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While I'm still crouching, after dodging the slash aimed at my head, I see the queen trying to grab the spear that is still stuck next to us.

But, for some reason, I see her movements as if they have slowed down.

Irritated and furious at my opponent's murderous intent, I decide to counterattack in the first way that comes to mind.

I use the bluish energy that covers my body during the spiritual fusion to grow a dragon's tail. I wrap the tail around the queen's foot and pull with all my strength to try to make her fall down.

This takes my opponent by surprise, and she drops her sword, falling unarmed to the ground.

Without wasting a second, I jump on the queen while dropping my own weapon, as it will be an obstacle to my idea.

Creating four energy claws from my feet and hands, I trap the queen's limbs, pinning her face up against the ground.

When I see that my idea is successful, I start preparing a piercing mana bullet with my mouth.

The queen tries to free herself with all her might, but fails to do so as our forces seem to remain relatively equal and my position gives me the advantage.

Frustrated, she tries to headbutt me. But as I am holding her by her forearms, her forehead doesn't even come close to grazing my head.

All this happens in a few milliseconds, and just as I'm about to fire the first of my mana-piercing bullets at point-blank range, the queen decides to start talking.

"Fine! You win; I give up." she mumbles reluctantly.

But I don't care about this stupid tournament anymore. She threatened my existence.

And everyone who does so deserves to die painfully.

"Don't be a fool, boy, don't ruin your life for a moment of anger," says the queen in a low, tense voice as she realizes that my attitude doesn't change one iota at her words of surrender "It's true that you have me at your mercy. But if you kill me, you will lose everything... The four races will hunt you down like a criminal. Think of your loved ones."

Confused by this last sentence, I look to the side of the stands to see where Joaquin, Charity, and Deirdre are standing.

The first two have expressions of surprise at how the fight is suddenly ending, though they don't really seem to understand what is happening.

But the little Therian has a terrified expression on her face, and slowly shakes her head in a silent negative.

No. The queen is right... no matter how justified my anger is, I can't kill her...

And without looking away from my Deirdre, I let the mana bullet dissolve, after which I see her sigh in relief.

"I SURRENDER!" shouts the queen towards the audience and, looking at me suspiciously with a raised eyebrow, she waits for me to decide to let her go. "Hahaha. You're great, kiddo," she says, giving me a hard pat on the back after accepting my hand to lift her off the ground. To which I only reply with a murderous glare, as I let the spiritual fusion dissolve and go to get my sword.

It's true that I can't kill her... But that doesn't mean that I'm going to forgive her attitude from a few moments ago...

It looks like I just won the tournament... I don't know whether to feel happy, or just relieved. I never thought that my life would actually be in danger by participating in these matches.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

...

After our fight, the prize distribution began.

For my victory against the queen, I won 1000 platinum coins and a lot of hostile looks from Victra.

Rewards were also given to all those who made it to the semi-finals, and to those who were in the best places in the second best phase. But they were rather symbolic prizes.

Thanks to the fight with the queen, I went up a level in Explorer. I added the stat point to Constitution, equating it to Agility, Strength, and Intelligence.

'Hmm, it seems that the experience I get from fights that don't end in the death of one of the parties is really low…'

That being the case... I can't imagine the level of monstrous abilities Gideon will have, which allowed me to go up 18 levels in just 9 months. And in my higher level classes!

As we are getting ready to leave the stadium, Charity beckons to Joaquin, and the two of them quickly say goodbye to us, after which we watch them walk away.

"Where will they go?" I ask aloud, to myself, surprised by the sudden goodbye.

"Charity wants to ask Joaquin things about the expedition to our continent. It's a long story, but, before your fight with the queen started, they agreed that, when it was over, they would go talk about the expedition matter in a private place" says Deirdre, who seems happy with the situation of being for once the one who has to explain things to me.

"Ahh. But… couldn't they have done that later? I thought they were coming to party with us..." I say, a little annoyed by the tinge of disappointment in my voice.

