As per usual, Ravenville's practice match for their 1st strings separated the 15 regular members into two halves, creating two separate 7-man teams with 1 more additional substitute player in the bank.
This 1 substitute player would change with every practice match following a simple rotation. And they were to be put in whichever teams that the Head Coach commanded them to.
Usually, the composition of the teams would follow the formations that all of them were training in during the day, but today was a little bit different than usual.
For this particular practice match, since they hadn't had any formation training for the day, the two 7-man teams were divided following the team compositions of the first and second half of their match against Magnolia this morning.
Which meant that Irvine was automatically put together with Derrick, Greg, Medea, and Baron amongst a few others.
Their team were the ones who're wearing the black and grey coloured exosuits, going against Renee, Clint, and the twins' team in their silver and grey variation of it.
Both sides were players who had managed to snatch 2 points each against Delta City's top school team, the Magnolia Thorns.
But the difference this time was that each of them had complete understandings of the other's tactics and plays. Also, they were playing without the direction of their Head Coach at the start.
All these factors meant that it would all come down to the teams' individual strengths and creativities in utilizing what they had learned in order for them to triumph against the other.
.
[MATCH START]
The moment the robotic voice had resounded through the stadium, both sides had immediately sent out their advance groups to the front line, seemingly attempting to clash head-on against one another.
It was worth noting that currently, all the players on the field were showing the same level of intensity and vigour that they'd wielded during their sparring match earlier today.
Although the players of Ravenville could yet to be called professionals by any means, at least the level of mentality and commitment these people showed on a daily basis were pretty much close to it if not already there.
.
.
Back at the near empty audience seats.
Even though both Wilson and Ella could also feel themselves getting swept up by the atmosphere of the practice match below, at the same time, they were also having their minds blanked out from the information they'd seen on the monitor.
Having been friends with Ella for so many years, Wilson had long since been heavily influenced by the other party's dedication to Ravenville and its team.
He had shared the same amount of knowledge that the girl had regarding all the old and recent Illusions' rosters.
The moment that the stadium monitor had first turned itself on, the two had quickly raised their heads at the same time to take in all the information that they could before the practice match started.
At first, both Wilson and Ella were diligently picking out the names on the list that they recognized and jotting down their player numbers in their minds.
All of them were mostly players from the last 2 years of the university's Silver Crown participations.
Presently, players like Renee Morgan and Baron were already very famous names within the college Arena circles.
At their levels, their popularities had even reached the level of having a small online followings of people that were patiently waiting for the day the two would walk through the door of the OPL.
Even Clint Silver, someone who had just started displaying his stellar performance in last year's Crown, had already begun to gain enough traction amongst the girl fans of college Arena to have his own dedicated fan club in some online forums.
This was why, when Ella had seen their names amongst the two separate lists of the practice teams, it was already well within her expectations.
After all, the current Ella could pretty much recite all the names of last year's regulars of Ravenville that had yet to graduate this year purely from her memory.
.
The two of them were fast.
The moment they'd scanned through any famous names that had caught their eyes, both Wilson and Ella would promptly commit the corresponding suit numbers in their minds so that they could pay close attention to them on the match that followed.
But then,
As the two continued to go down the list of active names on the monitor, when Wilson almost reached near the very bottom of one of the teams' list, he once again discovered another name that he's familiar with.
At first, the significance of this name had almost gone over his head as he reflexively jotted down the player's number in his mind.
But when he was thinking back on the familiar sounding name and its origin, a sudden realization struck Wilson like a lightning bolt out of the blue!
#15 Irvine Lang [Solver]
'...'
'Huh? Wait--'
A split second passed with Wilson's brain shutting down.
When he eventually came back to his senses, the first thing he did was to bump Ella's arm beside him with his right elbow.
"Hey..."
Wilson was the first to fully notice it. When Ella saw her high school friend standing dumbly with his mouth agape, she turned her head towards him out of concern.
"What is it?"
"F, fifteen... Player number #15."
"?" Ella was still slightly confused, but she pretty much understood what Wilson was trying to point out, so she followed his line of sight towards the bottom of the monitor too,
"What of it? Fifte--"
And then,
With a similar expression as Wilson, her voice also dropped until she turned completely silent within a second of the revelation.
Irvine Lang.
