Adelaide recovered her calm in an instant and replied,
"What a pleasant surprise. I wasn't expecting it to be your highness."
Clarence, on the other hand, was a little taken aback when she addressed him like that. Although it was a rule that the Royal family, no matter which race needed to be addressed with respect, it wasn't the case with demons and humans.
They were clear enemies fighting over more resources and the petty title of the strongest race. So they naturally didn't follow that rule.
From this, he deduced that her family, or to be on the safer side, she, was someone who was against humans and demons fighting. He wasn't so foolish as to assume she supported the demons, so that's where his prediction lay, that she was against the useless war.
He replied to her,
"You don't need to address me like that, let's call each other by our first names as I'll be more comfortable that way. By the way, your performance in this round was commendable. I look forward to you winning more."
"Stop joking, I just came eighteenth in the qualifying round and third in this round. It's a far cry from you, who were third in the qualifying round and topped this round. I hope I don't have to face you in the later rounds."
In a sense, Clarence, or to be precise, his whole family was also a little similar. His family wasn't the Royal family from the very start. His grandfather had climbed to the top like a meteor with his own power and dethroned the past Royal family with the help of some of his friends.
He then set up the Verity family as the Royal Family. But a peculiar thing was that he had never participated in the fight between the two races.
Probably a result of preaching or just his influence, but the whole Royal family never participated in the battle between the two races.
Except Lysander, that is, among the five people of the Royal family, only he opposed the humans as he was the chief commander of the allied army of demons.
Although there wasn't a single war big enough for him to participate in, his post alone shows his stance of not following his father's ideas.
Be that as it may, the humans didn't increase their attack tempo, instead it even lessened, making a lot of people, mainly the intelligence agencies, speculate that the current Demon emperor was a lot stronger than what he exposed to the public.
Clarence and Adelaide continued talking about random topics while waiting for this round to finish.
After a considerable amount of time had passed, Marvin appeared high up in the air again, this time gaining everyone's attention without having to cough.
He looked down at the thousands of participants remaining and spoke,
"You are all qualified to join the allied academy. From here on, the true tournament will start, which will be for the sake of ranking in the academy.
Those not interested can leave. Killing of the participants had been allowed till now, but no killing will be allowed in the tournament as you are all students of the same academy."
He then smirked and continued,
"But don't worry, there is a death ring in the academy where you can fight to death. Of course, you need to have a plausible reason. Only then will you be allowed into the death ring.
Anyways, all things aside, the tournament will begin after the people who don't want to join will leave."
As he said this, Clarence spotted a sizable number of people leaving the five discs along the stairs which were attached to them. At their rank, jumping from such a height will only result in them being turned into paste.
"Let's meet at the academy, Clarence. It was a pleasure talking to you."
Clarence turned to the side and noticed that Adelaide was leaving too. He was a little taken aback but still nodded without asking why, as everyone had their secrets.
He looked around and found that Bernard and Everett were both on different discs. When they turned his way, he just displayed his thumb with fingers closed as a sign to tell them to do their best.
After seeing that no one else was leaving, Marvin spoke up,
"There are around eight thousand five hundred of you people present. Unfortunately, the around five hundred people who are at the end of the leaderboard will have to go through another battle royal out of which only one hundred and ninety-two of you will qualify. You have three hours of rest time."
He disappeared again after he finished speaking.
Having nothing to do for three hours, he sat down and began meditating.
Viewing the golden blue orb of energy glowing in his mindspace with the same intensity he had first seen, Clarence couldn't stop himself from being amazed.
The beauty of this color always enamored him whenever he visited his mindspace. It made him wonder if people felt the same way when they looked at his eyes, which have the same color but without the glow.
During the past week he had tried many methods to make the orb spin, that is, to cultivate the golden blue energy. Although he discovered one of its uses, he still felt like there was more to it.
For the time being, he didn't want to even touch the energy as there'd be many eyes watching this area. Even if one of them discovered it, it could possibly spell problems for him. Sure, his family could try protecting him, but till when?
He internally called out to the system and asked it,
"Can I find out information about a specific person?"
[Possible]
"How much?"
[2 high tier mana crystal]
"Damn, that's cheap, can I know about the guy sitting on the corner of the disc on the right side of mine?"
[....]
[Status : Top condition]
".... No wonder it was so cheap, it only displays which state the target is in physically. But I think it still turned out to be useful, that guy has injuries all over his body but to think that he is perfectly fine. Everyone uses different tricks.
Anyways, let me go use the simulator"
Clarence had found a pretty amazing use of the simulator in the past month while passing time and it turned out to have immense potential. He was extremely surprised and delighted at this discovery. Now he was looking forward to unlocking more of the system's features more than ever.