Under the hub, there is a secret room built away from everyone's eyes.
Sam sat there at the head of a long table. Watt, Jack and Philip are currently sitting in the seats closest to him and they are waiting for the rest of show up. And within next fifteen minutes, the remaining people showed up.
There is Vidyut, Paras, Five elemental king, Saber Monarch, and of course Night Ghost is also there.
Sam smiled as he looked at all of them.
"So, how is the experience in the academy. It must be refreshing to be the underdog as a freshman when you are used to being a top dog for so long." Sam asked in a jovial tone.
The rest just chuckled and didn't say anything.
"Anyway, lets dive right into the meeting. I guess we don't have too much time, before someone notices that all of us are not there. And based on what Vidyut has been saying recently, Pearl might just sniff the coincidence.
What do you say Vidyut?"
"There is actually a great chance of that happening Sam. She is way too meticulous and cunning. She has too many plans."
"Care to explain?"
"So, I was invited into an alliance with her. Pearl, White and I are going to the be the three seeded candidates of the Zeus academy and in her own words, she 'wants to share her glory with us'.
But simply put she is following a technique very similar to the one we usually follow.
She created a list of all the candidates that are doing great in the academies and all of you guys are on that list. At least that is what I assume, because in the list she gave me, which is not complete, I already saw three names.
Watt is on top of that list.
She gave me a team and a list of tasks that I need to perform.
In the last few days, some people are following everything these people do in and out of the academy. I don't know who is giving out the information from inside the different academies, but the external information is being collected by the teammates directly under me.
One of them is shadowing Watt.
He is recording everything he does in a video format. His constant runs in the arcade, his meals at Nalan's restaurant. People who he is meeting with and whenever Watt goes out into the forest, just to stay alone and calm.
Right now, she has all that information.
In fact, she even knows how many people hold a grudge against him and how many women are interested in him.
She is being very detailed and she is doing this with every member she has on her list and I don't even know the full extent of her list until now.
"I am impressed. She is a lot smarter than I gave her credit for. But she is just a bit too green to try something like this. Anyway, let her think and do whatever she wants. The rest of the team will cooperate with you.
Even if you guys have to do some mock fights, sell it properly. She shouldn't doubt that we are working together."
Sam spoke and then turned to Watt.
"What's up with you? I heard you are trying to get your schoolmates play card games with you. You turned into a gambler when I wasn't there."
Watt just shrugged.
He knew Sam understood him and he doesn't have to worry. With their relationship, they can look past things like these.
Sam got some more details from the rest of them. All of them are gathering just the right amount of attention from their academy's people. Sam is actually a bit surprised that Pearl marked all of them as seeds.
"So, what's the deal with Hub? You said you will tell us what it can do in the meantime. The only thing I see as of now, is that it's a damn good training place. You really want to train these clowns from the academies?"
Philip asked. He couldn't hold back his curiosity anymore.
Sam chuckled and said.
"For now, that is going to be our cash cow. As for the other functions, I will show them to you when it is time to put them to action. Meanwhile, we need to keep all the freshmen academies on their toes. Our first major goal is messing up the inter-academic freshmen competition.
From this academic region, our team members should shine the best.
For this, I don't need you guys to hold back at all. From day one, I want you to shine the brightest. Right now, because of you holding back until now you are in a unique position.
You are not allied with anyone on the outside and no elder has put their complete focus on you. You also rejected the approaches of the regular instructors.
Now is the time for you to shine.
As soon as the towers open, go crazy with it. As long as you can, break as many records as possible. Just from the first day, I want you guys to be recognized and become famous all over the region. You will be like freshly lit lamps full of fuel.
And as soon as that happens, I will cast a shadow over the academies and all the freshmen in the region and in that shade, you will look the brightest of the bunch.
Of course, you are not the only ones that are gonna shine, there will be a bunch of lamps in the shade, but the more lamps we have in our team, the better…"
Sam went on to explain a few more things for the team to do and they dispersed.
No one knew that the orders Sam gave started a burning desire in every member that just sat at the table. Not just them, there are many people from dusk including the rest of the team members like Sia, Gyan and Tamas who heard this and they are also getting excited.
They are disappointed that they cannot participate in this plan and now they are training intensely to break the barrier and enter the Divine Plane.
And these burning desires are going to set the whole region ablaze.
In the dawn next morning, the hub finally felt a bit empty. Not a single freshman was in sight. All of them are gathered around the towers of their respective academies.
The towers are of the academies are very prestigious and they carry a lot of legacy.
No one has every climbed the tower to the fullest and no one even knows how many floors it actually has. And the height of the tower has nothing to do with the actual number of floors.
And the way to enter the tower and participate is actually pretty basic.
The tower has combat tests in each floor. Once someone clears the first floor, they will ascend to the second and then to third and so on.
And the combat tests will be proportionate to the cultivation level of the person. Since there are students of four stages of cultivation within the academies, there are four ranking lists based on how far a person can climb.
There are two factors to decide a person's rank. The total score they gained and the number of floors they climbed.
In each floor, a student gain around a thousand points, but they can pass the floor as long as they gain over five hundred points. The cut off might not seem much, but less than ten percent of people ever cross 550 points and less than five percent ever cross 600. As for more than 750, they are in the top one percent.
When a person attempts to climb the tower, their points counting will start and by the end of their climb, when they are finally defeated or they forfeit, their highest floor and the total number of points that they gained from all the floors combined will decide their rank.
To climb higher on the tower by overtaking another student, a candidate must satisfy two conditions.
One is they should clear more floors than the previous person and two, they should have more total points than the previous person.
For example, if a person has climbed twenty floors in total with total points of ten thousand, to beat that person in rank, another person should climb twenty-one floors and get more than ten thousand points.
If the second person only managed to ascend 20 floors and got beat in 21, he can still beat the first person if he has more than ten thousand points.
But if the second person did manage to beat 21 floors, but he didn't go past ten thousand points, his rank would still fall short.
A lot of students over generations showed their dissatisfaction with this weird method, but they couldn't change it. But still, everyone wants to beat the highest floor and everyone wants the highest score. With the added training and improvements from the hub, everyone is hopeful.
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