Reborn In 17th century India with Black Technology - Chapter 1094

Chapter 1094: The Olympics (4)

Athens, United Greek socialist republics

“Bang!”

The first shot of the Olympic Games rang out, and the swimmers poised at the edge of the pool dove in instantly, cutting through the water like kingfishers diving for prey. The sudden shot of the starter pistol startled the audience at the Omkar Olympic Gymnasium, but once they realised it was harmless, all eyes turned to the pool. Beneath the shimmering surface, the athletes glided forward with power and grace, moving like a pack of orcas in pursuit of their hunt.

The swimmers, after exhausting their energy under the water, finally surfaced and switched to a butterfly stroke. Spanish Maria Perez was in a slight lead, with the Dutch Johanna de Jong following closely behind.

The girls exerted the maximum effort that was humanly possible, sending up mists of water into the air and hurling forward with every stroke.

It wasn’t even the finals, but with the competition of Group A alone, the audience was on the edge of their seats, each rooting for the athlete of their own country to win.

This was a 200-metre race, so after the swimmers reached the end of the pool, they had to flip back and return to the position they started to win the race.

“Let’s go, Johanna, give it all you got.”

In a sudden twist of events, Maria Perez, who was in the lead, suddenly began to lose steam. Maybe she was not an endurance swimmer, or maybe she had gotten a cramp. She struggled to maintain her previous pace, and Johanna, who noticed this opportunity, let out a slight grunt, kicked her legs harder, and swung her arms faster.

‘Come on, come on,’ she kept muttering in her heart, and finally, just before Maria could touch the finish line, Johanna rushed forward and directly slapped the wall with all her strength, beating Maria by a split-second lead.

The whistle blew, and the game was over.

Maria was panting heavily, her expression strained with pain as she gripped the edge of the platform like a lifeline. Her thigh muscles were cramping so severely that she could barely extend her legs without forcing them through the pain. Yet despite the agony, she had poured every ounce of strength into her performance. Lifting her gaze, her face was a mixture of desperation and fragile hope. The other girls who finished just seconds later also looked up, their eyes filled with silent prayers, each wishing to hear their name called for selection.

Soon, the scoreboard in the gymnasium, which contained the names of all the swimmers and their nationalities, saw a change. Several were replaced with red crosses, while others had points added to them.

Out of the ten swimmers, only four were selected.

“Oh no!! God, what do I do now!!” The Polish athlete immediately broke down in tears.

“O Lord!! Is there no second chance?” The Swedish athlete was no different.

Other Southeast Asian athletes also wore expressions of desperation, but in the end, they left the pool helplessly, their backs looking lonely and defeated.

Looking at the board, Maria Perez let out a deep sigh of relief. Though she hadn’t scored the highest and was still five points behind Johanna, she was confident she could beat her easily. After all, if her thigh hadn’t cramped, she would’ve beaten her black and blue.

“Help me out!”

She asked and stretched out her hand.

After Maria was supported by her girls, she noticed the Dutch girl celebrating in the corner. Her mouth slowly formed a sneer of disdain, and her eyes showed the look of a noble looking down on a commoner.

In the audience, some spectators were overjoyed, especially those from the Netherlands, Spain, and other countries whose athletes had advanced to the next round, while others looked visibly disappointed.

In the midst of all these people, there were also some who were exchanging money with a sulking look on their faces. And yes, of course, these were people who had lost the bet. The International Olympic Committee had banned all sorts of betting apart from its own betting stalls, but this could only work for large transactions. For small transactions, people would rather bet with each other. After all, who wants to give a 30% commission to the Olympics board if they win the bet?

While the first 200-metre butterfly race for the women in Division A had just ended and the athletes of Division B were preparing to perform, in the Alexander Convention Centre, the Chess Championship was taking place.

The championship was divided into three categories: Classical, Rapid, and Blitz.

