Death... and me

Kayla had some confidence on her face as she saw the participants entering the Blacksmith spatial door. After all, Rean told her he was a Silver Middle-level blacksmith. She refused to believe Qianbel Sect had a better blacksmith than them. However... 'Why can't I see Rean anywhere?'

It turns out that Rean... simply didn't want to take part in this competition! In the end, the only member of her sect who entered the Blacksmith category was a man called Hoji, a Bronze High-level Blacksmith...which was far from enough.

"What?! Where is Rean?"

Cynthia and the other elders looked at the participants who didn't enter the Blacksmith competition and quickly found him. "He...didn't enter..."

Kayla felt like crying already. The Blacksmith competition was supposed to be one of the categories her sect would get the point in. Now she simply didn't know if Hoji had a chance of beating Qianbel Sect's Blacksmith.

Rean didn't know anything like that. He had never said which categories he would take part in since Rean didn't know which ones would be present until he arrived in this place.

However, he still paid close attention to the entire competition and had to admit the level of blacksmithing in the Realm of Gods was much more advanced than the Realm of Mortals. 'Once again, there are Golden-level blacksmiths at the Saint Realm. Not only that, there are even twelve of them. However, that helped me understand one thing. The people in the Realm of Gods also don't know how to create metals that can gather elements on their own. Otherwise, I would have definitely seen it during these matches.'

Hoji could only sigh as he came out of the spatial door. "It didn't go as planned. I failed many steps during my forging process, so I fell even lower than I should."

Wamil's group could only comfort him. "Don't worry. It's still the start. You're also taking part in the battles, right? Try to beat the Qianbel disciples if you get lucky enough to meet one of them."

Hoji nodded, saying, "Alright."

Fabio didn't wait much longer before calling the next group. "Next, the Formation Master competition. Please, enter the new spatial door that will send you to the field of the competition."

Rean then patted Hoji's shoulder before saying, "Don't worry. I don't know if I can win, but I will definitely not do any worse than the Qianbel Sect. Watch me."

Hoji and the others nodded after hearing that. Well, everyone except for Roan, who didn't even glance at Rean as he pondered about the Alchemy competition.

In the elder's room, Kayla finally sighed in relief when she saw Rean entering the Formation Master spatial door. "Perhaps he was saving his energy for this moment instead of getting tired in blacksmithing."

However, Wuxan noticed a problem. "Wait! There are none of the Qianbel Sect members entering the Formation Master spatial door."

Kayla's attention was immediately piqued. She took a look at the Qianbel Sect members in the list, and sure enough, none of them took part in the Formation Master test. "They don't have any Formation Masters..." That wasn't good news. After all, the agreement was that only categories where both sects had participants would be considered a competition between the two. If Qianbel Sect didn't send anyone, that meant their sect wouldn't get a point at all, no matter Rean's final result. "Fuck!"

Kayla looked with a dark expression at Ranmgues, much to the man's delight. "Hehe! It seems like you had some confidence in formations. Although it's just a coincidence, it looks like it was a good thing for my disciples to not take part in it."

Kayla couldn't help but say.,"So be it. Don't forget, you can't give up more than three categories, and this is the first. If you give up more than that, then we will get one point for each one of them."

"Of course!" Ranmgues replied. "Otherwise, the first one of us to score a point could simply give up participating in all the other competitions. That's why we created this rule of only a maximum of three forfeits. I'm more than happy to give up the first one here. In fact, I'm surprised you didn't do it in the Blacksmith competition. Your spies should have told you that our Blacksmith disciple is quite good."

Obviously, Kayla knew that. It's just she didn't expect Rean to stay outside. Otherwise, she would have told Hoji and the others to stay away from it.

On Rean's side, the spatial room he entered was even bigger than where the participants waited. 'Well, formations can be enormous, so it makes sense.'

Not too long after, a member of the City Lord's forces appeared there. "I'm Vintan, a Golden High-level Formation Master working for the City Lord. I'll be presiding over this test this time."

Everyone paid attention as Vintan explained the test.

Vintan then turned around and raised his hand, ordering, "Activate the formations."

The entire room began to shine as Divine Energy rushed into the area nonstop. Rean immediately noticed that many types of formations appeared one after another. However, they weren't that big. Rean thought he would see some gigantic formations in this place, but that didn't happen at all. 'Still, there are basically all types of formations here. Support, attack, defense, illusion, you name it. They're there. The number of formations here alone is several times higher than the number of participants in the Formation Master test.'

Eventually, all formations finished activating. Vintan then looked back at the participants with a smile and told them, "Your objective is very simple. You have to deactivate the formations without damaging them. Each formation deactivated will give you one point. However, if any damage at all is done, you will instantly lose three points. I don't care how much damage they take. It might be as much as just wasting 0.1% of the formations' capability. The loss in points will be the same."

Vintan continued, "Last but not least, you must not repeat the same type of formation until you have deactivated all types available at least once. That is to prevent some who are better at certain types of formations from focusing on only those."

The damaging rule was already very complicated, but the last rule definitely brought most of the difficulties into play. After all, it was normal for Formation Masters to focus on the type of formations they liked the most. Even Rean wasn't an exception as he preferred Lightning-type formations.

Vintan wasn't going to wait for everyone to think much about it, though. "Alright, you have eight hours. The test starts now!"