321 Chapter 321: The Arrangement of Academies

After watching the game between Southampton and Manchester United, I returned to the hotel with the others. Upon reaching my room, I raised my hand, tore open a time-space portal, and then exited the flashback to return to the present.

Everyone was staring at me, dumbfounded.

"Where did you go?" Pearl demanded.

"To the past," I replied. Ignoring their gazes of disbelief, I continued. "I'm surprised you guys actually continued waiting for me here."

"You were gone for one second at most," Dong Fang Yue Chu explained, shaking his head in bemusement. "One moment you were gone, then we blinked, and then you were back!"

"Hey, if you have such an ability to travel through time, can't you use that to…save Alicia or do something more significant instead of randomly doing a flashback?" Craig asked, annoyed.

"I'm sorry. I can only use that ability when the author intends for me to break the fourth wall as a joke. The moment things get serious, I lose the ability."

"…you're kidding me, right?"

"All right, all right." Harrison clapped his hands to draw our attention back to him. "Let's not waste any more time. Keep moving, people!"

We arrived in Crowley's Grand Arcane Academy before long, which turned out to be a massive school that resembled a palace more than an education institute. There were already countless groups streaming through its opulent gates and strolling through its marble paved paths, guided toward the gigantic main hall by student volunteers. Passing through the extravagant double doors, which contain lots of artistic motifs, we found ourselves surrounded on all sides by thousands of people from hundreds of schools.

"Wow, there are so many teams," Lily remarked excitedly. "There are so many participants!"

While we were looking around in awe and wonder, one of the staff approached us. This time, she wasn't a student volunteer, but an actual professional, an adult in her twenties wearing a gray business suit. She bowed.

"Good afternoon, everyone! Welcome to Crowley's Grand Arcane Academy. I am the receptionist here. Ladies and gentlemen, we have staff who will take care of your luggage for you."

To our utmost surprise, a bunch of bellboys with hats showed up with a trolley and began wordlessly stowing our luggage away. As they did so, the receptionist smiled at us politely.

"Also, if you don't mind me asking, you guys are the Jing Tian Academy team. Am I correct?"

"That's right." Harrison nodded.

"Excellent. Then…" the receptionist rummaged her pockets, and then produced a formal-looking letter. "I believe this is for you. This is an invitation to a banquet organized by Quetzalcoatl Academy."

"Quetzalcoatl Academy?" Yue Chu repeated, his brow creasing. "Never heard of them."

"Quetzalcoatl is Aztec god of wind and air, and is often depicted as a gigantic feathered serpent," I explained. Everyone stared at me.

"The Az…Az what god?" Theodore tried to repeat.

"Aztec."

"Never heard of that," Sheila admitted, scratching her head.

"It's an ancient empire that reigned in South America and Mexico, until they were destroyed by Spanish conquerors in the 16th century."

I would have explained more, but the blank looks on my friends' faces told me that it would be a pointless endeavor. Besides, I wasn't a walking encyclopedia. That was pretty much the extent of my knowledge.

"How do you know about them?" Harrison asked curiously. I stared at him, dumbstruck. I was more surprised that they didn't know about them…

…oh, right. This was almost a thousand years into the future. Much of ancient history was lost to the past…hell, the time period I originally came from was considered ancient history by people of this era. The history that the people of this time knew was different from the history that I had mastered.

"I read about it somewhere."

"That's cool and all," Craig broke in impatiently. "But what does this Aztec thing have to do with Quetzalcoatl Academy? Are the directors of that academy descended from that South American empire or something?"

"…to be honest, I have no idea," I admitted as I raised my hands in surrender. "I haven't heard of Quetzalcoatl Academy before either."

"How can you not know who the Quetzalcoatl Academy is?!"

We whirled around, only to see a red-haired guy in a green, dark blue and bronze uniform standing behind us.

"…who?" I muttered, perplexed. But the guy paid no attention to my question, dismissing me as stupid.

"Don't you dare look down on Quetzalcoatl Academy?!" he gritted his teeth. "Even though their name might sound unusual, I'll have you know that they were consistently ranked among the top 16 in the national tournament for the past two years!"

That piqued my interest. So they must be a very strong team. I ought to do some research on them in case we faced them during the tournament.

The red-haired guy was not done.

"As a bonus, I'll fill you guys in on some top secret information." He flicked his hand, and a huge holographic screen beamed into life in front of him. "I spent quite a lot of efforts obtaining this, so be grateful!"

Uh, no. no one asked you to share it with us…

The guy shared it with us anyway. Pounding on some weird graph that displayed indecipherable stats and weirdly colored bar graphs, the guy jabbed toward the numbers insistently.

"They have been granted rank B! You guys should be very afraid of them!"

"No, not really." That rank thing held absolutely no meaning to me at all. What was with people's obsession with ranking things? Must everything be a competition? Okay, that was a dumb question. We were participating in a tournament. Of course ranks were a given. However, what was with this weird A, B and C grades? More importantly, what was this guy trying to achieve, showing off his knowledge like this. And…"Um, who are you?"

"Me?" Redhead grinned. Then he flamoybantly flashed his arm up to introduce himself. "I'm Ding Ke Po from Divine Divination Academy, and I'm probably your best information specialist and analyst for this tournament."

"Hey, look! There's refreshments on the table over there! Let's grab some chow! I'm famished!"

