When I woke up in the morning I noticed that everyone else was awake before me.

'Weird' I thought.

Normally it would be me who would wake up first, and then I would wake everyone else up with my yelling so I could get some food, sort of like a natural alarm clock.

Another abnormality about the day was that they were wearing clothes I had never seen before.

From what I was aware of, everyone had around three pairs of clothes that they occasionally switched through and then washed.

These normal clothes came in bland colors like gray, brown, or black however these new clothes were of much brighter colors, colors that matched their eyes.

The same went for the clothes I had likely been changed into during my sleep, which were bright purple, solving the mystery of whose eyes I had inherited.

A weird sense of disappointment overtook me after realizing that.

The environment I used to live in always kept me on my toes, day or night, to the point that any noise that was a little bit too loud or any movement that was too close or too sudden instantly woke me up from sleep.

That combined with my repeated nightmares practically made me an insomniac, but now that I had lived a cushy life for so long, that was mostly gone.

I had always thought that I would've preferred this to what I had, however now that I was actually living it, I wasn't so sure.

********

A few minutes later we were out of the house and heading for the village center.

Along with us, we had brought a lot of food along with a few other items.

Looking around I saw that just about everyone from the village was there and they were all busy setting things up.

In one area they had brought together a lot of tables to make a very long table, and everyone who later arrived, including us, went over to give them chairs.

Off in the distance, there were people working together on cutting down one of the big trees.

Wasn't exactly sure why.

Another area was being marked by chalk, or something like that, in the shape of a crude square.

Even less sure as to why.

The last thing that caught my interest was a platform that had a red carpet on it.

It felt ominous, but again, I was not sure what it was for.

Other than those, the rest of the work was more straightforward like people putting up torches for lighting or cooking in big pots.

All signs pointed to this being a festival of sorts.

*****

The sun soon set and everything got dark.

The tree from earlier that was cut down had been propped up in the middle of a hole at the center of everything, and people were gathered around it chattering with excitement.

I tried listening in to their conversations, but the only thing I could really decipher from them was food-related, so I was pretty much left in the dark about what was happening.

All of a sudden a torch was lit near the tree, the first one of the night as all the other ones remained unlit, drawing the of attention from the people gathered and causing them to settle down.

I couldn't get a clear look at who had done it, but I suspected it was the man I'd come to know as the village leader.

With all eyes on the man holding the burning torch, he pulled it back behind himself in a winding motion before throwing it all the way up on top of the tree.

I saw the feat as beyond impressive considering that the tree looked somewhere around two hundred feet high, from what I knew, such ability was comparative to the strength possessed by an Olympic-level athlete back on Earth.

Atop the tree, a huge flame burst, covering the leaves of the tree with fire as the crowd happily cheered at the sight of it.

The scene was resemblant to the celebrations of New Year's that some parts of Earth took part in, so much so that it reminded me I had never once participated in any sort of these festivity events in my past life.

I couldn't blame the entire thing on Dark Cove however, as there were still some people there who held small parties for such occasions that I was happily invited to but refused to go to, since I considered it a waste of time from what was actually important, training.

It was quite ironic how I failed my mission in the end while they didn't.

As I finished looking back on my life, things finally settled down in the village as people made their way over to take a seat on the extended dining table.

The table was long enough that it accounted for everyone in the village however due to its strict continuity with no segmentation, only two head seats were present.

I was curious who would take them because while there was nothing else that was distinctive to them such as more luxurious chairs or better food near their area, everyone was staying away, likely saving it for important individuals.

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After most people were seated, I got one part of the answer, as the 'village leader' walked over and sat on one end of the table with his wife and daughter taking the chairs on his two sides.

Speaking of his daughter, I only learned about her existence in my later visits to their house due to her having of a reclusive nature.

Once my suspicions of the man's importance began, I decided to take special note of both him and his family for any further information, though my knowledge on the daughter was sparing at best.

She looked like a teenager meaning she probably was one, she had blonde hair and emerald eyes like her mother in that regard, and no apparent occupation from what I had seen.

Once I confirmed the occupant of the first head chair, I turned my attention to the other that had remained open, watching closely to see who would sit there.

My family started to walk towards the table as well, yet I kept my eyes glued on the open chair even then, and funnily enough it seemed like it was getting closer.

I didn't think too much about it, but then we got a lot closer to it.

'Maybe we were going to sit near the edges' I thought, all the way until we had reached the area I was keenly observing.

I held some doubt even until the very last second, until the last of it was washed away with the father taking the open seat.

