10 minutes later…
All of the teams had made it to the venue and lined in their designated space.
Felix’s team was standing on the right side of the field, getting sandwiched by the Philippines team and the Tunisian team.
No one was speaking as they were focused on a group of men and women wearing formal suits, walking towards the wooden stage.
They stood at the back after they climbed it, leaving only two men next to a podium.
Without being asked, the instructors started applauding in greeting, followed by the juniors.
“It seems like this gathering is going to be headed by Mr. Jacob, the current spokesperson of the World Council. And Mr. Rodrigaz, the 1st elected president of the ESG Organization.” The American broadcaster commentated.
Expectedly, Jacob was left to continue his term as the World Council spokesperson instead of electing a new one.
From the glossy skin and extensive hair on Jocab’s head, he clearly enjoyed the perks of being in such a high authoritative position.
“Thank you for such a heartening welcome.” Jacob smiled faintly and waited until the applause died down.
Seeing that the eyes of the bloodliners and the cameras were on him, Jacob fixed his tie, a habit he did whenever he felt a bit tensed.
However, even if billions of eyes were on him as a veteran politician, he wouldn’t get fazed that easily.
Thus, he brought the mic near his lips and started reading his speech out loud from an invisible hologram, making it seem like he was winging it.
The speech was mainly centered around thanking the world leaders, who were sitting in VIP rooms watching the gathering and motivating the juniors into doing their utmost best for their country. Especially for the planet as a whole.
After 15 minutes, Jacob wrapped his speech up under the heartful applause of the listeners. He nodded his head at the juniors one last time before saying, “I will let Mr. Rodrigas take it from here.”
“Thank you, Sir. Jacob.” Mr. Rodrigas shook the hand of Jacob for a second or two before moving into the podium.
He was a middle-aged man with a few wrinkles on the side of his green eyes.
If Mr. Rodrigas wasn’t already known for being 70 years old, he would have fooled everyone about his real age.
It was clear that he consumed the longevity potion just like Jacob and most of the world leaders.
After all, the supremacy coins earned from selling Earth’s data landed in their hands, and there was no way they wouldn’t pilfer 1 million each for the longevity potion from the budget given to their countries.
This obviously set outrage in some countries as the coins were already few and limited.
Instead of using them for projects such as buying large amounts of substances for commoners, medicine for cancer, and other chronic diseases, they were being spent selfishly on themselves.
Alas, their outrage resulted in nothing but venting for a couple of months before new scandals and viral news replaced their interest.
Now? Only a few individuals kept shouting at their TV screen after seeing Mr. Rodrigas’s youthful image. Most of them were seniors.
“I will keep it simple and short.” Mr. Rodrigas didn’t seem that friendly as he spoke with a strict tone, “Tomorrow morning, you will be sent to the black forest and remain in it for the next 7 days.”
After saying so, noisy murmurs broke within the teams’ ranks as some were still clueless about the format used.
Not everyone managed to get their hands on the competition leaks.
Unruffled by the noise, Mr. Rodrigas gestured for a staff member to open up a small box, showing a triangle-shaped white piece of cloth.
It had a QR code in the center of it and even a small chip next to that QR code.
The camera zoomed on the piece of cloth, displaying it up close for the viewers at home as well in the big stadium’s screen.
Upon seeing that everyone was looking at it, Mr. Rodrigas carried on, “Inside the forest, 100 of those flags will be hidden in trees, between rocks, and even deep under the lakes. In this competition, your task was to find one, secure it, and hold it until the 7 days period passed. Each flag represents a slot in the earthling’s team.”
“Aren’t those flags a bit too small?” Olivia wondered softly, “How can we find them only in seven days?”
The majority shared Olivia’s confusion as the flags were indeed quite hard to notice.
Heck, even in plain sight, they were having difficulty seeing the flag on the stage, don’t even mention inside a forest.
It just seemed too difficult to pull off.
Clearly, Mr. Rodrigas knew what they had in mind as he soon clarified that every 24 hours, there would ten planes passing over the forest with airdrops.
Inside those airdrops, the bloodliners could find daily necessities, like food, water, spare tents, energy stones, healing substances, and such.
However, the most significant value in those airdrops would be a GPS tracker device capable of locating flags in a 1-kilometer radius!
“This changes everything.”
“No wonder there was a chip on the flag.”
The bloodliners understood that obtaining those trackers were a must if they wanted to be competitive inside the forest.
A team with a tracker would give them so many benefits and options, such as finding out the number of flags each team was carrying and even using it to track teams with flags and defend themselves from ambushes aiming at them from flag carriers.
There were so many other ways to use the tracker effectively.
For such a must-have device, it only led the bloodliners to conclude that bloodshed would arise for every airdrop.
However, few bloodliners seemed disinterested in those trackers as they believed that the AP bracelet’s scan feature was enough for their needs.
