Chapter 42: Dangerous Mockery

Rhinese was fond of Crimson’s commentary, it was very direct, calling out mistakes and offering advice to the fighters. She was fond of it entirely because it was funny. It was also rather sparse, Draven took the lead rather constantly, only occasionally turning to Crimson to ask his opinion and getting such comments as, “It’s impressive that he’s able to keep his feet under him while fighting that way. I would constantly worry about falling over in his position. I would suggest practicing a firmer stance in the future. Though it’s too late for today, I believe that he will cleanly lose this bout unless his opponent makes a significant mistake.”

Crimson’s predictions tended to be on the mark, if he said a fight would be close, it was. He rarely directly called out a winner, and tried to indicate a path of victory for the underdog, but since he wasn’t running the show, many of these comments came either too soon for the fighters to get what he was saying, or too late to help them.

In other words, he wasn’t a very good fight commentator. He sounded more like a teacher critiquing a students performance than a person to hype up the crowd for the results of the fight. There was such a clear gap in how he perceived the tournament and how everyone else perceived it that Rhinese could only find it hilarious.

Elegance next to her appeared to have a similar sense of humor, because hints of her amusement would leak through every time Crimson made a tone deaf comment, which was pretty much all of them.

The funniest part of it was the one participant who took all of his comments seriously and had managed to get further in the tournament than he had any right to. It was the only Lv.5 participant. Most of the ‘real’ participants were exactly at Lv.10, some of them even intentionally kept their level that low for this tournament. There were 32 participants for the day, and 22 of them had participated last year.

Last year’s champion had also been participating for 6 years, so there was a problem that her family - as the tournament organizers - hadn’t managed to solve yet. The purpose of the tournament was to distinguish oneself before the God of War and win [Skills], [Titles], and other rewards, but there hadn't been any notable rewards in 2 years because of the stagnant roster.

The current state of affairs was the end result of experimentation with different rules and limitations on participation which had ended poorly. Participants, as people were often want to do, sought every loophole possible to mess with the tournament. Some were malicious, others were greedy, and others still were just being controlled by Alda’s enemies.

Alda had a poor relationship with the southern most country on the continent, Alhamist, a desert country. Open warfare between countries was forbidden by the gods, so their conflict was primarily found in the economy and in events like this one, where there were subtle gaps that could be taken advantage of.

The current champion was also from Alhamist, and it was him and one other that took possession of the title on two year cycles, passing it back and forth like a children’s ball to keep it away from other participants. The two year cycles were a result of a prior rule preventing a champion from participating three years in a row. It had been abolished this year.

Whether it was the Guild or the Royal Family, they’d all been scratching their heads over how to solve the problem. If the God of War was more amenable to their suggestions then they could solve the problem easily, but their extreme suggestions would undermine the purpose of the tournament.

Rhinese felt that it’s current form was already doing that.

The under Lv.10 category was rife with issues, well, all of them were, but under Lv.10 was the worst offender. She hadn’t been told what the change was for this year, but it would hopefully break this cycle.

This was technically Day 3 of the tournament, the first two were all preliminaries that refined the participants down to 32 in each category - with the exception of under Lv.50, which could barely get 16 participants. The purpose of Day 3 was to bring the number of participants in each category down from 32 to 4. Day 4 would be the finals, and Day 5 would be devoted entirely to the Open category.

Day 6 was the closing day, and only had a few matches. It was carefully arranged so that they wouldn’t perform any of the festivities on Highday, it became an unofficial Day 7 that was devoted to worship.

Falst was the location of the biggest Temple on the continent, so many took that Highday as an opportunity to make a pilgrimage to the Temple for worship. It was also particularly special in that it was the only Highday of the year that was devoted entirely to the God of War.

With the exceptions of the God of Death and the Goddess of Nature, all the Gods had a Highday devoted only to them.

“It seems like this will actually be interesting, for once. Both participants appear to know what their doing.”This comment from Crimson reached her ears, so her focus on the field sharpened. It was the last battle of the day for the under Lv.25 category, it was last year’s champion, a dark-haired, dark-eyed and dark-skinned southerner from Alhamist, against a much younger man. He was probably only a year or two older than Rhinese, which was on the extremely young end of the participants in this category.

He had deep red hair that caught the eye, and looking at the magnified image, Rhinese could see intense purple eyes. He was quite good looking, with a sharp jawline, well formed features, and a thin scar across his jaw that gave him a wild look.

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Considering how quickly his appearance caught her attention, he also likely had quite high [CHA], though it was practically nonexistent compared to Elegance.

Crimson had once pointed out to her that a high [CHA] didn’t necessarily change the appearance of a person, rather it changed people’s perspectives on the person to be more favorable. Even if the base features were plain, a woman could still be the most beautiful in the room with high enough [CHA], enough to outshine any other.

It was an extremely troublesome stat to deal with, and Rhinese was only grateful that she’d had lifelong training to help her resist its influences.

With a signal to start the battle, Rhinese watched as the much younger man slowly cornered the previous champion. It was a slow process, he appeared to be a [Guardian], so the champion was struggling to deal enough damage to outpace his recovery, so the typical win condition of getting the opponent to 50% of their health wasn’t working.

