Chapter 184: Chapter 184: Seckill
The whole stadium was quiet at the shock from such a quick battle. They had figured that the gap between themselves and the top of their year would be great, but none had thought the gap was great enough to achieve a seckill.
Kain didn't mind the reactions of the crowd, and looked at the other stages to see some of his competitors' performances.
However, looking around Kain realized that the shocked silence of the crowd wasn't due to him—at least not entirely. Not only had Kain defeated his opponent before the crowd could even fully grasp what was going on, but Serena, Soren, and Kairos had also all defeated their opponents within seconds. In fact, the order in which they'd defeated their opponents almost perfectly matched their rankings.
Serena, the quickest, couldn't have taken 3 seconds, while the relatively 'slow' Kairos had taken closer to 9 seconds.
Not long after, the rank 4 Ranya's opponent also admitted defeat.
Kain and the other winners returned to their seats directly having not expended much strength, while those they'd defeated went to get healed.
The gap between those in and outside of the top 5 was definitely apparent as the other 3 stages, while definitely one-sided battles, were still ongoing.
'I don't think the difference in strength between us and them was that great during the entrance test. Can the slight difference in resources and spiritual power in the top 5 dormitory really cause such a gap in 3 months? It's also possible that the gap is due to the beast-tide. Being in the most dangerous area forced the 5 of us to constantly push ourselves and grow.'
Although not as jaw-droppingly quick as the battles in the first 5 stages, the remaining 3 battles all finished within 2 minutes. The surrounding students applauded those still on stage for their performance, but all of them, especially Dwayne, sported unhappy expressions.
All of them had entered the re-ranking with the goal of finally entering the top 5. After all, they were the closest ones to being able to dethrone the current top 5. However, the gap in their time for finishing off their opponents was large enough to make them wonder if all of their hard work over the past few months was futile.
However, nobody could spare any attention to comfort them as the next round of matches began—including Bridge.
Before Kain could even become anxious on behalf of his brother, he saw that his first opponent was Aria. Despite having a pretty useful gift she truly is no threat. In fact, she may even lose her position as third from the bottom and directly sink to last place after this re-ranking.
This was especially so since unlike all of the other students with at least one orange-grade contract by now, the only contract Aria's revealed so far is still red-grade. Bridge hadn't even needed to use Lady to defeat her, and chose to battle using the red-grade Princess.
Taking Kain's advice, Bridge was trying to conceal as much of his strength as possible.
The day dragged on as students were continuously called for round after round of matches. Among the other battles, surprisingly there was an instance of another kill within seconds. A dark-horse in group 7 ranked 15, named Lucas Montgomery, was surprisingly able to defeat rank 20 who was not too far beneath him in less than 13 seconds.
Moreover, similar to the strange methods used by the top 5, it was similarly difficult to determine his combat method.
'He looks more threatening than the actual seed of group 7, there will probably be an upset within that group.'
Kain finished his second match of the day against the student at rank 42 even more quickly than the first one.
Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately for him, the other times the top 8 students were called upon did not overlap in timing so he was able to observe their performances—as short as they may be.
However, this also meant that they were given the opportunity to also observe him.
Finishing his own second battle and witnessing the remaining battles of students he thought may give him some trouble, he left right after checking out the performances of the rest of his friends.
Bridge was able to win against Elara at rank 37. Meaning that Bridge had currently one both of his fights.
Thankfully, as Kain predicted, none of his other friends seemed in danger of finishing outside of the top 3 of their respective groups except for Elias in last place.
Of his two battles today, the first was against the seed of his group, Kairos, and Elias had directly abstained. The second was against the 26th ranked student who he once again lost against. However, he put up a surprisingly good fight. Despite the huge difference in rank, this was actually the longest matchup of the day, extending for longer than 30 minutes.
Proving that Elias' current ranking is definitely not an accurate reflection of his current strength.
In fact, the fight may have dragged on for longer if at the 30-minute mark Elias did not attempt to use his gift.
Before anyone knew what was happening, a naked Elias appeared next to the female rank 26.
After a squeal in shock and a sharp exclamation of 'pervert!', she then proceeded to punch him in the face as hard as possible. It was an instant knockout. In a sense it was a seckill in a different sense...
That's right. Elias was not eliminated due to the fight between spiritual creatures, but rather due to he himself being knocked out by his opponent's fist.
Strangely in a beast-taming battle, the outcome was decided by the strength of the fists of the tamers...
Sigh
Kain couldn't help but expel a deep breath as Elias made his way back to the stands with a tissue paper stuck in his nostrils, presumably to stop the bleeding.
Elias was the last match of the day he was interested in, so he immediately returned to the dorm to rest and also formulate a strategy for the next day.
Thankfully, with the Training Arena's Skill Optimizer Bea was able to still train while Kain was doing the re-ranking with Eve and the Vespirae, so her time wasn't wasted.
Since the Vespirae weren't tired due to the quick battles, Kain also sent them to practice battling against some of the spiritual creatures Kain knew were contracted by the remaining opponents in his group in the Training Arena's Battlefield.