Although she had lost three Team Battles in a row, all because the adjudicators had ruled against her, Ice Storm remained a hot favorite at Blood Skull Arena.
Moreover, as the number of servant soldiers she could command dwindled, her own combat power became increasingly important.
Many still believed she could win her next match.
Kasava Bloodhoof was among them.
The minotaur noble was extremely curious to see how Ice Storm planned to fight back from the brink and create a miracle.
Unfortunately, with only thirty servant soldiers, Ice Storm had taken them all to a private Training Camp reserved exclusively for aces, where they underwent mysterious special training.
Out of respect for an ace,
even Kasava, as an adjudicator of Blood Skull Arena, could not rashly spy on or interfere with Ice Storm's special training.
He could only learn about the state of Ice Storm's newly assembled team through the Ratfolk Servants responsible for preparing her food, secret medicines, and training equipment.
Yet the information he learned from the Ratfolk Servants left him dumbfounded, unable to believe it for a long time.
"What? Ice Storm did not choose the strongest Ratfolk from the New Recruit Training Camp, or those who had performed best on the Path of Glory?
"Apart from one frail young man with the best results, nearly all those she chose had merely average scores, were neither tall nor short, and utterly unremarkable?
"She even fished up a batch of weak-looking fellows from the depths of the dungeons, people who had never undergone survival of the fittest?
"And she did not put these fellows through any earth-shaking special training. On the contrary, their training volume was far lower than that of other Gladiators' servant soldiers?
"And, and such easy training actually trained this bunch of fellows until