By Zephyria “Hey, is that you? Just say one word!”
“There’s a rumor that your alias is Leo, is your ambition to become the king of this league and win?”
“You’re already being talked about as a supernova in the league, what are your thoughts?”
“Is there a reason why you passed through the Portal late in the test match? Did you deliberately hide your skills?”
“Was your appearance at the end an act to aim for the main character’s spot?”
‘Ah, please stop—!’
Leonardo wandered around inside the main stadium building. To be exact, he was being chased by people.
Newspaper employees with notebooks and pens swarmed around him, asking him questions. However, Leonardo was ignoring the burdensome attention and looking for a place to hide. He covered his face tightly with someone else’s hat and cloth that were lying on the floor, and only rebuked inwardly, maintaining a vow of silence.
‘Get lost, you humans!’
He wanted to push them all away and run away if he could. But there were quite a few passersby, so he was just dodging here and there.
“Ah!”
He glanced back for a moment and bumped into someone else strongly again. The person he collided with screamed reflexively, as if hit by a 9,000-ton warship, and fell backward. Leonardo quickly grabbed the other person’s arm, straightened the body that was about to fall, and nodded.
“Sorry.”
Leaving a short apology, he hurried across the street. Behind him, a line followed, trailing behind him. Some people stuck to the person he had bumped into earlier and asked what they had talked about.
The inside of the main stadium building was much larger and more complex in structure than it looked from the outside. Among them, the south and east sides, which were used as the main entrances for spectators and participants, were densely packed with commercial facilities. It was the epitome of splendor, with a large floating population and no place to rest your eyes. The rookie of the hour, wandering around such a place in a daze, was bound to attract people’s attention.
When Leonardo, cornered, passed through a complicatedly intertwined corridor and leaned against a half-open window, the reporters who had swarmed in and the Council members who were trying to stop him waved their hands and tried to calm him down.
“No, no!”
“Come down!”
It was unclear whether they were concerned about safety, remembering the height of 5 floors, or whether they were anxious about missing their subject. However, the opponent is a capable person who has shattered 1m-long reinforced concrete with several layers of Enhancement magic. Leonardo, with light movements, climbed onto the railing and jumped out of the window despite the screaming protests, flying like a Butterfly.
The photographers who were withdrawing from the ground happened to discover the scene and pressed the shutter several times, capturing it on film as if it were a video. Afterwards, people exclaimed “Wow” as if they were seeing a legendary animal at the sight of him landing lightly.
Leonardo wanted to die of embarrassment, but he just closed his eyes tightly and didn’t show it. He left the reporters behind and ran to one side of the stadium and disappeared leisurely.
The north building was a special area used as the main operations headquarters of the main stadium. There was a sign that said ‘Restricted Area for Unauthorized Personnel,’ but there was no choice. Thanks to the guys who were more persistent than the stalkers, Leonardo lowered his upper body, crossed the fence, and wandered through the quieter hallway.
“Hyung-nim, this way. This way!”
He turned his head when he heard a whisper-like shout along the way. Ero, hiding behind the hallway, was seen gesturing. Leonardo ran to him with a complicated expression.
“You managed not to get caught?”
“Don’t even mention it.”
The two, exchanging words as if they were fed up, stuck their backs against the wall and held their breath. They remained silent for a while until the humans who followed them disappeared in another direction.
How long had it been? When the surroundings became quiet, Leonardo wrapped his hands around the back of his neck. He lowered his head and plopped down on the floor.
“Ha, I’m going crazy.”
Ero, who also sat down next to him, burst out complaining.
“I finally realized today. The reason why the preliminary candidates disappear like ghosts every year after the match…. Wow, aren’t those humans leeches?”
“No, why are they chasing me so much? Don’t they go home?”
“Isn’t it because if your battle with the whip is known, your value will skyrocket?”
Ero brought his index finger and thumb together and shook them lightly. Leonardo sighed.
“Some of them even guessed my alias.”
“Huh? At this point, isn’t the Council deliberately leaking it? To increase the stakes?”
It was an unrefined suspicion, but on the other hand, it was not entirely impossible.
The beginning of the two being chased was from the explosion that occurred while crossing the Portal. The situation had to go back about 20 minutes.
Leonardo, who had been looking up at the stands, which were boiling with heat in a negative sense, for 3 seconds, belatedly realized that his hat had flown away during the battle. He hurriedly picked up anything lying around. It was the first time since the trial that determined whether he would be released that he had been so intensely exposed to so many gazes, so the pulse in his neck became clear and even his head rang.
The symptoms became even more serious when he directly witnessed the situation and realized that there was no barrier in front of him. The voices of the crowd that he had been hearing since before entering the stadium now sounded like thunder tearing through the air.
Unlike his dignified appearance, he hid behind a pillar, a blind spot, after covering his face and head appropriately. In the meantime, his consciousness was hazy due to the aftermath of the battle, and his body was hot, so he was out of his mind. If the two staff members who approached him hadn’t told him that it would be better to get treatment first, he would have forgotten that he had been injured on his right hand.
Just as he was about to move to the infirmary as a specially managed subject, Leonardo realized that the sadist who had confronted him until the end was nowhere to be seen. The people who had crossed the Portal with him were also being supported and moved, but the whereabouts of the silver mask were unknown.
Afterwards, while receiving treatment in the infirmary with Ero, he was able to hear the situation from the league official who had come to find them.
“Hello, I’m Sandra, who is in charge of the F Group test match, Part 1. Thank you both for your hard work in the match.”
It was a somewhat familiar voice.
“In the case of F Group, we are visiting to inform you that the final results announcement may be somewhat delayed due to matters that require discussion and judgment among the staff members.”
