Pre-Tournament Review

In Number Three Floating City, eight days remained before the Champion Mage Challenge began, and only one day remained before the review deadline.

The mage in charge of the review looked miserable. He muttered, "Why hasn't she come yet?"

He stared at the list of those who had passed, then at the list of rule-breakers beside it, longer than in previous years. He felt faint.

Under the longstanding rules of the Champion Mage Challenge, only mages who placed in the top hundred in the Preliminaries could enter the Main Tournament.

Long ago, a replacement system had existed for those hundred spots. The spots were precious, but if a contestant genuinely couldn't attend the Main Tournament, nothing could be done.

Back then, every Main Tournament had one or two mages forced to withdraw for one reason or another, so the next-ranked contestants took their places.

But that had clearly given rise to buying spots. Even if the mages who bought them had some ability and could place around the hundred-and-something mark themselves, it was a terrible practice.

Later, several Council members had issued a strict order: no replacements after the third day following the Preliminaries, when the list of qualifiers was confirmed.

If you qualified for the Main Tournament after the Preliminaries and decided not to go, you could submit a withdrawal request to the committee, and someone else could take your place.

That still left an opening for mages who wanted to buy a spot, but three days gave them little time to arrange it and greatly curbed the practice.

The drawback was that the Main Tournament sometimes had fewer than a hundred mages, leaving several spots empty.

Usually, that was no great matter. The spectators and the higher-ups had grown used to it and accepted the compromise.

This year