(A/N: I tried, so hard, to make this chapter be the beginning of the tournament but I just couldn't so that will be next chapter, I promise. Oh and i blame Pathfinder for being late with the chapter, been looking in to that game for way too much lately.)

”Okay, I guess we are done for today.” Bryn finally speaks the words I have been dying to hear. “I suppose congratulations are in order for passing this month’s training program.”

“Training program!? You’re fucking with me right?”

“Hahaha, come on now don’t be like that. It has been a good month for the both of us, right?”

“Good month my ass! All you ever did was throw me in to fucked up situations and say “deal with it”, while you watch. Every day I’ve suffered for your schemes and what do I got to show for it? A few silver coins and half the city wanting me dead!”

“Oh don’t blame me for your lack of coins; I never forced you to bet your money. I just suggested that we could. Besides had you won you would be the one with all the gold while I would have been the one with the few silvers.”

“Fuck you Bryn. I know you cheated me on those bets! You never gave me the information I needed nor did you…

“…So sorry to butt in like this, but… Ehm… do you mind letting go of my colleague? He is starting to go blue…” A small man interrupted me...

I look down at the one he was talking about. He was lying on a table inside the room while I was standing next to him, my hand squeezing his windpipe.

“Why should I? He is the one, who decided to attack me, if I were to just let him go then him what is to stop him from attacking me again once he recovers?”

“I do believe that his broken arms would be a big deterrent…”

“Hah! Yea right. As if he couldn’t just get a healer to fix him right up. Don’t take me for an idiot. Just a week ago that same thing happened where a friend tried to have me let his buddy go, promising that they would not retaliate. It didn’t take them two days before they came out and dragged me in to an alley in order to get revenge. I’m damn lucky that they were drunk as hell or I would never have gotten out of there alive. So no, I am not going to let go of your friend here until I have a valid reason to believe that him and his friends…” I gesture to the rest of the room where eight men lay unconscious or groaning in pain. ”…won’t come to bother me in the future.”

Most of them have broken bones or are bleeding from various wounds caused by the broken furniture and kitchen utensils that litter the ground. I myself have big bruises on my face and one of my fingers has been broken on my free hand.

The small man nervously grasped his hands and gazed around the room.

“I-if I may be so bold, I do believe that in order to heal up the wounds that you have inflicted on them, with all right of course, they will have to have plenty of time to rest. Also I can assure you that after this event they will most certainly never think of getting revenge… So if you don’t mind…” The little man’s gaze wandered from me to his friend on the table and back.

“Like I said, unless I have some guarantee that they won’t I ain’t going to let go.”

“W-well if you would just release you grip temporarily I am sure my friend here can assure you about it himself…”

“Oh fine!” I say and release my grip enough that the man can gasp for breath, the color of his face soon changes back from a bluish purple to a deep red color as he coughs and hacks.

“Ohy!” I squeeze his pipe some more in order to get his attention. “Well, what do you say? Will you guys come after me after you have healed your wounds? Maybe gather up some more men first and then ambush me in the middle of the night, something like that? Huh!?”

Unable to speak he just shakes his head vigorously, his eyes wide in terror.

“Oh, so you will leave me alone from now on then?”

He nods and I can see him starting to relax a bit.

“I see now if only you could make me believe you…” I can see a new light go over his eyes and as he struggles to draw a breath I loosen my grip a little.

“Pa… p-pou…” He manages to squeeze out.

“I am assuming you mean your pouch right?” He nods again.

“Okay so I will take the pouch as a sign of good faith this time. But if there is a next time then you will not have this opportunity, alright?” With a final nod I let go of him and walk to Bryn who is sitting on the bar, drinking mug after mug of ale.

“Well, we are done here, shall we get moving? You obviously need to get yourself cleaned up.”

“Yea, no thanks to you. Did you know Millie was boasting about you before I met you, said that you were some great fighter. Yet all this time I have never once seen you throw a punch.”

“Well a good fighter knows to let other do the fighting, haha!” He laughs and grabs the bag behind the counter that we came here for. “Well Winnie, I trust you have no further objections to me taking this, right? After all you did promise it…”

“Ah, yes… I-…of course. It’s all yours just, don’t come back here okay?”

“That depends on you keeping up with your payments Winnie.” With that we waltz on out of there. Just in time too, as the guards come running from up the road.

“We running?” I ask Bryn with a sigh.

“Do you have to ask that every time? Of course we’re running!”

