Even if the villain that was killed was a piece of shit like Black Mantis, when many such villains like him die in a short amount of time, there would be repercussions. So heroes mostly did lip service and took down low-time villains once in a while.
But it seems the times have changed, and the heroes want a piece of them again. This suspicion turned out to be true. Fire Rose and the Justice League were warned, but Fire Rose responded by killing another villain a week later. It looked like war was really on the horizon.
Kelvin didn't know all of these. He was busy with the preparations for his advancement game. What he needed to prepare for was a lot, so he was very busy.
It was as if he was preparing for a difficult exam. There were to be a hundred competitors in total. So there would be 99 enemies for him other than the beasts in the game.
For these 99 enemies, he had to learn their identity, abilities, and fighting style. That's the most important thing he has to prepare for, but there's more.
Just for that alone, he had to watch many of their fights and browse the internet for information about them. But he should also learn their individual power ratings.
This information, combined with their ability and identity, will help him know who to avoid at all costs and who to take advantage of when possible. At the very least, he knows what best to do if he has to fight all of them.
The problem with this task is that the power rating is not constant. It is always rising when they gain more fans or falling when they do something their fans hate.
It means the best information that he can have about the power rating of his competitors will be inaccurate. He would have to go back to the tower of destiny through the month of preparation to update his knowledge of their power.
That is a bad thing, but he can use it to his advantage. Since he knows his competitors, he can do things that might defame them. This will hurt their fan base and weaken them before the game.
He can also do like what his competitors are doing. He can challenge them to fights in the real world to disgrace them.
Many people have done so to him online. They call out for Augustus to come and fight them everyday. If they knew his true identity, then things would be worse.
Things are already bad as it is. The fact that he hasn't responded at all has hurt the confidence of his fans in him. It is not enough for them to stop supporting him, but they will be quick to give up on him as soon as he suffers a defeat.
If he had competitors in New London, he would try to kill them before the game. But he doesn't, so he has to hunker down and prepare to kill them in the game.
As for the third thing that he had to prepare for, it was to learn their physical appearance and maybe some of their habits and speech patterns so that he could pretend to be them well enough.
This last one is the most difficult thing he has to prepare for. The first two things had numbers and figures that he could memorize. It is not easy to memorize them, but it is possible.
As for memorizing faces and then changing into them without looking at a mirror, that is just too difficult. He couldn't do it, so he gave on learning the faces of all of them. He only learned a few useful ones, like that of the harmless guy with the amplify class.
His preparation was intensive and took a lot of his time and energy, so he wasn't paying attention to what was going on in the circle of villains. He didn't have the time for it, and he didn't care.
Pauli updated him, though. He sent Kelvin a message once in a while.
One of them said, "A war of supers is coming. The heroes are getting out of hand. The Justice League is forming a coalition with other hero societies to fight us. The villains are getting ready too. We have set up a date and a time for the first battle. I am so excited. It will be a great opportunity to showcase my power. Are you interested?"
He learned a lot about the upcoming war through the messages. He learned that the war won't be like the long, drawn-out, and chaotic wars of the ancient past. If there is a way to describe it in a simple sentence, it would be described as a series of matches in a tournament.
This war won't be fought for money or for land. The shareholders that own the city also won't allow a long, drawn-out war to take place in their city.
The city would be devastated if that were to occur. No one wants that. Not even if the villains. At least, not the reasonable villains. Every reasonable person knows not to damage the city, which happens to be their safe haven for them in an apocalyptic world.
Besides, they also know not to damage normal humans since they are fighting for popularity. That is the aim of the war. At least for the heroes.
They are not fighting for resources or land. There's a lot of land out there that they can take for themselves if they are strong enough. What they want is popularity.
That means people must know what they did in the war, or their efforts would be in vain. So the war will be broadcast in real time to the whole world.
If the war is made to happen in the open and in a single place, everyone will have a chance to showcase their ability before the whole world. Therefore, it has been agreed that the war will be a series of matches between the two sides.