by Brent Tyman
They really were a rather stoic bunch…
The Sovereignty students visibly deflated at the news of their defeat, with that noisy student glaring at the Soldier Ant’s carapace before giving a huff and crossing her arms.
“Haha!” The guildmaster laughed. “Excellent, as always. See what the Adventurer’s Guild is capable of, Zandur?”
“Hmm, yes. Very impressive for them to reach the fourteenth floor. Soldier Ants have always been very valuable to the guild. Did you also give these ones a set of the parchments?”
“What kind of guildmaster would I be, if I didn’t?” The guildmaster laughed. “Only a few parties even bothered to ask us about the numbers. Of course, most of them were esteemed adventurers, such as these.”
Jeez, this guildmaster seemed a bit too pleased at having his adventurers perform so well. This at least confirmed how Juliana had managed to get the parchments that detailed all of the monster loot values.
I wondered what would have happened if we also had submitted a Soldier Ant’s carapace. Would they have declared it a tie or spend time trying to determine which loot was better quality?
“Now, it is time for our final party to present their submission,” the headmaster said, nodding.
All eyes turned to us. I honestly wasn’t sure how this would go. Logically, the Shock Bird was one heck of a strong monster, but since it hadn’t even been listed in the guild’s books, anything could happen here.
I let out a breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding and found Aurielle smiling at me.
“It is time to prove our strength, Alex,” she said with a nod.
I found myself smiling back at her and got ready to pull out our spoils from the Clan pouch. Everyone’s eyes widened as I produced the Shock Bird’s orange feather. I had to use two hands to set it onto the table, as it was several feet long.
The watching crowd stirred.
“Uhh, what monster is that?”
“I have no idea!”
“Whoa, it sure is big!”
“Go Sovereignty!”
The crowd became restless as they tried to work out what monster this feather had belonged to. It seemed it wasn’t that well known.
“No,” the guildmaster said as he ran a hand along the feather’s length. “This can’t be what I think it is?”
“Hmm, it appears to be the feather of a Shock Bird. A rather interesting development,” the headmaster said.
The staff around the guildmaster were whispering amongst themselves but he quickly rounded on them.
“Check it,” he ordered.
Unlike the previous two submissions, not just the woman in the brown robe, but everyone from the Guild circled the table to examine the feather in great detail. The scene instantly reminded me of when I’d sold the Glower Serpent’s scale to the Guild.
Some guild staff even knocked the Soldier Ant’s carapace from the table to get a better look at the feather, which made the adventurers shift restlessly off to the side.
“Hey!” Clarissa shouted, hands on her hips. “Don’t you dare damage our lovely loot.”
“I am sure the Guild will be very careful with the loot, right Rodnok?” the headmaster questioned, raising a single eyebrow.
The guildmaster didn’t answer as he was engrossed in inspecting our feather, checking for… something.
“Well?” The guildmaster growled when the robed woman had finished casting her spell. “What’s the verdict?”
Unlike before, she was rather pale as she reviewed her spell’s results. She took a shaky breath before revealing the information in her interface.
“This submission is… valid, guildmaster,” she said slowly, her own eyes widening in disbelief. “Its creation is within the guidelines. Estimated value is…”
I had to suppress a groan as she stopped. Did they really have to keep us in suspense?
The guildmaster looked at his staff. Each of them quickly produced some parchments and stepped away from the table to huddle up a few feet away.
“I apologize for the wait,” the headmaster said as the guildmaster got up to speak to his peers. “It appears Rodnok, and the rest of the Guild, do not know how much a Shock Bird’s feather is worth.”
“How did you get your hands on a Shock Bird’s feather?” one Sovereignty student asked.
“By defeating a Shock Bird,” Juliana said, rather proudly, her lips raised in a small smile.
I couldn’t help but grin at her response.
“Ugh!” Clarissa groaned as she watched the Guild staffers start to argue with each other. “Can we not skip this, headmaster? It’s clear to everyone here that the feather is worth more than whatever that Ant thing was.”
“All in good time,” the headmaster said, stroking his chin. “But you have even me curious about your… success. I’m sure many will wish to know how you accomplished such a feat.”
“Maybe another time,” Clarissa said airily, waving her hand. “Fighting Shock Birds is such hard work, don’t you know.”
Juliana rolled her eyes and shook her head at Clarissa’s antics, but the headmaster simply smiled at the blonde.
“Ahh, here they come,” Anny said as the guildmaster finally returned with his staff.
“Is everything in order, Rodnok?” The headmaster asked, a smile tugging at the corners of his lips.
“Yes,” the guildmaster gruffly replied, before turning to face us. “Congratulations. Your Shock Bird loot is worth sixty-five gold coins.”
I blinked at that number.
Sixty-five gold coins… And I had two of them.
Jeez…
“Sixty-five gold…” one of the adventurers breathed through his helmet.
I looked over at him with a raised eyebrow. So that’s what it took to get them to speak?
“It appears we have a winner,” the headmaster said, nodding. “You five will be heading on to the final stage of the tournament. My condolences to the others.”
