Chapter 1603
[ 648 words ]
He successfully broke through the opponent’s software.
But he was just a bit too late. He had lost.
Student 1 instinctively looked toward the audience, his mouth opening as guilt washed over him.
“Great job.” Tucker gave him a big thumbs up.
It couldn’t be helped.
He just had bad luck and drew a particularly strong opponent.
They had reviewed it briefly and saw that the Moralian student’s software was exceptionally well-crafted.
The fact that Student 1 managed to crack it in such a short amount of time showed massive improvement.
As for the other two students.
Through a mix of luck and sheer skill, they both made it into the top fifteen.
The second round also used a random draw.
The Moralian competitor sailed through effortlessly, easily taking first place in his group.
He had ranked near the top in both rounds.
Everyone was already guessing that the championship was guaranteed to be his.
“Lost another one.” Tucker wiped the sweat from his forehead and turned to Juniper. “Thank goodness we still have one student in the top five.”
Originally, their best-case scenario was breaking the top ten.
“He has a lot of potential.” Juniper lifted her gaze toward Student 3.
The guy was wearing a dark, heavy utility jacket, his hair buzzed short.
He had thick black-rimmed glasses perched on his nose, slightly small eyes, and a perpetually blank expression.
Juniper remembered him.
He was the guy who had shown up late at the airport and blurted out that she was going to escape her wedding.
Even after making it to the top five, he just stood there looking totally spaced out, showing neither joy nor panic.
“His name is Zavala Zigmund,” Tucker explained quietly. “He’s a bit of an oddball. Doesn’t really talk to people, spends most of his day staring at a computer, and his ideas are completely bizarre.”
“Is that right?”
Juniper’s lips slowly curled into a smile. That sounded pretty interesting.
The top three would be decided among these final five.
Because the last round required them to build software completely from scratch on the spot-which was highly time-consuming the finals were scheduled for the next day, giving the competitors a chance to rest.
Once the matches concluded for the day.
Zavala was walking down the steps, entirely deadpan.
Suddenly, someone bumped hard into his shoulder.
Zavala turned around, giving the person a blank stare.
It was the guy from Moralia… William something-or-other.
“Can’t believe someone from Orient actually stumbled into the top five.” William neered at him s tong
dripping with sarcasm. “Miss Null must have given you guys a ton of extra tutoring, huh?”
Null.
That was Juniper’s alias in the hacker world.
Zavala replied: “She did. The Goddess is amazing.”
“How amazing could she possibly be?” William scoffed dismissively, doubling down on the mockery “if she wasn’t some kind of genetic freak there’s no way she could have beaten my teacher.”
“Understood.”
Zavala stopped in his tracks. His calm gaze landed flatly on the other guy’s face as he spoke at an
Imet
unhurried pace. “Your teacher is loser who got crushed lay the Goddess, which is why you’re
by
throwing a tantrum right now.”
“You”
The guy choked on his words, momentarily stunned before snarling, “So what if Null
is good? Orient’s computer science is still a pile of crap.”
Zavala blinked. Without breaking a sweat or raising his voice, he calmly stated,
“Only a dog would look at a five-star meal and call it crap.”
“I guess a dog really can’t stop eating crap?”
The guy: “?”
“Actually, that doesn’t fit either.” Zavala rubbed his chin in faux thought. “Sour grapes. Since the dog can’t eat the crap, he says the crap stinks?”
“Are you insulting me?!” The guy instantly flew into a rage, glaring at him viciously. “Not at all.”
Zavala flashed a polite, friendly smile. “Weren’t you the one who brought up crap first? I was just continuing the metaphor for you.”
“Wow, look at you.”
Zavala kept smiling. “I’m not even mad. Why are you so mad?”
“I’m not mad!”
The guy bellowed, his voice echoing across the entire venue.
Zavala: “Oh, okay.”
William: Was he arguing with a brick wall?!
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