Chapter 175 - Two Days Before The Final Competition!
"I want everyone's attention to me."
Felix's thought process was stopped by Abraham's loud request. He refocused on the elders, who were gazing at them with a solemn look.
"I believe you heard enough to understand your situation." Abraham's eyes landed on those three juniors at the back as he continued speaking, "So, there is no need to sugarcoat it. Thomas, Ryan, Elise, you are out of the team."
Before those three could even react to the news, Robert added, "However, you could participate in the qualifiers with the rest and make it back to the team." He smiled, "We believe in you."
"That's right!" Olivia pumped a fist in the air and encouraged, "We will be there watching all of your battles and rooting for you."
Sarah, Johnson, and Kenny also said some encouraging words, trying to uplift the spirit of those three.
Only Felix and Noah said nothing.
One was an asshole, and the other was a healthy mute.
"Now, as you have heard, the Hilton bastards were the ones messing with us." Albert stepped forward with a nasty expression and said, "I want you to f*cking destroy their juniors when u meet them in the arena."
"If you want to break their legs go for it, if you want to disfigure their faces go for it!" Charlotte made a cut-throat gesture and said coldly, "You don't have to care about the consequences. Just be as brutal as possible against them. But, don't kill them."
"No one messes up with the Maxwells and leave in one piece!" Carter turned around as he said one last time, "Show them that even if they took three members of our team, we will still reign supreme in the battles! Understood?!"
"YES ELDERS!"
Disinterested, Felix mouthed his response while yawning.
...
Two hours later...
The jets landed at a privately owned small airport. The elders got out first and went straight to group with the rest of the seniors, informing them face to face about the content of the call they received from the organization.
Obviously, the parents of those three juniors weren't pleased with all the elders' decision to remove their children instead of others.
Though Abraham simply asked them if their children could beat anyone in the team except for Olivia, they will replace the loser.
After hearing so, they never mentioned the matter anymore. They knew that their children never won a single fight against those 4 during the previous months. There was no need to embarrass themselves any further.
"Alright, let's go to the hotel." Abraham was the first to enter one of the black cars, which were waiting to pick them up to Florida city.
The rest soon did the same, filling up all the cars.
After checking that no one was left behind, Abraham gave the order to move. The hotel was a bit far since it was built in the center of the city. Of course, the hotel belonged to the Family.
Heck, all of it was reserved for their residence!
While the commoners were having difficulty finding a place to sleep in this crowded city due to the competition, the Maxwell family reserved an entire 4-star hotel for only 70 members or so.
Money might not buy you happiness, but it sure wouldn't let you starve or struggle to find a roof over your head.
...
Days went by quickly as the qualifiers competition already reached its last day.
Although Felix never went to the stadium to spectate the battles, he watched from time to time its live stream.
As he expected, nothing much changed from what he saw in his previous life. The venue that hosted the competition was a newly built stadium, that had an extremely wide arena made with tough stones, able to resist the majority of abilities under the 1st stage of replacement.
Those kinds of stadiums were built all around the US in just a year, just like the assessment centers, and the public camps. They were built to give the bloodliners without an AP bracelet a venue to compete and train with their peers.
After all, they couldn't remain in the public camps forever. New commoners still needed to be trained as well.
Plus, the spectators were going to pay for tickets to watch them train and fight. This meant the stadiums were always going to bring profit for the government and the organization.
When compared to other SG stadiums in the rest of the states, this one was the biggest of them all.
This was the reason it was chosen to host the national team battles. The ESGO US branch knew that people would flood to watch those fights live, thus they had to choose the biggest one to ease some of their burdens.
Thankfully, the qualifiers stretched for 15 days straight, making the people who came to watch, get at least a slight chance to attend the stadium one time.
On the other hand, the participants in the qualifiers were made from 50 public camps, each belonging to a state.
Each camp sent ten bloodliners, making a perfect team that represented their state. If this was all to it, the three juniors from the Maxwell family wouldn't have a chance to join the qualifiers.
Fortunately, there were some participants from nouveau rich families, companies recruits, and such.
