Parallel Memory

The next day, again the list was shown and this time, similar to yesterday, the participants were mostly from Ace Academy. Six students from Ace Academy and the other four from other schools.

The six students from Ace Academy were Hiro, Zion, Lisa, Sylvia, Misha, and the second-year 1st ranker Ren Dreyar.

This time no one surrendered and all of them went on the stage. The other student had a worried expression. Why won’t they have as there were six opponents that they needed to face even if they allied themselves?

Not to mention that the Ace Academy participants were stronger than them. By that, I mean ridiculously stronger than them. The highest rank that the opponent team had was Rank-D.

Nevertheless, they gathered their courage and stepped onto the stage, hoping for some kind of miracle to happen to them.

As expected, no miracle happened and the four students were instantly eliminated by Ace Academy participants. However, the real match was just starting, which was among the Ace Academy members.

The match was immediately divided into three fights; Hiro Vs Zion, Lisa Vs Ren Dreyar, and finally Sylvia Vs Misha. They were all fighting separately.

Nobody present there has thought about teaming up with each other to eliminate the other. This would be disadvantageous to the Ace Academy as a weaker student might get advanced to the next round and the other thing was because of their pride.

It was okay to team up with a schoolmate against other schools because that is what they should do but when fighting the students who are all from the same school, it was inappropriate.

The only ones who would team up are a coward and those who don’t want to prove themselves and just want to advance to the next round. As for those remaining contestants, they were all those who wanted to prove that they were the best.

The battle started and they didn’t hold anything back, especially in Hiro and Zion’s fight. Zion showed powerful strength even though he was lower in rank than Hiro. However, Hiro was beyond his current strength and easily countered Zion’s attack.

Hiro didn’t even struggle and easily overpowered Zion like he was nothing. However, Zion was not without a trump card. He instantly used a skill that raised his power and he pushed back Hiro.

Zion seemed to have used a skill similar to Hiro’s System Power Double, as his strength increased and reached the level of Rank-C.

With that, he was able to fight toe to toe with Hiro. That showed the power of his skill. With that, it has now become vague who will win unless Hiro uses System Double Power.

Hiro would not use that skill, because he would not want to waste System points on someone he could defeat. In addition to that, if he wanted to, he would not be able to as he lacked the System point to maintain that skill for a long time.

For now, the fight between Hiro and Zion seemed to have reached a stalemate.

The other two fights also seemed that it would take time before a victor could be decided. Misha and Sylvia fought with everything they had. Even when their rank was D +, they didn’t seem much weaker than Rank-C – fighters.

Sylvia used her arrows to keep Misha at a distance. Sylvia already knows how dangerous Misha is in close combat and wanted to avoid fighting with her in close proximity. Misha also knew about Sylvia’s devastating attacks and dodged them instead of blocking them.

With them knowing each other, they were cautious of each other’s skills. They also smiled from time to time showing their admiration for each other’s skills.

On to the last fight, it was Ren Dreyar and Lisa. In this fight, instead of Lisa being overpowered, it was the opposite. Lisa was dominating the whole match.

Dreyar tried to close the distance since he was a swordsman while Lisa was a mage. He was also wary of the light ball that Lisa used to defeat Velma, the third year in the selection match.

He would quickly use his skill to instantly close the distance and attack Lisa.

However, Lisa would instantly dash away using her skill. And then continue to fight from long range. He tried his long-range attack but was blocked by Lisa’s defensive skill.

His long-range attack lacked the power to penetrate Lisa’s shield and therefore he needed to close the distance and then fight.

Although Dreyar could not defeat Lisa instantly, the same held true for Lisa. She also could not just eliminate Dreyar as he didn’t give Lisa a chance to conjure any strong spell.

-CHEERS!

The audiences were as hyped as ever, maybe not as much as they were in Zero’s match but they were definitely more excited than the other two matches.

The Ace Academy students showed incredible power one after another. Any of those students would be regarded as a treasure in any of the schools and all of them were gathered at Ace Academy.

The Ace Academy Professors looked at them proudly. This match had become a show-off event for the Ace Academy. Most schools were jealous of Ace Academy.

They already know that Ace Academy has a monster called Zero. But there were another five students who were just first-year that were extremely strong, stronger than their third-year Aces.

With such a lineup, they knew that the next two years’ tournament would be extremely difficult to win unless they got a first-year player who could surpass them, which was even more unlikely.

*SIGH!

Many professors sighed as there was nothing that they could do. Their first years were also talented but Ace Academy had taken most of the talented students from the Golden Generation.

They could not imagine what type of backing Ace Academy would have after Zero and all those students graduated from the school.

-CLANG! -BOOM! -CLANK! -POW! -BANG!

The match took a long time and finally someone was eliminated. It was Ren Dreyar who got eliminated first. Ren Dreyar could not withstand the continuous attack of Lisa and was extremely exhausted.

With that, Lisa had a big advantage over other participants. She could use this time to rest and recover her mana when others are fighting.

Similarly, the battle between Zion and Hiro appeared to be over after some time. While Zion had gained the power to fight equally against Hiro, it was not enough to overpower him. And, as previously said, every forbidden skill has big side effects.

Pain ran through every part of Zion’s body after the skill time was over. He immediately lost consciousness and had to be carried over on a stretcher.

As for the battle between Misha and Sylvia, there seems to be no end in sight. With both of them having a similar power level, they didn’t seem to have an advantage over each other.

On the other hand, Hiro and Lisa had also started fighting each other. With both their enemies eliminated, they had to fight each other. And the winner will fight the winner between Sylvia and Misha.

Lisa, who had to recover a bit, had a bit of an advantage over Hiro. Not only that, Hiro’s opponent was far stronger than Lisa’s opponent and therefore Hiro was also more exhausted.

However, Hiro had a higher rank which was a big advantage over Lisa. He also knows about Lisa’s skills. Though the same was the case for Lisa and she knew most skills that Hiro has.

The fight continued for some time and then Misha got eliminated. From the injuries that Sylvia has sustained, others can see that she didn’t have an easy win.

Ultimately, Sylvia won because she successfully baited Misha at the last moment. Sylvia intentionally gave Misha some openings, and Misha seized the opportunity and dealt some devastating attacks to Sylvia.

Sylvia managed to barely hold on and after Misha was done with her attack, Sylvia showed her attack which she had kept hidden. This made Misha go out of the ring.

It would not have been a surprise if Misha had won that fight. Misha dejectedly returned back to Ace Academy’s side. She was going to watch the match before going to heal.

Misha’s family cheered up Misha by showing their support and others also cheered for Misha.

“Don’t mind!”

“You did great!”

Misha smiled, but she could not hide the sadness on her face.

Misha’s parents and Eleonore really thought that Misha did everything she could and she should be proud of her achievement. She could easily join any Gold graded guild and even some Diamond guilds would recruit her.

However, even with such achievement, losing was losing, and Misha was disappointed nonetheless.

Even though she knew that winning the tournament was impossible for her and she was already satisfied with being in the Top 100, she could not help but shed tears when she lost the tournament.

This was a one in million chance for someone like her to get recognized by everyone!