To hide his embarrassment at chickening out, he swiftly changed the subject to Noah and Adam, “Did Olivia tell you about their bloodlines and their mutations usefulness yet?”
Felix shook his head in denial.
George pointed at Adam’s red scales and said with a hint of elation, “He got those from the Inferno Salamander bloodline. They are capable of blocking a 2150 BF attack!”
The mutation was honestly quite good, as it gave Adam somewhat of an extra 400 BF strength buff in his arms.
Nathan and Dale’s envious gazes were enough to show so.
“I see.” Nonchalant, Felix spared a single glance at them before gesturing with his head at Noah’s horn, “What does it do besides making him look like a mute unicorn?”
“Well, he got it from the Single-horned Raptor, and this beast’s abilities rely mostly on its horn.” George said, “I hope the next abilities that he unlocks are related to it.”
‘Single-horned Raptor? Uhmm.’ Felix tried to recall anything about the beast, but his memory was completely blank.
It was only natural as he barely knew most of the poison element beasts. Don’t even mention others.
“The 1st passive that he got is called, Chilling Breaths.” George requested from Noah, “Show it to him.”
Noah approached the minibus’ window without a complaint and exhaled a long breath through his mouth on it.
Felix noticed that his breath was blue and somewhat foggy, yet the biggest surprise was that it actually froze the window after touching it!
Noah didn’t want to break it so he returned to his seat after this swift demonstration.
“Not bad.” Felix said, smiling.
The passive was clearly limited as Noah’s breaths might be cold and chilling; They wouldn’t actually affect the bloodliners at the same level as him.
Unless he got them completely immobilized and started breathing on them.
But for an epic tier 2 bloodline, this passive was still above average.
Just as George wanted to ask Adam to show his passive, he was interrupted by knocking sounds from the minibus’ door.
“That’s the driver.” George notified them while going to the front of the minibus, “Return to your seats and change the subject. We are going to start moving now.”
When they entered the minibus, George requested the driver to wait ten minutes outside before departure.
He knew that a massive crowd of people was spread on the roads leading to the venue.
Each team was given a minibus dyed with their country colors and even had the country flag planted on its sides to let the citizen notice their team and cheer for them on their way.
He didn’t want for his team to be seen gathered around Felix instead of sitting in their places, waving their hands at the people.
This ‘minibus parade’ was being live streamed worldwide, and any tiny mistake made by a country would be magnified to an unprecedented level.
The team ignoring the people to chat with Felix would be beyond disrespectful. It was definitely going to generate some hate for the team and the country.
“Remember to smile and wave your hands.”
George said one last time before the minibus emerged from outside of the parking lot into the street.
The moment the sunlight penetrated the glass of the windows, Felix and the rest could be seen sitting with varied expressions as they looked at the sea of people standing at the side-walk of the street.
They had their faces painted with different countries’ flags and carried either cheering signs for their countries’ teams or pictures of their supporting bloodliners.
The moment the US citizen noticed their team minibus finally emerging after a long delay, they started shouting at the top of their voices while waving their hands in excitement.
“USA! USA! USA!…”
Since this was more of a parade, the minibus was going slowly. This made Felix notice that the US citizens were a minority in the crowd.
They were getting sandwiched by the thousands of European citizens.
“The Pilar of America!”…”The Pilar of America!”…”Adam!!”…”My Flower Olivia!!”…
That being said, Felix and the rest still managed to hear their names or embarrassing nicknames getting chanted all over the place.
Felix’s expression couldn’t help but get unsightly at the sound of his messed-up nickname getting chanted on live TV.
‘God damn internet!” He cringed every time he heard it getting chanted.
He knew that the ten strongest bloodliner on earth had gotten nicknamed based on their abilities, bloodline, element, fighting style, or the talent demonstrated in the national tournaments.
After Felix won the US national tournament’s finals by a single finger snap, manifesting ten large red pillars, he couldn’t escape getting nicknamed as the Pillar of America.
The connection was too glaring to pass by.
…
After 20 minutes, the minibus finally made it to the venue. It was the biggest football stadium in Berlin…Olympiastadion.
The football stadium was chosen instead of the arenas due to the large influx of participants, reaching 2000 bloodliner or so.
There was no way for arenas, which could utmost hold 500 bloodlines, be a suitable venue for the gathering.
Shortly after, the minibus parked at the stadium’s side as there was no underground parking lot.
However, Felix and the rest didn’t need to worry about getting stormed by the excited citizen since the stadium was fortified with max security.
There were metal barriers placed around the stadium, blocking the citizen from approaching any further.
The soldiers and police officers standing in front of those barriers were more than enough to let citizens recognize the consequence of passing over the line.
