Chapter 172 - Two weeks later.
14 days later...
Inside the training room, Felix was standing right in the center of a wide arena.
He snapped his finger and twenty bots surrounded him in a 20-meter radius. Just as he was about to give the order to start the training, his AP bracelet started ringing.
"Here it comes." After seeing who the caller was, Felix merely sighed and picked up, greeting in pure delight, "Grandpa! You finally called. I thought you forgot about me after regaining your vigor."
"Heh, as much as I want to bicker with you kid, I have other important matters to handle." Robert didn't waste a single second as he asked him with a stern voice, "Be quick, are you coming today or tomorrow?"
"Cough, neither, Cough!" Felix swiftly added after hearing his grandfather's heavy breathing, "The hotel just started the remodeling, I can't leave it yet. But, I promise that I will arrive on the day of the final tournament."
"Felix, are you trying to anger me to death?!" Robert shouted, "Do you f*cking think I don't know that you spend your entire time in the UVR!" Just as Felix braced himself for getting chided, he heard his grandfather calm sigh, "I don't care what you do inside the UVR, but from time to time do check on the real-world situation a bit."
'What does he mean?' Felix wondered to himself. But in his situation, he never actually wondered alone, as Asna was always listening to him, waiting for such a beautiful mess ups to belittle him.
'Do you have the memory of a goldfish or what?' She snickered, 'Did you forget already what happened in the world during this month?'
'This month?'
Numb to her belittling tone, Felix dug through his memories, trying to remember exactly what both of them meant.
It didn't take him even a split second before those memories surfaced on his mind. They were always there, they just never crossed his mind. Now, that they did, his eyes widened in stupefaction.
'F*ck me!! How could I forget about that!'
"Felix, you still there?! You better come tomorrow if you want to catch a flight with us." Robert informed him sternly, "We will send a jet to bring you home."
"Can't you just send a jet to pick me up 15 days later during the final tournament?" Felix asked with a ray of hope in his tone.
"Why ask when you know my answer?" Robert laughed, "We all want to see you as soon as possible. Don't you miss us as well?"
"I am going to hang up. I need to pack my stuff." Too annoyed to respond, Felix shooed Robert away and requested the Queen to log him out, not even finishing his daily training.
Tshshs!
Felix got out of the Pod and went to his closet to dress up. He pulled his suitcase from under his bed, and start packing up some clothes on it. He closed it and put it to the side. His necessary clothes were always in his spatial card.,
He called Leila and informed her that he was leaving tomorrow to attend the competition. Leila asked him if he wanted extra guards on his VR Pod after he leaves, to which he told her that wouldn't be necessary.
He wasn't a fool to leave the VR Pod here all alone while he could just take it with him inside his spatial card. It was big enough to hold the pod. After all, it was blackma...gifted to him by Fatty Worm.
That exactly what he did after he hung up. He pulled the pod's cable from the wall's outlet and beamed it in his spatial card.
After seeing that he didn't leave anything important in the room, he sat on his bed and requested the Queen to show him the most popular live stream news in the US.
It had been a really long time since he checked on what was going on his own planet. The fact he was living on an island isolated from the public, made it even easier to lose touch with the rest.
"As expected."
Felix crossed his hands while watching a reporter interviewing a grey-bearded old man, who was surrounded by a crowd of people near the airport.
The crowd wasn't small one bit as wherever Felix's eyes landed, he spotted a bunch of people cl.u.s.tered, pushing and pulling each other. It was clear that everyone was desperate to enter the Airport.
Hopeless, Felix sighed at that sight and refocused on the reporter, who appeared like he was about to be a victim of a stampede.
"So your grandson had been chosen to attend the nation's qualifiers." The reporter pushed the mic near the old man's face while asking, "How do you feel about his chances in qualifying to the final tournament?"
"haha! You jest! My little boy has already reached lesser purity and got an ability! An active ability!!" The old man took the mic from the reporter's hands and said in a vigorous manner, "You should have seen it! He was waving a whip made of flames, turning anything in his path into ash! How could he not qualify?!" The old man turned his head behind him and shouted to the people standing behind him, "Am I right?!"
"Yes dad, we get it already!" The old man's son, who pushed through the crowd, swiftly pulled his excited father away from the reporter. He couldn't believe that his father has just laid down his son's ability in public.
He knew that for his son to have a slight chance of rising above the rest of the participants, he needed to have his abilities hidden as much as possible. Alas, his father already spilled the beans on live TV.