I hate running from guards. They are so damn persistent. And when I have to go back to the castle I always feel bad when they salute me. Even though they probably chased me all over the city by now.

The reason I hadn’t been asked about that was my cloak. By now the dirt had made it look just like any other cloak, just one of hundreds in the city. So when the guards started chasing me and all they saw was my cloak, I was able to get away without consequence. Speaking of getting away, I had gotten rather good at it.

I followed Bryn around the building we just came out of and in to the alley leading to the main street. As soon as we got there, me and Bryn split off, each heading a different direction to meet up later in the evening. Once I saw that no guard was in sight I removed the hood and arranged the cloak behind my shoulders rather than drabbed around me, showing off my armor underneath. Then I started wandering while leisurely looking around, going into shops and stands here and there. I paid a few copper for a pie piece and sat down in the sun eating while looking around with a bored look. It didn’t take long for the Guards to finally show up, swearing a storm at loosing us again.

“This is the third time those violent bastards slip out of our fingers this week. Gods take me, the next time I see them I will shoot on sight!”

I sigh at the incompetence of guards in this city. I mean sure they have swords and armor and they know how to use them but if you compare them to modern day police then they are like a gang that can only do something if they catch you in the act. And even then they have to actually catch you. Hell if they even had the same mindset as a police officer then they would have been able to easily find me. After all plenty of people saw me exiting the alley with the dwarf, they saw me take off my hood, getting a pie and sitting down here, a mere twenty meters form the angry guards. Really they can ask anyone about a man and a dwarf coming out from the alley and they would point me out in seconds. Yet the guards just stamped the ground in frustration before getting back to their posts.

Idiots...

After I finished my pie I got up and left for the castle. It was a bit early but I was still looking forward to relaxing in the gardens.

In the past month it had become an almost daily routine. In the morning I would stretch and do some warm-up exercises that i made up myself. Then I would meet Bryn somewhere inside the city, most of the time I would have to find him rather than meet him at a set location though. After he… trained me… I would head back to the castle to eat after which I would meet Mrs. Gray for her lessons. And come evening I would go to the gardens for some quiet time. The girl would just happen to have the same idea and join me.

We would never really chat for long but those times had slowly become something I unconsciously longed for. Of course if you asked me about it at the time I would have said that she was only an annoyance and that I would rather have been alone. But the truth was that I had come to like my encounters with this strange girl and her many questions. Don’t get me wrong, there was no romantic feelings involved, she just didn’t fit my preferences. That and she were too young for my taste, a mere teenager. After she had misunderstood my dealing in town she never brought it up again and instead we played this game where I never really told her what I had been doing in the city, and she never really told me who she really was. It was a fun game.

After changing and sending my armor and clothes to the cleaners with instructions to have it done by the morning, they had gotten used to it by now; I went to the kitchen and ordered a picnic basket. Then I walked to the garden. By now my feet already knew the way to where I wanted to go.

The garden was, as always, in full bloom. Flowers and herbs showering the air with a refreshing sent. I had asked one of the gardeners once if the garden was always in bloom thanks to magic and they had reassured me that it was all thanks to the god’s good will that the garden had been in such beautiful condition ever since the heroes had been summoned. A bunch of nonsense. In other words yes, it was thanks to magic that it had kept blooming like this. Most likely the royal family had asked a few mages and druids to cast spells on them in order to keep up the farce that it was all the gods will, and that the gods stood behind the royal family’s decision etc. I personally just didn’t care enough to point it out to them and so instead I chose to enjoy the blooming garden.

I entered the rainbow circle that had come to be my spot and sat down in the grass. I decided to wait a little to see if I would get some company before digging in. To entertain myself while I waited I started to do some magic exercises. They were the other part of my daily training, on Mrs. Grays order. That woman was a pain to deal with. She never listens to others opinions and just makes up her own. After arranging my visit to her quarters she swiftly introduced one elemental magic teacher after another and had them teach me, one by one. They were of the classic, wind, fire, water, earth, elements but also teachers focusing on variants of those elements like ice, lightning, sand and so on. But instead of teaching me like they would the others they were under strict orders to teach me only the useful parts of their magic.

A good example would be the fire magic teacher. While fire magic can be very powerful, summoning rains of fire to burn your foes and calling out magma to melt anything in to slag, the only really useful part of fire magic is to light something on fire and to increase the temperature of something. Those two things were all he was allowed to teach me. Which suited me just fine; using those two simple spells I could manage without any problems. After all why should I need to rain down fire from the heavens when I could just set someone on fire using a much simpler spell? Why should I call forth magma from the earth in order to melt things in to slag when I could just heat it up until it melted?