The much younger man had excellent combat instincts, though his actual [Skill] left a lot to be desired, his ability to adapt to his opponent and anticipate blows allowed him to ignore the gap, making the battle much more close than it should’ve. Crimson was right again, both participants were excellent combatants, and it was the most interesting fight of the day.

Eventually, time was called without a certain winner. It was extremely rare for this to happen…under normal circumstances. Again, issues with rule manipulation meant that there was a slate of years where it was very common, but normally one person would be able to win within the time limit.

In cases like this, there were a few routes to determine the winner, and which route was taken was dependent on the Royal Family, Rhinese was the only representative that day, so she made the decision that the most common route would be taken.

Standing, then stepping over to a gem set on the edge of Royal booth, she spoke into it, and her voice was sent over the crowd, “the decision for this battle will be determined by the consensus of our commentators. You may have three minutes to debate before presenting your decision.”

It was very rare in recent years for the Royalty to directly determine the winner because of concerns over favoritism, so this was the most commonly suggested solution…it was still highly contested by the manipulators since it took power away from them.

The three main methods for dealing with ties like this was for the Royalty to decide the winner, the commentators to make the call, or for a ‘sudden death’ battle. The person with the lowest health after 1 minute would lose. The third one was favored by the manipulators, since they could still control the outcome.

It was always endless problems, one thing after the other when it came to the amount of manipulation that occurred in the Falst tournament. No punishment was enough to stop the issues, and no rule perfectly closed all the loopholes, just created new ones.

The three minutes up, Draven shouted into the magic circle that acted as a mic, “We have reached a conclusion. The winner is…Fade! This young man-”

Draven’s word were cut off by a roar from the former champion, who said, “This is unjust! You are manipulating the results due to favoritism! You don’t want me to win again this year! How dare you mock this sacred tournament in front of the God of War, how dare you-“

There was an interruption again, but this time, it came from Crimson, who stood in his seat. Rhinese could only see the back of his head, so she didn’t know what expression he was making, but it was apparently scary enough that the former champion instantly shut his mouth, cutting off his own words.

“Manipulating the results?” He murmured into the mic, “Favoritism? Unjust?”

Rhinese felt a chill, “Mocking the God of War? The one mocking him here, is you. Fade won, fairly.”

The chill got stronger. It wasn’t a physical thing, it felt more like a part of her deep down was shivering. Whatever was happening, she’d never seen anything like it before.

“Fade, care to tell me what your [Class] is?”

With a shocked voice, Fade spoke, “I am a [Tenacious Guardian].”

“A-“ Crimson choked on his words, whatever he tried to say was stopped, so when he spoke once more, it was a bit more hesitantly, “Yes, a defensive [Class]. One tasked with defending others.”

He turned to the former champion, “What about you, what is your [Class]?”

“I am a [Fighter]!”

An extremely common [Class]. It was typically considered a bad one because it spread itself too thin. It had actually been a bragging point for the former champion, the first year he’d won, he fed the crowd some sob story about the [Class] and how hard he’d worked to overcome the stigma, but-

“You lie. What is the name of your [Class]?” Was the blunt response.

“Huh?! How do you-“ questioned the former champion before slamming a hand over his face.

Rhinese leaned forward, eyes fixed on the former champion, his response was so obvious that she was almost shocked he’d managed to lie about the [Class] to begin with. If it wasn’t [Fighter], what was it?

“I am…” he looked hesitantly around the crowd, obviously nervous.

Crimson didn’t wait for a response, and merely stated, “Your [Class] is [Slayer]. One specialized in harming others. Now tell me, between you and Fade, who did their job better? The man who had practiced hard to hurt others, but couldn’t even take 50% of the HP of his opponent, or the man whose job it is to endure and protect others, who kept his HP from dropping below that threshold?”

“The reason you lost,” Crimson said, “is simply because you’re not very good at your job.”

Silence fell for a long second. Rhinese was baffled. How did Crimson know all of that? The former champion had managed to keep that a secret for years, was he just guessing? Or…

Crimson had started to glow, and when he spoke, it was like two people were speaking at once, with a much lower voice subtly adding strength to Crimson’s, “If lying about your [Class] was your only crime, you would merely be unfit to participate in my tournament. Do you think me blind? Do you foolishly believe that I cannot see the bribes you have paid? The threats you have made? Your crimes have built for years. I watched and waited, hoping that you would change, but now you have done enough, that I must punish you.”

Silence fell for a moment, then the booming double voice echoed out once more. Crimson no longer needed the mic to be heard, “Your [Titles] are forfeit. The [Skills] I blessed you with are forfeit. House Tryalsti of Alhamist is prohibited from participating or sending representatives for the next decade. Should your actions continue, and your crimes continue further, dare not to think that my next punishment shall be so light.”

There was a sound of cracking, a short glow, then the former champion fell to his knees and retched onto the ground, covering it in sick.

“Leave this sacred place!” Were the final words before Crimson stopped glowing, and the chill he was emitting vanished, leaving nothing but a deafening silence.

While the chill that Crimson had been emitting had stopped, it hadn’t quite left Rhinese. She realized, that for the first, and likely only time in her life, she had heard a god speak.