บท 29: The Second Round: Team Competition (1)

The second round was team competition which was conducted in the artificial mountain system and artificial primeval forest in the West sector.

Each Class Leader led a team of ten to enter the appointed competition area. There would be a flag and a flagpole separately hidden somewhere inside the area, as well as a lot of pitfalls were set up. Each member was given a military dagger and a wristwatch with the sync electronic map function among the watches. The electronic map was set in black by default, and would be revealed when the team members moved. The farther the team members moved, the more of the map would be revealed.

The competition outfits consisted of long-sleeved sportswear and pants, and a white sleeveless short jacket outside. On the one hand, this white short jacket helped to protect the members, on the other hand, it was also a criterion to be eliminated. Just when the white jacket appeared any signs of being attacked, for example, being hit by arrows, being slashed by swords or other weapons, burned by fire and so on, that member would automatically eliminated.

The mission was to find the flag, and the Class Leader must be one of the last survivors, to bring the flag to the flagpole.

The evaluation criteria for this round included: (1) Creative strategy, (2) Time to complete the mission, and (3) The number of members remaining after mission completed.

There would be ten areas reserved for ten Classes (ten teams) with the same terrain and pitfalls set up. If a member of a team unintentionally took the wrong step into another team's area, there would be a warning bell to remind him or her to return to their team area, focusing on the mission.

The other nine members that Angus brought into this round were: Hudson, Neil, Dustan – in terms of Fire style; Iris, Edelina, Genista – in terms of Lightning style; and Trixi, Derwin, Nissyen – in terms of Water style. All of them were the best choices of each style.

Angus divided the team into three small group, each consisted of three members of three different styles.

Group One included Iris, Neil and Trixi. Group Two consisted of Hudson, Genista, Derwin. And Group Three consisted of Edelina, Dustan, Nissyen.

"We will go together for the first ten minutes. Who are on the same group should pay attention and coordinate with their group members."

After Angus finished his order, they all set out to discover the area.

Angus went ahead to make the way, then Group Three after him, in the middle was Group Two, and finally Team One with Hudson as the last.

The whole team was carefully walking...

Pooph!

Derwin just had a feeling that he was stepping on something, and before he could reflect, one of his legs had a stinging sensation. Sky and earth swirled around. Obviously, he had fallen into a trap, his ankle was tied up by a rope which made him now tied upside down from a tree. Right after that was the sound of weapons tearing the wind rushed to him.

As fast as lightning, Angus turned his body to dislodge the three arrows from three different directions, then he swung the dagger to cut off the ties for Derwin.

Derwin fell down.

But one of his legs had just hit the ground, another rope came from nowhere grabbed his leg and tied him upside down on the tree again. And the sound of weapons attacking rang again.

"Genista! Hudson!" Angus ordered.

"Got it!" Thanks to the lightning speed advantage, Genista quickly dislodged the arrows while Hudson freed Derwin from the rope and helped him escape from the trap area.

A moment later, it was Neil's turn to get in the trap.

Did not know what he touched, suddenly a bunch of centipedes spilled from the bushes, surrounding and attacking the members.

"Water sphere!"

"Lightning bolt!"

This time without waiting for Angus to remind, Iris and Trixi immediately took action. At the same time, all members of Class K automatically jumped up, clinging to the branches in order to not be involved in the attacking skills of Iris and Trixi.

A giant sphere of water appeared from Trixi's hand and fell to the ground, combined with the electrical current from Iris' lightning bolt, attacking the bunch of centipedes and causing them to burn black in an instant.

The whole team continued moving on.

"Ladies and gentlemen, as we can see that the Class Leader of Class K – Angus Farley, is currently using a fairly safe strategy, which is the whole team going together..."

That was the voice of the competition's commentator. Currently, in the middle of the Aurora Bijlmer Arena, two huge LCD screens were set up. Those two screens were connected with the camera system equipped in the West sector, thereby directly showing what was happening with the ten teams. Those images were also being shown on the television of millions of households in Pacific.

After the comment about Angus of the commentator, the big screens turned to the image of another strong candidate for Grade Leader position – The third-generation heir of the Atticus clan.

