At that moment, a duel was underway in Arena Eight.
Ron vaguely remembered one of the contestants. He was a player who had reached Gold Rank fairly early, and his overall preliminary results placed him in the top ten.
The preliminaries only consisted of ten duels.
While that was enough to eliminate most contestants who lacked the strength, for the top players, the rankings were not necessarily accurate.
After all, the top several dozen contestants had all won ten out of ten matches. Their order in the rankings depended only on the details of each duel.
In that regard, Betty had done even better than Wodesen and Luo Wei'er, placing second in the preliminaries.
Andy had taken first place.
So the preliminary rankings did not mean much; they merely showed a rough distribution of strength levels.
And they did not represent absolute strength.
Therefore, even a contestant like Mia, who had ranked only 279th, still had a considerable chance of advancing if she performed well in the opening rounds.
As for the Gold Rank contestant on the stage, who had ranked in the top ten during the preliminaries, his strength was undoubtedly sufficient. Coupled with the fact that his opponent was only Silver Rank, the battle had become completely one-sided.
Yet even though the duel itself was not particularly thrilling, the spectators remained immersed in the atmosphere of the match.
There was naturally a reason for that.
The three of them found some empty seats in a corner and sat down.
At the same time, above the battle platform, a massive dark-red fireball over the Silver Rank contestant's head exploded with a boom.
Real sparks shot out in every direction toward the surrounding stands.
Once that final fireball representing the contestant's "health" had shattered, the referee immediately announced that the