“Let’s go, we are already pretty late.” George said while looking at the packed parking lot with minibusses of all different colors.
Most of the teams already made it to the venue like 45 minutes earlier. Although the gathering was set to start at 10:00 AM, it was always better to reach before.
After a while…
“Damn! How many countries decided to participate.”
Dale couldn’t help but exclaim in shock at the sight of hundreds upon hundreds of juniors standing in straight lines of twos in the field.
Unsurprisingly, the entire turf was covered by smooth blue material while the goal bars were taken away. This removed any signs that the field was for football.
“Close your mouth shut and follow me.” George said sternly while walking forward, “We are live on TV, so behave properly.”
As George said, camera operators were standing at the ends of the field, broadcasting and taking pictures. Other reporters were standing in front of a massively built wooden stage. Lastly, tens of drones hovering in the air without making any loud noises.
It was evident that every corner and edge in the stadium was under the view of the world.
Felix and the rest, who were walking towards the field, had most of the cameras pointed at them since they were the newcomers.
“The American Team has finally arriv…Wait a second! What happened to captain Felix?” The American broadcaster asked in confusion at the sight of Felix’s new appearance.
If Felix didn’t have his name written boldly on the back of his team’s outfit, the broadcaster wouldn’t have even known that he was Felix.
The confusion was shared by most viewers in the world, who saw Felix’s previous appearance.
“I believe that he must have replaced his bloodline.” The 2nd broadcaster clarified, “It just quite rare to change that much after a single replacement.”
The American viewers got pretty excited after hearing that their captain had finally entered the 1st stage of replacement.
He was actually the only captain who was part of the Ten Elites while still being in the purification realm!
If he didn’t have his legendary bloodline, they knew that he would have gotten kicked out of it long ago.
As the name suggested, there were nine more bloodliners on this list.
Actually, a team of analytics had made this list after making an extra effort to watch all of the countries’ tournaments to see who was the strongest bloodliner in the world.
So far, only ten bloodliners were placed in it, each a captain of a different country.
Those bloodliners either had something unique from the rest, or they were just that better.
The list had circulated on the internet in such a viral manner, it was beginning to be considered the standard of eliteness. This pushed every bloodliner into attempting and putting their name in it.
Their longing was understandable as the list’s reputation was massive to the point that even the broadcasters had no trouble putting it at the screen’s side.
They wanted to help the viewers know which bloodliners were noteworthy!
//
Rank 1) Slyvia Ivanov, the Ice Queen of Russia.
Rank 2) Zhang Wei, The Colossal of China.
Rank 3) Felix Maxwell, The Pillar of America.
Rank 4) William Bently, The Maestro of England.
Rank 5) Hina Suzuki, The Mermaid of Japan.
Rank 6) Maria Oliveira, The Demoness of Brazil.
Rank 7) Leo Bridges, The Barbarian of Australia.
Rank 8) Aadav Acharya, The Sun of India.
Rank 9) Sophia Schmidt, The Protector of Germany.
Rank 10) Arno Nkosi, The Strategist of South Africa. //
A team of analytics might have created this list, but they did so with a clear understanding of each bloodliner’s strengths and weaknesses.
Heck, the real list posted online had articles describing those bloodliners’ abilities in full details, showing what the commoners were missing.
After analyzing what Felix displayed in the national tournament and comparing it with the rest, it was up to no surprise that he wouldn’t be placed in the first rank.
After all, Felix never showed that he was capable of switching inducements.
The Poison Pillars, which made him viral on the internet, had already been analyzed to a terrifying degree, exposing all its weaknesses.
For example, the analytics mentioned that the only reason Felix managed to create that finger snap scene was due to the lack of knowledge about his ability.
Thus, the Hiltons weren’t expecting pillars to rise under their feet, ambushing them perfectly.
However, now that the ability was in the open and its range was also known, this would greatly reduce its effectiveness.
Mostly since the pillars were just poisonous mist that put one to sleep or force them to lose consciousness.
Besides, it was known knowledge that most barriers blocked projectiles and elemental abilities.
This meant those poison pillars were actually useless in this competition where every team had one buffer responsible for shielding his teammates!
This was seen as Felix’s most potent ability since he never showed himself after the tournament. Unlike some bloodliners in the list, who were posting on the social media bits of their daily training ventures.
Felix not bothering to accept interviews or even open up a social media account to address the internet inquiries, made it only natural that he seemed weaker than the rest who were lowkey ‘bragging’ online.
Alas, if only they knew that Felix was strong to the point he could slap any of those ‘elites’ to death, they would not have placed him in this list as it was an embarrassment to those bloodliners.
