by Yuri Ajin
“There’s a high chance that there are special zones in the Tower, which only young people can get access to. As for you, take this as an expression of my respect for having been able to mess up my plan in Alkea. Of course, I also take into account your strength. Knox told me a lot about you and your success in the Tournament. I suggest that you join our clan. If I vouch for you, which I will, you can even become an apprentice. What do you say?”
Kai narrowed his eyes. The offer sounded just a little bit too good to be true. If he joined the Moons, his problems with the Salamanders and the Serpents would disappear on their own. And on top of that, he’d get to go to the Tower. What more could he possibly want? Shacks made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. However, the little voice in his head was screaming at him, warning him that this was a trap.
It’s good… Too good, in fact... The status of an apprentice, the trip to the Tower... Why would he offer me that? Sure, I did great in the Tournament as someone not born here. But why would he — the best student of his clan — go through all this trouble to ask me this? Couldn’t he have sent a messenger or something? He’s planning something, I just know it. He acts like an idiot, but that’s just a façade. He knows what he’s doing. Something’s wrong here. Why would the Moons invite me to join them now? Especially after that little show with Shen? Unless... It suddenly dawned on him. Unless the thing they want besides my strength is a connection with the Sea Dragons! Damn it! I knew that there was something! The greedy bastards! Maybe I could ask Rune’Tan to gaze into Shacks’s soul to find out the truth? He has energy now... No, no... It’s not worth the time, resources, or the risk. He’s in deep meditation, figuring out how to fix my problem. I better not disturb him.
“Tempting.” Kai smiled slightly. “However, I’ll need some time to think it over. I’ll give you my answer by the end of the Tournament. Who knows, maybe the other clans have a better offer?” he added with a smirk.
“Haha, as if! Take as much time as you want! Just don’t wait too long. The Tower will open without you. You wouldn’t want to miss out on that, would you now?” Shacks said playfully.
“Actually, I have another question,” Kai said, ignoring his performance. “Why are the Blades staying out of this?”
“You want to know why? I’ll let you know by the end of the Tournament!” Shacks smiled widely. “Oh, come on! I’m just kidding, hahaha! The Blades are in debt to the Sun Blessed. They made a pact with us when they started looking for the fragments. And since we were oh so nice to them, we have the right to go with them. And also... Well, you don’t think that things will be easy when we get there? So they decided to form an alliance.”
“And the Forest Fairies? They’re the second-best, as far as I know.”
“Ah, the girls... Well, there aren’t many of them. They’re strong, but they’re outnumbered. If there were more of them, they might’ve been top one... But that’s not gonna happen. Do you know why?”
Kai didn’t answer, but just slightly shrugged. He really hadn’t done any reading about them.
“Because there are no men in their clan! Oh, can you imagine how many pretty girls are there?” Kai raised an eyebrow. He knew that the Fairies were a matriarchy, but he didn’t know that there were absolutely no men amongst them, even as sons and husbands. “They recruit outsiders. To get offspring, they seek out talented cultivators and use them. Sometimes they even enslave them. This cruel approach is exactly what allowed them to rise so high. See, the first members of the clan were women who fled from the Tree of Life, where they were basically slaves... But things changed...”
“I see... Well, thank you for your time and the chat. I gotta go now.” Kai interrupted Shacks, got up, and walked toward the exit.
The archer sighed, deactivating the Concealing Curtain. “Till next time.”
The waitress approached him and put a folded napkin on the table.
“Your check, sir,” she said and left.
Shacks took out a little paper from the napkin, looked at the amount, and then turned his gaze to the table. Kai had emptied at least five plates during their conversation.
“What a crafty little bastard!” He chuckled.
***
The qualification round was over. The final stage of the Tournament was about to begin.
The Great Arena was located in the very center of Neiven and occupied a square the size of a bigger village. Over one hundred thousand people had gathered here, and more were on the way. It seemed that the river of people would never dry out, but by noon there were practically no people left on the streets. No one wanted to miss the opening ceremony.
Cheered on by joyful shouts of the crowd, the participants entered the arena under the watchful gazes of the clan elite, whose representatives were seated in special boxes. The stands instantly exploded with an even louder cheer.
The head of the Blades soon appeared and took his place on the podium. He was a stately man, with sharp features and a frown that made his narrow eyes appear even narrower. His hair, black as night, was streaked with silver, the only indication of his old age. With a single gesture of his hand, he silenced the crowd. He then proceeded to hold the welcome speech, announce the official start of the third stage of the Grand Tournament, and then list the awards.
“…fourth place will receive the rarest Red Star Pill. Third place, exquisite armor and low-quality, Royal-rank weapons. Second and first place will receive a young and mature Weapon Spirits.”
The already silent arena became even more silent. Not a peep could be heard. Even the birds and the wind seemed to have fallen silent. Not only the students were shocked, but also the Elder Exorcists, as well as some of the uninformed Elementalists.
On the entire Saha, Spirits were considered to be the rarest of “ingredients.” Only a dozen of them appeared over a millennium, at most. For both humans and beasts, they were incredibly useful creatures. If one could tame them, they could increase their strength at the expense of the Spirit. Only the most skillful, however, could control them.
