POV: Luana

The fight we were currently watching was incredible, something no one would've expected to have happen on a random weekday during the day. What we were witnessing was something that would typically occur during prime time and would have been advertised for at least a few weeks.

Everyone was focused on the fight and the servers didn’t miss the opportunity to continue bringing drinks to anyone running low. Betting was happening constantly and even we were participating amongst ourselves.

I had already won three meals simply because the shield and sword fighter had managed to stay in the fight for so long. He looked like he was burning with how much heat was coming off him. Now that he wasn't being pushed back, the question was brought up if he could actually win this one.

No one had expected this from the start and I suspected a few gamblers who bet it all at the start on the sword and shield fighters win were getting quite excited right about now. The fight continued until we heard some other patrons yell that the Yellow Flash was about to do his signature move.

We saw the flying slash type attack and everyone expected the fight to be over, especially because of the strength of that attack. But then a giant man, who had to be 8 feet tall, tilted his entire body from the knees up to be almost parallel to the ground to let the attack bypass him.

He then sprang up like nothing had happened and launched his own similar attack, delivering a wound to the Yellow Flash. Everyone went crazy and when the fight continued, everyone cheered. It was already impressive that such a big person could move so fast, but his body strength and agility was unreal.

The fight continued and slowly the sword and shield fighter was pushing the Yellow Flash back, and it seemed that we finally had a winner. But the Yellow Flash didn't back down and the fighting continued to be top tier. So it came as a complete surprise when the sword and shield fighter backed off and announced, "I surrender. I’m all tapped out."

The moment he said that, absolute silence fell over everyone. What on earth did he mean that his tapped out? Then the commentators reminded everyone that this was the 13th fight this day for the sword and shield fighter and it was completely reasonable that he was out of energy. It was actually quite surprising that he was able to fight for that long.

We watched as the fighters approached and shook each other's hands. We couldn't hear what they were speaking about as we weren’t allowed to listen in, but soon the sword and shield fighter took off his helmet. And I almost choked on the drink I was having.

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That was Rich. How the hell did he get so big? And why was he already in the city? Had he been here for long? My companions were looking at me with concern as I stopped choking. It was hard for me to speak but I was able to get out, "That's Rich."

"What are you talking about? He doesn’t resemble the description you gave us at all," Horus exclaimed and Adam soon followed but he whispered his words, "You told us that he was our age. He looks like he's in his 30s."

I was able to get my breathing back in order to answer, "I have no idea but I recognize that face and I thought his body shape was a bit familiar. He's grown a lot and obviously gotten a lot stronger as well." After a moment, both my companions said in unison, "Well, shit."

Both of them took out communication crystals and quickly started to send messages. "What are you guys doing?" I asked them and saw embarrassment on both of their faces. "I asked a few others to join us during tomorrow’s meeting just in case Rich wouldn’t show up or be good enough. Yeah, I can see by your face, I’m fixing it," Horus explained. I wanted to chew him out but Adam spoke up, "I kinda didn’t give a definite answer that Rich was going to join us on our delve to the academy's administration."

Both of us looked at Adam in horror. "Dude, what the hell? Why didn't you confirm it?" Horus said. I was dumbstruck and Adam's answer just asked for a proper head smack. "Dude, you were going to invite people to replace Rich just in case. What's the difference?" Adam answers. Horus's face blanched.

"Changing someone you have confirmed is easy enough but currently we only have a verbal agreement with him. With the performance he had, he will be offered millions to join different guilds and adventuring parties. We can only offer him potential loot which might not even be worth as much as the gold he will be getting."

"I’m fixing it right now, just give me a moment," Adam answered but Horus shook his head. "Any lawyer would be able to void that contract and do you even have a definite answer from him? Only the promise that he will join us. Fuck, and we were so close. I can now understand how you thought that we could delve so deep, Luana. He seems really impressive."

Horus was correct. He could ditch us. But I took a moment to think back about all the interactions I had with him and what I observed while both my companions were nervously working on dealing with their errors. I honestly didn't know too much about Rich but he seemed to be quite an honorable man who had a ridiculous amount of energy when we were fighting in the raid dungeon.

I looked back at the screen where some other fights were going on. Was he truly out of energy, he didn't look like he was slowing down and while he looked exhausted at the end of the fight, he certainly didn't seem like he was out of steam. No way did he really give up a win. "I think we have nothing to worry about. If he promised he will join us, I’m quite certain he will."

POV: Rich

I was walking out of the arena a little bit disappointed that I wasn’t able to finish the fight, but I did make a promise to myself that I wasn't going to push myself if I fell below 20% of my energy reserves. And I was so close to victory as well.

But it really doesn't matter, it was just a matter of time before I won and from the looks of it, he wanted to make a good career out of dueling and messing up his win-to-loss ratio would have been a shame. I was probably never going to fight in the arena again or if I was, I was never going to give a shit about my score.

After I collected my winnings, I needed to dodge quite a few people who wanted to speak with me. While some of them looked respectable, most seemed to be after money and they saw me as their golden ticket. As soon as I got into the large crowd, I started to camouflage myself to look different and used my stealth abilities as well. That move already removed almost all of my tails but there were still some and probably a few who I couldn’t detect.

I used different crowds and open spaces to speed away or get lost in and even jumped onto a few buildings, making myself very light to quickly move on the rooftops and then jump into crowds again. I didn’t feel anyone following me after that but I still continued for a few hours and after a few more roof trips I headed back home.

Now if anyone was still following me, they deserved to find out where I lived and probably because of that they will figure out who I am. But hopefully no one did as I really didn’t want to worry about any of that. It was now quite late and I went to bed early so I could meet Luana tomorrow.