No Mrs. Gray really had the right idea, if only she wasn’t so darn forceful with it. I mean she would more or less ignore any and all complaints, thoughts or opinions unless she had first asked for them. And the way she would look down on you… Anyway after she had them teach me the simple spells form each element she then had me do the hole sit down and meditate thing in order to expand my “mana pool”, you know, that hole in my soul, by forcing in more mana then it could contain. This process was normal for a mage to keep doing until the image of his soul was only a thin layer outlining the mana pool.

Unfortunately something went wrong and on the third day as I was sitting there trying to stretch my soul; I suddenly felt an incredible amount of pain throughout my entire body. Screaming I collapsed in spasms and all I could think was “please don’t tell me this is epilepsy, anything but that”. Luckily it was not epilepsy, after a few healers examined me and had an intense discussion they all came to the conclusion that my mana pool had somehow damaged my soul, causing incredible pain when stretched any further. This was confusing for me since my mana pool was hardly bigger then a fist, and if the ideal would be to have it fill the image of my body, leaving only a thin layer to show my form then I had a long, long way to go. When asking for a cure all they could do was talk some bullshit about praying to their gods for guidance. So for now I had a tiny mana pool. Mrs. Gray was quite distraught at this but it didn’t really matter to me. After all I could still use the spells I’d been thought without hindrance. The expanding of my mana pool was only so that I could keep casting spells without having to refill my mana every few minutes, thereby improving the amount of time I could spend training on the different usages of the spells.

Magic really was rather amazing though. According to Mrs. Grays lectures low level spells were fundamentally different from higher level spells. The reason was because of their complexity, the bigger the spell the more rules it has to follow. Meanwhile a low level spell was a lot more flexible in the way it could be used. Take for example a classic [Ice Lance] spell. While it is powerful and has great piercing capabilities. That is all it can really do. Meanwhile a low level spell like [Summon Ice], which is used for novice mages to train their control, can take any form while being easily manipulated. The only downside is that should you try to replicate the [Ice Lance] not only would you end up with a worse result; it would also take much longer. But the advantage lies in its adaptability. Being able to take any shape and to be able to give that shape instructions after the fact enables you to do an infinite amount of things.

It was all really fun. I mean really, I loved playing around with my magic and finding new ways of using it. In fact it took me two weeks after the first lesson to stop setting my hand on fire every two seconds, just to prove to myself that I could. You could imagine the reactions of those around me during that period…

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

Anyway the exercise I had been told to preform was the way of applying different spells to perform the same task. In the beginning it was all rather simple tasks. Move this ball 1 meter in any direction. Have the ball hit the ceiling. Heat up this water. Now freeze it. Things like that using each element in turn. Some things were impossible to do, like you try using sand to freeze a cup of water… But this way I found out the best way of doing things and the alternative ways of getting it done. The fact that I could use fire to freeze water to ice for example really surprised me. I could see some of these applications being used to confuse your enemy a great deal. Unfortunately she never had me use my magic against anyone so far. When I asked how to use magic in actual battle she didn’t even react. Well, that’s just how she is so I didn’t take it to heart.

The exercise I was attempting this time was to split a rock in two. The goal was to find alternative ways of accomplishing the task using different elements. I had already finished it using water magic, ice magic, lightning magic and fire magic. So today I thought I would give wind magic a try. Honestly I didn’t believe that I would get anywhere. Wind magic is one of the trickiest magic’s to understand. In essence wind magic if the magic ability to manipulate gasses in the air. The problem is that unless you can actually differentiate among all the gasses in the air you can’t manipulate just a single one. Hence why wind magic is mostly just a force pushing and pulling the air around to create certain effects. The higher versions of wind magic is never just pure wind but rather a mixed magic creating the effects of for example a sandstorm, using wind and sand magic, or a typhoon, using wind and water magic. Of course there is the tornado and the hurricane but even those are just a mixture of heated up and cooled down air. Pure wind magic is not capable of something that extravagant. Pure wind magic is only really used for pushing things around.  

What Mrs. Gray had the mages teach me about wind magic was only two simple spells. [Push] and [Vacuum]. [Push] makes the air move to an area, while [Vacuum] have it leave an area. Simple right? That’s what I thought until she explained that both are just different ways of achieving the same result.

