After an hour, the Regalons appeared back at the table as each of them successfully finished the trial and acquired a score.
"Alright, announce your scores one by one. We’ll fill in the ten spots with the highest scorers." Admiral Rudra waved his hand and created a projection with ten slots and ranks from 1 to 10.
Almond, Lily, Admiral Rudra, Silvester, Hiroshi, Arjun, Julian, Big D, Kexell, Viktor, Bianca, Liang, Theo, Paloma, Zauna, Christina, Jas, Aarav, Liam, Ruyi, Natalia, Emma, Marcus, Maya, Kira, Noah, Tejas, and Valentina announced their scores one by one.
[ Top 10 Scores — Arena of the Fallen Star Trial ]
Almond — 2,300,000
Lily — 2,200,000
Admiral Rudra — 2,210,000
Natalia — 1,880,000
Arjun — 1,770,000
Silvester — 1,690,000
Hiroshi — 1,688,000
Big D — 1,640,000
Kexell — 1,580,000
Bianca — 1,540,000
A single mont of silence.
Then—
"WHAT?!" Julian nearly choked. "Two point three MILLION?!"
Noah whistled long and sharp. "Boss Almond is insane."
Valentina blinked at Lily. "You got 2.2 million... and still ended second?"
"That’s insulting," Lily muttered lightly, crossing her arms. "I’m redoing that trial next year."
Admiral Rudra huffed. "You realize I scored higher than you?"
Lily shrugged. "You’re a masochist who likes tanking danger head-on. I rely on elegance."
"You tried to break the trial system." Rudra pointed at Almond. "And he did break it."
Almond ignored them.
Silvester stared at the board, then sighed. "I’m happy with my 1.69 million. I’m not insane like you three."
"Agree for once." Hiroshi chuckled.
Arjun leaned back, faintly smiling. "As long as I’m top five, I’m happy."
"I was experinting, or I would be higher, heh." Big D licked his paw while floating.
Kexell snorted embers from his nose, half-satisfied, half-dissatisfied. "Top nine is fine."
Bianca wryly smiled. "And looks like I barely made it."
"Well, off you all go. We will do other missions." Viktor grunted.
"Better luck next ti."
And so, the ten Regalons accepted their entry into the Arena of the Fallen Star mission.
A heartbeat later, they arrived.
A colossal amphitheater stretched beyond sight, shaped like a ring of fractured stars suspended over an ocean of drifting constellations. In the center of the amphitheater, a sky-high pillar of light displayed the club rankings.
The 500 participants—50 Clubs—gathered across tiered platforms surrounding the arena, each wearing their academy badges, each radiating enough pressure to crush mountains.
All Grim Students.
All monsters in the making.
Whispers surged as soon as Club Regalon materialized.
"It’s them."
"Regalon made it?"
"They placed... fourteenth?"
"Not bad. Especially since they’re new this year."
"That’s the only club of newbie Grim Students who joined this year in the top 15."
"Though I see so of the top newbies of this year in top clubs."
Almond and others looked at the leaderboard.
[ TOTAL TRIAL POWER RANKINGS – CLUBS ]
Club Echelon Fang Club White Zenith Club Thousand Eyes Club Broken Root
...
Club Regalon
"Fourteenth, huh..." Julian muttered. "Guess we’ll have to take it up a notch from our current combat ability to get the first rank here."
"It’s going to be fun, I can feel it." Kexell grinned.
A deep voice reverberated across the entire arena.
"Welco, Grim Students."
A figure descended from the starry sky—
composed partly of shadow, partly of starlight—
a manifestation of Grimverse itself.
"Today begins the Arena of the Fallen Star. Fifty Clubs have entered. Only one will claim the Fallen Star Emblem."
The air hardened.
Lights dimd.
The pillar of rankings moved aside.
And a new projection ford.
[ ROUND 1 – CLUB SURVIVAL BATTLE ROYAL ]
Silence broke into murmurs.
The projection continued explaining:
[ ROUND 1 RULES – CLUB SURVIVAL BATTLE ROYAL ]
-All 50 clubs will be transported into a special dinsion called Bastionworld.
-Each club is given a territory fortress with a border. Once you leave the border, you can only return after killing a mber of another club or dying.
-After dying, you will respawn in your club fortress after 10 seconds. Each death will increase the respawn ti by 5 seconds.
-If your Fortress Core is destroyed, you will not respawn until the core is restored. 5 minutes to restore the core once it is destroyed.
-Killing mbers of other clubs and destroying their fortress’s core will grant you score and points.
-Score will count towards ranking. Points can be used to activate temporary skills of your fortress.
-The round will last for five hours. After five hours, the top 25 clubs in the score ranking will proceed to the next round.
-Teleportation of any kind is restricted in this dinsion.
"Read the rules. One minute later, the round will begin."
And in the blink of an eye, one minute passed by.
All the Grim Students arrived in the special dinsion.
The Regalons found themselves atop their fortress, which was situated in an open grassy plain with snowy mountains to it far north, and a gigantic forest no less tall than the mountains on the other three sides.
Their territory was a 3-kiloter radius of grassy plain with the fortress in the middle, which was a towering obsidian citadel shaped like a fang rising from broken stone. Intricate silver lines pulsed across its surface—alive, shifting, waiting.
With points, the fortress could have more features.
At the heart of the structure hovered their Fortress Core, a glowing crystalline sphere.
[ Fortress Core ]
HP: 100%.
"So, we have to go out to hunt, and also defend our fortress. And we have five hours to rake up the scores." Natalia blinked as she looked at Almond, Lily, and Admiral Rudra. "What’s the plan?"
"If we want maximum benefits, we need to keep our fortress core intact. So we will send half out to hunt others, and half to protect the fortress. How does that sound?" Silvester suggested a strategy.
"That looks standard. But it’s also sothing the majority of others would do, right?" Arjun smiled. "How about we go all out? No need to defend our fortress at all. The ten of us will hunt other students and raid their fortress, specifically, the fortress that doesn’t have all of their mbers present."
Everyone’s eyes flickered.
The plan sounded good.
"I am in." Kexell grinned. "That sounds fun."
"Indeed. Perhaps that will be the best strategy for us." Bianca nodded.
"What do you say?" Hiroshi turned to Rudra.
"Yep. Let’s go with that. But we will increase our efficiency by splitting into two groups, so we can search fast." Admiral Rudra explained the strategy. "Once a group finds a fortress or sees another group of Grim Students roaming about, we will gather quickly and decimate our opponents."
Almond added. "This is also a race. We have five hours, and it takes 5 minutes for a core to restore, and the respawn ti for other Grim Students also increases with ti. It will be hard to gather scores near the end. I have so ideas, but we will have to roam around and check this dinsion to see if it works."
Everyone nodded.
"Alright, let’s split." Lily looked at everyone and made two teams.
Team 1: Almond, Lily, Bianca, Kexell, and Big D.
Team 2: Rudra, Arjun, Natalia, Silvester, and Hiroshi.
...
Sowhere in the realm of Turning Crown Academy, John Wicked and Grimlord Spilcrown sat amidst an eccentric sky, with a giant screen in front of them.
"What do you think?" Spilcrown asked. "Will they take the first rank?"
John rubbed his chin. "It really depends, to be honest. I’ve set them on the right path, so they will only utilize it, but it remains to be seen how far they go during these arena missions."
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