Looking around I noticed that I wasn’t the only one who was calm about the situation.Everyone else seemed to have an indifferent opinion toward the situation, and handled the news pretty easily, even Eleanor.These twenty two of us currently standing in that room were the best of the best, elites, intellectuals in terms of quick thinking and accurate analysis.Now the competition would only get harder from here, the small fry had already been eliminated, and I was facing tougher opponents now.‘I like this, to be able to compete at such a high level. I just want to have fun this round, these are all people who once upon a time I would look up to, and try to emulate their lifestyles as students, but now, we are all equals and I consider them as fair game,’ I thought to myself.We waited once again for the rules to be announced. After a short while, another official mounted the podium to speak to us.“Now candidates, I'm here to relay the rules of the third challenge to you. You are ad
I chose to remain calm, I needed to be as calm as possible in this situation so I could think of a way out.“Eleanor, what happened here?” I asked, the concern was evident in my voice.“I-I’m not sure Damon,” she responded.‘Even if someone wanted to sabotage us, how did they know the location of our room, and after that, how did they manage to get in?’ I thought to myself.“Eleanor, can I see your key please?” I asked quickly.“Yeah sure I guess,” she responded and dipped her hand in her pocket, bringing out a shiny metal key.I brought out mine as well, and they were identical, so now we were both more and more perplexed.Both of our flash drives, which contained all our information, were missing.This basically meant that all the information we had gathered before which was worth ten points, could be distributed, or worse. If we didn’t get it back we wouldn’t have anything to turn in at the end of the challenge, we would be left with nothing.I began cleaning the room looking for w
****[Jake’s POV]Later that evening, Eleanor and I met at a secluded corner of the building’s rooftop garden.The view of the city below from up there was mesmerizing. The cars moving around, heading to their various locations, the traffic lights, the scenery, it was like the city had come to life.My brow furrowed as I recounted Damon’s desperate and defeated behavior during our last encounter.Eleanor listened intently, with an expression of a mixture of sadness and determination on her face.“I met him on his knees, his whole demeanor, the look on his face, it was a pitiful scene to experience. He didn’t try to argue or fight back, he just walked away and said I’d won.”I gritted my teeth in anger as I recalled the look on his face.‘I wanted more, even though I won and broke his spirit, he was just going to roll over and accept it? This was supposed to be a challenge! I took him as my rival and this is what I get?’ I thought to myself.“I can’t help but feel pity for him,” Eleano
****Three days later.I’d put my trading system into full effect now, and I was running it like a business.I recalled one of the events that happened recently, the first trade I had with someone else in the third challenge.****Mia's eyes narrowed as she listened intently to my request, her expression focused and determined. "So, you need me to research other candidates that you can potentially trade with?" she repeated, her voice betraying a hint of curiosity."Exactly," I confirmed, leaning forward in my chair. "I'm hoping to identify candidates who might have useful information or resources to share. I need someone with excellent research skills, and I know I can count on you to get the job done."She nodded, her confidence growing. "Consider it done, sir. I'll compile a list of potential candidates and provide you with detailed information on their strengths, weaknesses, and potential areas of expertise that might be valuable to you."I smiled, feeling reassured by Mia's compet
I turned my eyes to Damon to see his reaction to the results about to be released.‘This is my victory, there’s nothing he can do now to change that. I’ve crafted this system to perfection, and I know the outcome of everything,’ I thought to myself.“Defeating him turned out to be not much of a challenge for me after all anyway, I guess I overestimated him. I should never have thought that he would be a worthy opponent for me, no one is,” I muttered out."And now," the instructor declared, his voice ringing with authority, "the moment you've all been waiting for. The scores from the third round...I’ll be announcing the top five in ascending order,” he said.“In fifth place, Eleanor Windsor, in fourth place EmilyAnderson, in third place, Mia Rodriguez, in second place, Jake Thompson, and finally, the winner of the corporate assessment gauntlet, Damon Darhk!” The organizer screamed at the top of his voice.An eerie silence descended upon the crowd as the whole room went silent. The prev
"I repeated this process over and over again until finally I was able to accumulate enough points that I was sure would put me in the top seed.Then it was time for me to get everything back from Emily. I knew she might have been stubborn about it; she had no real reason to give them back to me anyway.****I was a bit skeptical about speaking to her.We’d never been on the best of terms, and it was much worse now, as we hardly spoke during the competition.It was so bad that even during the third task of the second challenge, where I was almost going to be eliminated, I explained my situation to her, and she said to me, “the less competition for me, the better.”I was infuriated when I heard this, but thankfully, Kevin was there to step in, and I was able to avoid the difficult situation.Even now, the only reason why she agreed to serve as a bank vault for the information I was receiving was that I promised her a portion of the points I would get. However, I had no intention of shar
“Damon…,” she started.She looked like she’d rehearsed everything she wanted to say earlier, but now that she stood in front of me, she was at a loss for words.I controlled my temper and remained quiet, determined not to get worked up over the situation.We stood there for almost a whole minute and she still hadn’t said anything.‘Is she going to speak? Or not? I’m tired of just standing here waiting,’ I thought to myself.After waiting a short while more I made an attempt to walk past her, since she wasn’t interested in saying anything to me.She grabbed my arm preventing me from doing this, and so I walked back and stood in front of her.“You’re aware you can’t keep us here all day right?” I asked, to remind her about the amount of time she was wasting.She waited for a while before she finally took a deep breath and began."Damon...I wanted to apologize for what happened during the competition," she said, her eyes searching mine for any hint of understanding. "I know that allying
In that instant, everything and everyone began to move so slow.I didn’t know what was going on but one thing was for sure, if I didn’t do something I would receive a vicious blow from Jake.In a few tenths of a second, I stepped out of the way as quickly as possible, I wasn’t prepared for this so I was clumsy and caught his ankle with my foot as I moved.When I was finally out of his reach safely, time went back to normal and everything began moving in real-time again.Jake tripped and fell over, knocking a few chairs to the floor as he did so, attracting the attention of everyone present in the room.He shook his head quickly as if trying to process what just happened.I walked up to him and offered him my hand, “you tripped and fell over, let me help you up.”He took my hand and I pulled him up close to me, and spoke into his ear. “If you ever try that again, I’ll kick your head in,” I said to him.I leaned back, brushed his shoulders with a wide smile on my face, and made my way t