Chapter 92: The Fine Print

"Found you..."

He had found the one thing he had been looking for... the one thing that he spent quite a lot of time hoping to find... the one that could turn this tournament into a living hell for him with just a few words.

Put simply, he had found the "fine print".

In his old life, his job made it so that he encountered all kinds of contracts, service agreements, and office policies every day of his life to the point that it was basically part of the boring routine. And in those contracts, the sentences that did not argue with you in the open waited silently for the day you would encounter an issue, bring it up, and get completely shot down by it.

A Fine Print was a term used to identify a loophole in the terms of any legally binding document.

Basically, it was a little clause that was stuffed in-between the lines of any contract, that in most cases, could directly contradict the contract itself.

For example, reading a loan’s terms and conditions, you could see something like: "0% INTEREST!" in big letters, but the fine print directly under it would say something like: "0% for 3 months only, then 35% interest in the coming months."

This detail could easily be missed. One would look at this and say something like; "it’s a good deal" and involve themselves, forgetting that the 0% interest rate only lasted for three months.

This was a very similar case.

He ran his hands along the sentence and read it out loud...

"Any of the previously stated rules are subject to change."

This was the part of the document designed to be found only by people who read past the bold headings and interesting sections

It was a sentence that could completely flip his tournament experience.

Crane had walked their class through the three critical rules... The were useful, important, true... as true as they got.

However, they were incomplete. She made it clear that reading the rest of the files was up to them. Meaning she expected that those who actually took the time to go through it to encouter something like this.

Ethan stayed on his bed with the PDF open on the phone as he read it again.

Any of the previously stated rules are subject to change.

Eight words, short enough that it barely took up a whole line. It wasn’t bold enough to be spotted immediately. It was just one clean statement buried under a page filled with four headings and almost ten lines under each one.

Buried well enough that any other person would completely pass over it without paying it much mind.

Subject to change did not mean there was a possibilty for the whole thing to change. It meant that a particular rule could be turn completely upside down if they decided that students were still a problem while they still didn’t break it.... It also meant that the three rules Professor Crane had stressed also had the possibility to be twisted.

He started accounting for the implications...

If rules were altered before the fights were locked in, preparation became a bet on the last version you saw.

If rules were altered after fights locked in, then mid-event constraints could appear at a very wrong time.

And since restricted class competitors already had stricter monitoring, it was very possible be be directly affected by it.

The frustration slowly started building up.

He scrolled upward, back to previous pages, hunting for softeners— Notice periods, any form of acknowledgment, limits on how possible it would be for any of the given rules to be altered, anything. But he did not find a sign that the rule could stay the same or change to his convenience.

"Of course," he muttered.

The implications for him were clear.

They could directly give him a limit to how often he could use his undead, how long he could them, or even which one to summon.

Then he had an unstable skill. If he got stupid they could stop him from using that too..

His mind wandered to Nora. If the staff tightened the rules around her, after a messy public round, things could go south for them. The history with ther devil kill already put enough eyes on them, so this was entirely possible.

Ethan set the phone face down, then picked it up again because putting it down wouldn’t make it easier for him.

The easy miss was the point. Students would memorize the three spoken rules and the ones who actually cared enough to read the pdf would probably not come across it.

Some would train within the rules they were told, others would train within the ones they saw, and the rest would actually make preparations based on that one line.

Luckily, he would be among the few smart ones...

He opened the notepad on his phone and began typing...

*Prep for instability. The rules may not remain the same.

*Assume the number of times I can use my undead can reduce

*Restricted umonitoring is looking for a reason to deadlock you. Don’t be stupid.

And lastly,

*Don’t waste the month sulking over devils you can’t even use.

He hit save and set the phone down. He had just found his loophole. The very sentence strong enough to change the entire outcome of the tournament.

He took a screenshot and forwarded it to Nora, and a reply came a few minutes later.

She was still awake. Good. Surprising, but good.

"I already saw this. Was thinking of telling you about it next time we meet."

He typed out a reply and down his phone. They needed to talk tactics. Ways to ensure that they won’t suffer too much from this.

’I’ll tell Lila about this tomorrow,’ he thought.

Right not now, they had classes tomorrow. PE class to be specific. Two hours of running and constant criticism awaited him outside this door in less than ten hours.

He needed as much sleep as he could get...