154 Strategy (1/2)

A few days later

Helial was gazing at his friends in the distance. They were training. Now, they were perfectly aware about what was waiting for the next.

The needed to make a name for themselves in Orma. Their group was, after all, all made of Humans and wastes of society. With the special bonus of a Goblin who would only sleep his days away on a tree. Still, Helial paid no mind to Vlad. He knew his words could nothing to convince Vlad to get down to training. He would need to wait for the right moment to strike some chord within him.

In order to build a name, the group should take the field in the Colosseum against other groups. In the Colosseum, matches were divided into three different kinds. Every victory or fail would be recorded in the global dashboard.

1 vs 1

One member selected by each group would challenge another from the opposite group. The group whose member beat the other would turn out to be the winning one. Usually, groups would send on their strongest warrior so as to ensure victory.

The 3 vs 3 relay competition would be carried out by three different members from each group instead. Every time a participant would by defeated, another member from the same group would take him over. The participant who had beat him could decide to be taken over as well or keep fighting until the end of the match.

Since matches could only be fought by people in the same Phase¬ – unless both parties agreed otherwise – the more were the group's strong warriors the greater would be its chance of winning. However, as it often happens down the Dao of Mana, quantity is doomed to lose to quality.

Helial makes for a good example. If Helial faced a hundred First Phase Intermediate stage warriors, he would wipe them out easily enough.

Inside the Colosseum hang a dashboard listing out how many points each warrior would gain.

Win 1 vs 1 – 1 Point

Win 3 vs 3 – 1 Point

Group Win – 0,5 Points

Fail - -2 Points

This meant that in order to earn a decent amount of points, failure was not an option. Helial's team must collect a great number of victories in order to climb in the rankings.

The wager system of the Colosseum was a state-of-the-art one. Every year, billions of golden coins would be thrown into its treasury thanks to the warriors fighting in the arena.

Ordinary fighters wouldn't see a penny, whereas the strongest ones would get pretty nice amounts of money.

The arena had two dashboards. One listed out warriors by their Phase. The other was the global one. In the latter, the warrior's Phase would enhance their ranking by adding points to those already earned by fighting.

The Colosseum hosted fights between warriors up to the Sixth Phase. Sixth Phase practitioners would get a x1.5 bonus in every fight on the global dashboard, whereas Fifth Phase warriors benefited from a x1 bonus.

Every Phase under the Fifth one would get a bonus inferior to 1. This meant there was a significant gap between the practitioners in the Fifth Phase and those below. The bonus of a Second Phase practitioner was x0,2. Therefore, in order to get the same points on the Global Dashboard as a Fifth Phase practitioner, they would need to fight five times as much!

Helial had studied the global dashboard in detail. To his little surprise, he found Pseudonym right on top of the ranking.

Pseudonym 2509 Points 1994 Wins 0 Fails