"...~Begin…"

To the surprise of the independent, Alfred shot forward the instant the signal was given. Instantly, a thunderous cheer shook the entire stadium. Both of these facts didn't affect any of the participants still in the tournament.

Despite their young age, each contestant already had countless battles that risked death, thunderous cheer was a weekly occurrence for them.

Still, some take it better than others. Alfred had blocked out the whole world outside their little platform, as he didn't need it, focusing entirely on pummeling the kid to the ground.

He charged in with vigor and aggressively locked shields with the kid. Alfred's shield was much smaller, giving him slightly more leverage and control over his opponent's shield.

As expected, the independent's first course of action was to regain vision and attack at the same time. Although it was one of the correct options in such a situation, that would only apply if Alfred had continued using his weapons in the assault.

In that instant, Alfred swept the independent's legs with no resistance, temporarily lifting him off the ground.

As the independent's sword and shield were still held in a position that impeded Alfred's sword, he instead chose to strike with the edge of his shield, instantly shattering his opponent's nose and dazing him into confusion.

To his credit, he quickly rolled and stood up, but began to stumble.

Alfred was greatly impressed by the power he was able to put out. 'There is this much of a difference between a civilian and an apprentice?' he thought while continuing his assault once he saw his opponent intended to fight on.

Now, the independent had a great deal of seriousness coupled with fear and regret in his hazy eyes. Alfred saw this and decided to test out his most recent technique on an opponent other than the wisp. Continuous Remise.

He started the assault with his shield up, and swung with his sword. The independent blocked sloppily with his shield, but managed to keep it up. Without pause, Alfred struck again with his sword with the same strength as before without pulling back half the distance.

Seeing that it was blocked again, Alfred sped up his next attack, and despite this, no power was lost. Then, in that moment, before the independent could react, Alfred spun hard with his shield and smashed the independent's shield out of his hand, leaving him wide open to strike through the armpit.

Alfred drove the sword through it, piercing a lung.

Before Alfred could do anything more, his body vanished off of his sword's blade.

Alfred shook his head and cleaned off his blade as best he could by flicking off the blood, and sheathed it. 'He must have gotten an easier opponent last round, right? Spear ki- no, Du Quigang, would have handily beat that blonde prick. Even now, I can see a fair few kids who wouldn't have too much trouble either.'

What confused him even more was the kid's gaudy behavior before the match. There was no doubt that he had seen Alfred at least smash a few kid's heads in during the first round. 'Is that just how he is? Being the center of attention weekly must have boosted his ego past Mount Everest.

'And if this is normal, then I can't put it past them to cheat either…'

Alfred quickly got to memorizing everyone left in the tournament, even the ones who were still fighting, as they all were the most likely to attempt to sabotage future opponents.

By now, Alfred had already seen everyone's fighting style enough to at least not be surprised, so he sat down and began refining.

Now that he was refining alone, he noticed a significant increase in his capacity for moving äura after his advancement to the Apprentice stage. The progress he makes now is far more satisfying and significant per session, but he knows well that this phenomenon is not unique to him. Competent, Advanced, and Master are all significantly harder and harder to reach despite the greater and greater leaps in strength one makes while refining after each stage.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

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Soon enough, the final fight finished up. Despite there being less people, the fights were generally more competitive, so the event lasted longer than the last. Even still, some participants managed to finish their fights as fast, or faster despite this, gaining the attention of many.

Obviously, Alfred was one of them.

He couldn't help but notice this fact himself. Thousands upon thousands of eyes were searing imaginary holes in the back of his head as he exited the colosseum, that didn't exclude his peers who were walking out with him.

One particular gaze was stronger than the others, but Alfred already knew the culprit, the smiling boy from the bear continent. Alfred made doubly sure to avoid his gaze out of sheer discomfort.

Once the group arrived at the infirmary, most got into a line. However, once the nurse who was there yesterday saw he was unharmed, he was allowed to leave prematurely.

Once cleared, Alfred began the trek back to the SE for the grimoire with haste.

Alfred couldn't help but look forward to practicing more. After the first corner he began to visualize techniques in his head that he had memorized to pass the time, but his thoughts were interrupted by a chair leg.