Like all other individual sports, four total participants, including male and female, represented each country. In chess, the Bharatiya Empire was seen as the crowd favourite. After all, apart from the Bharatiya Empire, no other empire, kingdom, or nation in the world had a dedicated organisation like the Bharatiya School of Chess to identify talent across the empire and train them to the highest standards. The only country that came even close was the Tsarist Russia, which had only recently established its own version of the Bharatiya School of Chess called the Russian School of Chess.

Due to such intense competition, most countries did not even try to send in participants, so the chess tournament was only held between five countries and in three rounds in total.

Right next to Deepa Shah, one of the best chess players in the world, was Tokugawa Tenobu, carefully observing the game. Tokugawa had come with the Olympic team of Nippon to encourage and take care of the athletes. But, funny enough, he was actually not interested in many games, and that included rugby, which was his first introduction to the games of the Bharatiya Empire, but chess was one game that tickled his mind. It showed him that it was possible for humans to wage combat against each other without having to fight, and completely convince the opponent of their defeat.

Currently, Deepa Shah was going up against the Chinese contender Ding Hu.

Deepa had completely tuned out his surroundings; the only thing that existed for him was the chessboard before his eyes. He calculated variations repeatedly, evaluating each line with precision. After confirming four possible continuations, he confidently repositioned his knight to Qh6, executing the tactical manoeuvre he had carefully prepared.

Ding Hu was lost in thought. He had not played chess for too long, but being the son of a governor and being proficient in classical Chinese literature and arts from childhood, he was very familiar with Go. He had even defeated his father and his companions when it came to Go. Now, Go and chess are both completely different games, but what he had as an advantage was that he was used to a much more complex game, so he was able to calculate his moves much faster and farther. The queen was right for the taking, but he could feel that somewhere there was a trap; he just had to calculate where.

In such a way, time slowly passed in the battle of wits and courage. All the other matches ended fairly quickly, as usual, athletes from the three chess superpowers, Bharat, Ming, and Russia, would easily defeat any competition. But the battle between Deepa Shah and Ding Hu was intense.

Surprisingly enough, his opponent did not take the bait. Deepa Shah got lost in thought, preparing for the next move. He realised that although he had an edge over his opponent in intuition, practice, and knowledge of different moves, his opponent had an almost inhuman calculation ability. He had an illusion that he was not playing against a human at all, but a lifeless machine that had no emotion.

‘In that case, I will increase the number of variables. Let’s see how you will calculate the possibilities then.’ As soon as he got hold of the opponent’s play style, he immediately came up with a countermeasure.

While the battle was getting intense, more crowd began to gather. Athletes from different countries who had just finished their games, people from the Bharatiya Empire, people from Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and even Southeast Asia, slowly sat down and intently looked at the board game that had become a battlefield between two geniuses.

Even the sounds that were previously heard became quiet.

Move after move, it was like a battle between a tiger and a dragon. But as the game went on, the people noticed something. Ding Hu was looking much more dishevelled, with his eyes a little bloodshot and his hair messy from all the times he had rubbed it over the last half hour, whereas Deepa Shah, although he looked tired, did not look haggard.

Finally, at the three-hour mark, Ding Hu’s mind began to ache. There were simply too many patterns and too many angles he had to calculate for the next move. He used to look down on chess as a much simpler game, and he had never met anyone he couldn’t defeat. But now he understood, chess might have fewer combinations and be much more restrictive than Go, but its simplicity gave people the ability to master different moves, combinations, patterns, and puzzles. This mastery could be used as a weapon of war, turning the game into an actual intellectual battleground. This was not possible in Go.

He was finally fighting with joy and the desire to solve every puzzle that existed. But maybe it was too late, because as he made the move, Deepa Shah came in with his rook from nowhere, and that was it, he was in complete zugzwang ( A position where any legal move a player makes will worsen their situation), his position locked.

“I concede defeat.”

That was it. It was over. His journey in the Olympics ended even before it began, but his journey into chess, maybe it was just begun. Walking a few steps into his restroom, he immediately collapsed onto the bed, but his face was not filled with tiredness or sadness, but with a smile, a smile of a boy who had played to the fullest on a summer afternoon.

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Pakistan better hope that the car blast near the Red Fort had nothing to do with you