My Plunderer System

Once the next morning had arrived, Milo once again went about his morning routine, this time however, Zach decided to join. While training, Zach inquired about Milo's date with Maria who went on to explain about what they did that day. Zach was surprised by this, as he was there when she first joined their team and saw how cold she acted towards everyone, not only this but he had heard the rumors about her shooting down every guy who approached her with dating in mind, being in the X ranked class.

Zach continued on to ask if Milo liked Maria back, as he also was aware of the little test run that he and Krista went on and wanted to know where Milo was on the whole girls front. Milo answered with a lukewarm response, he still wasn't sure if he liked Maria yet, but he knew where his feelings for Krista stood, and that was strictly as friends. After responding to Zach, he asked him if he had any girls he liked.

This was something Zach hadn't thought of yet. This is what he told Milo, but it started to get his thoughts moving. Were there girls at the school he thought were pretty? Sure, but he hadn't thought deeply about whether there were any stand out girls that he would say he was crushing on. He eventually decided to go through the girls he knew the best to see if any of them stood out to him. Allana was too forward and aggressive for him, Maria was already crushing on Milo and was also too forward for him, finally when getting to Krista he paused. He thought she was cute, he also thought that her personality was much better than the other girls. Eventually he got so distracted that he messed up a move and got caught up in Milo's chain while they were sparring.

After Zach got too lost in thought Milo thought it would be a good idea to end their practice session there. The pair began to head back to the dorms where they ran into Maria, Allana and Krista. The girls decided to go out and get breakfast together so that Krista and Allana could get to know Maria more. The girls asked if the guys would like to join them, but Zach and Milo said that they needed to shower first. Seeing Krista's face after the thoughts that Zach was thinking earlier sent a jolt up his spine, it was something he hadn't had happen before. Eventually during the conversation, the pair made eye contact for a split second before they both looked away blushing. This gave him a realization, maybe he did like someone, and that someone was Krista.

After the interaction with the girls, Milo and Zach each made their way back to their rooms and showered before meeting up with Chris and Mark and going to get some food before the festival. At the school cafeteria the group grabbed their food and took a seat. With the combat competition going on that day, the group was talking about who they thought would win. Milo had no idea who was competing so he stayed out of the conversation and instead tried to think of a way that he could find and convince the person who made the rare ranked equipment with an attached skill to make him a piece of equipment using the unique ranked core he had.

His only idea was to go down to where the artisan students worked and use his inspect skill to find who Avery Becket was. He then began to think of what type of equipment he should ask them to make it into. As of now he wanted to get his hands on either a chest piece or a new chain hook. Due to him already having a weapon that he could reliably use, he figured the former would be a better choice.

Milo eventually got snapped out of his daze by Chris, the group had finished eating and Chris was asking Milo if there was anything else he wanted to do at the festival that day other than go to see the combat tournament. Milo didn't have anything else he wanted to see, so the group made their way to the colosseum right at the start of the festival. The combat tournament was set up in a bracket format, and the competitors drew lots to determine who their opponents would be. At the start of the tournament, there would be 32 students competing and it would end with one overall champion. While a majority of those competing were from the X ranked class it wasn't uncommon for a few A ranks to also get into the bracket, if their abilities were better suited for combat than some of the X ranked students.

When the guys all arrived, the tournament was getting set to start with the first match. When they took their seats, Milo looked out at the venue. In the center of the colosseum 16 small stages were set up around the main floor. At each a teacher was stationed who would be in charge of refereeing the matches. Eventually the amount of stages would be cut down to one, once the quarterfinals arrived. This was simply to keep the competition from running for too long, as they needed to have a break in between each match to make sure the students who needed it received healing.

There was a small pamphlet handed out that had all the matches listed in a bracket so people could know who was fighting at what stage, and also so they could keep track of the matches. Looking around the venue some more, Milo was able to see countless cameras set up around the different stages to broadcast the various matches. Eventually the seats around them began to fill, and the girls had come to join them. Milo ended up getting a seat next to Maria, who wrapped her arm around his. When she did this, Milo was too flustered to try to separate himself from her so he let her do it.

After a couple more minutes an announcer began the opening ceremonies. Soon after the opening ceremony, the 32 competing students made their way to the stages they'd be fighting on. All the students who were competing were covered from head to toe in magical equipment, making them all look like gatecrashers. Using the inspect skill, Milo also was pleased to see that there was a wide variety of weapons and abilities that would be showcased, as he was worried that there may be too much of the same thing.

Eventually the matches began and the tournament was finally underway, there were a few matches that ended quite quickly and when looking at the matches in the program, Milo was able to learn that the students who had lost that quickly were A ranked students who got partnered against X ranked students. Of the remaining matches that were still underway, there were 3 abilities in particular that seemed like they could be interesting matches to watch. One was a student who used an ability called Physical Clone, they were able to make clones of themselves that were just like his main body and could push in and attack, when cloned all the equipment he was wearing would also be cloned which made it difficult to determine clones from his actual self. The second was a student who used an ability that allowed him to make himself larger, he wielded a large spiked club that grew with him, Milo imagined that fighting the student would be like fighting the cyclops he and the guys had encountered while on spring break in Miami. The third student had an ability that allowed them to grow and fire off spikes from their body, almost like a porcupine.

Eventually all the matches in the first round had finished and they took a short intermission to heal the students who had been injured, as well as lower the number of stages to 8 for the round of 16 matches. In the round of 16 matches only one student from the A ranked class remained, he had luckily been paired up against another A ranked student and had won in a close match. After the intermission ended, the matches resumed.

Still hanging on his arm, Maria asked Milo who he thought would win, at this point he wasn't sure but figured it could be one of the three students he had noticed earlier. Just like in the first round of matches, the last remaining A ranked student was knocked out of the competition quite quickly, and the rest of the matches took a bit longer. All three students Milo liked had won their matches, one of them was paired with the A ranked student so they had an easier match when compared to the other two, but all 3 of them won quite convincingly.

Watching the matches, Milo began to realize the gap that existed between the X and A ranked students, the A ranked students didn't stand a chance when fighting the X ranked students, which made Milo wonder where exactly his friends in the A ranked class stood on getting moved up to the X ranked class. Eventually the round of 16 had ended and they once again took a short intermission to prepare the colosseum for the final 6 matches, and drop the number of stages down to one.

Milo took this opportunity to get away from Maria who hadn't let go of his arm since the matches started and excused himself to go get some food as well as to run to the bathroom. Once he had left, he got a message from Chris with a winky face emoticon that Milo rolled his eyes at with a chuckle. Apparently Chris had noticed how touchy Maria was getting with Milo.

While that was going on, there was another boy and girl who got seats next to each other, in this case though neither of them knew whether they should make a move or not and it caused an awkward tension to form in the air.