Aside from that, the Spirits had another useful property. Once tamed, they could be raised to become Elementals, the Cores of which could then be used to become Elementalists. There were hundreds of Exorcists who had the talent but not a Core to reach the next stage.
However, that was the case only with nature-born Spirits. The artificial ones, created from the bodies of dead Elementalists, couldn’t become an Elemental. They didn’t have the ability to grow, and their strength depended on the strength of their deceased master, as well as on how many parts their Core had been broken into.
Such creatures had only three stages of development: young, mature, and old. After the last stage, they were transformed into Elementals.
The Weapon Spirit was the kind that, as the name indicated, contained weapon energy but had no specific form. Its shape would be determined by the will and power of the one who wielded it.
Shock very quickly gave way to determination. Every single one of more than five hundred participants wanted to win. As there were more candidates than initially thought, the organizers decided to divide the Arena into two hundred and fifty-six smaller ones, large enough for a one-on-one fight.
All participants received information about their arena’s location, so they were quick to go to their appointed areas the moment the speech was over. As soon as everyone was in their place and the hundred judges had given their signals, a protective barrier was formed around each arena.
“It’s time to reveal the list!” the main judge announced.
An array was activated and several huge boards displayed the list of matches that were about to take place as well as the arenas in which they’d be held. Everyone who had the student or elder mark could see them in the System window.
“Let the battles begin! Remember, if your opponent surrenders or can’t fight, you must stop the fight immediately. Participants, get ready, you can begin at my command,” the judge said, and then sharply shouted in an a
mplified voice: “Begin!”
The battles started immediately. Colorful flashes of various techniques could be seen here and there. The barriers prevented any stray flames, bolts, or icicles from harming the audience.
In some arenas, the battles ended as soon as they started, while in others, they lasted for more than a couple of minutes. The pairs had been drawn randomly, so some of the fighters were of equal strength, while others were levels or stages above or below their opponents. A protégé could easily go against a very talented inner-circle student who just barely made it to the third stage. In such cases, the battle ended quickly. Sometimes, the less fortunate ones gave up the moment they saw who they were up against.
Some rooted for the clan protégés, some supported friends and family, and some didn’t care who would win, just who would provide them with most entertainment.
“Who do you think will make it to the finals? Who’ll be the winner?” asked one of the spectators. He and his friends were sitting near the podium, where members of the Bright Moon and the Sun Blessed Clans were sitting.
“Lord Shacks, of course!” said one of the Bright Moons, all proud. “No one can compete with him! He’ll go against either Shin Sei or Yan Liang in the finals. Although Lei Shen may have a chance too, I don’t know much about him or his techniques...”
“Maybe…”
“Nonsense!” a member of the Sun Blessed Clan shouted almost immediately. “He’s a pitiful archer! He’s no match for Lord Yan Liang. He has recently mastered one very rare technique. I doubt that anyone could come close to him.”
The rest of the Sun Blessed nodded in agreement.
“Oh, we’ll see…” sneered the Bright Moon student.
“What about the protégés from the Blades and the Fairies?” asked a female student from the Bright Moon Clan. Her silver eyes matched the embroidery on her robes.
“And what’s there to say about them? The Fairies rarely aim higher than they can reach, so they never get to the finals. Although I suppose that their students will win a decent number of prizes. The same goes for the Blades — they’ll take a lot of places, but their students aren’t the best. They only have Jiang Yong, but he’s only sixteen. The rest are either even younger or older than twenty and can’t participate.”
“Hey! Who’s that there?” One of the students closest to the edge pointed at the arena a bit further away from them.
Turning their heads, they set their gazes on an arena with only one participant. Clad in gray training robes, he stood calmly under the center of the dome. His clothes looked simple, but everyone knew that Neiven’s tailors worked with nothing but the finest of materials.
“Why the hell is he alone? Where’s his opponent?”
“Who is he anyway?! Why isn’t he wearing clan robes?”
“I think I know the answer. Look at the board!” one of them said and they all immediately turned their gazes to the boards.
“Is that an error? You can’t be serious telling me that it just so happened that he didn’t have a rival.”
“Someone got badly injured during group battles, it seems.”
“Seems you’re right. But still, who is he?”
“Kai… Arnhard...” one of them read. “I think I’ve heard that name before...”
“Wait, isn’t he that the guy with the Sea Dragon Clan mark?”
“Shit, you’re right! That’s him!”
“He got lucky,” another spectator said condescendingly. “Well, his Tournament days are over.”
“Why?” someone else asked. “I heard he was one hundred in the second round.”
“Pff! So what? There are rumors that the Endless Battle was adjusted to match the participant’s level. Also, look at the people around him! All of them did better than he did. Think that he can compete with them? He used to be an inner-circle student, and he’s only at the Brain Endurance level, while his opponents are already at the Soul Stage! They’ll crush him like a bug he is before he even realizes what hit him!”
Everyone nodded in agreement. They couldn’t believe that someone on the same level as most of them had managed to get this far. The rumor about the Endless Battle had to be true.
