“And our victor is Anzel! Anzel is our champion of the weapons division!”
The white-haired kid made a declaration that was nearly lost in the deafening cheers.
“Tch!”
“Shit!”
Some of the villains made their escape from the warehouse where the illegal gamble had been taking place—specifically Lesten and Frozen. The two dashed out as fast as their legs could take them. Their bodyguards dashed out after them.
“Heh heh heh.”
“Hoh hoh hoh.”
The elderly men of Wu Haitong were chuckling to themselves. They clearly found the shameful conduct of the cocky upstarts rather amusing. Whether fifty billion krams or a hundred billion krams, such large sums of money were barely anything to them, no doubt. But to the two who had run out, that amount was enough to completely destroy them.
“What’s the plan now, Kaffes?”
Anzel had won. In other words, Kaffes had won the bet. As had Grieg.
“I’ve already given orders to my men. They aren’t getting far.” That was why he had sent a signal to them earlier. They’d decided beforehand that the signal meant that something was about to happen, so they were to remain at the ready. “Grieg, you’re going straight back to Vanderouge, aren’t you? Bring my men with you. I’d like to ask you to collect some debts.”
Lesten and Frozen were both based in Vanderouge, right next to Grieg’s turf.
“Wanna use me as a debt collector, eh? I doubt they have even fifty billion on them, though. Guess we’ll just split what they own between us?”
“I don’t mind splitting thirty-seventy.”
Kaffes would make sure they collected every last kram from those two even if it meant digging through all the cracks. Something like that would take its fair share of time and effort, though. If he was going to ask Grieg to go through all that, he couldn’t ask for a fifty-fifty split.
“Hmm... Well, that’s acceptable.” Grieg stood up. “I’ll get going, then. This was fun, Kaffes. I’d like to invite you to an event next time in return.”
“I won’t get my hopes up too high.”
With two large men trailing behind him, Grieg left the warehouse.
“Shall we oldies get ourselves going too, then?” Keya Kin said as he stood up.
“Of course.” Zen Fowah stood up too. “It’s been a while since we’ve attended anything this exciting.”
“Kaffes, I’ll send the money over to you in the coming days.”
“I’ll give you a bit of a tip too. Don’t waste it now.”
The inscrutable old men left with their subordinates.
“Go confirm what happened with Lesten and Frozen,” Kaffes ordered the remaining black-suits. When they were gone, he was alone. The cheers were still echoing from the MagiPad.
Everything was starting to sink in.
He’d won.
He’d won a fifty-billion-kram bet.
“The kid really did it...”
Kaffes poured a celebratory drink into a glass and chugged it down. For once, there was a smile on his face.
Indeed, the taste of alcohol after a victory was truly exceptional.
The long martial arts tournament had come to a successful end and everyone who had been involved returned to their usual lives. Over time, even the exhilarating passion of the Altoire citizens slowly died down as they also returned to normal.
After a week, the foreign competitors had mostly left the country. After a month, tournament merchandise began disappearing from the shelves. The rebroadcasts of the tournament matches had drastically decreased too, but it turned out there were still those enjoying them, so there was quite the demand to keep the rebroadcasts going.
Naturally, a lot changed after that tournament. For the competitors, there were quite a lot of them who had ended up liking Altoire, and the number of people seen going in and out of the adventurer’s guild had increased.
There were those like the tygre brothers who had gotten so many magivision offers that they’d chosen to remain in Altoire for a while. There had been more competitors than just the Kedo Brothers who looked like they would shine on magivision, like Scarlet. I wonder what happened with her?
Sauzan and Tohaulow, the two Hero candidates of the Heroic Star Assembly, had already left the country.
My students had returned to their own everyday lives.
And then I also...did not return to my old normal, however much I wish I could say that.
Instead, my life took a dramatic turn.
“Nia Liston, I now sentence you to exile.”
That decree came from His Majesty the King himself.