Odyssey of the Blind God

'So is that how it ends…just like that?' Nial thought as he lay down on his bed.

Finn was whisked away into custody by the President of the Golden Armaments Union and Nial was forced to return to his damaged room.

He couldn't think about sleeping because his mind was restlessly thinking about Finn's reasoning.

'I would definitely do the same thing if there was really no other way. My family will have it much easier as long as I can return with the Dryad Queen's tear, and that's everything that matters to me…'  He thought before deciding to return to work.

There was no way that Nial could fall asleep, so instead of wasting his precious time with useless doubts, he might as well try to work on becoming a better Runicier, and improve as much as possible in a few hours.

In the end, he didn't improve much but that was only obvious. Time passed quickly, and Nial went to the Colosseum's arena to participate in the third round of the U21 Runicier tournament.

'Including me, there are 18 participants left…he really killed six Runiciers before he came over to me,' Nial understood, which caused him to sigh deeply.

He couldn't change the situation and it was not as if it was a disadvantage for him to have fewer rivals either though the thought might seem a bit selfish.

[As everyone may notice, we have fewer participants in the third round than expected. The culprit, who caused this has been caught, which is why there won't be anymore problems. Despite that, I have to apologize to all the inconvenience the 241st U21 Runicier tournament caused every participant.

I apologize to everyone, who suffered due to the incompetency of me and my staff. We will consult with the masters and families of the deprived, and compensate them. This will not bring their loved ones back but there is nothing else we can do…but try to help…] Card Melphy sounded empathetic as he spoke.

His voice was overflowing with sadness and guilt, which caused Nial to lift his eyebrow because he could clearly visualize the President of the Golden Armaments Union inside the VIP room.

He didn't really look all that sad and was more angered about the given situation than anything else. Nial could understand that to some extent but he found the two-faced president to definitely be a weird kind of person.

[Despite all the sad incidents, we won't allow them to affect the Runicier tournament any further. We will end the tournament today, by holding the 3rd round and the grand finale on the same day!] Card Melphy spoke calmly as he revealed the huge change.

Usually, the U21 Runicier tournament lasted close to two weeks, and it would have five to six rounds in which participants would be asked to perform some grueling and complex tasks. However, this time, the tournament was going to be wrapped up in half that time, and in only four rounds.

[Only six Runiciers will advance to the fourth round, which will be the great final, where everyone will have to create the best Runic armament they're capable of!] The President simply continued to speak, ignoring the astonished gasps echoing through the filled Colosseum.

Many had bought tickets for the entire U21 Runicer tournament, paying a lot to witness every single day of the tournament, but now it was supposed to end in half the time it was usually held? This felt like a big scam and not worth their expenditure!

However, the spectators, who were present today, were still lucky. They could at least witness the grand finale of the U21 Runicier tournament.

For those who purchased tickets to witness the last three days of the tournament only, all their money had been wasted without receiving anything. By the time the news about the big change in the tournament reached the civilians outside the Colosseum, the tournament would come to an end.

The President of the Golden Armaments Union knew that lots of trouble awaited him but worrying about angered spectators was the least of his worries at the moment.

The trouble with the Balgris race was something of far more important than anyone could imagine and Card was more than a little bit annoyed about attending the Racial Ximatra court, where the punishment for Finn's actions would be determined.

Finn's punishment would increase according to how much his actions impacted the stagnation of the other race's advancement, how important the Runiciers he killed was, and much more. And to make things worse, the entire Balgris race would be held responsible for the actions of one of their reckless descendants as well!

It made things very difficult for the Union's president, but he knew that he had to end the tournament properly, or it would never attain the same reputation as it had before.

[The third round will be simple. There will be a Quiz with more than 100 questions, and your task is to answer as many as possible in the following eight hours. Certain Tier-0 runic armaments are the answer to the questions, and you have to create them in order to get the points!] Card Melphy finished before a huge list of 100 questions appeared in the air above everyone.

Meanwhile, a young attendant appeared next to Nial and bowed lightly so as to assist him at any moment.

'So they thought about me this time? That's a refreshing change, I'm not gonna lie,' Nial thought with a faint smile before he told the young attendant to start telling him the questions one by one.

[The third round of the U21 Runicier tournament will start now! Good luck to everyone, and may the best advance to the final round!]

With that being said, the tournament started and everyone began to move rapidly. Most rushed to their small artisan space that had their number engraved on it.

Numerous molds to cast all kinds of runic armaments had been prepared beforehand. This ought to make it easier to create the runic armaments, which was exactly what all the participants started to do.

