Although the Alliance tournament ended with a joyful and pleasant atmosphere, there were those who were displeased with the result or had different opinions on it. When the poor display of the debate started, the chat channels recorded on live stream had to ban users from the Nexus solar system who were flaming the chat with negative comments.
In fact, not only users from the Nexus were banned, but other solar systems were banned as well when they started making fun of the Nexus solar system. Instantly there were several memes about how Nexus won the combat segment but lost the technological one, which they specialized in.
The venue had a joyful mood because the tickets to get a virtual coliseum seating was extremely expensive to the point where the majority of them came the solar system associated with the schools Dragon’s Lair, Lemegeton, Heavenly Sanctuary, and Sea Emperor Palace.
Those who were displeased only did a light clap for the victor in the end, and they were rather forced to because of the atmosphere.
As the chat channels were being consistently filtered, the folks back the Nexus solar system who couldn’t voice out their resentment. Instead, they took a direct approach as they stood in a petition in front of Novera Corporation. Words spewed like wildfire demeaning the Long household and the Novera Corporation for being rigged, biased, and other negative comments. Soon enough a petition for reform in Novera Corporation was raised, and it wasn’t just targeting the Long household, but the Ichihara household as well.
Humans are vile creatures when things go wrong for one person or company, they would fan the flames even more and put the blame on one another. When in desperate times they steal from the poor and murder the rich, there was no sense of morality, and at that point, they lose the right to being human.
The citizens in the Nexus solar system were divided into two groups, ones who were satisfied that they managed to take third place this year, and those who found that the creative engineering aspect was absolute trash. They wanted a reform, more fair rights for job opportunities that weren’t judged by the system in the first place.
A good portion of the people who were the ones against the usage of Vortex Containers to manage and create children to improve one’s self. They were satisfied with their everyday life of just eating and drinking, utterly ignorant of the war that was just around the corner.
“Everything is going according to plan,” Daimon Werebringer said as he started sipping some tea in his private office space. Before his eyes was a projector screen with a black obelisk.
“Yes, the effects of sacrificing the fool has really turned out to be in our favor. Especially when we scored first in the combat section of the tournament,” the other person robotically said.
“Hmph, resources, as long as we scored in the top 4, it would be fine regardless of the result. More importantly, how sure are you to secure your position?” Daimon said.
“According to my calculations, at most another year and a half before we can gain control of it. As for the other divisions, we have already bribed the 2 of them, and they would indirectly help us for now,” said the other person.
“Are there any factors that may interfere with our plans?” said Daimon.
“None that I could think of since we’ve claimed a majority of the control over the military division it would be difficult to produce a prominent soldier with merit. We should be good for public influence. Cut the unproductive chatter, and make sure you do your job. Sway the crowd and fan the flames before taking it underground, I want the attack to start within two years from now. Do you understand what you need to do?” said the person.
“Yes, yes. I understand my duties. I’ll begin expanding my influence with the changing tide,” Daimon shrugged and said.
The man went quiet and said, “Alright… but keep it on the low end, we don’t want to have any spies within the organization now.”
“What if there is one?” Daimon asked.
“Kill them,” the person said bluntly.
Daimon nodded as he rose up from his seat. After doing so, he did a military salute and said, “May the flames of war make us prosper.”
The man said the same words and ended the call. After doing so, Daimon begins to laugh wildly as he imagines the future outcome.
…
Luon wished the ride home would turn out uneventful. Besides Gizmo, no one else reads the news about how riots and petitions were happening in their solar system. To ease their worries, whenever they got together he would never mention it, it was merely a missed chance, and they accomplished what they needed to do. He wasn’t worried about anyone finding out about it since nobody he knew had the time to read the random news.
That was until the headmaster came bolting in and said, “Ahhh, kids there are riots and many wild things happening in the Nexus solar system right now. So instead of taking us to the spaceport, the ship will directly drop us off at the school.”
Luon and the others who were having their breakfast thought they misheard him while Gizmo was facepalming at how insensitive their headmaster was.
The team started to read the news on their BMPU web portal and were shocked to see what was happening.
Bendan exclaimed, “This wouldn’t have happened if that guy didn’t mess this all up. I regret not having to punch him when I could have, where is he now? Let’s go give him a one-two!”
When the debate occurred, the rest of their teammates went to eat and drink to the point where they were all sent to the spaceship dead asleep due to satisfaction. When they woke up, they were notified that Dragon’s Lair reclaimed it’s lost crown and revealed a higher level of technology to deal with swarms of Inzektors in space.
