Okay, Adran, you can do this.

You got skills and equipment from that woman.

...

Okay, that's no consolation, like, at all.

I don't trust her, not even the slightest smidgen.

Neither do I trust the skills she, supposedly, transferred to me and, least of all, I don't trust the armor she gave me.

After all, she said, "I'd rather give you a fashionable armor set that fits together instead of one made of mismatched pieces, which had better effects but would be ugly. Presentation is a part of fighting."

I didn't like to hear something like this in the situation I found myself in.

What did it matter if it was mismatched if it was going to protect me?

I'd rather look silly than die.

These fights were not for fun- well, for some maybe, but your life was on the line, if you did not fully intended to sacrifice it in the name of the tournament then the arena was not a place you found yourself in just by happenstance.

I breathed in and out heavily and took and head in my hands and despaired. At the end of it all, I didn't have a choice.

It's either taking my chances in the arena and delaying my death until I come up against a stronger foe, or dying in a few hours because of that curse that Asher has put on me.

And the incurable propriety of the curse on me meant that I couldn't just go and seek out a mage to lift it for me.

I was doomed.

Please, please! If there are gods, just let me live through this day and after toda,y let me never, in my life ever again, see that wretched woman.

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I haven't yet met any other arena participants,but I knew of a few of them, famous fighters who took this year as their moment to win.

Niccolo Fadrian, Admarko Aria, Antonello Pucchana, and many more. Even my own brother, Iadra, was one of this year's fighters.

I really hope he isn't the person I have to fight.

It's a one-hundred percent chance guarantee that I lose, and he wasn't the type of person to hesitate.

Oh gods, what if he is the first person I have to fight?

"Welcome to the Castirian annual Dracken Colosseum's Tournament, ladies and gentlemen. One hundred individuals are competing for fame, wealth, and the chance to express a wish to Monarch Drach, who is present here himself," an announcer got going.

Applause roared.

I could clearly hear all of the yelling and screaming but I could neither see the crowd nor the king because I stood in an in-between area from the battlegrounds of the Colosseum.

"Thank you, thank you all for coming," the King stood to address and quieted the crowd, "on this historic site, over a thousand years ago, the first king, my ancestor, the warrior King himself, Coren Dracken, built this place as a monument to our great kingdom and even to this day, it still stands! The whole world fears and respects the name and the people of Castirin. They may not understand our traditions, they think it barbaric to fight your own countrymen, though I say, away with that. We fight not as enemies but as comrades, to honor one another and to display the might of the Castirinian people. Well, and maybe see who is truly the strongest," the king said cheekily, "and as it has always been, WE DO NOT HOLD BACK!" he yelled out, then sat down while the crowd exploded with cheers.

"For the first fight," the announcer resumed, "we have the famed, Iadra Arre!"

Oh no.

"And- uh, ...Asher Burell?" he said questioningly, "...that can't be right, can it?" He asked himself.

Nervously, I walked into the battlefield.

Iadra, who had already been waiting in the middle of the field of battle, didn't look surprised and his manner of speaking was more of a statement than a question, "Adran? It is... agreeable that my own brother decides to fight, but why is it under a false name?"

"It's complicated," I said.

I looked at the crowd. Some were cheerful, some confused, some mumbled but there was one awfully loud person.

It was Asher, and she was so loud in fact that I could clearly hear what she was saying even though there was a great distance between us.

"YEAH! LET'S GO! Beat his ass!"