I pick up a decorative stone, the size of my fist, from the garden and with a hand motion and a few words I cast [Push] on the rock in my other hand. As the spell goes off I control the strength of the wind by feeding it more or less mana and I control the size actually wind using additional hand motions and added magic words. At first I was only able to create a broad wind that rustled my hair but was without any real strength but as I fine-tuned the spell I was able to funnel the air in to a concentrated beam. It took quite a bit of experimentation but eventually I was able to reduce the size of that blowing beam to be half a centimeter wide. Unfortunately that still did nothing to the stone even when I tried to increase the output to the max. Reducing the winds affected area was not as easy as you might think for I could only feel the wind using my hand, or test its size on the ground. It was like trying to line up mirrored sunlight to as small a point as possible, eventually it gets so bright it’s impossible to see. It doesn’t help that the air can’t be seen and the magic is imprecise. I eventually ran out of mana about 15 minutes later.

Damn it, do I have to make some sort of funnel using earth or ice to make this work? No I should try some more, let’s see what I can to with [Vacuum] once I have refilled my mana.

At this point I hear a slight rustling of cloth and turn my head in a start. A woman dressed in a violet dress jumps a little at my sudden movement.

“Ah! M-my apologies, my lord.” She stutters out. I frown a little trying to place her but I can’t imagine seeing her before.

“What is it?” I ask with more agitation in my voice then I really meant.

“E-ehm, I was told by the lady… that is, you see…” She appeared to have some trouble, most likely because of our little game. Since that is the case I help her get on with it.

“Yes I can guess who you mean. Did you have a message from her?”

“Ah, yes. My lady regrets to inform you of being unable to accompany you this evening due to the preparations needed for tomorrow’s event.”

“I don’t see why she would send anyone here for such a small matter. It’s not as if we had arranged to meet here, we just stumbled upon each other here every once in a while since we both enjoy to spend time in this garden.”

Why do I keep sounding more and more like a snob when I talk to these kinds of people?

“My lady also wanted to express her wishes to see you in the morrow’s tournament…” She gives me a look as if she knows where I stand on this.

“I have no such intention.”

“She also hopes that you will change your intention of not participating. My lady believes that you would fare very well in the competition and has strong hopes that you will take… a high position when it is over.” The girl blushes when she speaks the last part, obviously thinking of romance rather than power.

I massage my forehead in frustration; this has been a frequent topic of hers ever since I mentioned that I had no intention of participating in the games. I believed that I had more than a few valid reasons not to.

“So tell her that I have no need of such a ‘position’. Something she very well knows by now. And as for how I would fare if I were to enter the tournament neither she nor I can say, after all I have no good idea as to the other heroes abilities and as such I can’t judge if I would win or not. Although if I were to make a guess I would say that in this competition the others are far superior to me.”

After all I have a bit of a fear towards being the center of attention in such a huge crowd. I would probably just freeze up and stumble around making a fool out of myself. There is also that other thing…

“Shall I tell my lady that you will not appear in the tournament then?” She says with a bit of a sour tone. She is obviously not happy and is glaring at me.

I roll my eyes and answer her.

“Yes, tell her that I have no intention of going to the tournament other then perhaps watching the mages competition as a spectator. Do tell her that I hope she will have a good time and not let my absence dull her enjoyment of the games.”

I felt rather proud with my snobby tone. I almost sounded like a full-fledged noble.

“Very well I shall confer to her your opinions on the matter.” With that she lifts her dress and gives a slight bow like a pro before heading back to the castle.

Well, no point in waiting for company then. I think to myself and open the basket to enjoy a nice meal.

Later I go meet up with Bryn.

“Hey, just in time.”

“Hey Bryn, you got my share right?”

“Of course, got it right here.” He throws a small leather bag with some coin over to me.

“So, what’s next?”

“Oh you are going to love this, my friend. You remember Sam right?”

“He is not a man you can easily forget.”

“Right, well Sam and some friends of his are going to compete in the tournament and so he got in touch with Broker. You know, from the Den?” Broker was a gambler who would set up bets for anything as long as there was money and interest involved. “Anyway they got this betting started for the tournament and they made some… arrangements, shall we say to better their odds. What I was thinking is that we make our own… arrangements. Right? You getting me here?”

“Sigh, not this again. You do remember what happened last time we dealt with Broker right? I don’t want to go through that shit again.” 20 guards, 30 drunks, a bet going bad and an angry mage. It was known as “The big Disaster” in the underworld.

