NOVPUBEveryone was stunned when they heard Eryndor's question.
"What could it be if not an item?"
Edward questioned. He really couldn't think of anything which would provide protection against elimination which was the mechanism of the tournament itself.
Instead of answering him, Eryndor playfully spoke, giving them a hint.
"We are in a tournament right now."
As expected, that hint was enough for Paulina to grasp the answer. She was the one who replied, albeit in a questioning tone.
"Is it a hidden rule?"
As soon as she spoke, everyone's expression turned to that of a realization.
Edyndor nodded, and a glance at the leader's panicked face confirmed his suspicion.
"Yes, it could be a hidden rule as well, "
He then pointed at the leader and said.
"But how would this team know that encountering us will enable them to have protection from being eliminated?
"I don't think these weak ass guys have enough points to buy information about us, not to mention it's doubtful if they even know how to buy information on other teams.
"But still, they need to have SOME kind of information for them to be able to determine that they'll be protected from elimination against us, right?
"That only leaves the rankings. That is the only place where our team can be seen by everyone out in the open for free.
"And what does the rankings display? Our current members, our points, and obviously, our rankings.
"Our 'current members' statistic has been the same throughout the tournament, so nothing can be gleaned from that.
"What's left? Points. And in what way our points have been changing since the last few days? In bursts.
"So well, they looked at our continuous bursts of getting points. Now, there are multiple things through which we can get points in bursts instead of earning points steadily.
"First is of course, beast hordes. Second, eliminating teams. Third, some very advantageous hidden rules. Fourth, a powerful item locked behind conditions in the Support Shrine. There could be more which we don't know about.
"Now, which one of these is obvious?"
Before Eryndor could continue, Paulina answered, being perfectly able to follow his train of thought.
"Eliminating teams."
Eryndor chuckled, and replied.
"Exactly. Team Jonathan, Team Lance, and Team Ricky disappeared from the top ten rankings one after another, while the points of four other teams including ours increased in bursts.
"It's an extremely easy deduction to make that we were the ones who were involved in eliminating those teams."
Eryndor stopped himself after saying all that. A period of silence ensued as even Paulina took some time to comprehend what he spoke.
This time, it was Valentina who put forward the final speculation after hearing all of Eryndor's hints.
"So you're saying that a team can't eliminate other teams after they've eliminated a certain number of students?"
Everyone except Eryndor had a stunned expression on their faces as they heard that hypothesis.
Killing the beast horde and eliminating the teams were the two highest contributors to their points.
Beast horde was completely based on luck. Last night when they had taken a break to sleep for less than three hours, Eryndor had checked for a beast horde, but none had appeared.
There was no telling when they would come across a big group of beasts again.
That left eliminating teams as a viable option for them to gather points in bulk since none of them knew about the conditions to get one of those overpowered items or even the highly advantageous hidden rules.
Now they were being told that eliminating teams wasn't an option anymore?
There was still more than a week left before the survival round ended, they could very well lose their spot in top ten if they didn't uncover more ways to gain points.
Eryndor smiled playfully as he allowed them to imagine all the consequences, before he pointed his knife at the leader and spoke.
"Or…it isn't that we can't eliminate any more students after eliminating a certain number of them, but that we can't eliminate any more students after eliminating them 'repeatedly'.
He put a special emphasis on repeatedly, before continuing.
"We have two examples to support this theory.
"One is this team itself. The leader wouldn't have panicked when I talked about taking them with us if we completely couldn't eliminate any student ever.
"Of course, it could be that he is simply scared of being tortured, but I am not too inclined to think in that direction.
"I rather think that he panicked because at some point we will be able to eliminate him, that protection on his team wouldn't work.
"The second example is Team Ricky itself.
"Despite having almost an army of students, they only went after the seeded teams. And even then, they only managed to defeat what four? Five? I don't remember but yes, they only managed to defeat those four to five teams over the course of four days.
"Which meant they didn't need the entire thirty seven teams all the time, so they could've instructed the rest to hunt other teams.
"Eliminating students is almost always a better choice than killing beasts, then why did they still instruct the rest of the students to hunt and tie down beasts instead of students?"
This time Eryndor didn't give them any chance to think, but spoke out the answer himself.
"It means that we can continue to eliminate students as long as we take a break in between where we earn points through some other method."
Everyone collectively sighed, before giving Eryndor looks of absolute amazement.
It also included the members of the team they had captured.
That person had literally deduced a hidden rule of protection simply based on a minor instance of panic their leader displayed in response to being captured.
While the opposite team were regretful that they didn't have him on their team, Valentina, Paulina and others couldn't be more relieved that they had Eryndor on their team.
Syndra mentally heaved a sigh as she lightly shook her head.
No wonder he was able to deduce the Cyborg Genius Caulin's plan even when he wasn't present there himself.
He deduced them purely on the basis of the few clues I provided him.
Of course, she was still rational enough to know that Eryndor must've gotten some more clues from elsewhere, but seeing how he was the only one who was able to grasp Caulin's plan beforehand, it just went on to show how impressive his logical deduction was.
With everything settled, Eryndor cooperated with his team to harvest all the resources at the bottom of the cliff.
They only had one rope, which they used to tie down the hostile team.
Valentina's Yang was too big to safely fly in the narrow space of the cliff, so Eryndor ended up having to make one more trip to the Support Shrine to help them with harvesting the resources.
Since he had almost seen the entirety of the tundra, he of course also knew where all the Support Shrines in this region were located.
As long as he was in the tundra, he would always know where the nearest Support Shrine from their current location was.
As he distributed the resources evenly among his team, Eryndor thought.
I could've used Telekinesis to harvest these resources, but a pity that I can't openly use this ability.
In the battle with Team Ricky, to cover for Drakarion, Eryndor had timed his Telekinesis with Drakarion's damage transfer else it would've been too suspicious that everytime Drakarion faced a heavy blow that one of the allies were being eliminated.
At those times, Eryndor would use his Telekinesis to interfere with the battles of others, damaging the enemy so that people would think Drakarion's damage transfer was used on the person Eryndor had used his Telekinesis on.
Even though the nature of both their abilities were different, it didn't matter. In the first place it was already rare that people would know Drakarion's exact ability.
"Let's kill some beasts and eliminate these people first."
Eryndor of course wouldn't speak about their plan of sleeping in the Support Shrine in front of the captured team.
Even though everyone was exhausted, they still held on and killed a few beasts.
"They can still not be eliminated."
Eryndor was panting with visible exhaustion as he gazed at the bound team.
His team had returned from hunting various beasts in the same pairs as before.
He had tried just now, but wasn't able to eliminate them.
"Could you be wrong?"
Edward asked.
Eryndor was a little irked with how he phrased the question but didn't take it to heart.
If it were his roommates, or probably even Syndra, they would've instead phrased the question as 'Could 'we' be wrong?'. They wouldn't have blamed him.
As expected, Valentina was quick to defend him.
"Maybe we just need to kill more beasts."
It was extremely risky to keep going with such low energy reserves, but they still killed a few more beasts in the next hour.
Fortunately, this time they were able to eliminate the team who could just helplessly watch their teammates and themselves getting kicked out of the tournament.
"Alright, let's go to the Support Shrine. Everyone agrees with this method I hope?"
There was an enthusiastic positive response. They couldn't wait to just fall on a comfortable bed and get a nice long sleep.
In under twenty minutes, they were able to reach the Support Shrine and enter it.
Sitting cross legged on his own bed, Eryndor looked at a few plants in his hand.
They were immensely helpful in cultivation!
It wasn't impossible to even reach the peak of Qi Gathering realm.
