I milled around with the other entrants who had registered for the tournament while waiting for the opening ceremony to begin. I had split up from Gorban and Shirel when entering the city, parting as friends so that we could prepare ourselves to possibly face each other as combatants. I was appraising the various people who had traveled from all around the Kingdom, getting an idea of the relative power level and who I needed to keep my eye on as an actual threat.

In addition to looking, I listened. People were talking and whispering, all sorts of rumors flying. It was pretty common knowledge that Vorel’s last apprentice would be in attendance, a personal invitee of the crown, though probably one that had required less coercing than myself, and was apparently not present at the public registration.

I wondered if I should have found the captain of the soldiers who had summoned me and gone with him to get registered for the tournament, but instead had elected to just go to the public sign-up spot like anyone else. I figured it was the same difference, with less of a headache dealing with people who might be close to the king.

My beasts were staged somewhere out of the way so I did not cause too much of a scene as I wandered through the people, eyes and ears open.

“Isn’t that the Shadowblade of Roko?” I heard someone whisper.

“The assassin? Must be trying to win amnesty for his crimes,” another person whispered back.

I glanced around, finding the people who were whispering and following their gaze to a muscular man garbed in black clothing with a hooded mask over their face. Ninja, I thought immediately with a grin, then appraised the man.

My eyebrow raised ever so slightly, and I took a step towards him.

The man turned, and rapidly walked in the opposite direction from me, disappearing into an alley.

Yeah, not happening.

I pursued, stealthing with invisibility and silence, and pulled out a 3-point magic circle so I could sporadically scry the Shadowblade’s exact location. I made my way through a narrow alley between some buildings, getting ahead of him, and when I anticipated him stepping past me, I stepped forward and grabbed at an invisible arm.

“Ack,” the Shadowblade let out, quickly trying to pull from my grip, but with double-advanced Strength that was a futile effort.

I dropped my invisibility, and after a moment, the Shadowblade dropped his. The man glared daggers at me with hard eyes, and I snorted.

“You can drop the illusion.”

“...no,” the Shadowblade said petulantly.

“Come on,” I urged, relaxing my tight grip into something gentler, taking the Shadowblade’s other hand with my free one.

I heard the Shadowblade sniffle, and the illusion dropped, revealing a teary, purple-eyed young woman with thick damascus locks spilling over her shoulders. Rather than garbed in black, she wore a late-summer sundress, showing off a lithe, athletic figure. A sabled muskoon appeared at her feet.

“Same old tricks,” I said with a smile. “I’m happy to see you, Soa.”

“You shouldn’t be, Pilus,” Atlessoa sniffled, tears spilling. “I ruined everything. All the things you taught me, I–I used them for terrible things, I–”

“You survived,” I said forcefully, squeezing her arms slightly. “I taught you those skills so you could survive, and you did. That’s all I care about.”

Atlessoa sobbed, and threw herself against my chest. I wrapped my arms around her and hugged her until she calmed back down.

After she had relaxed a bit, I guided her out of the alley to somewhere we could sit and talk. We still had a while before the tournament opening ceremony, and I wanted to hear about her life.

From the sound of it, the first few years passed were not that different from the time we had spent together. She had continued practicing the skills I had taught her, and with Meaila, her sabled muskoon, she had managed to get enough food by hunting and cooking the nuisance beasts like polerats that survived within the city. When they could not manage to get meat from beasts, they stole bread and produce from the markets.

With a steady diet, Atlessoa quickly grew, and when puberty hit it had been impossible to avoid additional attention. She started using illusions and invisibility more, but she was young and inexperienced. It was only a matter of time before someone noticed her, for her skill and potential instead of being a helpless orphaned girl, and she had been coerced to work for some nasty people.

Over time, she was molded into their assassin. She had hated it, but it gave her security that she had never known, so it had taken her years until she felt confident enough to run. News of the tournament and the opportunity to be absolved of her sins, at least from a legal perspective, had pushed her to flee Roko and head for the capital.

