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Translated By Arcane Translations
Translator: bchen3
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“Team members… I hope we get matched with good people.”
Nogi sighed while poking at his fish with chopsticks.
“Don’t poke at the fish with your chopsticks, Nogi-kun. They said the competition members will be divided as fairly as possible, so everyone will probably be similar, won’t they?”
Luna spoke as if comforting the gloomy-looking Nogi.
Everyone who had formed parties and groups was saying similar things.
It was the day to announce the temporary party members for the competition that had been noticed a few days ago for party unit training.
That’s why Nogi was whining.
If maintained fairly, all 16 planned parties would clearly be filled with one ace user, 1-2 decent users, and the rest being, honestly, holes at this point.
After hanging around with users who ranked in the upper tier among the 108 users, it must be annoying to be in a situation where they’d mostly have to take care of others.
Though everyone had some degree of strong team orientation in their hearts, that guy was a bit extreme.
His skill wasn’t bad compared to other users, but he kept trying to compare with other parties around them.
Moreover, since this competition had different rewards based on party rankings and additional rewards for individual performance, he wanted a good party even more.
Even if individual awards were difficult, he probably wanted to get assigned to a good party and receive high-grade rewards as leftovers.
While the habit of trying to assess one’s position was good for maintaining objectivity, if taken too far, it easily led to becoming a cherry-picker who only tried to choose good things.
‘…Seems like I’ll need to discipline him a bit later.’
He was someone with a light attitude, overly free but seeming to lack responsibility, who tried to secure only good things for himself.
Though it was hard to think this party with me would fall behind other parties later, just in case.
It would be troublesome if he ran off to another place after we’d built team chemistry.
“Kid-nim, don’t read books while eating. And Hirao-san too. Everyone’s being so ill-mannered at the table!”
Luna, after comforting Nogi, glanced this way and nagged.
Hirao and I, who had been reading books borrowed from the library, closed our books while reading the atmosphere.
Could have read a bit more. That’s disappointing.
“Sheesh.”
Unlike her pretty appearance and the affected expression she showed at first, she seemed to have become something like an incredibly tenacious girl head of household.
“What do you plan to do when the competition party teams are decided?”
Hanai-san, who had quietly and quickly finished eating first, quietly opened her mouth and asked me.
I couldn’t even hear chewing or utensil sounds, but she was already done eating?
Maybe choosing kunoichi would have been better than archer class.
“You’re asking about unity, right?”
I answered after reading the intent behind Hanai-san’s question.
Currently, the overall user level wasn’t high.
Even our party, which ranked among the top three by recognition and personally among the first picks, only had decent individual abilities and hadn’t yet achieved proper party coordination.
There hadn’t really been such opportunities to begin with.
At this point, except for me, Luna, and the Japanese lunch kid, the others became exhausted after 8 hours of training, though it varied by individual condition.
Even at this point, except for outstanding aces, users who would form the middle ranks and lower ranks were overwhelmed just getting used to this place.
This was the same for other parties.
Therefore, there had been almost no opportunities for scrims (practice matches).
Moreover, the parties being formed now were hodgepodge parties with more than half filled with what would be called fillers in Korea.
Though they said they’d reduce basic training now and increase time for party unit training, honestly, time would be lacking even if all time was invested in training.
Even with increased party training time, focusing on competition party training meant training for this party “Happy Ending” would be difficult.
‘And, maybe because of her sports club experience, she seems to understand the importance of unity.’
Even for a party formed briefly over less than two weeks, a party was still a party.
To form bonds, intimacy needed to be built between party members even outside of training.
‘The simple way is eating together and talking like this.’
I nodded slightly in understanding.
Was Hanai-san from Kyoto?
Though she spoke quite indirectly, the point was this:
‘Even if this party continues later, please allow time to be invested in the competition.’
After the competition parties were formed, she meant she wanted to invest in the competition party’s quality rather than eating together like now or talking separately.
When our eyes met, those calm eyes showed greed for the competition rewards.
The rewards obtained in this situation would all be great help for clearing and survival.
