As Daron entered the crowd outside the castle gates in a rather depressed mood, he hid most of his information expect his name, age and gender and showed his identification to the guard, who took down the details and handed him a badge that he would need to use within the castle.
Walking in still in a daze, he entered the castle and followed the long line of young children below the age of 8 as requested by Lord Zack, and used his token to register for the tournament.
It took another hour before everyone had gathered and Lord Zack as well as Zoey Bard, the main guest and host of this event, appeared.
Naturally, they did not meet anyone, and instead were seated on throne-like chairs at the top of one of the walls surrounding the tournament space, overlooking all the 4 tournament arenas.
With the wave of Zack’s hand, 4 matches started simultaneously. Since the requirement was for a bodyguard of his only daughter, the competition was elimination style, since losing to even a single person could mean the death of his daughter.
In all actuality, Zack could have appointed one of the sons of his student knights or servants, or even hired a professional bodyguard from the capital for this task. However, he did all of this. For what? Publicity?
Nonsense, he did it to attract the one and only, Daron from the church. Knowing the lad might have wanted to be a knight, and to keep the promise with the head priestess who had saved his life countless times, he decided to use this method to bring the lad into the castle. He could then rope in all the food the lad was hiding in his mind sooner or later.
The plan was simple, if Daron came, even if he lost in the first round, he would still hire him for something, and disqualify the winner from ever gaining the position of bodyguard after making up some reason.
All his hopes for this plan were on the appearance of Daron. If Daron did not even appear, he would need to come up with another plan, and have to let all the planning for this even go to waste.
Thankfully, he soon noticed the name Daron on the list of participant list, having the Number 25 token.
“Inform me when number 25 begins the battle.”
“Who is Number 25 Father?” Zoey’s interest was piqued. It was not usual for her father to take interest in someone, let alone a child below the age of 8. She was already excited to have someone be a bodyguard for her, since that was the dream for every noble young lady, to be rescued by a bodyguard in times of need, and other nonsensical tropes.
“Nothing.” Zack harrumphed as he shut his daughter up from talking about number 25 again.
However, Daron’s first match soon came up, and he came up on the stage. In front of his was a 7-year-old. However, the kid looked so weak than he could just shove him off the stage with a light blow.
The rules to the tournament were simple. Either knock your opponent out, make him unable to continue fighting, make him surrender, or knock him off the stage, which was around 10 meters in any direction.
And that is exactly what Daron did. He did not wish to harm the kid, and so he simply picked up the kid and placed his softly on the ground outside the stage made of grey tiles.
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
This comical scene was rather to the fancy of many of the people who were seeing the matches and they all laughed at the thin kid, whose face turned bright red as he quickly ran out of the castle since he lost.
“Winner, number 25.”
A short announcement later, Daron was instructed to get off the stage and the next match begun.
The second match that Daron needed to finish soon arrived, and he was faced with a much more built kid compared to before. However, his strength along was nearing that of an average adult. A small kid like this could not bother him much. However, he did not let his guard down and continuously maintained vigilance for surprise attacks at his vitals.
For some reason, the opponent did not do any such thing, and just rushed towards Daron, his arms flailing. Just before he reached Daron, he had even closed his eyes.
Seeing this, and the fact that he himself was standing near the edge of the stage, Daron just moved aside, and let the kid run off the stage and fall flat on his face in the dirt.
A few matched went like that for Daron. Over time, Zack was getting more and more interested in Daron’s combat capabilities.
Although his moves seemed incredibly stupid and dishonourable, not one of his movements were wasted. He accurately predicted the enemies strength and movement, and took the option which required the least effort from his side to win the match.
However, Zack was still unsatisfied. He wanted to see a proper fight, and not just Daron tripping his opponents without them being able to fight back.
After observing some other fights, he smiled happily. There were still around 4 other people with rather good combat abilities and good builds left in the competition, and were winning.
At this rate, Daron was bound to come across at least one of them.
And as though responding to all his wished this day, Daron did indeed come across one of the people. Sirious, who was continuously instructing him on the opponent’s strengths this whole time, spoke up once more.
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Name: Unknown
Age: 7
Vitality: 6
Strength: 6
Stamina: 5
Agility: 5
Sense: 4
Toughness: 5
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Seeing these stats, Daron was rather impressed. The number 12 in front of him was rather strong for his age, comparable to a 12-year-old or so.
However, looking at his own Sirious generated status, he sighed.
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Name: Daron Cage
Age: 6 Years (59 years)
Vitality: 7
Strength: 8
Stamina: 9
Agility: 8
Sense: 7
Toughness: 6
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Talents
Bloodline Inheritance
* Current information on this talent is incomplete
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His physical prowess was nearing the level that of a 16-year-old. Not many children of his age would have such stats. And even if they did, his body still had been ingrained with all types of mixed martial arts.
Sirious had been able to pull out all the memories he had of watching online, or learning martial arts like Jujitsu, Wing Chun, etc.
Somehow, he had a memory somehow od a certain discipline called Krav Maga, which is used by street fighters to ‘eliminate their opponents’.
Naturally, while training his body, he had spent long hours practicing these martial arts, especially Krav Maga. After all, who would not want to be a John Wick, and swiftly deal with countless hordes of enemies within a few strikes each?
Since his body was still underdeveloped for this, he only spent ours practicing the basic moves and continuously using those handful of moves.
They were the most brutal and underhanded tricks in the book. However, it seemed really interesting to Daron. A kick to the groin, a chop to the neck, a knee to the solar plexus, biting, pulling hair, and other things, although not all part of Krav Maga, seemed really interesting to Daron.
Since there was an opponent who did not rush towards him like a buffoon, he decided to use dome of these methods.
He himself acted like a buffoon and rushed towards the enemy with his hands flailing, making the enemy want to step to the side. However, as soon as he noticed the enemy taking a step to his right, his eyes gleamed as his hands instantly came into a proper stance and he put his left leg in front of him and propelled himself into the enemy with both his hands raised above his head, shooting into the enemy like a bullet.
‘Superman Bullet!’ he exclaimed in his mind as his fists made contact with the unprepared stomach of the enemy, making his fall back a lot of steps before collapsing to the ground, vomiting the food he had eaten in the afternoon for breakfast.
Just like that, Daron advanced once more.