'Huh-- Irvine Lang? Who?' She took a moment to think to herself,
'...Right, the student athlete from the class, he was part of the Battle Arena team too. Eh...?'
.
.
On the field.
The match between the two teams had intensified.
Unlike their game against Magnolia, currently neither of the two sides were displaying any terrain-related tricks that they'd used for their spar.
Instead, the match had progressed through a series of continuous battles of skills and wits.
Similar to the second half of the morning's friendly match, Baron was once again stationed within the tower zone of the front-most tower of Irvine's team.
The difference was that this time, he was not backed by either Greg or the other 4th year Guard in the zone.
Early in the match, their team had taken advantage of their higher potential damage output by trying to reduce both Dan and Dennis' HPs as much as possible.
For this game with almost no substitute, Irvine's team had decided to emphasize on their offensive power to put the other team's players out of commission first before they could score any points.
And they had actually achieved some level of success in this endeavour during the early game!
But although Irvine and Derrick had managed to damage them quite considerably, with the twins' [String] control, Renee's advance group had also managed to take the first halfway line breakthrough from them.
The only silver lining was the fact that Baron had held up well against the twins' harassment on the tower zone, at least long enough for Irvine and Derrick to retreat back and reinforce him.
After that one push from Renee's team, one other differing development from their fight against Magnolia had also appeared in the form of Irvine's new technique!
As this was a practice match within their own home ground and against own teammates, Irvine held no reservation in using his [Impact Armor] to its fullest extent in this match!
At the team's tower zone, he quickly coated both his arms and upper torso with armor-shaped compressed air and slowly released the pressure of it against the incoming threads of Dan and Dennis.
These gradual pressure releases created strong gusts of wind that repelled and redirected the twins' threads towards the direction of Irvine's swinging arms.
*WHOOSH* *WHOOSH*
"Guh...!"
"Godd*mn that's annoying!"
Noticing that his almost established web of threads on Irvine's body were getting slowly snapped and repelled, Dan exclaimed in annoyance.
With this move alone, the probability of successfully trapping Irvine with their webs had deccreased by a lot!
.
After that, the rest of the practice match continued on, maintaining the same level of intensity as before.
Irvine's [Impact Armor] had managed to become his team's asset in defending the tower, but at the time, the twins' control on Derrick had also started to affect their team coordination.
The Young brothers would block Baron's path when he was about to reach their Captain by pushing or pulling Derrick's body in front of him, ultimately lowering the overall efficiency of their 'elimination' strategy.
Though in the end, Irvine's team had eventually managed to push the other team's back and gained their breakthrough for the second halfway line battle, the process had already consumed too much time at that point in the match.
[MATCH END]
All in all, the match ended with the score of 1-0 for Renee, Clint, and the twins' team.
Had the time limit been slightly longer, Irvine and Derrick might have succeeded in eliminating the twins at the same time, ultimately causing the other's Solver, and subsequently the whole team, to forfeit.
But in the end, both Dan and Dennis still stood firm with 12% and 13% of their HPs respectively.
This massive amount of total damage had not been purely caused by Derrick and Irvine, but also Baron with his multiple [Air Pistols] aimed at the two during their defense.
To top it all off, it was also worth mentioning that as Rangers, Medea had contributed more towards the game than the other party's Clint for this particular match.
This result really could not be helped,
Because of the specific composition of their team that lacked offensive power, Clint had been forced to become the main damage dealer of their party, while on the other hand, Medea could still focus on her job as support fire from behind.
The repercussions of this was that Clint had become too busy trying to keep up with the enemy's damage output and had fewer times to do what he did best, which was surprise mid-range interceptions with his barrage of arrows.
.
.
Overall, the match had been quite a spectacle to watch.
On one of the teams' corner, Lark and his group of coaches was also satisfied at the rate of which this new Ravenville had come together and improve.
But, this sentiment was not shared by the other group of viewers on the audience seats.
After finding out Irvine's name on the list, both Wilson and Ella looked on towards the practice match from start to finish with varying degree of complex emotions in their minds.
""...""
"...He did tell us that he's on the team." Wilson muttered out the only comment that he could think of in this moment.
"..."
"--That was freaking incredible though, El!! Did you see how he fought in the same level as the other regulars?? He can even stand his ground against the famous Ravenville's twins!" He then quickly turned towards Ella who had been silent all this while with a bit of a probing comment.