“What do you think, who’ll win the third battle from that group?” one of the students asked.
“My money’s on Tai Go.” They pointed at a tall, broad-shouldered man. There was a victorious smile on his slightly tanned face. The wild, chestnut hair, sky-blue eyes, and the green robes spoke of the Tree of Life Clan. “People say that he’s the strongest of them all since he was born with an unusual mutation that allows him to harden his muscles at will. Look, his opponent is barely breathing. The maniac beat him with his bare hands until the poor bastard sunk into the floor. I doubt that there’s anyone who can defeat him.”
Everyone turned to look at Tai Go and his stone-hard muscles. They swallowed hard at the thought of what would’ve happened had they been in the arena with him and not the poor Salamander kid.
The first round ended soon enough, and the number of participants was halved. The wounded were quickly carried away by the healers, and the rest were given an hour to rest and prepare for the second round. Some of the winners decided to temporarily retreat to changing rooms within the arena, while others remained where they were.
Kai was sitting on the ground, ready to plunge into meditation, when he heard someone’s footsteps growing nearer. Opening his eyes, he saw Tai Go’s square face looming above him.
“There’s no place for wimps here, you lucky bastard,” he growled, spat, and left.
Kai shrugged and chuckled to himself. What a silly man, he thought and finally began to meditate.
The hour passed quickly, and the judge announced the beginning of the second round. By this time, Kai had already emerged from the depths of his own consciousness. His mind was as calm as the surface of the lake on a clear day and body as ready as a notched arrow.
Getting into the Arena, a student of the Forest Fairies at the Discovery of Acupuncture Points level stood before him. Her right eye was swollen shut from her last fight and there seemed to be a couple of locks of hair missing from her luscious mane, but other than that, she looked all right.
“Look, that weakling will finally have to fight!” One of the spectators drew attention to Kai’s arena. “With Wei Wei. She was eighty-ninth in the second stage, if I recall correctly.”
“Look at him! I told you!”
“Umm, what’s he doing?” another spectator asked quietly, puzzled. “Why did he sit down again?”
“What a fool!”
“Looks like he decided to give up.”
“Hmm… No, wait... He would’ve done so by now… I mean, it’s already been a minute or so...”
“Strange, but Wei Wei is in no hurry to attack either. What are they doing?”
“Are they talking?”
All of them instantly leaned forward as if that would help them hear the two better. They were looking closely at Kai’s and Wei Wei’s lips in order to try to understand at least something. However, the conversation quickly ended.
“Am I imagining things or did she say ‘thank you’ at the end?”
“You must be... What kind of nonsense is this…?” The student fell silent, as did everyone around him. Everyone froze, gazes stuck to the board.
Struggling, Wei Wei raised her hand and then shouted something. The barrier around them instantly disappeared. “Forfeited,” appeared under her name.
“What’s she doing? Why did she surrender?” one of them asked, having finally overcome the initial shock.
“I can’t believe this!”
“Apparently, she was too badly injured in the first battle.”
“Then why did she even enter the arena? She could’ve given up at the end of the first round!”
“You dumbass!” yelled a blonde girl with a mole above her upper lip. “If she didn’t appear, it would’ve affected her reputation. She did the right thing surrendering in the ar
ena. That takes a lot of courage and effort to do.”
“Makes sense, but… Why did she wait a whole minute then?”
“How would I know?”
“I think,” another viewer cut in, “that she was trying to see if she could still win somehow. This Kai fellow must’ve realized that she was wounded so he didn’t attack her.”
“Ah, had she been in a bit better condition, he would’ve lost instantly.”
“What a lucky wimp!”
“Aha, such a wimp. He made it this far because he’s a wimp, sure,” said a brunette with curly hair and rolled her eyes theatrically.
“Nonsense! Not that it matters anyway. He’ll have to fight with Tai Go eventually. Who, mind you, just broke his opponent’s spine over his knee. Can’t wait to see if he’ll fare any better.”
“I doubt that he will...”
“Bye-bye, Kai…”
Thus ended the second round with Kai never having had to fight anyone. In all honesty, he hadn’t expected this turn of events. Luckily, his next opponent was unharmed and determined.
The judge announced the last round for today.
“I didn’t think I’d get to fight you, wimp. But, since it happened, try not to surrender right away,” Tai Go said with a smirk.
“I wasn’t going to,” Kai replied with a grin.
Tai Go started toward Kai when suddenly he froze and roared with laughter.
“Ahahahaha!! You sure are a funny one! All right, enough fucking around, get your weapon out.”
“It’s already out,” Kai said and waved his hands.
“Arrogant. More luck than brains. Oh, I love killing entitled brats like you!” Tai Go roared and closed the distance between him and Kai. And although the latter was rather tall, he looked like a child in comparison to his opponent. “You know, I have a proposal for you,”
the giant said, stopping just before Kai. “Until they died, my brothers and I played a game called ‘Don’t Fall.’ The rules are simple — we hit each other in turn, until only one is left standing. However, you can’t defend yourself. So, waddya say? Wanna play?” He grinned, flashing his fang-like teeth.