Class F's Leader Drake Atticus divided his team into two groups: One team looking for the flag (Flag team), and the other team looking for the flagpole (Flagpole team). The Flag team was led by a student of Water style with a special talent of sensing and finding the objects that he had been in contact with ➡ This was also one of Drake's powerful assistant during the military course. The Flagpole team consisted of five people, led by Drake himself. The plan was: After Drake found the flagpole, his team would give a signal to inform their position to the Flag team. Flag team then bring the flag to Drake's position and he would hang the flag to the flagpole, completing the mission.

The screens changed to another class.

The ones currently on the screen are Class A's Leader Cheryl Maximus and the other nine members of her team. Just like Drake, Cheryl split her team into two groups to find the flag and flagpole – In fact, this was the most common strategy to be chosen by Class Leaders in this second round. It was just that, the starting line-up of Class A made people very confused: Instead of bringing members from different styles, the Class Leader of Class A chose to lead a team of nine Fire dragons to participate in the competition! And she herself was also a Fire dragon!!

Back to Class K's situation.

After the team was pretty familiar with the setting of the area, Angus gave his second order: "Alright, now three teams scatter out to look for the flag and flagpole. I'll go with team Three. If a team finds the flag, use Water power to give signal. Similarly, Lightning signal is for flagpole, and Fire signal is for when you need help."

The other nine answered in unison: "Copy that, Leader!"

Angus thought for a few seconds and added, "Wait, when you guys give signal, give it three times in a row."

Someone asked, "Why?"

"We just faced with a trap of Lightning power, so I want the signal to be different to distinguish it from the traps." Angus replied.

"Got it. So... anything else we need to pay attention?"

Angus shook his head. "No. The rest of this round, just improvise by yourselves. And be careful!"

The three groups separated, following Angus's order. About twenty minutes later, team Three found the flag.

The flag was hung at an altitude of ten meters high. From afar, they could see a red flag with the white "K" freely fluttering in the wind, creating such an inspiring image.

However, after approaching the flag in a closer range, team Three could not feel inspired any more.

Because... standing in front of the flag was a giant scorpion with the two huge pincers which were moving and sounding cluck cluck!

"My, my god... Seriously???" Dustan stammered.

Outside the two LCD screens, the faces of all freshmen were also very lively.

Team Three of Class K was the first to find the flag, so it was the first time that viewers saw the "flag guard".

Right at the beginning, the test stated that the terrain and pitfall conditions were the same for all ten classes. This meant, the other nine teams would also face another giant scorpion as the "flag guard", just like this giant scorpion which team Three of Class K was facing.

The expressions of the students were various: those who belonged to Class Leader's supporting group were very worried, while the ones who didn't get along well with Leader's gang were very excited.

From a direct view, the scorpion with two giant pincers had a width of about six to seven meters, and a length of more than ten meters. It had eight legs covered with thin hairs on two sides, each side had four legs. Last but not least, it also had a curved tail with a pointed tip filled with toxic. Those with a bit of knowledge would realize this was the Desert Scorpion species that often appeared on the Animal World program on the Discovery channel of Pacific.

Over the past ten years, the forest area in the west of Pacific had been more and more shrinking, and the desertification rate had increased rapidly, leading to the growth of this Desert Scorpion species. The typical size of a matured Desert Scorpion ranged from five to seven meters in width, ten meters in length, just like the guy that Angus group was now facing with. Sometimes, a few Emperor Desert Scorpions with specially big sizes would be found in the desert as well, could be up to twice the size of a normal Desert Scorpion.

It was normal to encounter a Desert Scorpion when traveling in the desert. But now it was in the capital land of Pacific! And the Ministry of Education not only brought one guy but also ten "guys" like that to this competition ➡ This was enough to see how they invested on this event!!

Compared to the original form of the Dragon races, this Desert Scorpion was not really "giant", but even in original form, a dragonman had to be careful when fighting with it. Meanwhile, the current situation for the students was: They were not allowed to use their original form for fighting. Therefore, the difficulty of this mission was increased to another level.

Having just seen the Angus group, the scorpion immediately spewed out a burst of fire bullets.

Compared to the low-level (primary) skill "Fire Bullets" often seen from freshmen, these fire bullets of the Desert Scorpion were not only larger in size, larger in number, but also had a terrific rate of moving, could be compared with a mid-level skill.

A rain of fire bullets rushed forward to Angus group. The four students quickly jumped backwards, constantly dodging the fire bullets. Angus and Nissyen simultaneously performed the primary skills "Water Sphere" and "Multi Water Spheres" to extinguish fire bullets and reduce the heat in the air.

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