Pointedly ignoring Ding Ke Po, Craig strode away, with Sheila, Theodore and the others in tow. The redhead's jaw dropped for a moment, and then he jumped, outraged.

"Hey! You people!" he shouted. "Is this how you repay someone who worked his ass off to obtain such top-secret information and so generously shared it with you?!"

As much as I appreciated his information, I had to point out that no one asked him to. He just randomly approached us on his own and began shooting his mouth off before we even knew who he was or what he wanted.

Harrison, on the other hand, was a lot more skeptical. Narrowing his eyes, he cast a suspicious glance at Ding Ke Po.

"Where did you get that top-secret information from?"

"Come on now." Ding Ke Po laughed. "Did you really think I'll just tell you that? If I can so easily tell you how I came across this information, it wouldn't be top secret anymore, would it?"

"Funny." Harrison activated his smartphone and beamed a holographic screen of an electronic newsletter into the air. "Because I could have sworn I found that the same so-called top-secret information published in today's article in The Public Guardian. Which offers all that information for free."

"…"

Ding Ke Po couldn't say anything after that. As he stood there dumbly, realizing that his cover had just been blown, the rest of Jing Tian Academy proceeded toward the buffet table. I almost felt sorry for him.

Almost.

"I hope they still have steak," Pearl murmured.

"Aren't you supposed to be on a diet?" Theodore asked, earning a punch from her.

"This is pointless," Bu Fan sighed heavily as he clasped both hands behind his head. "I want the tournament to start already."

"Trust me, you're not the only one," Craig told him.

While our group strode away, the lone figure of Ding Ke Po remained, watching us fade into the distance. A smile spread across his face.

"Heh heh…"

Chuckling, he turned away, only to be greeted by four of his comrades, all wearing the same green and dark blue uniform as him.

"We'll definitely meet each other again soon…the C-ranked Jing Tian Academy team!"

BULLSHIT! On what basis were we given that rank!? Oh, I get it. This must be another one of those "protagonist's academy is trash" cliché where every other team looked down upon us and regarded us as trash because of our rank, only to get their faces slapped and their asses handed to them because we had a Mary Sue captain who could pull off the most incredible and perfect strategies known to the Federation and surprise everyone.

Pushing my glasses up, I narrowed my eyes. I can see the ending!

…if this was Battle Frenzy, that is. Unfortunately, I doubted my author even knew what the ending of this story would be. The tournament was just one arc out a few. And I wasn't even sure what the last arc was. Maybe defeating the Dark Church and the Assassins Guild? That would be so cool. Unfortunately, you can tell that this was going to be a train wreck if my author didn't have an idea of how the ending should be like, and was just making stuff up as he went along.

After the reception, where light refreshments were provided, we were then all assigned to our rooms. Crowley's Grand Arcane Academy was truy massive – even with thousands of students, they were able to accommodate us in what looked like dormitories.

The staff of Crowley was as good as their word. Our luggages were brought to our rooms in a perfunctory manner, and already awaited us when we got there. There were no mistakes, so far as I knew, even though it must have been difficult for the bellboys to know whose luggage belonged to who. Must be magic.

It didn't take long for me to unpack as I didn't bring too much stuff. Once I had laid everything out and placed my clothing in the closests, I dropped onto my bed to rest. It had been quite a long day, and we woke up fairly early this morning. As usual, the one thing I lacked the most was sleep. Well, sometimes. There were days were I spent 10 to 12 hours in dreamland, reluctant to wake up. I'm pretty sure everyone has days when they just felt utterly sluggish and totally unwilling to rise from their beds.

Unfortunately, I wasn't given much of a choice. My smartphone buzzed and I swiped at the screen. Harrison's face appeared in a hologram.

"What's up, Captain?"

"The banquet tomorrow." Harrison held up the invitation card. "What do you think?"

"What do I think?"

"Should we go?"

"I don't mind going. What about you?" If there was free food, there was no way I was going to say no. My mouth was already watering when I imagined the sumptuous food that awaited me. I bet Yue Chu and Theodore would feel the same. The three of us would attend just for the free food alone.

"Hmm…" Harrison hesitated for a moment, and then nodded. "I guess there's no harm in going. I was just asking for everyone's opinions and checking who wants to go." He grinned. "I kind of expected you to say yeah."

Either he was familiar with me following Alicia around to such events when she was still alive, or he was aware of my desire for free food. It didn't matter. I just nodded.

"So everyone is going?"

"I'm about to ask them now. You're the first person I contacted." That made sense, given that I was technically the vice-captain. He shrugged. "I'm sure some will want to go, and some wouldn't."

"That's normal."

"Yup. But…" Harrison frowned. "I might seem paranoid, but I have a feeling that Quetzalcoatl Academy has their own motives for inviting all of us to this banquet. From what information I gathered, they only invited the lower ranking academies…the C ranks, and a handful of B ranks."

"…heh…" Like I gave a fuck. Probably because it was too expensive for them to host rank A academies. Hell, what was with ths random ranking thing, anyway? I had never heard of this stupid ranking thing in my life.

"Well…I guess we'll find out what they want tomorrow. But for now, keep your eyes sharp. There's something not right about this whole thing…" Harrison sighed. "I hope I'm not thinking too much."

"Don't worry," I assured him with a grin. "What's the worst that could happen? If you turn out to be right, then…we'll just leave. It's not as if we're obligated to obey them just because they treated us to free food, right?"