“Yes!” Clarissa shouted, raising her arms overhead. “We did it!”
“Indeed,” Aurielle said, smiling.
The gossiping from the crowd had already started up again in earnest, but I didn’t pay them any attention. I let out a long, heavy breath and scratched the back of my head.
“Nice work, everyone,” I said.
“Might I invite the winners over to the Guild?” the guildmaster asked. “Perhaps we could discuss selling the feather to us.”
It seemed like the Academy wouldn’t be keeping our loot this time.
“Maybe after the tournament is over,” Juliana said as she reached over to grab the feather. She must have a pretty decent Strength stat, I thought, as she hefted the giant feather in her arms easily.
“Please place this in your bag, Alex,” she directed.
“Sure,” I replied. As I held out the bag for Juliana to deposit the feather into, everyone from the guild watched the loot disappear with somber eyes.
Did they really want this feather that badly?
The headmaster took the time to dismiss the other two parties, who departed with some Academy staff members.
“Did you hear that? Sixty-five gold coins...” a Sovereignty student said.
“Do you think I made a good impression on our Lady?”
“You made an impression, alright…”
Once they were gone, the headmaster filled us in on what would happen next. Six teams would be advancing to the finals, where it would be a series of fights against the other remaining parties.
The Academy intended to grant the top two finishers in the second stage a ‘bye’ while having the lesser four performing teams fight against each other in a quarter-final round. As it seemed that we were the party that had performed the best out of everyone so far, this meant that we would only have two fights, with the second one being the tournament finals.
Juliana had asked the headmaster about her retinue and received some good news. They also had beaten the two parties in their grouping.
<
br /> “Excellent!” Juliana quipped as she heard this news. “My retinue is extremely talented.”
“Yes, they have done quite well, despite the odds,” the headmaster said. “They had been placed in a group with two Yunissan parties, after the results of the first stage. It is most impressive, reaching the final stage with only a four-member party.”
Juliana beamed at him, but the headmaster continued. Coincidently, they would be fighting another Yunissan party that had managed to pass through to the final stage in the tournament.
I wondered how powerful they were.
Clarissa only smirked at this news.
The headmaster let slip a brief chuckle before letting us know that the final stage of the tournament would begin in two days, with directions on where we’d need to go at the Arena.
Two more days…
We were almost there.
27
“How the heck could I have missed this place…” I wondered out loud as we stood before the Tringall Arena.
It was a giant edifice, built with a wood-like material that must have been extremely strong to support such a massive structure. The sheer enormity of it shocked me. It easily dwarfed every other building in the area by several magnitudes, stretching as far as I could see in either direction.
There were giant pillars holding up its outer sections and, as I expected, the top part of the structure curled outwards over the street. No doubt this was where spectators would be sitting. Its ginormous scope was also apparent as scores upon scores of people crowded through the Arena’s giant gate to get inside.
“Isn’t it amazing, handsome?” Clarissa asked, grinning at my stunned reaction.
“We should not idle here,” Juliana said, pointing towards a smaller set of wooden doors to the left of the arena’s massive public gate. “We do not have much time before our match. Let’s go.”
Most of the past few days, we’d spent grinding in the Dungeon. Actually, probably a bit more than I’d intended. Time just seemed to fly in the Dungeon… I’d had to apologize to Juliana for causing her to miss out on her retinue’s victory in the quarterfinals. It seemed I now owed her not one, but two one-on-one dates after the tournament.
Though outnumbered, it seemed their boosted Strength came in handy, with even Vencia dispatching a foe with a vicious left hook to the temple. Daiver, somehow, managed not to get knocked out in the initial engagement facing two opponents, and Kesara kept everyone in top form as Karl overwhelmed the other two mages.
Juliana seemed familiar with the Arena and confidently led us through the smaller entrance to the side of the gates. She flashed that fancy badge she had, and we skipped all the lines and were led up a private stairwell. Apparently, the big Clans got all the perks.
I didn’t get much time to appreciate the new sights, but one thing that stood out to me, was the physical presence of the raw noise generated by so many spectators. The roar of the crowd pushed against me when we walked past one of many sections that looked down onto the fighting grounds.
Having so many people in one place focused on the same thing and making this much noise was a new experience, even for me.
There was one oddity that stuck out to me, and it was probably the reason I hadn’t noticed the arena since I’d been here in Tringall. For some reason, instead of this vast place being a focal point at the center of the city, it was tucked away near the edge of the city. In fact, one of Tringall’s city walls, made from some kind of black obsidian, made up one of the Arena’s curving walls, as well.
Blue jolts of magical power occasionally zipped along the material’s surface, reminding me that it probably wasn’t a good idea to get too near that side of the Arena. The black obsidian that merged with the wooden walls created a really strange contrast. I honestly couldn’t fathom a logical reason why they’d build it this way.
At least there were no spectator stands over on that side, so I guessed it was fine.
