Chapter 40

After the Baronies, I had put serious effort into my training. I spent days on days working on improving my Attributes as much as I could, to get to a high Level that gave me much better chances at winning my fights. Skills had not been neglected either, incorporating them in my daily training routines. The whole thing had been arduous, but the results were worth it.

I breezed through the rounds of the Counties with the ease of an overpowered MC in a low levelled area. My opponents were nothing more than ants to be crashed underfoot on my way to riches, the sweetest of rewards anyone could ever give me. I couldn’t believe how easy winning became once you had a substantial Level advantage over your opponent, which had me wondering why the higher leveled individuals at the Baronies hadn’t walked over the low levelled guys like me, through the competition. But that was neither here or there, as long as I was winning, what did it matter what they did wrong.

The finals were a walk through as I stomped on my opponent throughout the fight. I didn’t much enjoy watching other people struggling for something, hence I didn’t let them think that they had a chance of winning in the first place. From the get go, I went in full force, throwing everything I had at them.

With the way I was tossing them around the arena, I was surprised they hadn’t turned into mush already. They must have the most durable body I’ve ever seen, I thought to myself as I walked towards them for what I knew would be the finishing blow, they were barely crawling on the arena as it was.

But I never was able to close the distance, with every step I took towards my opponent adding to the distance between us instead. The whole thing perplexed me, I tried increasing my pace, but that was of no help. Running too did nothing but acerbate the problem. The faster I tried to close the distance, the faster my opponent seemed to be pulling away. As desperation began to set in, something hit me hard on top of my head, and I closed my eyes in pain; when I opened them, I found myself in an unfamiliar place altogether.

The arena was gone, instead, I was surrounded by cases all round with a strangely familiar guy sitting across from me on the only other available space nearby. I blinked a few times as my sleep addled brain finally caught up with where I was.

And I was hugely disappointed. I had been so close to winning a lot of gold, and that was all gone.

“How long was I asleep?” I asked as I sat up right, or as upright as I could manage in the cramped up space of the carriage. My sleeping self apparently had no problems using the cases as a bedding, I just hoped I hadn’t done too much damage.

“A few hours. It’s barely midday,” Xan said as he repositioned himself. “Sorry about that, I’m afraid you might have slept through the whole journey.”

“Sorry about what?” I asked, feeling grossed out by how sweaty I felt.

“The bag…”

“Oh… right. The bag,” I said as I rubbed the top of my head.

That must have been what hit me, and the reason I was back to reality. I turned my head to the side to look at the scenery we were passing through, but the cases had blocked all windows the carriage might have had. I was surprised it wasn’t dark inside, but looking up answered that riddle for me, a light crystal was affixed.

“Couldn’t you find a much more spacious carriage?” I knew I was freeloading and had no right to ask such a question, but…

“When I left Thylom—”

“The Grand Duchy,” I felt the need to add, I don’t know why.

“Are you ever going to get over that?” I could see a little irritation set in after the interruption.

“Of course… not.” The last part was added underbreath, after all, I had to be as truthful as I could possibly manage.

“Anyway, I had a much larger, more ornate carriage. I wanted to travel in style, and comfort,” he began again in a up tone, before dropping into melancholy as he continued, “but as you can imagine, it attracted the attention of unsavory characters. After one too many encounters, I sold it and purchased this beauty.”

It took a while for me to actually process what he had said, and for the glaring facts to become obvious. The carriage wasn’t a rental, or someone he had hired to take us to Choska, no, he owned it, making the driver a permanent employee, most likely. I couldn’t even begin to fathom what that meant exactly about his financial situation, but I knew he was a goal I needed to surpass.

I gulped a little, and decided not to ask much about that. If we stuck together for long, the facts would present themselves sooner or later. Instead, I focused on things that could actually help me going forward, namely, information on The Grand Competition.

“How many people will be qualifying to the Duchies?” I asked in opening. As much as I wanted to know about the prizes, the whole point Xan was even coming with me was because he hoped I would go all the way to the Kingdoms. I had to project the mentality of that being my goal too.

“I don’t really know,” Xan said after a few seconds of contemplation. “The number of people qualifying from each round is never a fixed thing. They keep changing it from year to year, to keep things interesting I’m sure. Take the Baronies for example, this year, Sjuma is sending three competitors to the Counties; last year it had been two, and the year before, four.”

That was just unreliable, if I wanted to qualify for the next rounds, I would have to aim for the finals each time. Maybe even top finisher.

“How many qualified for the Duchies last year?”

“Two, I think. I wasn’t paying that much attention to The Grand Competition last year. But I think this year it will be four.”

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“You don’t know that. They could allow only one person to advance, just to keep things interesting.”

Xan laughed at that, clearly enjoying my sense of panic at how uncertain it was that I could make it past the next round.

“That would keep things interesting, wouldn’t it?” he asked after calming down a bit.

“Yeah… but not for me,” I said in a low voice. If what Boni had said was true, then I would need to be above Level 40 to have any hope of winning in the Counties. As it was, I was way far from that mark.

“Don’t worry about it, we will have you blazing through the Counties in no time,” Xan tried to cheer me up, I think. But it wouldn’t be him in the arena fighting, that will be me, and… yeah, I was doomed.

“What about the rest of the competition?”

“Hmm…” he rubbed his chin in thought. It had to be a habit of his, always thinking about something before giving an answer, what was it called, speech mannerism?

“The last time I paid proper attention to The Grand Competition was four years ago when I was in Thylom. And things there are very different than they are here. I told you how the number of qualifying competitors changes each year, right?”

I nodded to that, and so he continued.