‘A rear archer position with broad vision. Sports club background. Naturally calm personality and an adult who’s experienced society. Has decisiveness to get what’s needed without relying solely on emotions.’
While she couldn’t be called a ranged dealer with outstanding inherent sense or specs, she was someone who could act as command tower if something happened to me, once internal rapport was built.
“Let’s focus on our competition parties rather than this party during the competition.”
“Eh.”
“Eehh?”
Luna and Nogi looked at me while making strange sounds.
Among them, Nogi had somewhat anxious eyes.
“Since our side is a high-rank party with mostly high-ranked users, we’ll mostly be split up. It would be a waste to give up the competition rewards, right?”
“…Still.”
I understood what Nogi was worried about.
“Don’t worry about this party I’ve formed with carefully selected talents falling apart in less than two weeks. Think about it. The parties temporarily formed for the competition will mostly be lower-ranked users. Compared to this current party… ha…”
“‘Happy Ending.'”
“…Right, ‘Happy Ending,’ they’ll definitely fall short. I think there won’t be any problems with our party, ‘Tempest,’ and ‘Golden Apple,’ though I’m not sure about other parties.”
I pushed away Luna’s forehead with my index finger as she watched me getting embarrassed with a grin.
“There are competition rewards, and anyway, I think experiencing various party formations won’t be bad.”
“Ugh.”
“If we need to get rewards anyway, isn’t it better for our members to each rank high and bring back rewards? If you believe our party will continue even after the competition ends, I think it’s right to work toward getting the biggest rewards possible. Rather, since most pre-competition formed parties will be assigned ace-level members, if their unity weakens during the competition due to previous party relationships, our party members who focused on the competition will have a higher chance of each getting good rewards.”
“When you put it that way…”
Nogi quickly changed his attitude at the mention of getting rewards more easily compared to other parties.
Nice that he’s easy to handle.
“The practice training period is 12 days, and the rest is round of 16, quarter-finals, semi-finals, and finals over 2 days, right?”
“The rewards are in 5 tiers: 1st place, 2nd place, top 4, top 8, top 16. It seems there are also individual rewards for some who show outstanding performance.”
When the topic of rewards came up, it quickly became noisy again.
While I’ll aim for first place, I hope the others each get good rewards from their respective parties too.
Everyone try to earn as many rewards as possible.
It would be nice if there wasn’t internal conflict, but that might be difficult?
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People who appeared to be servants and maids posted papers with various names written on them on the bulletin board.
The users who had been keeping their distance while things were being posted started rushing forward as soon as approach was allowed.
‘…Is this like Japan’s new year class announcements or acceptance announcements?’
Of course, Japan had already digitized such things long ago, so this was actually a scene only depicted in old media.
“Hmm…”
“Ehh…”
“Is this… acceptable?”
“…Is this real…”
“Tch, nothing but trash.”
Ambiguous voices could be heard here and there.
It was natural if you thought about it.
Honestly, less than 40 people had shown promise of being worth their salt at this point.
With that divided among 16 parties, more than half were fillers in both 6-person and 8-person parties.
And by this point, most users could distinguish who had decent skills and who was inadequate.
The aces who had already found parties would be dissatisfied about having to lead parties mostly filled with fillers, while the fillers nodded at seeing parties that were somewhat fairly distributed.
Of course, there were also seemingly conscienceless users who complained about other party members seeming inadequate despite being fillers themselves.
And S-ranks like Saito and Shoenji, as well as people who had anticipated this situation, remained calm as if they had expected it.
Since the result wouldn’t change whether I looked early or later, I slowly approached the bulletin board when people started clearing out.
‘Yoon Sihu, Yoon Sihu.’
It wasn’t hard to find since I was the only Korean.
Party 3 Total 6 persons
[Leader] Yoon Sihu
Kinoshita Yui
Sakaki Takeshi
Amakas Riho
Masunaka Toka
Yori Yorisada
I nodded seeing the party members.
Hmm. As expected, I don’t remember any of these people at all.
Looks like it will be a somewhat difficult competition.
I’m feeling a bit depressed.
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