Unsurprisingly, Kain finished at the top of his group and will enter Phase 2 to compete for ranks 1-8.
All of his battles ended almost as quickly as the first one. The longest battle was against the rank 10 student, but still did not surpass 1 minute.
Similarly, Serena, Soren, Ranya, and Kairos also ran through their opponents with incredible speed. Therefore, Kain was unable to obtain any more practical information on their contracts' skills.
Among the other seeds, ranks 6 and 8 also advanced at the top of their groups, but there was one surprise within group 7. The rank 15 Lucas advanced at the top of group 7. Therefore the original seed of that group will at best be able to compete for rank 9 in Phase 2.
Addison and Aiden easily advanced in second place of groups 4 and 5, respectively.
Finn and Leonara competed intensely for the second place in their respective groups. After a long battle Leonara, who was originally ranked 2 places below Finn, managed to prevail and will also compete in the second group in Phase 2. However, Finn who is currently rank 16, may not have his final ranking adjusted greatly if he can finish at the top of the third-placed group.
Within the same group as Finn is Bridge, who narrowly lost out to his opponent at rank 14 in the battle for second place due to an error in choice made by Lady. However, it's been less than a month since she evolved and upgraded. Bridge also doesn't have a System with a Training Arena that can help with rapidly improving skill and battle proficiency.
At the next re-ranking, as long as he keeps up the hard work, Kain predicts that Bridge may be able to finish within the top 2 of his group.
Finally, Elias, likely due to the limitations of the frontal combat ability of his contracts, finished last in his group.
Professor Flint posted the final placements of each student within their respective groups, and the rankings they'd be eligible to compete for in Phase 2. Kain, of course only paid attention to the names of those he knew, which pretty much just consisted of. Those that were in the top 20 since the beginning of the school-year and his friends. The final groupings were as follows:
--------------------------------
Phase 2: Ranking Stage
Ranks 1-8: First place from each group.
Participants (current rank in brackets): Serena (1), Kain (2), Soren (3), Ranya (4), Kairos (5), Dwayne (6), Lucas (15), Hailey (8).
Ranks 9-16: Second place from each group competes.
Participants: Camille (9), Mike (10), Liam (11), Addison (12), Aiden (13), Leonara (18), Michael (7), Rai (14)
Ranks 17-24: Third place from each group competes.
Participants: Finn (16), Bridge (39) and Ranks 17, 19, 20, 21, 23, 25
Ranks 25-32: Fourth place from each group competes.
Participants: Elara (37), Ranks 22, 24, 26, 27, 28, 29, 31,
Ranks 33-40: Fifth place from each group competes.
Participants: Riley (35), Ranks 30, 32, 33, 34, 36, 38, 47
Ranks 41-48: Sixth place from each group competes.
Participants: Elias (48), Aria (46), Ranks 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45
----------------------
Likely because the students are now closer to one another in strength and effortless quick-decision matches won't occur as frequently, the remaining battles in Phase 2 only occur at a pace of one per day—which explains why they were given two full weeks off from classes during this period.
Kain's first opponent of the day was Hailey at rank 8.
Thankfully, due to her higher ranking quite a bit of information about her had been spread around. Although, the accuracy of the information still needs to be confirmed.
From what Kain had heard, her affinity was related to metal-attribute spiritual creatures and she had a gift that can also add a strong metal defense to a designated target. As a result, of the already strong metal defense of her contracts getting stronger due to her gift, it was difficult to do any damage to them.
Kain had already used the Training Arena's Battlefield to practice fighting against Hailey's two known orange-grade contracts: an Ironhorn Juggernaut, which resembles an extremely large rhino, and a Mercury Sentinel Beetle, which appears like a large beetle made of blue shining, fluid metal.
Of course, he couldn't also simulate the effects of Hailey's gift on them; however, even without the addition of her gift Kain discovered that it took multiple strikes by the Vespirae in the exact same spot to penetrate their defence. And during a high-intensity fast-paced battle achieving that would be difficult.
Therefore, this would be the first battle in which Bea will be revealed. Similar to the Mindweaver Spider from which she got some of her abilities, her mental attribute threads also ignore most defensive methods.
Of the 8 stages set up in the Stadium, 2 were removed to leave only 6 stages that were slightly larger. The first battles for each group were then called to the stage.
The first matchup in Group 1 was between Serena and Lucas.
Surprisingly, the opening match of Group 2 was between the siblings Addison and Aiden.
Therefore, Kain focused the majority of his attention on stages 1 and 2, since the remaining stages didn't include matches with anyone he was particularly close with.
'Hopefully this dark-horse can hold out long enough for me to get some more information about Serena's strength.'
In all field assessments, the beast-tide, and even during the re-ranking so far, she had only revealed one contract—the elemental spirit with 4 attributes. According to the System's Battlefield when Kain simulated battle against it, it is called an Elemental Guardian.
After much practice, Kain was able to defeat it without significant losses to himself. But he knew that Serena's Elemental Guardian was on a completely different level compared to the simulated one, likely because it was benefitting from her gift in some way.
Hopefully, Lucas or some of the others would be strong enough to get her to reveal at least one more contract, or even the identity of her gift.