---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
6 days earlier
"The results of the National Battle Strategies Competition are in! On the blue side, 20 out of the 21 contenders from Class 5c in the school Nimbus Hail got perfect scores. In the 100+ years of competition, not a single team has gotten that many perfect scores before!"
"As for the opposing team, not a single person has gotten a perfect score. In fact, most of them had missed 2-3 questions."
"And the winner is...Wait what?"
The announcer's bright and cheery smile disappeared in an instant, replaced with a look of confusion.
"That's not possible. No way. Hey graders, did you double check your answers?"
The graders confidently replied "Yes, we checked them over 50 times. If they're wrong, we'll voluntarily suicide!"
"But, how? How could such a result happen? Oh, sorry everyone. Uh...There's something that I need to discuss with the graders."
The audience, who were already confused by the announcer's sudden outburst of surprise, were even more flabbergasted by the sentence "There's something that I need to discuss with the graders." Most of the audience consisted of Nimbus Hail fans, parents, and investors. They came here expecting an easy win for Nimbus Hail, especially since Nimbus Hail won the competition the last 10 years in a row. In fact, other schools jokingly referred to the National Battle Strategies Competition as the name "The Nimbus Hail Competition". In terms of combat planning and prowess, nobody could even come close to Nimbus Hail, widely renowned as one of the best, if not the best fighting school in the nation. But with the announcer's sudden change in emotion, that meant something could have gone wrong. Perhaps one of the graders graded wrong? After all, things like that have happened before. Or one of the competitors was sick. If that case happened, then his score would be marked as zero. But at least losing through that method would cause people to decry the victory as tainted and undeserving and Nimbus Hail would save some face. And then there was the implausible notion that Nimbus Hail lost because they weren't as skilled as the other team. However, this idea was quickly shut down, as there was probably no chance under the stars that that would happen to a powerhouse such as Nimbus Hail. So what was the sudden change in events?
This contention went on for some time before the announcer, visibly shaken, said three words before departing.
"Nimbus Hail lost."
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It was said that the uproar from the audience that day was so loud, buildings one mile away had their windows shattered from the sound waves. And it wasn't only the people in the auditorium. The competition was being broadcast on live TV, and many civilians that were doing their day job in the virtual world decided to stop to see the results when they came out, to see if Nimbus won again. Bets were being placed on who would win, and the head of Nimbus Hail said he would suicide if Nimbus Hail lost a battle strategies competition. (He jumped off a bridge the same day the results came out.) Pure chaos ensued, and many people, unable to accept the results, called for the graders to be fired.
The reason for all of this chaos was because of how prestigious this competition was. Being a part of the winning team of the National Battle Strategies Competition, often abbreviated to NatBaS, was one of the highest honors a combat student could get. Along with its sister competition National Fighting Competition (which Nimbus Hail dominated as well), these two competitions, known collectively as the "golden duo", produced countless military leaders, battle experts, and top of the line soldiers. Being a part of the winning team was enough to get into any university you wanted to. The reason why Nimbus Hail was considered the by far and away the best fighting school in the nation was because how much it dominated every single fighting competition.
Until today.