Not a metaphor, but a literal chair leg.

Somehow, the person swinging had been able to hide around the corner and avoid detection, but they failed to take into consideration Alfred's natural instant reaction speed, not that they had any way of knowing in the first place.

Alfred tilted his head back and contorted his body backwards to dodge the heavy blow by a hair's breadth. 'Damn!' He turned that contortion into a high kick into the assailant's jaw.

The instant he dodged Alfred already sensed four more individuals rushing him, so he activated HSM as a safety net. Getting a good look at the person who swung the chair leg at his head, he easily deduced it was a child slave from the wolf continent that had already been knocked out in the first round.

After snapping back upright and grabbing the chair leg, he backstepped to make sure every assailant was in his field of vision.

'I didn't expect it to happen so soon! And in broad daylight as well!'

The rest of the assailants were made up of one two independents and two wolf continent slaves, all knocked out in either the first or second rounds. The five (including Alfred) were tensely locked in a face-off.

But suddenly, to the surprise of all four of the assailants, Alfred booked it the other way.

They all scrambled to give chase so as to not lose sight of him, speeding up particularly after he turned the corner.

Sadly, they didn't learn from Alfred's actions just moments before, and rounded the corner at full speed with no care for what might be happening on the other side. Sound wasn't something they could rely on as Alfred's steps were imperceptible in such a high stress situation by such low level martial artists.

Behind the corner and once the first one was in range, Alfred swung full force and smashed the kid in front's nose in, shattering the chair leg in the process.

The sudden change in speed made the one in second stumble over his body, but the third managed to sidestep the pileup… right into Alfred's spinning heel kick.

Needless to say, the laws of physics did their thing, leaving the third out cold on the tile floor.

The second who had tripped was scrambling to get up, but Alfred soccer kicked him with no remorse, finally turning to the last who was dumbfounded. He put his hands up, but Alfred was not going to let him stall at all before he was at least out of action.

"Snap!"

"Ghhk!!!~"

Alfred kicked one of his knees backwards, bringing tears to his eyes and dropping him to the ground while clutching his leg in pain.

After making sure nobody was at least in eyesight, Alfred wrenched one of the kid's hands away from his thigh and grasped a finger in his hand.

"Did you really not expect this?"

"Snap!"

Alfred broke the kid's index finger after he finished the sentence.

"Aghh!"

Instead of grabbing another, he held onto the finger he just broke.

"I know how much this hurts, you little turd. Now, before I make it worse, Describe to me the person who put you up to this. If it doesn't sound convincing, I'll-"

"Fraisure! Fraisure put us up to it!" the boy said without hesitation. "He's another independent like me! I really don't care about the bastard! Gah!" wincing, he continued. "He just offered each of us a decent weapon if we beat you up! Really that's all I know!"

For a moment, Alfred was taken back at how fast the independent snitched, but he got back to the interrogation. "I said describe him to me."

"U-Uh.. Ghh~ Could you stop putting pressure on it! I-I can't think straight."

Alfred let go. Despite acting angry, he didn't really care too much about these four after finding out they just did it for a reward. Now all his anger was directed towards this "Fraisure" guy. 'Besides, I know how hard it is to think when someone is fucking with your fractured bones.'

A little bit of Alfred's ambient killing intent leaked out, startling the kid even more.

"Uhh… Ah! Fraisure is a pompous prick! You've probably seen him and his brother flaunting their g-gear around! Lionel is his brother! They both look pretty similar! Maybe they're twins… hmm…"

"Get on with it!"

"Ah!"

Alfred shook his head, 'Fucking airhead. Not a good situation to let your thoughts trail on.'

"I think they are of foreign descent, so they aren't hard to miss! They've got glossy gold hair and green eyes, the both of them-"

Alfred suddenly punched the kid in the jaw, knocking him out swiftly.

"I get the picture," he said aloud, knowing if he had let the kid run on the others would surely wake up. 'I just fought one of the two brothers in the last event, and I saw the other one across the stadium kicking the shit out of a kid from the bear continent. I can't expect things to get easier after what I did to that one.'

After checking the hallways again, Alfred sprinted out of the scene despite not being in the wrong, finally slowing up a bit once he got closer to the SE and his master.