Alas, those thoughts were removed instantly from their minds after Mr. Rodrigas said sternly, “To stop any cheating attempts, we have taken extreme measures. Every flag has a unique QR code to set those flags apart from each other and fake ones. Two, the AP bracelet features will be wholly deactivated without exceptions. Three, the Queen AI’s assistance will be offline for the entire duration…Except for her messaging feature.”
‘Sigh, I guess I won’t be training my inner manipulation in the woods.’ Felix scratched his cheek in annoyance.
He had a sliver of hope that the features blocked will be specified instead of taking everything at once.
Since the spatial card was a feature of the bracelet, he wouldn’t use the energy stones to train or refill his energy tank.
Felix didn’t want to waste Asna’s purified energy for just training.
While Felix was having thoughts only about the spatial card, the rest were either voicing their displeasure or sighing in dejection at the idea of spending an entire weak without the AP bracelet.
From the moment they got those bracelets, they were pretty much relying on them just like an old man relying on a cane to walk.
Now that cane was taken from them, their days in the forest weren’t going to be pleasant.
Well, at least the Queen’s messaging feature being left untouchable was some consolation news.
No one bothered to ask whether they would be able to contact people outside of the forest or not, as it was common sense that it would be banned as well.
Heck, Mr. Rodrigas took a step further and told them that communication between teams was also banned! This led them to conclude that allying with other teams was most likely not allowed.
As they assumed, Mr. Rodrigas went on and explained that allying to seek flags or sharing tracker would be strictly forbidden.
“Those are all of the competition’s rules.” Mr. Rodrigas looked at them sternly and said, “There is no need for me to mention what’s going to happen to you if you decided to aim for an intentional kill, right?”
The juniors gulped a mouthful as they nodded their heads. Most of them saw the heavy punishment of breaking this rule in their national tournaments.
They didn’t dare to challenge the ESG Organization. Since this time, the punishment might even affect the entire country in worse cases.
Such as having their future bloodliners banned from participating in future international competitions.
“There will be surrender option available, and each individual or a team, who voiced their surrender will be marked with red ‘X’ and be dispatched by helicopters.” Mr. Rodrigas explained, “You just need to confirm your decision with the Queen, and we will take it from there.”
Seeing that everyone understood those rules, Mr. Rodrigas tapped on his bracelet, and a hologram that was displaying his UVR ID emerged before the juniors.
“Please send your UVR ID.” Mr. Rodrigas requested without explaining why.
However, Felix and some bloodliners who knew what he wanted to do, sent their IDs without complaint.
Just like sheep, the rest followed their lead and did the same.
After a couple of seconds, Mr. Rodrigas was notified by the Queen that there were 100 missing UVR IDs from the ones sent to him.
“You have three seconds to stop wasting my time and do what you were told.” Mr. Rodrigas said, unsmiling.
Upon hearing so, no one hesitated anymore as the hundred missing IDs were all sent. Soon, Mr. Rodrigas displayed 2780 Censored UVR IDs on a humongous hologram.
The number almost reached 3000 only due to the substitutes of each team were gathered here as well.
“The Queen is going to ask you to give her your permission to monitor your words, actions, and also to deactivate your AP bracelets until the competition ends.” He looked at them sternly, “Be sure to accept.”
The moment he finished, the Queen’s voice truly resounded in everyone’s minds, requesting permission to apply what was mentioned.
‘Permission granted.’ Felix accepted instantly as he had nothing to worry about.
It might sound invasive to give the Queen permission to relay his words and actions to the Mr. Rodrigas or other supervisors. But, he understood that the only thing that the Queen was going to send were matters related to the rules.
For example, if Felix said that he wanted this bloodliner dead at any cost, the Queen wouldn’t hesitate to rally this information to the supervisors.
Then, it would be up to them to check whether he was truly aiming to do so or he was just throwing a fit.
As for monitoring the actions? It was merely to keep the bloodliners in check from activating their AP bracelet features or doing something foolish like destroying the GPS chips on the flags.
As Felix expected, Mr. Rodrigas started mentioning the same points and inquiries, which were on the bloodliners’ minds.
After getting pacified, the juniors gave away their permission as well. Everyone noticed so from the way those censored IDs on the hologram kept getting illuminated with a green light.
Mr. Rodrigas made everything seem transparent to avoid getting accused of giving a biased treatment above the others.
For example, he had a Brazilian nationality and if the Brazilian team had even a slight advantage, he wouldn’t escape getting some accusations thrown at him.
Neither Mr. Rodrigas nor the ESG Organization as a whole wanted to deal with those kinds of matters. Thus, they were trying their very best to make the competition as fair as possible.
Shortly after, the entire hologram was brightened up, showing that everyone had agreed on his terms.
“Now that we finished dealing with the cumbersome rules let’s move on to drawing!” Mr. Rodrigas smiled for the first time as he clapped his hands, giving off some sort of a signal.
Everyone got confused after hearing the term ‘drawing’ since this competition clearly didn’t have anything to do with brackets and such!