"Yep, I guess. But I think Charity wanted just the two of us to party..." she says cheerfully, and in a quieter voice she adds, "There are times when I don't understand how you're so dense..."

"Huh?" I ask, puzzled.

"Nothing," she says, and sighs.

She's been sighing a lot lately.... Later, when we're eating, I'll ask her again if there's something bothering her. Maybe, when she's distracted by the food, I can get a more concise answer out of her about what's bothering her.

Raila didn't want to hang out with Deirdre. So, even though she was in the stands while I was fighting, she stayed away from her. I guess she must have really taken the teasing about her age badly.

But, when Deirdre and I finally leave the stadium, talking about what we're doing tomorrow, Raila comes over for a moment to congratulate me on behalf of herself and Julia, who had to stay behind to watch Mia.

...

After leaving the stadium, we went to spend the prize money in an exaggerated way.

The first place we went was a fancy clothing store, where I bought Deirdre all kinds of clothes. Since I know she doesn't have a lot of clothes and doesn't have a lot of initiative to buy things for herself. It's probably because she was a slave until she came to this continent....

Deirdre doesn't seem to like dresses, so I bought her a variety of jeans, tight leather pants, blouses, shirts, and leather jackets. Basically everything I saw that attracted her eye.

Deirdre wanted to pay for her clothes, but I told her to let me make her some gifts now that I had money to spare. Deirdre reluctantly agreed to this request, but in return, she told me that I would have to accept whatever clothes she chose for me....

She chose me a series of classic suits involving a vest, shirt, and fine cloth pants, which also have a knee-length coat over the suit and a beret in their ensemble.

I'm not entirely sold on it because it seems like too many layers of clothing for no reason, but Deirdre loves the outfit. So I had no choice but to accept them, buy them, and keep them in inventory, probably never to take them out again.

She also intended for me to shave the sides of my head, leaving only hair on the top, since according to her, it's a fashion from her continent. But I flatly refused this last request no matter how much she asked me to, because it seems ridiculous to me.

We also bought a pair of matching black hooded capes, one for her and one for me. The garments are similar to the one I lost to the corrosive slime, but much higher quality in both fabric and workmanship.

After leaving the clothing store, we went to eat something at the most expensive restaurant we could find.

The restaurant's menu was full of dishes with strange names that we didn't know. So we simply ordered the ones we thought were the most delicious, based on what the names sounded like.

While we're eating, Deirdre brings up the subject of what happened in the finals against the queen.

"W-were you really planning on trying to kill her?" she asks with a tinge of fear in her voice, and I see her blush as she asks the question.

"No. I wasn't thinking about it myself at least.... It's complicated. When I'm fused with Azur, I'm not fully myself." I say, as I stroke the head of the little dragon that's on the table, eating a big piece of juicy meat "It's a strange feeling. We are both him and me at the same time… but simultaneously a different personality, as there are things about him that are enhanced by my personality, and vice versa.... So when we are merged, we can think about things that neither I nor Azur would normally do. Anyway, the queen had tried to kill me.... I was just defending myself."

Deirdre doesn't seem to like this explanation, but she doesn't pursue the subject, and returns her focus to the huge steak in front of her.

...

After leaving the restaurant, we went, with full stomachs and significantly more cheerfulness, to Ozy's store.

Where I bought potions in quantities that would be absurd, were it not for how absurd my inventory capabilities are.

When we told him that I had won the tournament, the flamboyant alchemist was very surprised, to the point that he froze for a moment as he pulled large quantities of healing potions from one of his storerooms.

It seems that the elf didn't know anything about the tournament since, according to him, it wasn't something of interest.

But he was immediately happy about my victory against the queen, and, taking out some multicolored drinks from a pouch he carried in his waist and leaving them uncovered on the table, he invited us to drink and asked us to tell him in detail how our fights went.

After that, I don't remember what happened....