Forty-seven floating houseboats lined the river, their flags whipping in the wind, each emblazoned with the emblem of a different school. The participants stood on decks or hovered in the air above the boats, awaiting the start of the game.
Rita observed closely and realized that the 37 smaller and mid-sized schools had sent far more participants than the Nine Great Magic Academies. Even the academy with the highest turnout among the nine barely passed 800 students. Moonlight Marsh had the fewest—just over 300 participants—barely more than the unaffiliated trainees.
By contrast, some of the smaller schools had over a thousand students packed onto a single deck. She couldn't tell if they just didn't care about attrition or were simply confident they could withdraw before dying.