“Well, each region has its own set of qualification criteria. It’s different for each empire, kingdom, duchy and so on. What the Grand Duchy of Thylom uses will not be the same for the Duchy of Makndre. That’s the duchy we are in, by the way.”

“I know the name of the duchy I live in,” I complained after that insulting remark.

“Just making sure,” he seemed ready to move on before he got a determined look. “What’s the name of the empire Makndre is in?”

I cursed myself for my previous retort. For the life of me, I couldn’t recall it. I knew that Boni had told me, but try as I might, it escaped me. I didn’t even have an inkling of what it could be.

“Let’s focus on what’s important right now,” I said after deciding that guessing would only make things worse.

Xan shook his head as he went back to what we had been talking about. “I think the Kingdom of Thyatol send around ninety competitors to the Empires that year.”

“Ninety!? Like nine-zero, ninety?” I asked, and he nodded in answer. “Just how many people where competing in the Kingdoms then?”

“Over eight thousand if I remember right.”

That was like fifty… hundred… three hundred times the number at the Baronies. The sheer scale of the number was mind boggling, even the number of competitors at some of the most celebrated competitions back on old earth couldn’t compare to that; the Olympics had little more than one thousand, and that was for over thirty different events.

“What about at the Empires? There must be over hundred thousand competitors.”

Xan stared dumbfoundedly at me, flapping his mouth for a few seconds before he brought it under control. “Why would you think that? It would take forever for all those fights to be held, not to mention the number of arenas that would be needed. No, I don’t think there is that many.”

“You don’t know?” I asked, wiping a bid of sweat that had been running down my cheek. I had thought the sweat was from my dream activities, but I was beginning to think it was the stuffy carriage that was making me sweat. Xan looked fine though, I guess me sweating easily carried over.

“I didn’t pay that much attention to The Grand Competition before, I had other things occupying my time.”

“And now I’m supposed to believe that you are invested enough to uproot everything and leave in a moments’ notice?”

“I think I was ready to move, you and The Grand Competition just happen to be final push I needed.”

I felt like I had learnt everything I could about The Grand Competition, if anything else came up, Xan would still be around to answer the questions. The ones that he could, that is.

Another sweat drop running down my neck reminded of my other problems. “Can we at least open the door? I feel like I’m baking here.”

Xan opened the door in answer, and the rush of cold air that washed over me felt euphoric to my sweat-drenched body. Any other questions I might have had were pushed to the back of my mind as I stared at the alien and not-alien landscape that we were riding through.

I kept my gaze fixed on the landscape rolling by, looking every which way. I assumed we were already within what would be considered Choska, not the county, even Yange was in Choska County. Maybe the Barony of Choska, was there such a thing?

The area we were passing by wasn’t as heavily forested as it had been around Yange, and I could see tilled fields all over. I wasn’t sure what they cultivated in the area, but I was certain it was some kind of grain, maybe the wheat and soybeans I had gotten used to during my time as a farmhand. Sadly, my eyesight was as poor as it had been in my previous life, making it that had to pick out the details of things slightly away from me. It was like only the bad attributes had carried over while the more advantageous ones were left behind.

I had also noticed a couple of orchards in between the field crops, but I still wasn’t able to tell with certainty what kind of fruit trees they had. Apples maybe? I pulled in a deep breath, trying to see if I could get a whiff of what fruits were growing on the trees. I got nothing but the smell of fresh clean air.

Ever since I got to the Realm of Mesily, the air had been the most noticeably different thing about it, aside from the Mana of course. It didn’t have the dusty feel as the one of my home town, or the smoky smell usually found in large cities of old earth. Maybe there were places that had had as clean a smell as I found in Mesily, sadly, I had never visited those in my previous life.

“What are they growing?” I asked when I could no longer contain my curiosity.

Xan didn’t even bother looking outside before he answered, “The usual.”

Either he had a low opinion of farmers, and farming in general, or it really was the usual. But I couldn’t tell what the usual was in Choska, I had spent all my time since I came to Mesily in the farms of Yange, and based on what I heard from Oki, it was possible for the usual to be something different from what I was used to.

“The usual being?”

“Wheat, oats, rye, corn, soybeans, other kind of beans, beets, potatoes, tomatoes, vegetables, fruits… you know, the usual.”

“That’s a lot of the usual,” I said, trying to recall what I had seen in the fields around Yange. Had they been so varied and I didn’t notice?

“This place is highly fertile and it receives plenty of rainfall all-year round. Anything that can be grown here, is grown.”

“Is this area around the equator?” I wanted and didn’t want it to be at the equator. As much as I liked snow, I didn’t want to be competing in an area with freezing temperatures, and as it was, it looked like we would be moving further and further away from where we currently were.

“The what?” Xan’s question brought to attention how long he had stayed without answering, he really didn’t know what equator was.

“You know, the equator…” I said as I made a horizontal circle with my finger, but all I got from him was a confused expression. The downsides of a minimalist education system.

When I realized he had no clue about what I was talking about, I decided to drop the whole geography topic altogether. I had other questions pertaining to how the regions where administered, but I had the feeling he would only provide information on the Kingdom of Thyatol only and nowhere else.

I liked a top down approach to solving my problems, I would wait till I had the general lay of the Realm of Mesily before concentrating on the minutiae. Besides, if I kept advancing, then all the details about baronies and counties would become useless in the long run. I had barely spent seven days in Sjuma, and I was already moving on to bigger things. It was best to start learning about the higher levels early on so as to be well informed when I finally made it to those rounds.

The Counties would only last for around two weeks from what I had learnt, and then it was off to the Duchies. I decided to start gathering information about those, and my current travel companion was of no help in that department, after all, he was from another duchy altogether.