The format of the National Competition had the top 5 students of each year must fight against the same-year students at the other colleges.
Points were then awarded based on the final ranking. A maximum of 100 points each for first place among the first years, second years, and so on. The competition format is a single one-on-one battle, a three-on-three battle, and one five-on-five battle. Whichever side can win 2 of the three matches will win the round and advance.
Additionally, there was the measure of the college's overall combat power. A one-on-one individual match of the top 5 strongest students of each school, a face-off of the elites. Regardless of year level. This elite team that represented the school's strength in its entirety was usually composed of third and fourth years,
The first-place team will receive 200 points. So, in theory, a school could win a maximum of 600 points if they take first place in everything. 100 points each for ranking first in years one to four, and 200 points for the strongest multi-grade team.
However, Kain was not yet strong enough to enter the elite team, and could instead focus completely on preparing for the competition against the other first-year teams.
The representative for the single one-on-one matches could be changed with each school they face. However, the three-on-three and five-on-five matches required for them to develop their teamwork, therefore the representatives of each team match would need to practice together beforehand.
For the team of 5 match, they'd all be working together and must therefore improve their coordination. However, the team of 3 match still needed to determine its representatives.
Ranya and Kairos both have contracts with decent control and support ability that shine greatly in group matches and were therefore chosen unanimously as the definitive representatives for the team of 3.
For the final spot, Serena, Kain, and Soren all have stronger frontal combat abilities to make up for Ranya and Kairos' shortcomings and were therefore planning to rotate into the team of 3 depending on the composition of the enemy lineup.
However, since Serena and Kain were decided to take on the majority of the one-on-one matches, Soren was decided to take on the majority of the team of three matches.
This arrangement also helped Kain a lot since he did not have to focus as much of his energy on training as a group with Ranya and Kairos. Instead, he could mostly just focus on his individual training and the team of 5 training.
Currently, the seniors were assisting them in their cooperation as a group of 5. And in order to improve their teamwork, the second years were serving as their opponents. Of course, though they only limited themselves to yellow-grade and below contracts and could only summon 3 spiritual creatures since it was unlikely for a first-year to exceed being a 3-star beast-tamer.
Facing them as representatives of the top 5 second-years, were Alexei and Jin, who Kain grew familiar with during the beast-tide and the relic exploration, and three female students: Kyria, Cressida, and Rhiannon.
Kain had seen them and some of their contracts during the beast-tide, but he hadn't known all of their names yet at the time.
Ranked fourth among the second-years was Kyria. Kyria had black hair and tan skin, with eyes that were a deep, hypnotic violet. From what Kain had seen during the beast-tide and rumours he'd heard, she seemed to specialize in support and defensive abilities.
However, rather than the typical defensive type spiritual creatures with a burly physique and were usually of earth-attribute, instead her defensive capabilities were described as more 'magical' and difficult to circumvent.
She and her contracts could apply buffs to herself and allies and magical elemental shields with a myriad of effects such as reflecting damage or absorbing the energy from the attack to partially heal wounds.
Ranked fifth among the second-years was Cressida. Cressida was the girl with pink hair and eyes who had a gift for forcefully gaining the attention and infatuation of all living things in an area. The effect of her gift was so strong that, even Kain, despite his strong resistance to mental attribute attacks, found it difficult to resist the effects of her gift.
Although he hadn't been able to see much from her contracts, from what Kain could tell, they also seemed to specialize in the mental attribute.
However, like most mental-attribute spiritual creatures in the mid and lower levels, they were not particularly lethal but had extremely strong control abilities—a mental-attribute spiritual creature that can directly cause death like Bea at their current level is rare after all.
Finally, Rhiannon had a valiant atmosphere and long wildly curly hair that was a fiery blend of gold and red and framed piercing golden eyes. She had a fire-attribute affinity and among all of the second-years had the strongest destructive capabilities, which probably explains why among the rankings of students which prioritizes frontal combat abilities she was ranked first.
Following her were Jin with an affinity related to the wind-element at rank 2 and Alexei with a rare blood-attribute affinity at rank 3.
Even before the battle started Kain was extremely worried the average level of the second-years' contracts was higher than the first-years'.
However, even if that wasn't the case and the level of their contracts was similar or the first-years' contracts were slightly higher, Kain would still not be optimistic about their chances. He had witnessed the second-years' tacit understanding during the beast-tide when they worked together to kill the mental-attribute green-grade spider.
With their excellent teamwork they achieved an effect where their combined strength was far greater than just the sum of each of them.
'We just have to try our best. After all, this will be the first really intensive training for the National Compeition that we'd have undergone as an officially determined team. Nobody will be expecting us to win, let's just try our best to not get thrashed too badly…'