“Oh come on you hardly have to do anything. It will be easy, just shut up and listen to me for a moment. First the deal Sam and his friends worked out was that they would all sign up together and whenever they come across each other, one of them would throw the fight. So it’s a simple fix right? But what if they went further than that? What if they arranged it so that Sam would come out ahead every time, that way they could not only get the money for betting on Sam but they could also split the prize money that Sam would eventually win, making an even bigger score. Now I was thinking. What if we put you in there as well? What if you went in and you joined all the other competitions and lost, lowering your odds, only to then have Sam lose to you in the finals? That would rake in more gold then you could ever need!”

“Sounds unlikely. The fights are randomly selected so you never know who meets who. What will you do if we meet on the first or second round?”

“Ah don’t worry about that, Broker got an inside man to set something up for that.”

“Hah! Haven’t we heard that before?”

“Yes, yes, so the plan has some small problems in it. But we can work those out, right? Think about the gold my friend. An opportunity like this won’t come around often, and this is the perfect time for it. With the heroes here everyone’s attention will be on the sword fights and the mage battles. Only peasants will watch the brawls, the noble’s hates watching men roll around in the dirt. So setting something up will be a walk in the park. And remember that the winners get really good prizes no matter the competition.”

“Okay, let’s say you can fix the fights so that me and Sam, if we win, will meet at the finals. Then what? I can still lose on my first round and the plan will be fucked. I mean sure, if this was a real fight then I would be able to pull through somehow, gods know I have done it plenty of times already. But this is a competition; they have tons of bullshit rules...”

“Rules can be bent. Don’t worry about the small stuff I will take care of it. All I need is some capital and we are good to go…”

“Oh so that is what this is about? You want to take my money away again? Fuck you, use your own damn money.”

“Not at all! Seriously do you think so little of me? I was going to suggest that we pool our money together and use it to bet on you in the tournament. Only safe bets, of course. That way we can gain maximum profits.”

True, we could make a lot of gold, and I will need gold in the future I bet. And if we only bet on fixed fights then there are little risks involved…

I stop myself realizing that I am getting to in to this. I made my decision almost a month ago and now a little bit of gold is changing my mind?

“Forget it, I’m not competing anyway. It’s a waste of time.”

“What the hell are you on about? Don’t back down like this now. It’s just a few days of mock fighting and a big sack of gold for each of us.”

“That’s just it Bryn. You know how my body works. A few days of mock fighting might mess it all up, especially if I have to hold back and loose on purpose. What if this month of hard work is all destroyed just because of a few gold coins. I don’t want to take that risk.”

What I was talking about was something I had learned soon after meeting Bryn. At the time I had been doing my own training, trying to teach myself how to fight. I had been shadowboxing like an action star would. They would actively show the windup and then linger after a move was finished. This was the very reason why my fight with Sam had gone on for so long. Sam had been able to clearly see everything I was doing because I prepared myself before every move. Essentially I had taught my body how to show the opponent what I intend to do. You can imagine how bad that is in a real fight. It took us three weeks of intense fighting to get rid of those bad habits and now I actively had to think about everything I learned so that I would avoid making the same mistake again. A high kick might look cool but unless you know when to use it and have trained to do so at that time, a high kick can get you killed. Finding out just how harmful my misinterpretations of a real fight were, hurt. And I don’t mean mentally.

“You don’t want to fight because it might harm your progression, is that it? Fine, then how about if you don’t have to hold back. What if we talk to Sam and his buddies and we just have them throw the matches to you and you can just beat them up. We would probably have to pay them a bit extra on the side but overall it should be fine. As for the other matches… How about this: you can fight the first match in each competition at full strength. No holding back, no giving up. After the first match you simply give up on the others due to injury or some other excuse. With only 1 win your odds will still be very low and when we come to the brawl we will be able to get some good cash. As for the brawl matches we will set it up so that your opponent is either weaker then you, and we might be able to make them surrender or they will throw the match, making it look like it was their mistake that made you win. Most of the times you will look like you win for other reasons rather than your actual strength. Sure we won’t have full control but if push comes to shove we can just block the view of the judges so you can go all out.”

“Sigh, I don’t know Bryn…”

“That’s a yes! Okay let’s go meet with Broker and work out the details. We have until tomorrow afternoon to prepare so we better hurry up.”

(A/N: I might as well mention that I am looking for PR's so if there is anyone interested I could really use the help. :)

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