Many of the other people sitting down started staring our way once we sat down but not with shocked emotions that I myself held.

'I guess everyone else expected this.' I thought.

Upon looking more closely though, I noticed that they were instead looking at us with undertones of anger and disapprovement.

The hostility of the villagers was very evident; however my family showed no reactions to any of it, casually getting comfortable in their seats as if they were unaware of it all.

Quietness and tension slowly spread throughout the whole table as more time passed, till everyone's focus was on the leader and the father.

The whole atmosphere had visibly dampened.

A few seconds of complete silence passed by before the leader spoke up in a booming voice over at us while keeping his monotonous tone.

Most people would think he didn't care much about the whole seating situation from a quick glance at him, but I sensed something deeper.

I couldn’t exactly put it into words however I knew, there were hints of annoyance coming from him.

Some moments later, the father responded to him in a much quieter but clear voice that could similarly be heard all the way from the other side of the table.

More time passed with the tense silence until the leader spoke again, this time addressing everyone at the table.

As soon as he was done, the seemingly invisible boundaries that were keeping people from moving dropped and a wave of feasting began.

Hands were reaching all across the table towards plates and bowls of food, with the clattering of utensils and grinding of chairs quickly filling up the previous silence to the point that one would have thought the earlier events were all an illusion.

Slowly, the earlier liveliness had returned as more and more people started chatting, laughing, and eating.

I had never actually seen the father interacting with anyone else outside the family before today and the reaction I saw made me realize why.

He was somewhat of an outcast.

The more I thought about it more, the more I became really confused.

He was married to one of the most popular people in the entire village, yet the others didn't like him.

I would’ve expected that either his status would spread over to the mother for interacting with him, or the other way around where people would like him for being connected to her, but neither seemed to be the case.

I pondered over how the situation could have possibly turned out that way but after a few minutes I gave up, I had nothing to go off of to make any accurate assumptions.

There was probably something a lot deeper I wasn't aware of.

The rest of the feast continued pretty uneventfully until everyone was done eating.

After that, people started heading toward the chalk marked area.

It took me a while to figure out what was going on until I saw young men of the village starting to enter the square equipped with wooden weaponry.

I was later able to surmise that the gist of this activity was a tournament, likely for people to show off their fighting skills through competition with those of similar levels.

When all the participants were confirmed, one of the villagers started organizing them into separate matches.

The excitement was at a peak as the first match started with two sword users.

I expected amateurish fighting from the two, but unexpectedly they actually fought pretty well from what I could see.

The techniques they used were unfamiliar to me, which wasn't very surprising considering that my expertise with blades was limited to knives since as one could probably guess, guns were much more useful than swords on modern-day Earth.

Even so, I could still recognize some patterns between what I had learned in those fields and what the fighters were displaying, allowing me to roughly estimate their commendable skill levels.

After the preliminaries were over only the four best fighters were left.

When the go-ahead was given the fighters engaged in combat again with a rapid succession of quick slashes coming from both sides.

It seemed like their strategies had been to play it easy in the first rounds since as soon as the later rounds started, they fought with a much higher level of expertise.

These fights dragged on a lot longer with the fighters being visibly reduced by their exhaustion.

Their tenacity to continue in that state was admirable but sooner or later one of them gained the upper hand over the other.

The people cheered while the next set of contestants were getting ready.

Similar to the other fight they both rushed in until exhaustion overtook them and one of them ended up collapsing due to it.

The crowd cheered again, getting rowdier as the final was coming up soon.

Once both of the young men regained their stamina they began the last round.

This time they were being a lot more strategic in their advances.

They circled around, every so often sending stabs at the other person without overreaching their offensive.

It reminded me of a slow boxing match from Earth.

This continued for a while until one fighter looked to have sensed an opening and rushed in with a fast slice to the other person's sides.

Unfortunately for him, the gamble didn't pay off though as the other person managed to block it and respond with a shoulder tackle that threw him into a daze.

During the time he was staggered, his opponent used the opportunity to ready a powerful attack and swing it with significant amount of speed.

There was an attempt to block the swing by the other fighter right at the end, but it was completely ineffective, sending his sword flying away from his grip.

The winner had been decided and the crowd exploded out in praise for the young man.

Once his celebration was over the leader came to personally recognize him with a pat on the shoulder and some congratulatory words.

I expected the event to be over then, but in an unexpected twist, the leader entered the marked arena.

The crowd was also unprepared for this, evidenced by gasps and murmurs breaking out all over.

Then the leader pointed toward the father.

He looked to be issuing a challenge to him.