After that strange encounter, Anzel finished his meal.
The mutual destruction tactic was now off the table. Guess I’ve gotta do things the proper way now. Trying to think up some new strategy and attempting to implement it now was too risky. Rather than trying to think outside the box, it seemed far safer to simply brute-force it. He just had to pray he didn’t get matched up with anyone he’d have a hard time with—especially Fressa and Lynette. If he did get matched with one of those two, he hoped it was at least around finals.
The match schedule for the first rounds of the tourney were posted on the bulletin boards in front of the arena and in each of the lodgings. But not only were there spectators always passing by the arena board, it was also a bit of a walk from the accommodations. There was no need to go all that way to check, so it was easiest for competitors to check the notice in their building.
“I’m fifth, huh?”
Lynette Bran was standing in front of her lodging’s bulletin board. She’d done nothing special to win her previous matches. She’d done nothing memorable, yet she never let the matches go too slow or too fast. Worded differently, she hadn’t particularly struggled in her fights. She’d ended up against a fairly strong crescent sword wielder in preliminaries, but she easily shut him down without trouble. (That man had been a member of the main house of the Qilong, but she remained unaware of that fact.)
Her first tourney match was going to be the fifth one of the day. Her opponent was Em Tairi, a female martial artist from Wu Haitong. There weren’t a lot of female competitors in the tournament, so Em had frequently been interviewed and featured in special focus segments. She was a cute, small girl who wore her black hair pulled back into two buns. She was always very easily embarrassed, and Lynette had a clear image of her nervous look. In any case, the cuteness factor was hard to miss.
Naturally, the fact she’d made it all the way here meant she was the real deal. All Lynette really knew about her was that she fought wielding two trident-like daggers known as sai. She meant no offense, but she really hadn’t looked into Em that much. Lynette was fairly certain she could win easily. It would probably play out like all the matches she’d had before.
Lynette was much more interested in the second match between Sauzan Flameen and Lestra. Sauzan was a swordsman who had come from Slengradd, a country far from Altoire. He’d said in an interview that he was like an adventurer but not quite. The audience viewed him as a funny person with a big secret. Everyone seemed to agree that he clearly had something important about him that he couldn’t divulge, but he was also a terrible liar, so any time the interview questions took him too close to revealing it, he would start comically stumbling over his words.
Underneath all of that, though, he was strong. Lynette had been curious about him for a long time. He fought in a similar way to her—they were both swordsmen and had won their matches in a plain and steady way, taking no risks.
Lynette had been considering how she would take him down if they ended up facing off—and she still hadn’t come up with an answer. It seemed unlikely she could win by fighting him normally. She was only on the same level of Sauzan if she used chi, so she didn’t think it possible for her to disrupt his stable swordsmanship. If the match went long, she’d end up unable to maintain her chi and her chances of winning would drop dramatically.
If she wanted a chance of winning, she may have to use her hidden move. But in an environment like this with the public watching, she would likely only have one chance to use it. She wouldn’t be able to get away with it a second time. Once the fighters knew what she could do, they’d be able to counter it.
Sauzan was the main fighter she was interested in, but that didn’t mean Lestra hadn’t also caught her eye. As someone with elven blood, Lestra had a long lifespan, and reflecting that, she had been in the adventuring business for a long time too. She was talented and had had a long career—it was unsurprising that she’d made a name for herself. Having studied in the Department of Adventuring back in middle school, Lynette obviously knew her name.
But she had heard that Lestra was a magician. It made it feel all the stranger that she was participating in this martial arts tournament.
“You’re Lynette, aren’t you?”
As Lynette was looking at the match schedule, a woman came up beside her.
“Yes. I was actually just thinking about you.”
Speaking of the devil, it was Lestra, the beautiful lady with pointed ears. Although she was likely older than even Lynette’s parents, she could have easily passed as a young adult. Perhaps even younger than Lynette herself. The indicators of her elven blood were more than evident.
Incidentally, it seemed she wasn’t a half-elf. Half-elves were the children of a human and an elf, but in Lestra’s case, she just had an elf somewhere in her ancestry—somewhere so far back that even Lestra herself wasn’t aware of who it was—and those features had been passed down generation after generation. It might have been an exaggeration to say she had elven blood to begin with. Even the lady herself seemed to just view it as a very small part of her heritage.