285 About the Shadow Ranking Cup

Words : 1411 Updated : Oct 7th, 2025

...… *Ding!* System: Congratulations! You have successfully cleared your Awakening Quest! System: Checking for your achievements and performance. Finalizing your total score. Please wait... *Ding!* System: Chaos Level Awakening Quest has been detected! Increasing your achievements and rewards even further! System: Congratulations! You achieve a perfect score for not dying even once until reaching round 6. You will receive an Awakening Skill of higher Rank! System: Congratulations! You manage to survive for a whole 3 hours during the extra battle, the 7th round! You will receive a bonus reward for your great achievements! *Ding!* System: Your Awakening Quest has finally concluded! Transporting to the main world. Please wait… ******* And when the long series of system notification was finally done, Shin was immediately sent out of the special dungeon and teleported back to his room at the Mayor's Residence of Calderock Town. He didn't know how much time had passed in this place since the time inside the special dungeon and the main world were quite different. So, the first thing that he did was to look at the in-game clock to see how much time was left before the Shadow Ranking Cup could start. Fortunately, he made it in time as he saw that there were still a few hours remaining before the tournament could start. And without further ado, he quickly summoned the system responsible for organizing the event and quickly registered himself as an invited participant. Naturally, he used an alias when he was registering himself for this tournament. And obviously, the alias that he used for this Shadow Ranking Cup was his 'Nameless Swordsman' identity. He already decided about this after all. What's more, he felt that it was going to be interesting if he somehow managed to get two different titles for each of his identities inside the game. He already had the 'Emperor of the Night' title for his 'Sickarius' identity; even if it was granted to him by the system due to the massive numbers of players that voted for it, that feat was still amazing since having a Ranker's title despite being a Maverick Ranker was quite rare at this point of game. And if he somehow managed to get yet another title for his other identity, then he could still brag about it to his brother since Arthur didn't manage to do it when he just started the game. Though, Arthur belonged to the type of players that became Titled Ranker first, before being a Godlike Player. And these types of players were the ones who were standing at the peak of the gaming world. After having all of these thoughts in mind, Shin finally turned his head at the rules of the current Shadow Ranking Cup. And when Shin saw the rules on each stage, he couldn't help but knit his brows and complain a little. "What's with these rules? It is quite obvious that the organizers want to end this tournament for as soon as possible." "The first stage was a group stage Battle Royale and whoever managed to survive after the thirty-minute battle will advance to the next stage of the tournament." Reading just this part already made Shin to click his tongue and said. "Tsk! With this simple rule, the organizers surely want to cut the number of participants for as much as they can." "At the same time, they can easily pinpoint the participants that are worth focusing for their broadcasted covers, which will also give them a free promotion for the tickets that need to be sold." After that, he proceeded to read the rule for the next stage of the tournament. "On this stage, the winners that survived the previous stage will be separated into different groups and will fight in a duel type of battle with a single-elimination bracket stage. And whoever won the top spot of each group will advance to the next battle." Shin shook his head and smiled bitterly as he saw the battle type. "What a cunning group of guys. Using the previous stage to find the right seeded players that can have a covered battle before putting them in a duel with others and broadcast their battles with a paid ticket." Then he proceeded reading the rules for the last and final stage of the tournament. And similar to the previous stage, this one had a duel type of battle just like what Shin had expected. But there was a little difference between the two stages. Because the final stage was a double-elimination type of bracket instead of a single-elimination one. And when Shin saw that, he couldn't help but start laughing loudly as he could see the hidden purpose of this stage. "Hahaha… such a group of money-grabbers! Doing a double-elimination instead of a single one? These guys surely want to squeeze as much money as they can." "With this type of bracket, they can cover the most popular contestants not just one but twice! Just a single look at this and I can tell that this stage will obviously be the money printing machine for the Gaming Company and some Entertainment Channels." After that, Shin took a few moments to recover himself before proceeding to read the prizes for the winners of the tournament. Unlike the previous Shadow Ranking Cups, the current tournament was quite special because there were a lot of players that were previously Titled Rankers in their respective games. There were even some players that already got their own Titles from some voting polls set by the system. So, instead of giving the top 16 a 'challenging rights' that they could use to challenge a Titled Ranker of the game, the top players would get the 'Godly challenge right'. This 'challenging rights' would grant them a chance to challenge three Godlike Players of their liking. And if they managed to win at least two out the three challenges, they would get a Godlike Title of their own; the same if they only managed to score a draw to all three challenges. Aside from that, there were also some prizes that were worth fighting for. The champion of the tournament would be the real winner of all as that spot would grant them a Class Specific Tier 2 Epic Skill and a Specialized Equipment Set. There were also 50 Skills Points and 25 Legacy Points together with it. As for the Class Specific Tier 2 Epic Skill, Shin could already tell how strong these kinds of skills are. Just looking at his 'Monochrome Field Domain Skill' alone was more than enough for the explanation. On the other hand, there was no need to explain how important the skill and legacy points were. So, this kind of reward for the events like this was necessary. At the same time, the rewards for the runner up didn't lose much either. The second, third, and fourth placers would also get a Tier 2 skills and Equipment Sets; though, their ranks are obviously a step lower compared to the champion while the amount of skill and legacy points that they would get would also be fewer. In the meantime, the players that got the top 5 to 8 places would not get a set, but they would get some specialized weapons or equipment at the very least. They would also get a Tier 2 Skill with a rank lower than the previous placers together with fewer number of skill and Legacy points. The top 9 to 16, on the other hand, would not get much aside from Tier 1 Epic Skills and some skill and legacy points. "Looks like I really need to do my best to win this tournament. I guess I need to focus my mind and body now so that I can recover my peak form," muttered Shin after reading all of the information regarding the upcoming Shadow Ranking Cup. He was about to close the information panel when his eyes suddenly got a glimpse of something that really caught his interest. And with written on that corner was a simple word of 'BET'. With that word alone, it was easy to guess what was running inside Shin's head right now. And while looking at that word, the corner of Shin's mouth couldn't help but curve into a grin and muttered to himself. "Now this is a much better motivation to do my best." ...

285 About the Shadow Ranking Cup

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