I forgot we’d talked about a family trip before. We’d struggled to fit it in since I’d had so much recording to do over the last year. I’d basically never had a true holiday period.
Though, for me, that one hunting expedition was pretty much a holiday for me. It was fun.
“That sounds nice,” I said. “Winter vacation will be right after the tournament, though, so I may still be a bit busy.” The break would be in just a little over a month—there would probably still be residual excitement. There were certain things that could only be recorded right after a tournament as well, so we’d likely be working on that.
“Then let’s go in spring,” father decided. “I’ll get Bendelio to free up space for you.”
Oh my, you’ll tell that distinctive face directly to not give me more work? If he was going to go that far, then I may as well view it as a done deal.
A family holiday in the spring, hmm? I...wasn’t entirely sure if I was looking forward to it. I wouldn’t mind if they all went and enjoyed it without me. The one Neal and my parents really wanted to spend that time with was the real Nia Liston, not me.
But if the schedule had been decided, I couldn’t really say no.
Though, it turned out that things happened that made it impossible for me to go anyway.
“This rule will be in effect starting today in order to protect the lives of our competitors.”
Anzel could only sit there stunned as he heard the new rule. “You’ve gotta be shittin’ me.” He had been in the middle of having his breakfast in the cafeteria of his accommodation, watching the princess’s announcement on the MagiPad along with the other fighters having their own meals.
Magic treatment was now off-limits.
Anzel had been intending to do whatever it took to take out his opponent, even if it meant damaging his own body. With this update, it was like his only chance at victory had been completely crushed.
The ideal outcome would be to fight and come out unscathed. But an ideal was simply that: an ideal. It would have been naive to think that would be feasible for every fight, so he’d been trying to devise a different way to win. What he’d landed on was willingly taking a blow from his opponent to take them out at the same time. He’d been perfecting his defense specifically for that reason.
Now, he couldn’t take that route. Even if he won with that tactic, getting injured would be the worst thing he could do. A bout like that wouldn’t end with a little scrape; the injury would be major.
It wasn’t that Anzel didn’t understand the reasoning behind the rule. Sure, it was inconvenient, but he wasn’t against it. There were likely a lot of fighters in this tournament who had been considering similarly reckless tactics because they’d been under the assumption they could immediately get magic treatment after the fight. They’d just been denied their recklessness, that was all.
He greatly agreed with the ruling too—he didn’t want there to be deaths any more than the next person. He didn’t want to die himself, that was for sure, and he didn’t want to kill either.
Whatever the case, rules were rules. He could complain all he wanted, it was set in stone now. All he could do now was accept the rule and think up a different winning strategy.
“Hey, uh...”
“Huh?” Anzel looked up when he suddenly heard someone talk to him. “Uh...who are you again?”
It was a male competitor with around the same build as Anzel... Anzel could tell that he was pretty strong.
“Sauzan.”
“Ohh, so you’re Sauzan.”
In one of her unprompted tirades, Fressa had mentioned that this guy was one of the ones who had caught her eye. If someone like her had shown an interest, then it seemed pretty certain that this guy was strong. Anzel had been so focused on his own training that he was clueless about everyone else in this tournament.
And that was fine by him. It didn’t matter who his opponent was—he just had to take them down.
“Did you want somethin’ from me?”
“That.” Sauzan pointed at the lump of meat sitting square in the middle of the salad on Anzel’s plate, ready to be cut into with his knife and fork. “Is that pork?”
“Yeah. It’s been grilled to remove the fat.”
“To remove it? Even though the fat is the tastiest part?”
“I mean, we’re about to do some intense exercise, ain’t we? I’d rather avoid anything heavy that’ll sit in my stomach.”
Sauzan’s eyes widened. “Shouldn’t you make sure to eat big meals because we’re about to fight?”
“Oh, uh... That kinda depends on the person, don’t it?” Like someone’s condition at the time, their appetite, even their body’s constitution. What was this all about anyway? “Somethin’ wrong with pork?”
“No, it’s just I heard that Altoire’s pork was nice, so I want to try it out. Someone told me where the specialty meat was from, but I already forgot the name. So I want to try and eat a lot of pork. One of them has gotta be the one they recommended.”
The words coming out of this guy’s mouth were so vague. But just like what one ate before a match was dependent on the person, so was the way one spoke.
“If they were talking about pork famous in Altoire, they were probably talking about meat from the Silver territories.”
“That’s it. It was something like that.”
“I dunno if this is Silver pork. You’d have to ask the chef. That all?”
“Yeah, thanks. Sorry for suddenly jumping you like that.”