The few groups who had arrived at the Academy at the same time were greeted by two young people only a few years older than Henry, the first one was a boy, quite handsome with a permanent smile on his face, he gave off a very kind vibe. The second one was an active girl who seemed to be enjoying her job too much, she greeted the teachers and directors one by one by shaking their hands with a big smile on her face.
"We are both students of the academy and we will be your guides before the tournament, my name is Hannah and he's Mike. I hope you'll like it here and give your all to join us ! I can't wait to see how talented you are hahah !"
The girl said while looking at the student and then told them to follow her, the Academy was surrounded by a huge wall at least 30 meters high ! The wall stretched far and wide so Henry couldn't guess how big the campus was, however after going through the giant gate on the wall he finally realized how big it actually was, sky high buildings everywhere, artificial lakes, small mountains ! Everything was so excessive, it seemed as if this school just had too much money to waste.
"This building is the new facility for Skill implementation. You must have all heard about the attack a few years ago, well the building has been rebuilt since then and equipped with better machines. However we don't have much students with this specialization that's why we're holding this session of recruitment before the classic ones."
Mike said while showing them around, every-time they passed by a building he told them what it was and more informations if he felt it was interesting, Hannah however had just made new friends amongst the group and had completely forgotten about her guide role.
"And finally this is the Arena, the stands can hold more than 100 000 people. There are 4 rings for simultaneous fights as well as 10 locker-rooms for boys and 10 others for girls. Hmmm I think that's it, if there is something I forgot then you can ask me."
Henry looked up and was awed by the gigantic structure in front of him, it was as high as a 30 floors building and as wide as 10 football fields !
"This is insane, this school must have lots of money to waste."
Thomas near Henry was also in the same state of shock, in Buton the scale of buildings wasn't this impressive. Although they had seen such buildings on the Uninet it was completely different to see them in real life.
"Let's go inside."
Mike took the lead again, they went through a first hallway where lots of portraits were hanging on one wall while the other was covered with hundreds of trophies and medals !
"This is the Hall of fame, these portraits are either students or teachers who did great things either in the research field or the military field for the Alliance.
The trophies are from students, our school is famous even outside of Trish galaxy because we have such a huge palmares. If I remember well our school won a total of 138 Solar cups, 77 Galactic tournaments and 4 Universal championships ! We didn't win a lot in the recent year but I'm sure we'll go back to our former glory in no time with you guys."
He said the last sentence while smiling, he was obviously trying to motivate the kids to try harder and show all their potential, this way it would be easier for the judges to spot a hidden gem amongst the losers. The reason for that was because except the top three of this tournament, other students would be able to join if they caught the eye of a judge.
"Let's go to the stands, you'll be sent to the lockers from there when all the other schools made it."
/
/
/
Half an hour later after just sitting in the stands and doing nothing an old man walked up the middle ring and started a speech about life, goals, ambitions and such stuff. In the end he sent everybody to the lockers-room.
"That was the Dean of our school, his name is Mr. Herman, he's the only person who you must show respect to in this school, the rest are mandatory."
Mike said while taking the guys to the lockers-room while Hannah was taking the girls to their.
"This is it, you can follow this hallway all the way to the end to reach the arena when you're done changing."
He gave them the instruction and then left to go back to the stands, at the same time Thomas said
"Alright time for me to leave you Henry, you can survive alone right ? Hahah"
Thomas said jokingly and followed behind Mike.
"I'll be fine, watch as I take the first spot."
Everybody around him heard what he said but only a rare few looking at him angrily, the rest knew that he wasn't being conceited but had the ability to reach the top 3 at least as they had seen his unstoppable win streak during the training tournament.
As he didn't need to change and was already ready Henry say down on a bench and closed his eyes to focus while the other boys were having fun half naked, some fought, other pranked the last to come to change, typical guys stuff.
As he couldn't focus Henry headed out towards the arena, there wasn't much people earlier so he decided to go there to find a bit of peace however when he walked out of the corridor into the huge arena with 4 rings and around them the sitting stands for the contestants he heard a huge commotion.
He lifted his head to look at the stands and his heart started beating two times faster !
He had spent only 10 minutes inside the changing room but the stands he was sitting on earlier were half full ! Half the seats full meant around 50 000 spectators to see him fight.
That wasn't all, on top of the normal spectators there seemed to be TV crews and journalists with their huge cameras pointing at him.
'I came here to focus but it had the opposite effect.'
He sighed and looked for a place to sit, feeling all the eyes on him made him uncomfortable but at the same time it was a great feeling, since he was alone in the arena everybody looked only at him.
Finally after a short while the rest of the boys and girls who were done changing started coming in from the corridor and the attention soon shifted from only Henry to everybody.