Her blood-soaked years as an assassin had helped her grow tremendously, in terms of levels and skills. Killing humans was, sadly, the best way to earn experience I had found in this world. She was actually a higher level than I was, at Level 51, but her skills were more focused, largely the same few she had gained from me all those years ago, with a few new martial and mundane skills to go with them.

“So that’s why you hid from me when I tried to find you in Roko?” I asked, and Soa nodded.

“I saw you, and I saw how well you were doing. You created that guild, you were doing well as a trader, and I didn’t want to get you involved in my mess.”

“I would have been happy to help.”

“I know,” she said, a soft smile on her face as she looked up at me from where she sat at my side.

Thinking back, I realized that it had been a decade since our time in Roko. Atlessoa was only a year younger than me, and with me turning twenty that fall, that put her at eighteen or nineteen years old. I glanced at the young woman who had grown into a beauty, which did not come as a surprise, and noticed her real clothing again.

“And do you always wear a sundress under your assassin disguise?”

Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

Atlessoa blushed. “It’s cute,” she murmured, petting the muskoon curled up in her lap, but then straightened up. “And it’s also a good way to get away after dropping an illusion. No one expects the girl in the dress out on a walk or doing the shopping when there’s been a murder,” she said with confidence, before wincing at her casual mention of assassinating people.

I put my hand on her shoulder. “I won’t judge,” I told her. “I’ve had to do some horrible things to get here as well. I’m sorry I couldn’t come back for you sooner.”

She leaned against me, and we lapsed into a comfortable silence, until I cleared my throat and moved to stand.

“We should get back for the tournament,” I said. Atlessoa frowned slightly, but nodded, and became the male ninja again before my eyes, Meaila disappearing at her feet.

* * *

The crowd was thicker by the time we returned, and I squeezed my way forward to try to get a better look at the small stage that had been set up for the tournament. Some kind of horn blared, and a small group of people stepped up onto the stage.

The first was a young man wearing a perpetual scowl on his face and a crown on his head. I did not even need to appraise him to know that this was Rugnor Horuth, the new king. He was flanked by a relatively powerful mage and warrior, likely bodyguards.

Off to one side was a woman wearing priest robes and a veil over her face. A representative of the Church, clearly. It was hard to get an impression of her age, but her stats were not high enough for me to assume she was the figure in charge of the entire organization. Perhaps a personal healer for the king?

On the other side, another mage stepped forward. She was garbed in expensive robes, and held herself with a posture that screamed nobility. Dazzling auburn hair shined in the sunlight, and intense hazel eyes shining with flecks of gold glared out at the crowd.

“Well, isn’t today just full of blasts from my past,” I muttered, shaking my head slightly.

“You know her? That’s Fire Master Vorel’s final apprentice,” Atlessoa whispered next to me, her voice masculine from her disguise.

“Of course it is.”

I reached up to where I was wearing a gold brooch clipped to my clothes. I had not seen my childhood friend since before I left Mirut, having left without even saying a proper goodbye after she had run off, crying, at the news of my decision to apprentice with Marshan and his convoy. Truthfully, I never really expected to see her again, having left Mirut and that chapter of my life behind in the past.

When Forn had joined the Tamers Guild, he had asked why I did not return to Mirut, and I had struggled to answer him. I had finally been able to admit to myself that I was avoiding my parents in this world, having mixed feelings about the fact that I was reincarnated from another world and so much of my personality already existed from the moment I was born, robbing them of the ability to properly raise their own child.

Seeing Nodel again brought to the surface memories of my childhood and the complex set of emotions that made up my early years here. I largely had quite liked my parents, despite the fact that they made sneaking around to level and learn skills difficult at times. As people of this world and this Kingdom, I worried that, even if I could reconcile the rest, our more political feelings and opinions would be in conflict. I was sure my mother would be appalled that I knew 6-point magic, believing that it was the sole province of the Church, and I strongly suspected my father had been part of the army that originally won the north before my birth. I had no idea how he truly felt about Velgeins and the war.