Honestly, the father was being paranoid for no reason, as his son was merely one average participant from a thousand of awakened commoners, who were nurtured in public government camps, sons of nouveau rich families, recruits from companies, juniors nurtured by private organizations, and such.
All of those juniors applied to have their affinity rating get tested in public assessment centers, which were being built like mushrooms all around the world.
The ones who had a good affinity rating, reaching 50% or above were able to join public camps built and funded by the governments around the world.
Those camps were free and also followed the same structure as Felix's family training camp. Though, the competition inside them was beyond vicious, as rare rank bloodlines were limited to only a few juniors per camp.
Luckily for Felix, he wasn't born a commoner on earth. Otherwise, he would have needed to spend at least two-months struggling in a camp to just secure a rare bloodline, and then 6 months of hell to secure a qualifier spot in the competition that was about to start tomorrow.
After all, it was impossible for all the awakeners to join the US National Team battle.
The US is a big country with 50 states, and each state had its own public camp, which was packed with juniors, attempting to awaken. Thus, the national team battle was split into three stages to not get messy by the large influx of participants.
Stage one happened in the public camps, in which tournaments raged in them to decide who would join the qualifiers!
Stage two was obviously the qualifiers competition that was going to start tomorrow in Florida. Each camp sent 10 winners, making a full rooster team.
Since there were 50 states, it meant the total sum of juniors reached a whopping 500! They would have to compete with each other for the next 15 days until only 50 of them were left.
This leads us to the 3rd stage, which was the final tournament! The Maxwell family's team was going to join this tournament straightaway, just like the rest of the business empires' families, or political families.
The reason those families were given a free pass straight to the final was due to the fact they created their own camps and nurtured their own people with the best resources possible on earth. This meant, they relieved the government while also giving them a world representative potential candidates.
It was only natural they get a free pass to the final tournament as compensation. But honestly, they would have got it either way. After all, there was no way those noble families would accept to send their heirs to tangle and get messy with the commoners.
The qualifier competition was the reason the airport behind the reporter was packed to the brim with people carrying suitcases and wearing cheering outfits.
Everyone was trying to fly to Florida where the main venue of the competitions would be held.
The hype for seeing earthlings use superpowers and abilities for the very first time was about to cripple the entire country transportations services!
Train stations, highways, buses, and even seaports, were all experiencing a flood of people trying to book a ticket to Florida city. This wasn't happening just in the US, but worldwide.
It was only common sense that people would prefer watching earthlings' bloodliners compete with their abilities live.
They already saw through the SG free stream channels, how other human-races in the Milky Way galaxy used those abilities.
Right now, they were dying to see their own people, born and raised on earth, demonstrate that earthlings' were also capable of achieving everything other races were able to!
Too bad their excessive excitement and eagerness made it almost impossible to catch single available transportation.
And for Felix who was planning to take a boat from the island to California, then a plane to Florida a month later, that would be impossible to do.
Only after being reminded by his grandfather and Asna, did he remember how the situation was like in this month. Thus, he had to pack up and join the family's flight, as he did in his previous life.
After seeing that the reporter was having difficulty asking questions due to the bustling noise, Felix waved the hologram away from his face and went for a quick shower.
....
Tomorrow morning, in the airport runaway, Felix was dragging his suitcase behind him, as he approached the parked jet that had just landed.
No one accompanied him to send him away, as he drove all by himself without informing Leila and Jack. He knew that they were beyond busy with managing the island, and there was no need to steal their time just for a send-off.
After he reached the jet, he gave his suitcase to the steward and climbed the stairs, entering swiftly.
"Welcome, Mr. Felix." The pilot and the co-pilot both extended their hands towards Felix, the moment he stepped inside the plane.
"Thank you." Felix shook both of their hands, and asked with a polite smile, "Are we heading straight to Florida?"
"I apologize, but we need to meet up with family first in Boston before going to Florida." The pilot clarified, "The family planes are barely enough to send the members of the family to the venue. Thus, we received orders to pick you up and bring you back home instead of taking you to the venue."
"Alright, thank you for the ride." Felix nodded his head in appreciation and went to find a seat. The private jet was one of the big ones, which were able to carry at least 15 passengers. Yet, Felix had it all to himself.
He quickly sat and put on the seatbelt.
He closed his eyes and requested the Queen to log him in. The flight was 7 to 8 hours long, Felix wanted to continue his training in this period. It was better than sitting doing nothing.