"Kasugano-kun and Julie, congratulations on making it to the finals! Cheers!"
Everyone sat together in the restaurant as Nagakura Imari excitedly raised her glass and shouted. The others also lifted their drinks in congratulations.
"Well... we expected it, but it's still a little surprising that you two made it to the finals."
"I heard the betting pools have stopped taking bets on Kasugano-kun's matches. Almost everyone is betting on them to win."
"But you all did pretty well too."
Fang Zheng chuckled as he looked at Nagakura Imari and Katou Kirin.
"Making it to the third round was already quite impressive. It was just that your matchup against your opponents was really terrible."
"Yeah. Tomoe and Ya were actually pretty unlucky too. If they hadn't run into the Deep Sea Witch in the second round, they might have made it even further."
After defeating Kurogane Ikki and Stella, Fang Zheng and Julie advanced to the semifinals, then easily defeated their semifinal opponents and entered the finals. No one found this surprising. From their very first match, Fang Zheng and Julie had displayed overwhelming dominance and control. Now, almost everyone, including the media, believed that the Phoenix Star Martial Festival championship was already in the bag.
So, people had even begun discussing next year's Griffin Star Martial Festival and the Dragon King Star Martial Festival the year after that. Naturally, there was only one topic: whether Fang Zheng could also take the championship in those two Star Martial Festivals. Anyone who had seen Fang Zheng fight had been left with the impression that his strength was simply unmatched. Yet because of that, many people had begun discussing whether Fang Zheng could become the first triple-crown champion of the Star Martial Festival.
That was an incredibly compelling prospect. When the Star Martial