. One day in the real world was equivalent to one month over there. The students participating were protected by their identity badges and wouldn’t age according to that dimension’s time. The academy had taken good precautions beforehand.

Thus, the students in the real world were all watching highlights. Except, of course, the staff present in the auditorium. The auditorium’s time was set to match Blue Haze World’s, and the staff was watching every movement of the students, every given second.

“…And here I got news about the second conflict of the day. Can you all guess who it is? Go to our website and send in your votes to guess, and win a chance to get exciting prizes. Go vote now as the voting will be closed within a minute, starting from… Now!” Vanir’s enthusiastic and cheerful voice resounded throughout the plaza and the Sky Island.

Every student who was about to cheer for Vanir and the people excited to see the stream got into a frenzy and quickly took out their phones to vote, as Vanir instructed them to. There was a one-minute timer on the big screen and it was now gone.

Vanir was on screen and visible to everyone again.

With the same enthusiastic and cheerful voice, Vanir said, “the poll has been closed. All votes are in and are already being displayed to you on your phones as well as on the screen behind me. Wow! I have to say, everyone quickly got hold of the pattern happening here! Why do I say such a thing? Because what the majority of you all guessed is correct! The second conflict has indeed happened with none other than the 2nd most powerful first-year—Ralph Asmodeus!”

Everyone cheered happily knowing that their guess was right.

“The winners will be announced an hour later. Make sure to stay tuned everybody. Now let us have a look at what Ralph is doing.” Vanir said cheerfully.

Everyone saw Ralph’s performance and at first everything seemed to be normal but later when Ralph charged at the creature, their blood boiled as they looked at him fight so fiercely with it. Everyone cheered for Ralph and ten minutes later, Ralph won against the creature, getting loud applause and cheers from everyone once again.

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…

Looking at the dismantled corpse of the creature, Ralph wondered just what it was. He hadn’t studied about such a creature in the academy and it was new to him. He walked closer to it and searched if there was something useful on it.

After a few seconds of searching, Ralph found a red-colored sharp bone embedded deep inside the skull of the corpse. He examined it and found nothing odd about it. Still, he kept the bone in his ring and walked in a random direction.

His thoughts were simple; even if the thing is useless, it’s better to keep it until the tournament ends. It was the only odd thing he found after beating that creature; so better be safe than sorry.

…

Auditorium, Abalax World Academy.

Crack!

Emilia gripped the armrest of her chair tightly after noticing Ralph getting attacked by a creature.

Everyone in the auditorium heard it and looked at Emilia. They could roughly guess what the reason was for her to lose her cool like that and thus kept their mouth shut and didn’t disturb her, lest they angered her even further.

Emilia knitted her brows and got back to staring at her tablet screen. Even though she was angry, nothing could be done about it currently as the tournament was going on, and stopping it would be a problem for the children.

The reason she was angry was that Ralph got attacked by a powerful creature at the start of the tournament. It was fine to get attacked when one just arrived in the other dimension, however, what wasn’t fine was the fact that Ralph was attacked by a creature whose prowess was on par with a Rank 4.

Such creatures were made to attack students at the later stage of the tournament and not at the start. Emilia was now very sure that someone had rigged the tournament, but she couldn’t point out who.

‘I’ll punish you severely once I find out who you are. Just watch me.’ Emilia thought to herself as she continued to watch the students in the tournament.

…

In a dense jungle.

Lith was walking in a random direction since he had no idea where to go.

He had recovered already and had looted whatever important things he found in the monkey territory after massacring all of them. If he could, he wouldn’t have done such a thing but it was a necessary evil.

The monkeys wouldn’t leave his trail no matter what he did and this was problematic as they would become a hindrance for him. Killing them off was the best option for him.

He could just cast a dark spell on himself and hide his body as well as aura and could hide his traces from the monkey. But, doing so would reveal about him having another affinity and the losses weren’t worth the gains.

He chose to massacre all the monkeys instead of showing his trump card.

Was this cruel of him? Of course, it was. But did he care? Obviously, no.

Lith didn’t find anything useful in the entire territory of theirs. There was hardly anything that could catch his eyes. There were just a select few objects that he picked up and left the monkey territory.

Lith was still in the jungle area of the Blue Haze World. He had no idea which continent or place he was at and having no hints or clues on where to move, he was wandering.

…

Dark Mist Mountain Range.

‘Alright, the instructor shouldn’t be paying attention to me now. I’ve been resting and doing boring stuff for quite a while now.’ Lucas thought to himself as he got up and walked around the tree he was resting.

Lucas stopped in his tracks at a certain distance away from the tree’s bark. He looked down and found there to be a few roots of the tree extending above ground. He bent down and cut a big chunk of the root and stored it in his ring. He quickly backed away after doing so and looked at the now cut root from afar.

There was some kind of black sap oozing out of the root and was getting absorbed in the ground. Noticing this, Lucas smiled and thought to himself,

‘Good. The trap is laid.’

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