Chapter 208: I Can’t Wait
The high-ranking officer took a deep breath and then spoke calmly:
"This year’s rookie tournament is gonna be different from every other one in the last century, but I can’t share the reasons just yet. The tournament itself won’t be the usual solo fights — it’s going to be team battles."
Everyone was surprised. Historically, the competition was never purely one-on-one — if it were, tanks would always come out on top, while supports would be dead last. It’d be dumb to compare rookies’ strength like that.
That’s why tournaments were always organized as battles between people of the same class, with four separate brackets running at the same time.
Mystics were grouped together with fighters. Even though mystics could act as tanks and had a bit of an advantage, they weren’t outstanding in that or any other role, since they weren’t specialized. In fact, in the whole history of the tournament, only once had a mystic ever beaten the fighters and taken the win.
"Each empire will send exactly ten people, split into two teams," the officer went on. "We’ve got 18 young talents here today. Eight of them will naturally be eliminated."
He gave a quick explanation of how the selection would work. To create two strong and balanced teams that could compete properly in the tournament, the selection would happen through individual battles by class, just like in past years.
Among the 18 rookies, there were four supports, four tanks, four fighters, four mages, and only two mystics — the twins.
So the selection would be individual matches across the four main classes, with the mystics included as part of the fighters. Each role would have two spots, and the fighters would get four — forming two teams of five people.
After the announcement, the officer began formally introducing all the rookies. It had to be done, since everything was being recorded and would be broadcast to the empire’s population in a few months.
This selection didn’t include every rookie from the last four years — only the ones the empire handpicked and kept under wraps because they were seen as promising talents. The rest would be shown off in a smaller internal tournament later on.