"Pardon me, City Lord, and I don't mean any disrespect when I say this, but..." Adrian suddenly spoke and asked, "...why only now? Why did none of you tell us this earlier? Had we known that the stakes are this high, maybe we could've done more, trained more, or...you know."
The City Lord was supposed to answer that, but someone else replied first.
"Because he wasn't supposed to tell us this early."
All heads turned to Ren, the one who replied to Adrian's question just now. He didn't look at them; he was polishing his gloves.
"If the City Lord followed the rules, we would only know this after the tournament. When the results are out and it's too late for us to change anything."
"This rule sounds nonsensical, but it's a measure of quality and responsibility of the citizens and the participants. If we truly cared, then whether we knew what the stakes were or not, the end result wouldn't have changed. We would still do our best to get a decent ranking anyway."
