"Second modification," the announcer continued. "In addition to your assigned tutors, each team will carry an additional escort. mbers of the military service and guards from noble houses have voluntarily offered their ti to ensure student safety."
"To prevent cheating," Larissa murmured near Ren, low enough that only her neighbors heard, understanding the subtext imdiately. "Seems they think Zhao is helping Ren."
It wasn’t subtle.
The opportunistic nobles clearly suspected Ren’s success in previous exams had been partially due to help from his tutor. So they added their own observers, people loyal to their factions, to watch and report any "irregularities" real or imagined.
"Third modification," the announcer continued. "In this evaluation, quality will have double weight over quantity."
This ti, the auditorium exploded in conversation, voices rising in confusion.
"That doesn’t make sense!" Min protested from his seat, frustration clear in his tone. "Gathering has always been about both. Why change that now?"
The Directors raised a hand, requesting silence that took several monts to achieve as students reluctantly quieted.
"It has been considered," the announcer said carefully, each word chosen with diplomatic intention, "that so students with beasts that have large spaces for transport, like wolverines, have disproportionate advantage. Other students equally skilled at gathering, but with bad luck in team compositions, don’t have access to this important chanic that only works here and not in real life..."
He paused for breath, for effect, letting the justification build.
"...By giving double weight to quality, we cushion the ’wolverine effect’ a bit," he continued, the term clearly coined specifically for this announcent. "This massive transport chanic doesn’t occur in real life with such frequency because nobles from high houses rarely go gathering, and they’re the ones who have most of the wolverines in their power."
Another pause...
"...Although this generation has them sowhat more, the chanic remains unrealistic. It’s not reasonable to expect that adventurers will always have soone with a wolverine on hand to create gathering teams in adult life. Therefore, we reward the ability to identify and gather high-quality materials over simply accumulating volu."
♢♢♢♢
Ren listened to all this with an expression that revealed nothing.
His face was a mask of neutrality, the kind he’d learned to wear from Larissa’s advice... since, when dealing with nobles, one doesn’t want to reveal much to those who watched his every reaction for weakness or advantage.
But internally, he was already processing rapidly, his mind already calculating adjustnts and strategies.
Limiting to the Silver ring...
Adding additional watchers from noble factions who’d report his every move, his every decision, looking for any excuse to claim impropriety.
Quality over quantity to try neutralizing his Wolverine’s advantage, the massive storage capacity that had let him dominate previous competitions.
Each rule designed specifically to try and counter his strengths, to strip away the advantages he’d built through years of careful cultivation. The nobles had studied him, analyzed his victories, and crafted restrictions they believed would finally level the playing field.
He couldn’t use Gold beasts to dominate with quality from more dangerous territories, couldn’t leverage the raw power he’d worked so hard to develop.
He couldn’t receive help from Zhao... Not that he ever had anyway so that didn’t matter, that restriction was aningless against soone who’d always relied on his special knowledge rather than outside assistance.
Still, there were many changes targeting him...
So now he couldn’t simply fill his Wolverine’s space with tons of any material and win by volu, the brute force approach now neutered by the quality weighting.
Then the Plants cultivation materials in silver rank that he’d wanted to bring because they were what the city needed, but which weren’t yet the most expensive in demand, were discarded as viable strategies.
It was intelligent in a certain way on the part of the "enemy" nobles, he had to admit with grudging respect.
Limiting in ways that seed reasonable on the surface, justifications that sounded fair to those who didn’t understand the deeper ga being played.
And...
Completely useless in Ren’s eyes if they wanted to make him lose first place.
Ren smiled.
Because the nobles had made a fundantal error in their reasoning, a mistake that revealed just how little they truly understood about what made him exceptional.
They didn’t know him, didn’t understand what actually drove his success.
They thought Ren’s advantage ca only from having strong beasts, more cargo space, and help from his tutor. Surface-level advantages that could be neutralized with the right rules and restrictions.
They didn’t understand that his true advantage was knowledge itself.
From a brave and well raised yet normal child, to a ’vessel of knowledge’ by luck... Ren had realized little by little that "Knowledge was power".
The deep understanding of ecosystems that let him identify the most valuable materials without effort, that let him see patterns others couldn’t perceive even when staring directly at them. The capacity to use those sa ecosystems and their beasts to access resources of qualities that others didn’t even know existed, hidden treasures that textbooks never ntioned because those who knew kept the information close.
The new rules changed none of that fundantal superiority.
Silver ring instead of Gold?
Ren could fill himself completely with the most valuable thing from Silver ring 3.
He knew every rare resource, every exceptional dicinal plant, every elental crystal that grew under specific conditions that most gatherers never encountered. Years of looking through his fungal network had given him maps others couldn’t dream of accessing.
And he could bring an obscene quantity of the best possible quality equally, storage space still massive and relevant even if restricted to a fixed quality.
He could even make three trips this ti, efficiency compensating thanks to being on a closer and weaker ring.
The nobles had bet against him thinking they’d leveled the playing field, that they’d finally found the restrictions that would humble the commoner who’d risen too far too fast.
In reality, they’d only better delimited the best possible record... and Ren would again be the one to obtain it, showing exactly how little they understood what they were facing. Proving once more that surface advantages ant nothing against true comprehension.
The only uncomfortable situation might be the need to fight more often against other teams, since he’d be more within reach limited to silver 3. Other students who’d avoided Gold zones would all cluster in Silver, increasing competition and potential conflict.
But he had just the solution to that too...
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