Death... and me

One hour quickly passed in the Formations Guild as Rean talked with everyone else. Eventually, Turin, Saya, Zako, and the other elders came out to give their results.

"We are pleased to see the many inventions displayed during the last phase. Except for three of them, we had quite some conflicts between who would be the other seven. After all, we only have ten slots available."

"Anyway, we had a total of 37 elders overseeing the exam this year, so we used a voting system to decide the first ten places. We only did one pass of votes for each position. For example, all elders voted on who should be in the first place. Then, all of us voted again to decide who would be in second place. That's how we came up with our decisions."

"If you are not in the top 10, don't think that your work was not worth it. Except for a few cases, most of the formations shown in the last phase deserve to continue being developed."

"Very well, let's start.

10th: Luan Fole and his Breeze Concealment Formation.

9th: Giampol Dinsve and his Heat Sinking Formation.

8th..."

One by one, Turin announced the positions of the Formation Masters. The ones selected couldn't help but become ecstatic as the rest looked at them with jealousy and expectation.

"4th: Qia Sasamil and her Multi-teleport Formation System."

Qia's eyes immediately lit up after hearing that.

"I did it!"

Rean smiled and nodded while Milo and the others complimented her.

"3rd: Rean Larks and his Water Reclaiming Formation."

Rean was surprised to hear that. Of course, he was anything but sad with his result. His objective was to join the Formations Guild so that he could get unlimited access to the repository. He could then get the Jade Slips with the formations he wanted to study and go back to Jialin Country.

Qia then hugged him once again before saying.

"3rd place is great! Anyone who makes it into the top ten has absolutely nothing to complain about."

Rean totally agreed with her.

"I know. I'm very happy to see my Water Reclaiming Formation doing this well."

Turin continued his announcement.

"2nd: Havek Sasamil and his Light Formation."

"What?!"

This time, even Rean was taken aback. He was pretty sure that Havek would take first place. The others were even more sure about it. Surprisingly, he didn't.

However, Havek didn't seem to find it hard to believe.

"Even a super genius like me would find it difficult to take first place with formations I just came up with. Besides..."

Havek then looked in a certain direction where he spotted a female Formation Master.

Rean and the others followed Havek's eyes and soon found the girl.

"Who is she?"

"Did anyone pay attention to the examination of her formation?"

"I didn't. I was more worried about my own formation."

"What kind of formation did she create?"

Rean pondered for a bit. Even he didn't pay that much attention to her before.

"If I'm not wrong, her formation was-"

Before Rean could talk, Turin announced in his place.

"1st: Balia Loskrey and her Nutrients Absorption Formation!"

No one had heard that name before. Turin obviously noticed that and began to explain.

"This is a marvelous formation for farming! Rean's formation can separate the impurities in the water, which can be used for farming. However, Balia's formation is different. It slowly absorbs the minerals deep in the ground and brings them up."

"It can be made into a huge formation capable of covering an entire farm. The good thing is that it can operate on ambient Spiritual Energy alone. All one would need to do was to set it up around a year before starting the planting. The results would be much stronger plants with a lot more nutrients."

"For those at the Energy Gathering Realm and below, food is of extreme importance. In fact, we had quite a bit of difficulty deciding between her and Rean in this aspect. But ultimately, Sasamil Country is a country where water isn't hard to be obtained due to the constant tropical rain. So a method to use the nutrients that are usually too deep for the plants to absorb has greater importance."

Rean nodded. He made the water reclaimer, which could be used in case there was no water. But food was still a lot more important in an empire with Sasamil's average weather. He didn't find it the least bit strange that the Formation Masters took her Formation instead.

Turin then continued.

"To be honest, the hardest pass was for the position of first place. From the 37 judges, 13 selected Balia, 12 Havek, and 12 Rean. That shows just how good each of their formations was in our eyes. If I could, I would count all three of them as first place of this year's exam. However, it's not possible."

"For second place, Havek Sasamil got 15 of the 37 possible votes. Rean Larks got 9, Qia Sasamil 7, and Waka Mantil 3. The remaining were single votes into different formations."

"Anyway, you can see how it went."

Everyone couldn't help but pay attention to Balia. After all, she was quite the dark horse. In the previous exam, she was only in 79th place.

Balia, on the other hand, dropped her head in embarrassment. It turns out that the girl herself was quite shy. She always did her best to not catch anyone's attention, and it did work very well until the very end.

Rean then shrugged his shoulders before saying.

"Well, I finally got what I wanted. Now I can finally get the jade slips in the repository and go back to Jialin with Master."

Qia glanced at him and said.

"What are you talking about? There is still our marriage remaining, you know?"

Rean nodded.

"Of course! How could I forget the future happiest day in my life?"

Havek completely ignored Rean's play with Qia and asked something else.

"So, what did you want to talk about?"

But before Rean could say anything, Turin called the winners over.

"Come to the stage. It's time for your prizes."