“Uh…?”
Ero tried to point his finger, but hurriedly lowered his finger, realizing it was rude. Leonardo, who was watching the process of the flesh on the back of his hand being restored with recovery, also raised his head and looked at her.
Sandra smiled and continued.
“Yes, that’s right. I am the staff member who was in charge of explaining the rules and guiding the passers before the match started. It’s an honor to meet you.”
“What do you mean you need to judge? Does that mean we didn’t pass?”
Leonardo, whose nerves had become sharp, frowned with an aggressive tone. Still, he had been using honorifics to the members to show respect for the organization since his release. As the situation seemed to be going strangely, the habit of acting comfortably even to the high-ranking commanders in the peninsula popped out.
Ero looked back at him as if surprised. However, Sandra, who was aware of the major participant information, answered softly without showing any unpleasant or embarrassed expression.
“That’s right. There are a total of 7 people who passed through the last Portal, including the two of you. Among them, 5 are participants and 2 are safety personnel who were urgently deployed. At the time you entered the Portal, the number of people who could pass was 4. In other words, there is one more passer among the participants. Therefore, a judgment is needed to determine who the final 4 passers and 1 dropout are.”
Originally, the 26th passer was designed to be pushed out and the Portal would close immediately when they entered the Portal. However, Sandra added that various external pressures acted during the final battle of the group, and above all, the Portal was formed unstably, so there seemed to be an error in the recognition of the passers.
She bowed her head and apologized for not taking action in advance before the tower collapsed. Who would have known that a mere participant would slice the tower? Leonardo remained silent with a displeased expression.
“The primary purpose of this assessment is to identify the final qualifiers, but discussions will also address excessive obstruction by specific individuals and destruction of terrain. While the League does not restrict combat methods, making it difficult to argue that the participant’s actions violate the rules, these actions have gone too far, impacting the safety of participants and influencing individual qualification. Therefore, we have determined that it is necessary to consider whether there was an intent to manipulate the outcome.”
Although the ‘specific individual’ was not named, Leonardo and Ero simultaneously thought of one person. The fact that he was a subject of discussion assured them that he was among the five final candidates on hold.
Sandra explained that the specific individual had left the scene and disappeared immediately after passing through the Portal, which made securing a statement difficult and slightly delayed the discussion.
Leonardo sighed, seemingly regretful. He blamed himself for deliberately holding back in front of that bastard.
‘I should have just blasted him away.’
“The assessment and discussion will conclude within three hours, and each participant will be notified. In the meantime, we would appreciate it if you could rest comfortably in the infirmary or the participant waiting room.”
Sandra, having completed the brief announcement, was about to move elsewhere when Leonardo remembered a question he had throughout the match.
“Wait, there’s something I’m curious about.”
“Yes, please speak.”
“When the Portal opened earlier, was the simultaneous passage of over a dozen people also due to a recognition error? Originally, the calculations were based on a maximum of three people passing through at a time. It was clear there was a problem, so why didn’t you stop the match sooner?”
Sandra listened attentively and smiled warmly, like a professor at an academy hearing a satisfactory question.
“That’s an excellent point. However, the Portal was only problematic at the last opening.”
Leonardo raised an eyebrow.
“No problem?”
“No matter how detailed the explanation of the League’s rules, the aspects that can be specified within the given time are limited. Therefore, they can be understood differently depending on individual interpretation. I explained the match format as follows: ‘All participants must head to the Surgery Tower and return to the goal point in the main stadium by passing through the Portal that opens only at the top of the tower.’”
Leonardo stared at her with a ‘so what?’ expression, as she repeated what he had already heard.
“This is the requirement for passing through the Portal. The subsequent explanation is only about ‘how to open the Portal’ and has nothing to do with the possibility of passage.”
“……”
“There’s a slight trick in the rules of this match. In the Plarinus Surgery Tower Capture Match, there was no mention of a limit to the number of people who could pass through the Portal at once. However, by mentioning the limit to the number of crystals that could be placed in the seed chamber per person, we naturally induced the formation of teams of two to three people, which created a competitive system and determined the ‘win or loss’ between participants.
In the beginning, many participants mistakenly believed that if they lost in this competition, they would not be given the opportunity to pass through the Portal. That’s why they often politely watched the opposing team pass through when the Portal opened, waiting for the next opportunity. However, as time went on, they became impatient, and the competition intensified, eventually leading to several people aiming for the Portal simultaneously. Many participants passed through unexpectedly, like the situation when you two passed through.”
Leonardo’s lips parted in disbelief.
“So, that means…”
“Yes. As long as the Portal was opened, any number of people could pass through. After that, it was first-come, first-served. However, as you mentioned, there was a possibility of recognition errors, so we provided a slight hint by designating the number of qualifiers as a number other than a multiple of three.”
“Wow, Brother! I knew I was right!”
Ero claimed that he had figured out the rule after listening to the 4-hour progress broadcast. Believe it or not.
“It’s impressive that you grasped the rules during the match. Like this, the League’s rules convey only the facts but do not directly specify all the information. The variable and another strong contender in this League will be those who can distinguish between the clear rules defined by the rules and other means, and furthermore, doubt the information they have judged. This is a small tip from the host to the two of you, who have shown excellent performance.”
Sandra, who designed the rules of the match herself, placed her hand on her chest and bowed politely. Then, she was about to move on to convey the instructions to other participants when she added an explanation as if she had forgotten something.
“Ah, the management will provide a small compensation to the participants who have experienced inconvenience due to the delay in the results announcement. This compensation can be used anywhere in the main stadium, but we recommend that you two stay within the restricted area near Entrance C as much as possible. This is a request for your safety, as there is a large crowd outside, so please cooperate.”