CHAPTER 85: TRIAL OF CONVERGENCE! (6)

The psychological warfare from the fourth team was as impressive as the tactical execution. They had created a situation where everyone knew they needed to be stopped, but no one could afford to pay the price for stopping them.

Elena’s solution was characteristically elegant.

"Keep following our plan," she announced calmly. "We’ll stick to our positions and let the other teams waste energy fighting the thieves. We can still collect more fragments than anyone else."

She was accepting the fourth team’s presence as an environmental hazard rather than a problem to be solved directly.

By maintaining focus on their own strategic advantages, Elena’s team could continue accumulating points while letting other teams exhaust themselves fighting the parasites.

The key was to gather an overwhelming momentum and bet on the fact that the attention of the fourth team would bs split between the other three teams.

The question was, would it work?

The approach worked brilliantly.

While the northern and eastern teams engaged in costly battles with the fourth team’s ambush specialists, Elena’s team methodically collected fragments with minimal interference.

Their superior positioning and coordination allowed them to avoid most of the chaos while maintaining steady point accumulation.

Their coordination with their guardians was so nuanced that they were always protected during the crucial moment of retrieving these fragments.

It was quite beautiful.

Lyra’s predictive capabilities were proving invaluable for avoiding the most dangerous conflict zones while identifying safe collection opportunities.

Her Oracle enhancements allowed her to guide the team through the battlefield with near-perfect tactical awareness.

By the time the Starfall concluded, Elena’s team had secured forty-three percent of the available fragments despite representing only twenty percent of the competing teams.

The mathematical advantage of the Constellation Web had translated into decisive practical superiority.

But the real victory was psychological.

The other teams had exhausted themselves fighting each other while Elena’s team had achieved their objectives with minimal casualties and maximum efficiency.

The parasitic fourth team had been eliminated through attrition, the northern team had suffered serious losses, and the eastern team’s chaotic approach had finally resulted in catastrophic coordination breakdown.

It might seem absurd how they managed to achieve this result, but with how large the arena was, even the chokeholds created by the arena had a radius in kilometers.

Coupled with Ren’s genius disruptions, he was able to pave the way for the runners to perform their task seamlessly.

Elena’s strategic patience had been completely vindicated.

"Starfall collection finished," she reported with quiet satisfaction. "We got more points than expected. Team worked perfectly during the multi-team fight. Our advantages are confirmed and getting stronger."

The numbers were impressive. With the Starfall fragments added to their previous accumulation, Elena’s team now held seventy-eight points—more than three-quarters of the way to victory.

Their nearest competitors were struggling to reach the fifty-point mark!

But more importantly, they had demonstrated tactical superiority that would influence the psychology of future engagements.

Other teams now knew that Elena’s team could coordinate effectively under extreme pressure while maintaining their mysterious collection advantages.

Ren had contributed quite significantly to the victory through his disruption activities, but his efforts were largely invisible to external observers.

The sisters’ coordination had dominated the visible aspects of the battle, reinforcing their reputation for exceptional capabilities.

As the teams regrouped after the Starfall chaos, the strategic landscape had fundamentally shifted.

Elena’s team was now the clear frontrunner with a commanding point advantage.

Every other team would need to reassess their strategies in light of this new reality. Some would attempt to form alliances to counter the leaders, while others would focus on catching up through improved individual performance.

But the most significant change was psychological. The aura of inevitability that surrounded Elena’s team would influence every subsequent decision made by their opponents.

Teams fighting from behind often made desperate choices that created additional opportunities for those in the lead.

They were truly members of the progressive faction.

Ren observed the regrouping process with analytical interest. The political dynamics that would shape the remainder of the trial were crystallizing around the simple fact that Elena’s team appeared unstoppable.

Yet something continued to nag at his strategic instincts.

The arena’s adaptive responses hadn’t shown up during the Starfall engagement, despite the intense magical activity and strategic innovation displayed by all teams.

The environmental modifications he had observed were subtle compared to what he had expected from a truly responsive system.

Either the arena’s countermeasures were more limited than his reconnaissance had suggested, or they were building toward something more dramatic than simple spawn manipulation and terrain modification.

The Constellation Web was working perfectly, but perfection in magical systems often preceded catastrophic failure when underlying assumptions proved incorrect.

Ren decided to expand his surveillance mission to focus specifically on arena behavior patterns rather than enemy team activities.

The information might prove crucial if his concerns about adaptive countermeasures proved justified.

As the teams settled into post-Starfall positioning, Elena’s confidence was reaching new heights.

"The Constellation Web worked perfectly under extreme conditions," she announced to the team.

"Our strategy held up against multiple teams and weird tactics. We have an eighty-seven percent chance of winning based on our current points and remaining time."

Lyra nodded approvingly from her central analysis position. "Star patterns are still stable. Predictions stayed accurate despite all the battlefield chaos. The system is barely adapting and it’s manageable."

That last comment reinforced Ren’s growing concerns. The arena system should have been adapting more aggressively to counter their success, but it seemed to be accepting the Constellation Web’s exploitation of its fundamental mechanics.

Systems that appeared to accept exploitation usually had hidden layers of complexity that activated under specific threshold conditions.

The question was whether those thresholds had been reached and what form the countermeasures would take when they manifested.

Still, he couldn’t deny the fact that he might just be too pessimistic after all.

But Elena’s team was riding high on their Starfall success, and questioning the foundations of their strategy would be both politically dangerous and practically difficult to justify based on theoretical concerns.

Ren maintained his surveillance posture and continued monitoring for signs of impending arena adaptation. The second phase of the trial was about to begin, and the real test of the Constellation Web’s robustness was still ahead.

The next Starfall announcement would come in approximately forty minutes, and by then, every surviving team would be desperate enough to attempt tactics that could fundamentally alter the competitive landscape.

Elena’s team held a commanding lead, but commanding leads had a way of creating overconfidence that could be exploited by sufficiently desperate opponents.

The honeypot gambit had worked perfectly, but honeypots were only effective until someone figured out how to poison the honey.