Living Life As A Game: Through And Through 135 Taking The Spotlight Once More

Upon being called to the competing area within the Tournament Stage, Elizabeth retained her silence as she made her way over to her block. Having grown used to the way the Events progressed, the small prelude before the announcer introduced the First Stage no longer drained on her patience. Moreover, with all the fancy new toys on her block, Elizabeth was more than content with appraising the quality of materials she had to work with.

When the announcer finally came through the public announcement system, Elizabeth was all ears. Focusing on the sound of his voice, she heard the announcer say, "Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to the fifth Event of the day, the Enchanting Event! To start off the first Stage, the Speed Stage, the competitors will be tasked with drawing a relatively simple Neutral Enchantment, the Storage Enchantment, over and over again. Since speed is the focus of this First Stage, competitors need only inscribe Enchantments to seventy percent completion. The more Enchantments they inscribe to that degree or higher, the better their score. Competitors will have ten minutes to work and only the top five-hundred competitors may pass to the next Stage. On my mark… Get set… Go!"

Wasting no time at all, Elizabeth decided to go all out as her eyes shimmered with the cyan hue of Time Magic and her dominant hand began inscribing Storage Enchantments on the first sheet of talisman paper on her block's work table. Smiling in satisfaction for finally being able to work with legitimate Enchantment Grade Talisman Paper, Elizabeth's enchantment speed neared 80% of her combat speed. It also helped that the inscriptions pen she was given for the Tournament Event was also much more advanced than the one she had been practicing with thus far.

Adding on the fact that she was the only one, presumably in the entire world, who understood Enchantment Principles and used them effectively; her Enchantment Principles becoming her most advanced set of Principles after all the practice completed in the past hour. Even Spirit Realm Practitioners who focused on the secondary occupation of Enchantments would be left in the dust in; albeit only if accuracy was also taken into account.

As the Storage Enchantment was a Neutral Enchantment, and one that was of the easier side of the spectrum as well, Elizabeth completed her Enchantments at 100% perfection every five seconds. Her speed somehow still increasing as her proficiency in the Principles of Speed, Accuracy, and Precision rose; albeit, at a saddeningly slow pace. Like a human printer, she drew the intricate lines of the Enchantment with mechanical precision and eventually… She ran out of Talisman Papers to Enchant. Adding insult to injury, there were still over five minutes remaining.

Waving down a standing attendant, Elizabeth said, "Can I get some more papers?" The manner in which she brazenly shook the stack of completed talisman papers in her hands, made it seem less like she was in the middle of a competition and more like she was trying to bribe someone…

"R-right away..." Taking a second to process just how ridiculous of a reality it was for her to run out of papers to inscribe before half the Stage was over, the attendant took his leave and rushed to the resources department to get the Elizabeth more papers. It took less than a minute for the attendant to return with another stack of 60 talisman papers, but going by her current rate, if she hadn't the need to stop, she could have easily completed ten or so Storage Enchanted Talismans.

Still, after taking in the sight of her fellow competitors and the troubles they had with speed, Elizabeth didn't mind the small handicap. She thanked the attendant for getting her papers as fast as he did and resumed her printer-like drawing speed until the buzz of the announcer prompted her to stop altogether.

Helplessly, Elizabeth could only settle for turning in 114 completed Storage Enchantment Talismans, as she was only a quarter of the way through with drawing her 115th paper. Returning to her life of endless meditation, Elizabeth awaited for the results of the first Stage to be announced.

Having grown tired of wasting her time by listening to the results her peers achieved, she directly ignored all prompts by the announcer until the runner up's score was announced. The results were more disappointing than she could have predicted as not only did her 114 complete Storage Enchanted Talismans eclipse the runner up by a factor greater than three, but the quality of the runner up's talismans were also consistently at the 70% threshold; the absolute minimum accepted by the judges. There were even a couple of his talismans that fell below the minimum allowed completion threshold and were discounted. But, what really caused Elizabeth to despair for the Martial Society, was the fact that the runner up's discounted 4 talismans were supposedly a rarely seen low number. It truly left her thinking that her decision to ignore the other results couldn't have been a more perfect call as such cringe was bound to turn her stomach…

Electing to pass on the interview as people had already heard enough about her for the day and she could feel the reluctance in the crowd to have to hear her shame her competitors once more, the interviewer was relieved of duties if only for when Elizabeth secured another victory for herself. As was the case, the announcer moved on to announcing the Second Stage.

Announcing, "Moving on to the next Stage, the Transmission Stage, the remaining competitors are to inscribe the same Defense Force Enchantment on a variety of materials of different texture and size. The judging criteria for this Stage is the number of Enchantments a competitor can create under different, even unorthodox, surfaces. With each material possessing a value for its difficulty to inscribe on and another value for its size, the higher the competitors total score the greater their final ranking. Only talismans with a completion rate of 80% will get the full score for their estimated size and difficulty values and competitors will have a grand total of twenty minutes to compete. With that said, the materials the competitors may use are located by the walls of the tournament stage. Now, three, two, one… Go!"

Chance! At long last, Elizabeth finally found something that would challenge her. Granted, she was about to do something so ridiculous it would only further her reputation as insane, as she ignored the flow of competitors fighting to acquire the easiest materials and direct made her way to the edge of the tournament walls to pick up the trickiest materials to inscribe upon. With literally no one beside her to distract her merry browsing, Elizabeth picked seventy of the most difficult materials available for the competitors to work with.

Taking on hard metals, soft woods, beast hides, bones, and everything in between, virtually all the textures she wished she could practice on were selected. However, the absurdity didn't end there, as in her stack of materials there were included objects as small as a centimeter wide marble to a plank with a surface area surpassing three square meters.

Returning to her block on the Tournament Stage, Elizabeth went straight into her work. Taking a much more reserved pace of fifteen seconds per completed Enchantment, she managed to retain her perfect 100% completion, since even if the Defense Force Enchantment was a bit harder to make than the Storage Enchantment, it was still a mere Neutral-type Enchantment.

Thus, after about 18 minutes, Elizabeth was done with the various materials she had initially picked out and though she could have continued on and finished a couple more Enchantment's, she didn't feel the need to continue as she had already practiced her technique with the strangest selection of materials available to her. Feeling satisfied with all the experience her Enchantment Skill received after being able to augment her Enchantment Principle of Transmission, Elizabeth sunk into yet another light meditation as she awaited for another cycle of judging to pass by.

To no one's surprise, Elizabeth retained her spot in first place after earning herself a score of 788. Compared to the runner up's score which was still in the double digits, deep breathing could be heard as the crowd thought Elizabeth's "overperformance" to be the resulting fury of losing in the last Event she attended.

Elizabeth skipped yet another interview and vowed to continue doing so should she continue to take first place in the Stages, leaving the announcer to take to the mic and announce, "Moving on to the Final Stage, the Freestyle Stage, competitors are given ten minutes and three tries to complete their best Enchantment. For the next minute, the remaining hundred competitors will be given the chance to pick out what materials to use in their chosen Enchantments."

In a similar manner in which she picked out materials to forge the Evergreen Copper Sword in the Forging Event, Elizabeth received a tablet from a personal attendant and picked out a list of materials to use in the Final Event. After receiving the materials and thanking the attendant, the announcer shortly returned to the mic to say, "Begin!"

Chapter end