User blog comment:CreatorTheta/Only 48 People can Pass Beacons initiation/@comment-4709478-20130919174808/@comment-3146930-20130919183835

I think you are a bit confused. Each person in the initiation was told to make a partner and that team would go collect a relic and bring it back. A team of four would then be picked formed based on which piece they took.

However there are 4 of one piece altogether, two white and two black. Team Blake-Yang picked up one White Knight and Team Ruby-Weiss picked up the other. They didn't each pick up a White Knight. If there were 8 of each piece, that would be something like 88 teams, but only 80 if there is a team based on one king and one queen piece.

The real question is where did the extra students come from. There aren't 40 students on the cliff when they are launched into the forest. Maybe they had times, like the part we saw was the 8:00 AM testing time, then another group would show up at 10:00 AM and they would keep going until all the pieces were picked.