“Wah! Wah! So you’re the Executioner!” A boy adventurer with a youthful face was clamoring excitedly onto the arena stage.
“Is he by himself…?”
Alina furrowed her brow at the number of their opponents.
Though the starting bell had rung, the boy was still by himself. There was also no sign that any allies would show up.
“The judge isn’t stopping the match… Does that mean you applied solo from the start?” Jade muttered, lowering his voice in a question.
Lowe was silent, as if he were wary of something, while Lululee seemed somehow anxious.
“So he’s doing it for the experience?” Alina asked Jade. It seemed clear at a glance that the boy wasn’t trying to win.
But Lowe answered no to her question. “We should keep our guards up. I just watched a different match where a guy was participating on his own, too, and he beat a full party like it was nothing.”
“One person beat a full party…?!”
Ignoring Silver Sword’s confusion, their opponent continued to act excited. “My name is Gose! It’s an honor to be able to fight the Executioner!”
He was about fourteen or fifteen years old. He was roughly the same height as Alina, and you’d be hard-pressed to call him muscular, even if you were trying to flatter him. His delicate frame was lightly armored, and he had a knife at his waist. The one unique thing about him was that he had a large stuffed leather bag hanging from his shoulder, even though they weren’t in a dungeon.
“Man, whoever seeded these matches was awful, making an innocent boy like me fight the Executioner. You don’t want to whack li’l ole me with a war hammer, right?”
“Skill Activate: Dia Break.”
“Wait wait wait!”
While thinking, If nothing else, this guy is annoying, Alina mercilessly pulled out her silver war hammer.
Gose’s face twitched as he watched this. “U-um, listen, I don’t think I could beat you in an honest fight, okay, so I came today thinking we could do something interesting!” he said in a panic, and then with a “ta-daa!” he brought two statuettes out from his leather bag.
“!”
Alina’s eyes widened with a start, and she froze.
The two statuettes were exactly the same shape. And they weren’t just any figures. They were vaguely human-shaped, twisted around in a mocking pose. Odd patterns danced on their surfaces, and the mark of Dia flickered mysteriously inside their bodies.
Yes, they were the same as the prize that was supposed to be in the lobby.
Alina wasn’t the only one to be taken aback at this. When the audience members saw the statuettes, a great commotion instantly broke out.
“Hey, is that the victory prize?”
“Why does that kid have it?”
“And there’s two that are exactly the same…?”
“Is one a fake? Is this for entertainment?”
“You!” Unsurprisingly, the judge couldn’t just stand by and watch, so he called off the match, came up onstage, and approached Gose. “Is one of those real? If it is, this is theft—”
Alina saw Gose’s lips curl into a smirk.
“Flama.” The boy muttered a spell and pointed his index finger at the judge. Instantly, a mysterious blue flame about the size of a small grain came forth from his fingertip to attack the judge like a lead bullet.
But the blue flame just skimmed the judge’s head. “W-waaaagh!”
Gose cackled as the judge panicked and fell on his bottom. “Don’t get in the way, pops.”
For an instant, cruelty peeked out from the boy’s innocent smile, and he summoned another blue flame from his right hand and directed it at the judge.
The judge blanched at the boy’s clear hostility.
“Wait!” Jade immediately got between the boy and the judge, greatshield raised. “Attacking the judge will get you disqualified. Are you aware of that?”
“Th-that’s right…,” the judge wrung out hoarsely, pointing at Gose from behind Jade’s back. “You little shit, acting nicely and then pushing your luck…! Disqualified! Disqualified! Disqualified!”
Gose snorted at the immaturely wailing judge, then paid him no more attention as he turned to Alina. “Frankly, I thought it was strange that you would show up in the tournament. You seem like you wouldn’t be interested in this sort of thing.”
Alina’s heart pounded in her chest. “…What are you trying to say?”
Gose giggled at her wariness. Then he lowered his voice and said in a whisper, “Hey, could it be that you know the secret of this figure…?”
“…?!” On reflex, Alina sucked in air and made a weird sound.
Seeing her freeze, Gose puffed out his chest proudly, as if to say his intuition had been on the mark. “I’m just like you, Executioner. I know the secret of this statuette.”
As Alina stood there speechless, her hands trembled slightly.
The boy knew—that she had flicked the figure’s head off…!
For a moment, her mind went blank from despair. It was such a shock that she lost her sense of balance, growing dizzy enough to feel as though she was being sucked toward the ground. She was so rattled that she forgot all about the possibility of shutting him up with a good thwack from her war hammer.
As Alina gritted her teeth and somehow resisted the urge to break down, Gose said something even more unbelievable.
“Hey, let’s play a game. One of these statuettes is the real deal, and one is a fake that looks exactly the same. If you can win at this game, then I’ll give you the real one. But if you can’t win…I’ll reveal what the real figure really is right here.”
“…?!”
“How about it? Wanna give it a shot?”
“…” After a silence, Alina nodded. Since the boy knew, she had no choice but to accept this game.
Gose seemed satisfied as he returned the two figures to his bag for the moment, then stirred them around inside before pulling them out once more. “So which one is the real victory prize?” He smirked mischievously. “You only get one shot. And you do know what will happen if you get it wrong, right…?”