She Had to Be an Expert, the Ultimate Jinx

John had no idea that the person he had bragged about had found out—and had taken an interest in him. As the open qualifiers got underway, two days passed in the blink of an eye. The qualifiers ended, the next round began, and the field narrowed to just over a thousand contestants.

There were still too many contestants, and the game they had been playing demanded little skill or strategy. To speed things up and make the competition more tactical, John changed the rules on the day the qualifiers ended.

They would now play Triumph, a popular card game in the Empire with rules similar to three-card brag. Players compared the ranks of their hands to determine the winner, with five players at each table. Winning a showdown against the dealer earned one point.

The highest-scoring player at each table would qualify for the ranking challenge.

The rule change naturally drew complaints. Some contestants even thought the Governor's Office was deliberately targeting players from the other kingdoms and planned to protest together. But the Governor's Office pointed to the final clause of the agreement every contestant had signed before entering: it reserved the right of final interpretation. After it disqualified the loudest troublemakers, the rest fell silent.

After a day of fierce competition and elimination rounds, only two hundred contestants qualified for the ranking challenge. The next day, the tournament continued as scheduled. By the end of the day, the top twenty had been decided, and an extra round that evening narrowed the field to four. Notably, of those who had entered through the Governor's Office, only Wendy and Igonila reached the semifinals. Everyone else had fallen in earlier rounds.

The four semifinalists were:

Akweiler, Wendy, Igonila, and Zhizhi, a Goblin engineer from the Darkmoon Clan.

Zhizhi was the only