Rather than actual questions, all the 'questions' sounded more like scenarios one was supposed to imagine themselves in.

[A Mirae-ranked Titanium Rhinoceros attacks you.]

[You want to preserve a Bluermial flower.]

[A swarm of Leacrat Locusts corrodes your farm.]

All scenarios could be answered with the creation of various runic armaments. The attack of the Titanium Rhinoceros could be countered by creating a runic shield, a runic ring with a defensive spell, or even an attack spell. One could also create a Rapier with [Armor-piercing] and other runic constellations engraved.

Nial predicted that all answers would be considered correct as long as one could imagine that their choice of weapon would solve the issue mentioned in the 'question'.

This made things quite interesting, especially since one's efficiency in solving a situation was questioned in the third round.

The third round's task may look like it had been created in a hurry but that was not what Nial thought. He was pretty sure that eight hours were not enough for many ordinary Runiciers to create 10 Tier-0 runic armaments, even if they had been provided readymade molds.

As for prodigious Runiciers, Nial doubted that they could create more than 25 Tier-0 runic armaments.

If they engraved 2 runic constellations on each runic armament, and they wouldn't be working in a highly efficient manner in every other step required to create runic armaments, they would need roughly close to 20 minutes to forge for each Runic armament.

That was already extremely fast, but Nial wanted to create more than them. He wanted to make sure that there were no surprises and that he could create more than 30 runic armaments to be certain to advance to the final round.

Thus, he told his helper to read him the situations twice before he spent a total of 10 minutes arranging all the scenarios.

Nial had already visualized all the molds that had been prepared in advance, which was why he organized the scenarios to the molds their problem-solving runic armament would require to be cast.

Many of the molds in the first 20 questions overlapped, which was why the Runiciers would have problems using several molds at the same time.

Only if someone acted like Nial, and decided to organize all the runic armaments that were required to answer each question with the molds, was it possible for him to start making use of them.

However, as some scenarios were not easy to answer, Nial ended up spending more time than he believed to be necessary.

He had created enough liquefied metal to forge more than 10 runic armaments, which was near-perfect as he began to use all the eight weapon molds they had been given for the third round.

Without hesitation, he worked on eight runic armaments at the same time without showing the slightest bit of nervousness.

While others might be better in the engraving process of high-ranked runic constellations, Nial had been forced to learn how to engrave all the runic constellations he knew with a 100% perfection grading.

It was not necessary for him to focus too much while engraving runes as long as it required only the runic armament to reach the threshold of a Tier-0 runic armament.

Nial worked hard, while focusing his mind on making sure that he answered the scenarios with the correct runic armaments.

Even if he wanted to work fast, rushing things was not helpful if he would make mistakes in the process of speeding up. Qualitative creations were just as important in this round as a high quantity of Tier-0 runic constellations.

With that in mind, Nial worked relentlessly for eight hours before everyone was ordered to stop doing what they were doing and took a step back.

All the runic armaments they created were taken away, from various staff members that appeared out of nowhere. They began to count the correct answers on the spot before they noted the final result of the participant on a holographic screen that was enlarged and shown to everyone.

The first results were shown to everyone after a few minutes. The spectators and participants looked at the results but nobody was impressed by what they saw.

Even the participants, who had been awarded points, weren't impressed. Rather, they looked depressed as they looked at their abysmally low score which they had achieved after giving their best for more than 8 hours.

"11 Points…how did I only receive 11 points?! I clearly created 31 runic armaments!! How is that possible?!?" One of the participants screamed out in anger and disbelief.

He was certain that the attendant had made a mistake, which was why he turned to the female attendant in anger.

However, even before he could do anything, the female attendant stared into the depths of the young man's eyes, forcing him to retreat with a terror-stricken face.

"I don't make mistakes. Just accept reality!" She warned in a cold voice before she handed over his runic armaments without saying another word.

The female attendant left the young man while looking at the results of the other participants.

The first five results were all between 10 and 15 points. This was neither good nor bad, especially since it was necessary to think about all the scenarios before forging one of the few runic armaments that could be created in order to solve the scenario without casualties.

Slowly, more results were unveiled and the highest points reached the 20s after the score of the 12th participant was unveiled. Earning 20 points was already a lot, considering that one had to create 20 correct Runic armaments in eight hours.

Many spectators and participants believed that 20 points were more than enough to advance to the final round.

However, there were still 6 more results yet to be announced, and their result shocked the masses as their earlier assumptions were shattered.

[23], [25], [23], [31], [39]...

[51]...