“But still, why now? He didn’t have those eyes before, and when I first felt that weird feeling it was incredibly faint.”
“He might have unconsciously suppressed the memories of that night as a self-defense mechanism. Something about the second phase must have made those memories come out again. That would also explain why he passed out even though all his vitals were normal before the phase ended.”
Executioner Leywin looked at Stella who was visibly concerned.
“Don’t worry, he’ll be fine. The sooner he faces his past, the better,” she said, ruffling Stella’s hair.
“Do you think that could be stopping him from awakening his ability?”
“I don’t know, it’s hard to say without knowing the precise nature of the memories and to what extent they were suppressed. Maybe in his past, he will finally find the answer he has been searching for. We’ll just have to wait and see,” Executioner Leywin said before disappearing into the hallway.
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Seth didn’t come out of his bed during the following day, if he wasn’t sleeping, he was mindlessly staring at the ceiling until he finally fell asleep.
Just as the sun was setting down on the horizon, he heard his ID card vibrate from the nightstand next to his bed. When he turned to look at it, it displayed a window with information, it was all the details about the final phase.
[Congratulations, Seth Bayard!]
[You are one of the few participants to reach the third phase
The final phase will start tomorrow morning.
It will be a tournament divided into two parts: a Preliminary Phase and a Direct Elimination Phase.]
[Preliminary phase:
-Participants will be divided into groups 34 groups of 7 and 3 groups of 6.
-Each participant in a group will compete against every other participant in that same group.
-The winner of each match will be the first to land five clean hits on their opponent.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
-These matches will determine the rankings of each competitor based on their performance within their group.
-Total received and given hits will also be taken into consideration when creating the final ranking.
-The final ranking at the end of the Preliminary Phase will be used to determine the match-ups for the Direct Elimination Phase
-Only the top half participants will pass to the next phase, the rest of the participants will be eliminated from the tournament.]
[Direct Elimination Phase:
-One-on-one matches determined by the final ranking after the Preliminary Phase
-Participants will use a special device that will detect if the attack they are about to receive is life-threatening and teleport them away if so
-The winner is determined by knockout or when the opponent’s safety device is activated
-The winner continues to the next round while the loser is eliminated from the tournament
-All matches will be broadcast live
-Special broadcast priority will be given to the semifinals which will be coordinated with the semifinals of the other tournament venues so there are no matches taking place at the same time]
[Both phases will be supervised by HSA scouts]
[Please report to Hall J-2 tomorrow at 8 am. Your group number is 17.]
After Seth finished reading the information, he made sure to set an alarm for the next day at 6 am and went to sleep.
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Ring! Ring! Ring! Ring!
The sound of the alarm woke up Seth. At the same time, his ID card displayed a window with the current time written in large numbers that flickered to the alarm.
Seth turned off the alarm, rubbed his eyes, and slowly got out of bed.
His body was quite numb because of the lack of activity, and he took longer than he would normally have to get ready.
After taking a bath and changing into his usual clothes, he grabbed his things, put on his mask, and left the room. The high-grade medical wing was one of the areas that he didn’t have access to before, so he used his ID card to display a map to help him find his way out.
After half an hour he finally arrived at the hall but since he was almost an hour early the hall was still closed. Without anything better to do, he just decided to sit down and wait for the hall to open.
Little by little, more participants started arriving and joined Seth. A couple of them actually tried to approach him, but as soon as Seth gazed at them they quickly backed off.
Finally, 15 minutes to 8 am, the hall opened its doors. By that time, all the participants that were assigned to Hall J-2 were already waiting in the corridor alongside Seth. He estimated that there were around 60 other participants who had been summoned to the same hall as him, about one-fourth of the participants who qualified for the final phase.
Even though the number of participants was considerably smaller, the hall was as big as the hall where the second phase had taken place. However, the need for such a big space became clear as soon as Seth stepped into the hall.
Nine gigantic fighting rings were ordered around the hall. The hall was surrounded by a continuous black stripe halfway between the floor and the hall’s high ceiling.
‘A two-way mirror,’ Seth thought.
The HSA scouts would surely be watching the performance of each participant from behind that window.
Making it to the third phase of the Rising Espers Tournament basically granted you a position within the HSA, either in the military or in the research and development division. Still, being picked by an HSA scout meant being able to skip several years that otherwise would be spent just climbing the ladder of ranks.
The participants could not afford to relax. They had to prove themselves valuable to the scouts.