Chapter 610: Participating Academies

A week quickly passed. Ever since Xiao Lin agreed to the deal with Bell, there had been no movement. Bell said that she needed time to prepare, and emphasized that everything had to avoid the notice of the student union and the academy, so she needed to make especially many preparations. Xiao Lin had no choice but to listen to her. In truth, unless Bell looked for him herself, Xiao Lin had no way of locating Bell.

Xiao Lin did not throw all his hopes on Bell, as he still maintained his training and attending classes during the day, and would still memorize his lessons at night. Everything seemed to be progressing as normal, and he had made time to visit Song Junlang twice, but most of the time, he could not find Song Junlang. Xiao Lin did not want to stay alone with that sea monster that would go into a rage whenever it saw him, so he naturally stopped going.

At night, Cheng Ming would occasionally ask Xiao Lin to train with him. The list of participants for the tournament had already been decided. Other than the twelve monitors, there was also Gu Xiaoyue, making it a total of thirteen of them. The tournament’s schedule had also been passed on to the participants by the student union.

The tournament was split into three parts: an individual tournament, a support tournament, and a team battle. There were three separate competitions, and for the sake of fairness, they had a point system in place. The individual tournaments would be split into two, and each one would award one point, which was the same for the support tournaments. Each match would feature a different theme. The group tournament was a 5v5 fight, and was worth three points.

That meant that the total score was seven points, and the academy that managed to get four points would win. All the academies would draw lots for their matchups, and before the finals, each round would use the same rules. However, the finals would be done separately. The tournament venue would be in the New World, and would be a 10v10 team battle. The time limit would be set at two hours, and after the time was up, the side who had the most remaining members would win. If there was a draw, then the remaining members would fight individually to determine the winner.

Each participant received a detailed explanation of the rules, and the president had also personally explained it to everyone in the lounge.

At the time, everyone had a strange expression on their face, but no one dared to interfere with the president’s words. It was the president who smiled bitterly as he said, “I know what you want to say; these rules are way too complicated.”

Xiao Lin nodded and said, “It’s true. Seven separate events make it so convoluted. A straight group battle to determine the victor is much more simple and direct.”

Cheng Ming nodded in agreement as well, and said in frustration, “I’m not afraid of the tournament, but what about the support classes? We haven’t started our secondary profession classes for that long, and we’re going to have to head straight into a competition. It’s too quick.”

The president sighed. “The tournament has a long history, and it’s not the first time the rules have changed. Initially, the tournament was just a pure battle, but someone decided that it was not fair, since one person who was extremely strong could cover up for other weaknesses. So, it turned into 1v1 fights. However, after that, some academies felt that war was determined by teams, so they changed it to a team battle, but after more and more colonist academies joined, the smaller countries found it hard to stand up to our might, so they requested the secondary professions for the sake of fairness. The decision on that had never been set, but this year they finally passed it.”

After pausing, the president said helplessly, “Because Dawn Academy had some matters and delays this year, we were taken completely by surprise by the change. We never expected it to be in the tournament since every academy’s courses were different, but we have no choice now.”

The president vaguely glossed over the reasons, so it was obvious that the reasons were not appropriate to divulge to the monitors present, but Xiao Lin could more or less guess them.

Dawn Academy was transitioning between deans, and there were constant fights in the dark, which was why they were looser when it came to dealing with outward matters. However, Dawn Academy was still one of the founding Academies, and was part of the Supreme Council. According to reason, their position meant that they had tremendous sway. If Dawn Academy did not agree to it, and the secondary profession tournaments were still added, then it was a little weird.

Xiao Lin felt that it was strange, and could not help but ask, “Which academies are participating?”

The other monitors also looked over curiously. Ever since they started classes, even though most of them had heard about other academies such as the American Judge Academy, the British Royal Academy, and the Russian Voyna Akademiya, not many of them knew how many academies there were.

The president slapped his forehead, smiling as he said, “I almost forgot about that. There are a total of twelve academies, and of those, Dawn Academy, Judge Academy, Sainte Académie, Royal Academy and Vovna Akedemiya are all founding academies. The other academies joined later on. They are Japan, Germany, Egypt, Argentina, The Netherlands, Spain, Turkey, and Portugal. We naturally have an advantage as a founding academy, so the five academies automatically advance to the second round, and the other academies will compete with each other to determine the last three before we start the elimination tournament.”

After a brief silence, everyone’s expressions turned strange.

Cheng Ming said a little unhappily, “There’s Japan?”

Class Eight’s Sheng Guo was a little surprised. “There seem to be more European academies.”

“Portugal, Spain, The Netherlands; they all seem to be strong European countries during the middle ages. Does it have something to do with the New World?” Chen Dao lamented.

“Why does America get to advance directly as well? Doesn’t their history start much later than ours?”

“There are very few South American and African countries, with only two in total.”

“It’s not that strange. At the peak of colonization, those regions were all colonized by others on Earth. They could not even take care of themselves on Earth, so how could they run to a new world?”

…

Everyone discussed quite a lot, but Xiao Lin’s expression was not great because he had once heard from Song Junlang that, in the Supreme Council, most of the matters related to running the academies were all discussed and decided upon together. If they forcibly approved something without Dawn Academy, that meant that the countries did not even bother notifying Dawn Academy.