Juliana led us through a short passageway to another entrance that revealed a set of stairs heading downward. At the bottom of the stairs, we eventually found ourselves in a rather wide room with several tables and chairs. This place was pretty dusty and its only notable feature, other than the thick wooden walls, was a large gate that let out on the arena’s fighting pit.
“Ugh,” Clarissa said, “so much dust here.”
“The Arena has not seen use in… quite some time,” Juliana explained. “It makes sense if the underside of it needs a little cleaning.”
As if responding to our presence, at the other end of the room, a door opened to reveal a man with short brown hair and gray eyes. He wore worn leather armor that looked like it had seen plenty of use. Some straps were broken off and hung limply in the air.
“Ah, yes,” the man said in a smooth voice. “The double heir group… welcome to the Tringall Arena.”
“Double heir?” Aurielle asked, her face reflecting her confusion.
“You know, having two of the three nations’ heirs in one party…” the man continued, walking to a nearby table. He snorted. “Never thought I would see the day that two heirs from the major Clans would team up together. My Pa was telling me I must have mixed up the lists.”
I had no idea what he was talking about, but the man didn’t skip a beat.
“Right. My name is Tovar,” he said, giving a brief bow, “and I’m here to direct you on how the matches will work and to instruct you when it is your turn to go out.”
“Wait a moment,” Juliana said, holding up a hand. “Where are our opponents?”
“On the other side of the Arena, where my peer is, no doubt, telling them what I’m about to tell you, so listen up,” Tovar replied. He picked up a parchment that had been left on the table he stopped before. He stared at it intensely before cracking his knuckles, picking up the sheet and instructing us.
What followed was a rather long list of rules we’d need to adhere to for the final stage of the tournament. It mostly matched the rules we were already familiar with. We were to fight until we knocked our opponents out or they submitted. Since we would be fighting another party, as long as everyone followed the rules, no one should suffer irreparable damage.
There would be healers on hand if needed.
An interesting tidbit I gleaned from his rather dry and monotone reading, was that there was a powerful magic spell cast over the whole Arena. This severely constrained most magical abilities, with restrictions being based on your magic stats. It served as a fairly robust way to ensure that there were no serious injuries during the matches.
What I found unbelievable, was that the same magic applied also to our weapons, as well. It would temporarily blunt our weapons’ edges, making our blows far less effective than they’d normally be—at least until we left the Arena’s confines.
How was this sort of stuff even possible? I really wanted to take out my sword and examine its edge, but it probably wasn’t a good time for that. I definitely didn’t want to mess about with this strange magic before our match.
Tovar seemed very content to just read from his parchment, which elicited an eye-roll and a yawn from Clarissa. By the time he was done, the buzz from the crowd just outside the gate had risen from a low drone into a loud rumble.
Was it time?
“Ah, looks like your opponents have come out already. Remember, when the gates open, go through and wait for the signal from the platform after you march out onto the sands in the pit to start fighting,” Tovar instructed.
The man dropped the parchment back onto the table and headed back through the door he had just come in. Once he’d gone, I couldn’t help but tilt my head in confusion. I suppose we had all the information we needed… I just wish the man had at least waited for us to actually go through the gate out into the fighting pit before making his exit.
“You know, I thought there would be a bit more… I don’t know… a bit more ceremony or something to all this,” I grumbled.
“Do not worry, Alex,”
Aurielle said. “We will fight these opponents and, on my honor, we will win.”
“Haha,” I chuckled. “Glad you’re feeling pumped for this.”
“Yes,” Clarissa said with a smirk, squeezing my biceps, “pumped. That’s the type of attitude I like to see.” Clarissa flipped a long lock of her hair back with her hand. “And besides, it’s just some students from my homeland, after all. How powerful could they be?”
“In any case,” Juliana said, “we must be cautious. This team did take down a party of veteran Yunissan adventurers in their first-round bout; surprising everyone, including my father.”
Clarissa giggled. “I bet he lost a fair amount of coin on that fight. No wonder my Father was so tickled last night.”
After a few more minutes, the wooden gate before us seemingly opened all by itself and we all looked at each other, before heading into the tunnel to the fighting pit. The cheers were almost deafening inside the tunnel and there was also some kind of announcer bellowing out words too. I couldn’t make out what he was saying, as his voice seemed garbled amongst all the noise.
The fighting pit was mostly made up of sand and small rocks and was a lot smaller than I’d expected. There wasn’t any place we could use for cover. The Arena itself, while massive in scale, used most of that size for the spectators’ tiers of stands. There wasn’t much room to work with in the actual fighting pit.
There was only so much room we could use before we’d end up dangerously close to that wall, its rather fancy protruding column supports, and the spectators who loomed over it, in the stands.
Tovar had let us know during his talk that we shouldn’t get too close to them anyway. The wood they’d used for the Arena, apparently, was not all that sturdy as I had thought initially.
I kind of wished he hadn’t told me that, now that I thought about it.
What I focused on instead, was our opponents. There were five of them, of course, since that was the limit on how big a party could be for this tournament. I wasn’t sure if it was just something everyone expected, but it seemed that Academy students wore their uniforms even when they weren’t at the Academy.