Those bloodliners were acting more like an ad for the companies, wearing outfits with their logos and brand.
Sadly, the three juniors had to join those random bloodliners and create a team made of 10 to be able to participate.
This added at least 10 teams made of those ragtag bloodliners, pushing the total number of teams to 60.,
There were two reasons why the organization made the competition team-based instead of individuals. First, the Planetary Supremacy Games were being played by teams made out of ten members or above.
This meant, those competitions needed to be team-based as well, to evaluate the bloodliners' teamwork. The second reason, and also the most important, there was absolutely no way to have individuals battles with such a huge number of participants!
They couldn't just throw them all in the arena and tell them to fight it out in free for all, or simply make them compete in 1 vs.1.
The time, the resources, and the manpower needed to pull that off was already being used fully for the World battles' preparation. Hence, it was much better to split the bloodliners into teams.
As for the format used during those past 14 days, it was a tournament-based team vs team battles.
Since the number of teams was quite hefty, there were five tournaments played out one by one. And each tournament winner secures a spot in the final competition that was going to start 2 days from now.
Obviously, the team which had the three juniors were one of the first ones to get eliminated. Their teamwork was absolutely garbage when compared to other teams coming from the public camps.
Those bloodliners had enough time to get familiar with each others' bloodline abilities. Meanwhile, the ragtag teams were running around like headless chickens, scared shitless about getting killed by a stray ability.
One should never forget, that the competition was being held in real life, which meant, abilities could actually take lives if one wasn't careful in using them or defending against them!
There was absolutely no protection from being harmed by the abilities.
The organization only made a rule that intentionally trying to kill a bloodliner would result in heavy punishment. They weren't worried about crippling others or getting heavily wounded, since they had healing potions and substances ready to be used.
Although they said so and emphasized the punishment, some bloodliners still died. It was impossible to avoid having deaths when dealing with 600 bloodliners all fighting using deadly abilities. Those deaths turned off some of the spectators' hype to continue watching the battles live.
They knew that it was going to be gory, bloody, and even might end up in having deaths, but still, knowing was one thing, and seeing with their own eyes was another.
Those types of people were rare though, as the majority were already used to seeing players die in the SG for the past year. They saw it happen many times, they became numb to the notion of death in battles.
Thankfully for the Maxwell family, those three juniors didn't die but merely were injured heavily. The elders used their own potions to heal them back in shape.
They might have lost, but they did get some experience battling other juniors outside of their family.
That's how the qualifiers ended. Some deaths, pleased spectators, and 5 teams each made of 10 bloodliners going to the next stage, joining the final competition with those business and political families.
...
"Alright, that's enough for today." Robert clapped his hands twice, stopping the juniors from practicing. They were inside his UVR room, which was modified to resemble the same arena in the stadium.
The elders allocated three hours each day during the past two weeks to practice together. They did so, because of Felix, who never trained with them before.
It was only natural to see his abilities and also let him see theirs in order to build a better synergy.
"Get some rest, tomorrow we are heading to the stadium." Robert informed them with a stern tone.
The juniors nodded their heads in understanding and logged out one by one, exiting Robert's UVR room.
After opening up his eyes, Felix immediately left the hotel hall, where they always grouped up and went to the elevator. Noah followed after him as well.
A few seconds later, the elevator door closed, leaving them both alone in it. Felix tapped on the 5th-floor button, where the males' juniors' rooms were located.
"Can you lead the team in the first battles?" Felix suddenly requested.
"...." Noah looked at him dead in the eyes and shook his head firmly.
Felix sighed and didn't mention it anymore.
He already requested him three times to take the captain title away from him, but Noah was hell-bent on rejecting him.
Ting!
Noah left the moment the elevator door opened up. Based on the fast movement of his legs, it was clear that he was running away from Felix.
He got harassed multiple times by him to get the captainship, he got even bribed with potions! Still, he refused.
If it was an order from the elders he wouldn't say no, but since it was from Felix, there was no way he would let himself get such a bothersome rule that required speaking!