A Private Booth of the Tournament

Allen can’t help but feel conflicted as he looks out of his and his wife’s private booth at his daughter’s team standing on the pitch black stone field in the center of the North-East stadium representing Hunter’s Peak. His daughter is wearing the magi-tech armor Cynthia had ordered for her, which is quite similar to her own and also made by his father, and Scarlet can be seen staring forward with a neutral expression on her face. One not expressing how she’s feeling right now.

“Are you still worried?” Cynthia asks as she enters the booth again, the door behind her magically vanishing while she walks over to him.

“Yeah…” Allen mutters, not taking his eyes off of Scarlet, trying to figure out what she’s thinking.

Ever since she told him and Cynthia about the etched skill she got achievement locked from White that confirmed her relationship to her, he has begun questioning everything that’s happened. Not only why the Knight would abandon her own daughter to a random Class IV Guardian and tell him to raise her in an orphanage of all places, but why she wouldn’t ever even bother visiting.

But no matter what he comes up with for possible reasons, none of them make any real sense. None beyond a possible prophecy, because he knows that White isn’t the type to do something so cruel. Especially to her own daughter.

And even if it was a prophecy, Allen still can’t condone what she did. After all, if it was his own daughter that he’d be forced to do that with, he’d rather lose his own life than force her to be raised as an orphan.

“Are you worrying about why White did what she did?” Cynthia asks, sounding slightly suspicious as she looks down at the girl that’s like a daughter and soon enough will be to both of them. “Or are you worried about what this means for the adoption?”

Allen flinches at that.

“I just… I don’t know…” Allen mutters in a slightly despondent voice before turning to face his wife as he continues, “how are we going to be able to convince the government to let us adopt her if she already has a mother and isn’t really an orphan? Even if she did abandon her, she has her last name, and she has proof from the System that White – one of the five Knights and the strongest one to boot – is her biological mother! How-”

Cynthia cuts him off by simply covering his mouth and shaking her head.

Allen takes a deep breath to calm down after that as his wife says, “We’ll deal with it as it comes. Just know that you have both my support along with your father's.”

That startles Allen.

Father? Why would he support my adoption of Scarlet?

He stares at Cynthia for a few seconds before shaking his head and turning to look at Scarlet again, only to find her still with a completely neutral look on her face despite the MC beginning to speak.

I’m just glad she decided to open up about this and tell us, even if I know she’s keeping other secrets. Like whatever gave her ears that look frighteningly similar to those of a blood lycan. Which, if I had to guess, is probably some sort of anomaly in her magic. Or she’s just not being fully truthful about her magic.

“And here we are with the first team tournament of the Interschool Tournaments, the Tower Siege!” the MC shouts, the excitement in his voice seemingly oozing out into the audience as the rules for the tournament appear above the participants. “This will be our first Class I tournament of the year, and it will be in a siege and defend format, where one team of Guardians will be defending their tower, and more importantly, their core at the top of the tower, while the other team will be sieging the tower with their end goal being to destroy the opposing team’s core!”

Tower Siege? Interesting format for their team tournament…

“At the same time, the defending team must either wipe out the entire offensive team, or they must survive till the end of the five minute long time limit with their core intact to win,” the MC – Allen believes their name was Scott or something – declares. He then goes on about the rules of the tournament, which aren’t very many beyond the general rules of the Interschool Tournaments.

Looks like they can do anything they wish to get to the core, including going up the tower or even climbing the outside if they wanted to.

“Now, for this tournament, we have a total of four hundred and eighty participating teams, so for time’s sake, we will be splitting this tournament up between the four stadiums, with each stadium having more than one battle of each round going on at a time,” Scott continues before a screen appears in front of everyone asking them which stadium they would like to go to along with a list of each team participating and which stadium they will be fighting in.

“That’s convenient,” Allen mutters after finding that his daughters’ team will be fighting in the Hunter’s Peak stadium that he’s currently in, “looks like we won’t have to move stadiums after all.”

After he says this, three fourths of the students in the stadium all vanish, leaving the remaining fourth to be teleported around the field as the MC says, “And now we will commence with the deciding of the brackets for this round!”

As if the brackets weren’t already decided, a massive bracket showing just the first three rounds of the tournament appears above the heads of the students.

“The teams in each stadium will be separated into four brackets, with each bracket having thirty teams in them, with the main screen being split between the four brackets going on at once,” the MC continues. “After that, the remaining fifteen teams of each of the four brackets will merge into two brackets instead, each once again of thirty teams until they narrow down for the third round to be a single bracket of thirty teams. The winning fifteen teams of each of the four stadiums will then be moved back to the Hunter’s Peak stadium – this one – to compete in the second half of the tournament.”

“A rather long process,” Cynthia mutters, and Allen can’t help but nod.

“This is the most sought after tournament for the first years who wish to participate and have a team to do so with,” Allen says, justifying the process a little.

Still, it’s a good thing each actual battle is only five minutes max. Otherwise the tournament would take far longer than a day to complete. And with there being sixteen battles going on at once spread across the stadiums, the tournament should only last for several hours, finishing before dark.

Allen’s eyes narrow.

But… I wonder how Scarlet will really do in a team based tournament like this one?

The thought both terrifies and thrills him at the same time.

He stares at Scarlet, a faint grin forming on his face as he wonders just what she’s thinking about right now.

Maybe she’s looking forward to the battle? Or even trying to figure out strategies for the tournament to work through with her team? Either way, I can’t wait to see!