Rio went back to his dorm to absorb the knowledge of the book, comprehended both of them quickly, and started to practice it to start using it more efficiently.
Three days passed and it was time for the competition, these past three days Rio had managed to comprehend the Octave Movement Art and the adaptive shell technique to master the stage and prepared all he could, now it was just time to power through the competition. As long as I am top ten, Rio could enter the secret realm.
'Being first place would be too eye-catching, and could bring forth trouble, it is best to stay lowkey until I have the power to defend myself.' Rio thought as he was walking to the Academy Arena which was massive and at least 50,000 m2.
There were 4 massive circle rings on the outside and one circle ring in the middle that was about twice as big as the rest. Seats were like stadium seats, as there were seats that surrounded the arena apart from one area, which seemed to be where the elders and Academy Leader sat apart from the rest.
There were around ten thousand disciples ranging from outer to core students at the sideline, Rio gave the token to what seemed to be an outer elder and he scanned my token before pointing to the disciples which he followed.
Around 30 minutes passed and the noises and commotion started to settle down.
"The Academy Leader has arrived!" someone exclaimed in a boisterous and deep voice and what followed was a man that looked like a white-haired youth but was actually old. His body looked invigorated, his face filled with vitality and his eyes held unimaginable power, as if the eyes landed on you, you would be sucked into an abyss with no way to gain your clarity.
This caused everyone to instinctively bow not daring to look directly at him.
"Ehem, I would like to firstly say I am proud to be the leader of such admirable and exemplary disciples, this generation has made me proud as I have seen many geniuses, this competition is just to give everyone a chance to grow and let you figure out the flaws you need to work on. There is naturally of course the secret realm entrance that would be granted to the top ten students, to further increase your potential."
As everybody looked in awe at the figure emitting a serene aura that seemed that could turn suppressive and spine-chilling any second. Rio was anticipating the matches, why does the start of the competition have to always go through long speeches?
After around five minutes of "motivating" talking, the competition began.
Since there were ten thousand disciples, the first round was an elimination round at the massive center ring, which can accommodate well over ten thousand disciples. Everybody got on the stone stage and got ready for the round to begin
"Ok! If you are knocked out or kicked out of the ring, you're eliminated, killing is prohibited, and whoever goes against this rule will be severely punished. Anything else is fine. The competition will end once two hundred people are left. BEGIN!"
As soon as the man that was floating in the air started the match began, Rio ran to the side knocking one person who was still looking up at the "referee" dazed, whilst he turned his back toward the end of the ring keeping his guard up
It seems he was not the only smart one as multiple people ended up being disqualified in an instant, and when people regained their clarity, the battle started occurring with spells and martial arts being thrown around and used
Rio didn't seek people out and stayed at the edge of the ring, as people continuously tried to eliminate him, then the battle experience Rio gained from the inheritance really came in handy as he was able to dodge spells and avoid hits with minimal movement and not using any mana.
After an hour and eliminating around 50 people, the estimated number of people that are left shouldn't be more than two thousand. At this point, people started forming groups.
'The weak don't have strength so they hurdle together. There's nothing wrong about it, it's good they recognize their own strength'
There were roughly one hundred core disciples, four hundred inner disciples, and the rest 1500 outer disciples.
So, some inner disciples teamed up with some other inner disciples and hurdled all the outer sect disciples, and naturally, there was no resistance.
The Core disciples didn't really team up apart from when groups attacked them, they would work together and knock out or kick out the group.
The Core disciples didn't set up a group not because they had bad relations with each other, it was just because they were confident in their abilities. And since a team of a hundred regardless if it was outer sect disciples, they were cautious so they would form a temporary collaboration between themselves and eliminate the team.
Hardly any Core disciple went against another core disciple, it was more a core disciple sweeping away the outer disciple and an inner disciple struggling to face the outer sect disciple.
After a thousand people were left, a medium-sized group that had fifty outer sects and two inner disciples approached.
"Hey, you must be an inner disciple, join us. If we team up, we have a chance to be the final 200 participants, including two of us being the top inner disciples."
Rio pondered for a moment and replied
"Sure, I don't mind joining."
why would Rio pass up free meat shields, if someone he can't beat comes along, he will just use the rest as fodder whilst he ambushes or got away from them. However, it would most likely be a core disciple that would cause him to retreat as he could say that he is the strongest in the inner disciples from what he could see.
The highest-ranked inner disciple seems to be a 3rd Rank Mage, however, due to my combat ability, Rio was definitely stronger than a 3rd rank Mage, even if he didn't use his origin magic.
Rio joined them making the group have three inner disciples and 50 outer disciples, after around half an hour of recruiting and eliminating, Rio found Lara in the huge battle sprawl, luckily, she wasn't out, it would've been a waste of a good trusty meat shield.
The group had 70 outer sect disciples with five more inner disciples. And the total amount of people finally reached below a thousand people. Without about five major groups and two medium-sized groups all led by a couple of inner disciples.
After fifteen core disciples teamed up to decimate a two-hundred-man team, reducing a major group by one and making the two medium groups merge into one major group having 150 outer disciples and thirty inner disciples
Whilst this merge was happening the core disciple once again decimated another major group resulting in only three major groups left leaving around 600 disciples left with eighty of the core disciples still left in the ring.
400 people needed to go until the end of the competition, which caused everybody's attention to go from targeting the core disciple to one another, the three major groups targeted each other knowing it was near impossible to eliminate all the core disciples without combining strength, even if they teamed up with others, The Elders behind each core disciple were enough to deter that kind of targeting
Once again chaos broke out, and our team had extra manpower due to the merging of the groups and us having more inner disciples, after around half an hour of battle, the battle came to a close, and 200 people were left.