It all added up to wanting to leave those relationships in the past and instead focus on the ones I had built since. Yet in front of me stood one of my oldest relationships, a person who I had put on the path to magic, who had gone on to study under the man I would go on to kill in war. She must have only just started studying with him shortly before that, possibly even came to the capital with him and then stayed here to study under other mages when he died, I pondered as I listened to the opening speech. Clearly, she had done well for herself in the capital.

King Rugnor spoke with passion about “a new era” for the Kingdom, and how honored we should all be to be a part of it. He expressed how we should do our best in the tournament to show how powerful our Kingdom can be, hinting at great rewards for those who persevere and come out on top.

Eventually, he let a mouthpiece take over for him, speaking to the specifics of the tournament.

The tournament was split into two tiers, magical and non-magical. I already knew this, because I had not known which I should sign up for, given that I registered myself as a tamer. Most people still saw taming as a mundane art rather than magical—though within the Guild, I made it known that the same magic power which was used in spellcraft was also used in taming, so perhaps that would change in time—and it was determined that I would compete in the non-magical tier.

Division between mundane and magical was not because of a difference in strength, like I initially assumed, but endurance. Pure mages, particularly advanced ones, could wield quite a lot of overwhelming power, but all mages knew that they had a magical limit. The best of them could push it as far as they safely could, knowing exactly when to hold back lest they kill themselves when they run out of MP and start burning HP, but for the majority of pure mages, once they hit that limit they were basically just squishy non-combatants.

As a result, the magical competition was not about knocking out their opponent, and more to do with spelling and counter-spelling. Those who wielded their magic the best would move on, as determined by a panel of judges.

The non-magical tournament, on the other hand, was mostly about beating the shit out of each other.

Killing was frowned upon, but a realistic possibility. The tournament had a collection of Church priests on hand to immediately apply healing to those who took serious damage in a battle to avoid unnecessary death, but given the demands of healing magic, the battles would need to end for the day when no additional priests were available for healing and resume the next day after a rest.

If a competitor was found to be repeatedly going for killing blows across their matches, they would be disqualified, and possibly even lose out on the promised amnesty. This was a surprisingly reasonable way to ensure that people were not entering to cause unnecessary pain and bloodshed in the tournament while being immune from reprisal. However, accidentally killing one or two opponents would not likely result in disqualification, so it was certainly possible that there were people in the tournament who would kill given the right opponent, reason, or opportunity.

Interestingly, magic was not forbidden in the non-magical tier. Almost nothing was forbidden. Spellcraft was a tool and a weapon like any other, and if a warrior had trained in it, they were entitled to use it for this tournament. Due to the limitations of magical endurance, most magic could be waited out given the right defenses, and it was also assumed that someone who blended magic and martial skills would have less of both, putting the spellsword at a disadvantage. Some people also used enchantments as part of their fighting style, which this allowed for. Whatever the method, a skilled martial combatant just needed to survive until their opponent had no magic power remaining, after which point they stood a strong chance of turning the tables.

Since killing was frowned upon, a battle was won through knockout or by forcing the opponent outside of the ring. Combatants could also yield. The tournament was single-elimination in format, but given the disadvantage that put the people who faced the strongest competitors early on, there was a losers bracket for those who wanted a second chance to prove themselves.

Atlessoa had also registered in the non-magical tier as a dagger user, though she would certainly be employing tricks and tactics to ensure her victory beyond just her blades. You could register as whatever you wanted, so long as you actually were primarily using what you said you were. Those that registered as similar styles of combatant would be placed against each other first, for as long as it was possible, so that the variance between types of weapons and fighting styles did not cause the best of the varied combatants to lose to bad match-ups right away.

Eventually, it would come down to the best of each type of fighter competing for the top position of the tournament. Realistically, since the crown was looking for skilled fighters, anyone who performed well had the potential to claim a bright possible future with this new regime, but the semifinalists, finalist, and winner were all promised additional rewards.

I was not too interested in a cozy position working for the king, nor his rewards, but my pride would not allow me to throw my matches. I wanted to show off the possibilities of taming, and show off the beasts I was proud of training. Since I was participating, I was there to win, and would deal with the complications that might come from it later.