Hearing the sound of her friend speaking to her face, Ella was also brought back to reality from the aftertaste of the match.
"Wil... He's a first year."
"Hm?"
"He's in the same class as us so he's a first year... Right?" Ella couldn't find the right words to express the current feelings that she was having right now, so she simply asked a rhetorical question.
"You're right... Wait doesn't that mean--"
But at this moment, Ella was no longer listening to Wilson. She once again got caught up in her own thoughts.
The guy she had arbitrarily met on her first class of the semester turned out to be a regular of the team that she was staking her future for.
It would be a lie to say that she was not feeling the slightest bit of envy at the revelation, but those feelings were utterly blocked by the huge sense of self-doubt that had risen from her heart.
The man in front of her was of the same age, but the starting stages that they were standing on the moment they'd entered college were miles apart from each other.
Ella had resolved herself in rejecting a Tier-2 college's scholarship offer to chase her dream here, because even though there were lots of athletes better than her on the field, she believed that she could still improve for the better.
However, when confronted with someone like Irvine, even those bits of confidence she had were tested to the extreme.
'Is Battle Arena really not for me?'
'Maybe only someone like that could have a chance to go to the Pro League...'
Yes, pro!
Although Ravenville was a goal, it was not the end point of her dream! As a proper Arena player with enough achievements to receive an offer, of course she was also aiming for the OPL.
Not only that, if the limit of her capabilities allowed her to, she would also dream of winning the coveted Golden Crown after joining her OPL team!
But what if her limit couldn't even take her past the college Tier-1 League's stage?
"...ey."
"..."
"I said, hey!!"
'?'
Right at the moment that her original doubt's about to give birth to more doubts, the calling voice of her high school friend brought her back to the present state.
"I swear, you..."
"What are you getting down about? You've taken this path because you believe you can still grow right?? Don't get discouraged now!" Wilson harshly reprimanded.
"...I..."
"Being a freshman and having an Ability means that that Irvine's most likely a Starseed, but so what!?" He continued,
"Everybody's growth period is different, look at all the current pro players in the ranking, do you think all of them are Starseeds in college?"
"That's--" Ella wanted to talk back at him and say that it's not that simple, but deep down she knew that he's right.
Being a Starseed was a great first step, but it's not a definite formula for becoming a great player. At most, it was a boon to choose any colleges one could want.
Even someone like Renee Morgan or Sylphie Hunter were not Starseeds. Both had only started to improve drastically duringtheir early college years.
"You know that even Sigma Conquerors' Adrian Crowe almost didn't get drafted back then, right? I mean, look at the guy now." Wilson quickly pointed out an example.
Adrian Crowe was another ultimate example of a late bloomer. He had been a player from a Tier-2 college back in the day.
"..."
"... ...Mm."
"What's that?"
"..."
"...Alright already! you're right! Dammit, getting consoled by you is really lame!"
"Now that's the spirit~" Seeing the light slowly coming back to his friend's eyes, he knew that at least some of his encouragements had worked. Wilson grinned as he then changed his expression into a teasing one,
"Would you look at that~ The Ella who rejected a Tier-2 offer almost wanted to quit in her first week!"
"You!!"
...
The two's banters continued for another couple minutes until they eventually noticed that the regulars were beginning to clear the field below.
Irvine and the others were already getting ready to leave for the day.
"--Alright, alright. So looks like Irvine's the rumoured Starseed that our university's managed to get after all?" Wilson asked to confirm,
The two of them had heard the rumours of Ravenville getting a Starseed player, but since their official site's rosters hadn't been updated yet, they couldn't confirm the truth of the matter.
Ella nodded at the question, her expression was now very clear with no more confusions like before, "...Most likely, maybe we can find some articles about this year's Starseed and confirm first."
"Wow... as I thought, that dude's so cool! I should've asked for his autograph back then. Wait, I'll ask him for it on Monday!"
*snort*
"You're better off asking for some training advice instead, you're planning to rise up as a regular in these 4 years as well, right? Cause I'm telling you, I will not be waiting for you if you fall behind."
"Look at someone being confident again..."
"Ugh...."
"--Wait, actually... It's not really a bad idea... Right?" Ella was about to retort when Wilson suddenly spoke up again.
"What's not a bad idea?"
"Asking for some help in training from him? I mean-- We're from the same major, his dorm room's probably close-by..."
"!"