When Bendan rose from his chair and started to walk away, Gizmo sighed and said, “You stupid loaf, he’s not even on this ship. Don’t you remember that the engineering division gets their own private cruise on their way here?”
“Oh,” Bendan was surprised as he thought about it. He had finally realized why he hadn’t seen any of them before. He sat back down and started to eat with more vigor, disgusting everyone on the table due to lack of manners.
“Hey, the food isn’t going anywhere, calm down a bit,” Luon said while looking at Bendan who started eating like a ravenous wolf.
“But after we leave this ship we aren’t going to have this kind of treatment again. I might as well stuff myself completely full until the end of the trip,” said Bendan before he went back to eating.
At this point in time, the girl’s team arrived, and Shizuka’s face was even more expressionless then before. Just moments ago she was on a voice chat with her father asking about how the company was doing which he said it was perfectly fine. Besides some protestors no one prosecuted Novera Corporation, they only wanted to change the management and not shut down the company. Without Novera Corporation, how could the solar system even represent itself to others?
Instead, it was an opportunity for some small fries to get in the big leagues. Their chat only lasted a minute before Dio cut it off, he was too busy to deal with his daughter. Shizuka was disappointed at not only the Long family but the citizens who tried to drag down her family when they didn’t do anything at all about the competition. The Ichihara family never cared about things like management and focused on development.
The ice-cold atmosphere emitting from her body made it difficult for others to approach, and yet her personality remained the same as the other girls continue to talk to her normally.
‘It will probably last for only a few days. Eventually, everything would go back to normal. After all, people still have their obligations to do. The system was designed that way, and humans are the same,’ thought Luon.
And a few days later it did indeed die down, besides some reporters who wanted to obtain a scandal, many of the original protestors went back to their normal jobs, after all, standing around and complaining about something that may or may not be relevant to their lives, wasn’t going to feed their families.
When Luon and the others arrived back at the Nexus solar system, a group of reporters came to do a quick interview, but the headmaster intercepted them. This allowed the students to quickly escape, they were already tired and bored from the extended space trip, and they didn’t want to bother with the reporters.
Unfortunately, the engineering division spaceship had a different situation than them. They were immediately raided by activists and news reporters upon landing. The level 2 engineer that was neglected sold the group out before they had arrived at the port. However, as they searched the ship, they weren’t able to find the culprit to all of this, so they put the blame on the other participants.
Overnight, all of the members of the Long household had vanished even on the ship, it was as if they knew about the result beforehand or that they hadn’t existed at all. Since there was no one for them to blame, they went to Novera Corporation once again, but it all died once other reporters positively wrote about how good the results were. Some experts argued that there was no way to win against Dragon’s Lair during the second segment since they had long prepared for the event while others tried to explain otherwise. The third opinion was that the final segment was rigged. However, it was initially designed to unveil or produce amazing ideas to help the Alliance against the Inzektors. It was all fair game as long as it works even if the topic wasn’t the one they were researching at the time.
Since the topic was improving space battles against Inzektors, many had focused on mass production or improvement on spaceships, having an army of mass-produced cannon fodder spacecraft would greatly help in the war, especially since they were autonomous.
Every single solar system had researched the topic, it was only that the contestants haven’t been involved with them, except for Valerie, the magician and the dryad that is. Originally this project was a collaboration between Dragon’s Lair who secured the Inzektors corpse, Magician’s Tower who did the research and Harmonic Forest who cultivated the trees. It was a secret project that recently been completed, and they were only waiting to unveil it, and the three of them were involved in it.
Luon returned to his normal academy life of studying, training, and working. There were no more surprising events besides the Alliance tournament which was still the topic of discussion as it played over and over again on the different forms of media. Luon and the other team members became somewhat famous in school, but outside of it, they were regular people.
Why was it like this? He wasn’t a superstar, just an average student and it was a one time gig. Although sometimes people point him out and shake his hands it wasn’t anything notable.
Luon asked himself, “What am I going to do in the future? Continue engineering? Find a job? Join the army?”
Thanatos didn’t say anything, a path chosen by others isn’t always the safest or the best.
Luon didn’t know what to do, what was his meaning in life. The government recommended him to be an engineer, a commander, and a soldier. He was quite interested in being a commander, but he didn’t know the requirements for it. Which is what the third year was for. Luon’s second year had officially ended.
