In the following days, the entire city of Vebel was abuzz with discussions about the incident on the Ninth Artificial Floating Island, and the excitement showed no signs of subsiding.
The long-awaited Sky Wizards Martial Arts Festival had just begun its first round when an attack by a new species of Armored Beetles resulted in multiple injuries, some serious, forcing the competition to be halted. This turn of events was certainly an inauspicious start.
People continued to debate the incident, even going so far as to criticize the Floating City Alliance, blaming them for not conducting a thorough investigation of the competition stage. They argued that the Alliance should have known about the presence of these new Armored Beetles nesting near Vebel, and that this oversight was unacceptable.
Some even linked the recent disappearances of Vebel residents to this incident, suggesting that the new species of Armored Beetles had been silently abducting citizens and consuming them as food.
As a result, many began to shift responsibility onto the Floating City Alliance for their failure to properly handle the situation.
The fact that a new species of Armored Beetles had appeared around the Pope's Floating City without the Alliance's knowledge was enough to lead people to believe that the Alliance was negligent, not to mention the other issues that had arisen.
Fortunately, due to the characteristic of Armored Beetles, which causes the memories of those killed by them to vanish from everyone's minds, it was eventually proven that the missing citizens had not been victims of these new Armored Beetles.
Thus, although the matter continued to be the subject of much discussion, it gradually blew over.
Just when everyone thought that the Sky Wizards Martial Arts Festival would be canceled, Hartmann, representing the Floating City Alliance, made a surprising statement.
"The survival competition will be considered prematurely concluded, and only the teams that have met the clearance conditions will continue in the Sky Wizards Martial Arts Festival."
In other words, the Sky Wizards Martial Arts Festival would proceed.
This announcement naturally caused another uproar.
"Even after the accident, they're still holding the event?"
"The Sky Wizards Martial Arts Festival was previously banned due to political instability. Now there's an actual incident, and they're still holding the competition?"
"What is going on with this year's Sky Wizards Martial Arts Festival?"
"Are they not considering the feelings of those involved?"
The citizens of Vebel voiced their discontent.
What they didn't know was that this Sky Wizards Martial Arts Festival was a proxy war between human forces and Armored Beetle forces. The victor would gain the upper hand in the subsequent war, making it impossible to cancel the event.
Even if the humans wanted to cancel, Zeth would never agree.
To demonstrate the power of the humanoid Armored Beetles and force humanity to submit, Zeth was determined to ensure that the Sky Wizards Martial Arts Festival continued.
In light of this, the Floating City Alliance, against public opinion, declared that the Sky Wizards Martial Arts Festival would go on.
The competition was set for tomorrow.
At that time, the teams that had secured four orbs in the survival competition would be eligible to continue participating in the tournament.
During the single-day survival competition, four teams had managed to obtain four orbs.
They were:
- The Vebel representative team.
- The Korai representative team.
- The Mistgun representative team.
- The Falcion representative team.
These four teams would compete in a round-robin elimination tournament starting tomorrow.
As for the matchups, they had already been decided.
Match 1: Vebel vs. Falcion.
Match 2: Korai vs. Mistgun.
The winners of these two matches would face off in the third match.
The victor of the final match would be crowned the champion of this year's Sky Wizards Martial Arts Festival and awarded the title of the strongest.
The news spread quickly.
Naturally, it reached the members of Mistgun.
...
"As Rozen predicted, the competition won't be canceled after all."
In the inn's room, Kanata held up a notice as he informed the others.
Everyone had gathered, including Leysritt.
However, Leysritt was miserably writing a reflection letter.
The reason? After waking up, Leysritt had tried to escape. When Rozen returned and didn't see her, he immediately issued an order that brought her back and assigned her this punishment.
Although Kanata and the others were not completely indifferent to Leysritt's situation, now was not the time to dwell on that matter.
The group was focused on discussing what was to come.
"The fact that the competition isn't canceled was within our expectations, but I didn't expect the next round to be held as soon as tomorrow."
Chloe sighed.
"This is way too rushed, isn't it?"
Yuri expressed her worries as well.
"It seems the people behind this proxy war are getting impatient."
Mena deduced.
"Or should we say, Zeth is getting impatient?" Rozen glanced at the group and smiled faintly. "The appearance of the dragon completely disrupted Zeth's plans. Worried that his scheme might fall apart, he must be pressing to finish the Sky Wizards Martial Arts Festival as quickly as possible. Delaying would only complicate matters."
It was likely that Zeth, in his capacity as the head of the council, pressured the members of the Floating City Alliance to push through the decision.
Clearly, Zeth was no longer willing to wait, having been unsettled by Rozen's unknown capabilities.
This was exactly why Rozen had summoned the dragons in the first place.
Rozen, too, was tired of wasting time with Zeth. Since Zeth refused to show himself, Rozen decided to turn up the heat, accelerating the events to force him into the open.
This way, they could locate Zeth's true body, expose the entirety of the humanoid Armored Beetles' plans, and neutralize all of his strategies, bringing Zeth down without taking any losses.
That was Rozen's goal: no losses.
Otherwise, he would have long since opted to crush the Armored Beetles' conspiracy with brute force.
Though it was more troublesome and had taken longer than expected, everything was proceeding according to Rozen's plan. No unexpected issues had arisen.
That's the advantage of strategy.
Relying purely on brute force might be satisfying, but in the long run, it offers no real benefit.
So...
"I'll reconfirm one last time."
Rozen looked at the group.
"As I've mentioned before, I plan to intervene in this conflict as a third-party force and take down Zeth."
Since returning from the underground city, Rozen had shared all the information he had gathered with the others.
Although they were initially shocked, they had since come to accept it.
Now...
"Count me in!"
"Let's go with your plan!"
"I'm ready, senpai!"
"There's no turning back now!"
Kanata, Chloe, Yuri, and Mena all declared their resolve.
"Alright."
Rozen nodded.
"Then tomorrow will be your time to shine!"
To thwart Zeth's conspiracy, it was time to unveil the "thing" they had prepared in advance.
When that moment came, Zeth and Annerose's reactions would surely be priceless.
With that thought in mind, Rozen smiled.
Thus, the day passed in the blink of an eye.
The day of the tournament arrived.