Death Mage with an SS-Rank Talent-Chapter 150

Smiles can be seen on the faces of all five of the students who came to participate in the tournament. This was because of the points that they just earned without doing anything.

When they were stopped by the group of ten students before returning to the start area, they thought they were in a bind. There were only five, while the other party was a group of ten. It was supposed to be a tough battle, but the battle ended before they could think of starting it.

The reason behind that was their leader, Aaron. He summoned his undead army and ended the battle within a minute.

After that, they didn’t have any trouble returning to the starting area.

The reason there was a smile on their faces was that beacuse, Aaron took away all the tokens from the defeated ten. He didn’t keep all for himself, though. He distributed some to them, keeping some for himself.

When they refused, "Don’t worry, I have too many and that would be troublesome. So, I am sharing with you", he said.

After that, they didn’t object and took the tokens he distributed.

When they had submitted their tokens, the points gained by each crossed the 4,000 mark. The highest was almost near to 6,000 mark, which was earned by Erika. As for Aaron, it crossed the 12,000 mark.

When they heard the number, they were shocked.

Aaron, on his first day, earned 4,200 points from the 150 tokens he got. On the second day though, the luck was not good as not many tokens were found, not until after he defeated the ten students.

He collected a lot of tokens from these ten students, which Aaron was sure were collected through Robbery, rather than self-efforts by actually defeating the monsters.

After defeating the ten, he wanted to collect all the spoils at first. Though these ten were robbing tokens, they should have collected a lot of monster corpses, either by themselves or from other students.

There were only three black tokens among the tokens that Aaron got from the ten students, probably the ones they genuinely earned or snatched by luck from a weak student who got those by luck.

Aaron gave two of those black tokens to James and Diana, as they were not lucky enough to get a Black Token in the two days. One he kept for himself, only bringing the count to two black tokens in his possession.

First of all, he was their leader and second of all, he earned all those tokens by himself. So, there was no unfair distribution by giving them fewer numbers each than what he kept for himself.

The four were more than happy with what they got.

No one is an idiot to make enemies with Aaron for no reason at all, not after what they saw happen a few minutes ago. Also, he benefited them by giving them those tokens.

Though the coordinator informed them that to pass the stage, one would only need to cross a 1,000 points mark, they knew that there was much unsaid.

How can that be so simple?

If there were just a pass stage, then the coordinators wouldn’t have bothered with four tokens, the least one starting from 1 point. They could have just started with Blue and ended with Black. That would have been more than enough if this stage were just mass elimination.

There was a mention of students’ performance determining the Academy rankings.

So, that means the more points a student earns, the more points will be allotted to the academy. This would be a decision factor in determining the rank of the academy. With this many points allocated, they were sure to get a lot of rewards from the academy after the tournament ended.

So they were very happy with the outcome.

---

Half an hour later, the same one who spoke at the start of the tournament came on to the stage, "Okay, congratulations for the ones who were able to reach the 1,000 point mark, and successfully were able to return here".

"A lot of you passed this stage, two hundred and twenty five to be exact. We hoped that no more than a hundred would pass this stage, which would have made it easier for us, but that doesn’t matter anyway. We’ll make do with what we were dealt".

"Anyway, these 225 would participate in Stage Two, but I know you must be tired after two days in the mountains, constantly looking over your shoulders and fighting almost every minute. So, you would get a two-day rest before Stage Two starts".

"As for the ones who lost, they can stay in the capital or return, but remember this, you have to pay for your stay, if your academy has not even a single student who progressed to the Stage Two".

The hotel rooms were arranged by the alliance with money from their own coffers. Only the travel cost was on the academy.

The number of students, along with the chaperones that attended, was too many for the alliance to give them free accommodation for too long. If they do so for all until the end, it would leave a big hole in their treasury.

"The list of students who passed Stage One was being pasted on the temporary board as we speak. You can check the list, and if your name is there, then you can stay a while longer. If not, make sure to pay for the food and lodgings or make preparations to leave".

"I know that it won’t be easy to leave. So, you are given until Stage Two to leave or pay for the stay. Decide for yourselves", the man said and walked away after speaking what he came to speak.

Once the man left, everyone scrambled to take a look at the list.

Though they knew that they had passed after reaching the 1,000 mark, they wanted to know who else was able to. Those are their competitors after all, and they needed to be prepared to fight these competitors.

Aaron and the group are no better. They knew why everyone was interested in seeing the list, and they too joined to check who made it to the next stage.

---

An hour later, the group returned to the hotel where they were staying.

Along with them, there were Valiant and Mirth Academy students as well, but from the list, it was easily known that Mirth Academy lost two students from the competition, while Valiant lost a student.

The list had names of the students as well as the academies that they belonged to. So, it was easy to look at how many students from each academy made it to stage two.

There were only four academies, including Dusk Academy, where all five students made it to the second stage. Everyone lost a student or two, and that means if the next stage were team matches, then they would be at a loss.

Though it could be said to be unfair, they knew beforehand that the tournament was never fair in the first place. So, there was nothing anybody could do.

With students lost from the teams, the students from the other two academies were not as smug as they were the previous morning, when they left the hotel.

Though Bronn and James wanted to be smug about this, the others were too tired to care about what had happened the previous day. Moreover, it’s not like they have any enmity between them; it was just competition.

This year they may have gained good results, but what about the next year or the year after that?

Would everything remain the same?

So, Aaron felt that there was no need to make enemies unnecessarily.