“I’m glad to see another tamer here,” I said across the ring to the young lad I was facing. I put him at sixteen or seventeen years old, and he had a rank D evolved beast with him. It seemed well-trained, and if he had evolved it himself, it showed some real effort on his part. “Are you a Guild member?”
The lad nodded, looking a bit worried, then held up his badge. “Bronze rank. You?”
I looked at the two beasts I had brought in with me for this match, both rank C. I could have brought more, but the rings were not very big, and I did not particularly see a need to use more power right away. I winced apologetically, and held up my gold badge.
The boy whistled and shook his head. “I don’t have a chance, do I?”
I shook my head, frowning. “Do you have any other beasts?”
“Another iron rank beast. Or, well, my only iron rank now, since this one transformed,” he said, patting his beast.
I glanced up at the sparse crowd of viewers, who were already bored that we were just talking and not fighting.
“Well. I suggest saving your strength for the survivor’s bracket,” I said, using the less offensive term for the loser’s bracket. “But at the very least, find me after this, and I can share some resources to help you transform your other iron rank beast. Should give you a better chance in the next bracket.”
“Really? Thanks!” the boy said, genuinely pleased. The high value beast meat and a magic crystal needed to evolve could add up to be pretty expensive, and I had to assume he put all his resources towards his first rank D in order to compete in the tournament.
The boy yielded, leaving the ring, and I heard some grumbles from the peanut gallery. There had apparently been some rumors about the tamers fighting in the tournament, and this match had not provided any action to see at all.
I realized that it might have looked like I bribed the boy to yield, which maybe was technically accurate, but really I bribed him to not get trounced, so I was ok with it. I wanted people to see the skills of tamers, and he could show that off better in the next bracket. That’s certainly a downside of clumping similar styles together at the start, I thought. If there even were any other tamers participating, I would likely have to beat any that stood a chance at making it further so that I could advance.
Turning to the single judge for our ring, I double checked that I had not accidentally broken any rules, but the judge did not seem to care and marked it down as my win.
My first round concluded, I left my ring, returning my beasts to the area I had been told I could keep them between matches, and wandered away to one of the other rings to watch some more active fights. My next fight would not be until after lunch, assuming the day was not prematurely canceled due to healer fatigue. That seemed unlikely as the match-ups still had a wide power discrepancy, and a lot of weaker opponents were being easily manhandled without causing much injury.
There were exceptions. One man ruthlessly stabbed another combatant in the throat, and the healers had to rush to save him. He received a warning before being declared the winner.
I wandered away from the rings toward where a number of stalls had been set up by enterprising merchants. The tournament attracted many people to the capital, competitors but also those with wealth who were just interested in seeing what was happening in the Kingdom, as well as local citizens who were coming to see the fights. It offered a good opportunity to make some coin, and I went browsing the somewhat-overpriced food stalls looking for something to eat. I settled on a skewer of meat and vegetables, as well as some kind of savory pastry from another stall. Both were pretty tasty, although at the price they had charged, my hopes had been a bit higher.
The young tamer who had conceded the fight managed to find me after I had eaten, and I gave him a small pouch with some high rank dried meats and a small beast crystal. I wished him luck, and that I would try to watch his battle in the other bracket if I could.
Making my way back to the rings, I found where my next battle would be and saw a swordsman preparing. I guess that’s it for other tamers, I thought unsurprised. That there had even been one other was a pleasant surprise to me. The Guild was just too new and the idea of battle taming even newer, with few people who could have pushed to silver or gold rank in the short time since its incarnation who could reasonably compete with lifelong martial trainees.
Now that I was going to be matched with a real fighter, I decided to take a more aggressive approach. I picked the alcewing and lightning collus, who could take to the air and not occupy space in the actual ring, as well as the strongjaw mecrokotas and the nocturne urstrig.
We stepped into the ring, and the swordsman looked us over, frowning.
“That’s not fair,” he said, turning to the judge. “This is supposed to be a one on one match, not five on one!”
“It is one on one,” I answered. “You’re fighting me, and I’m the only one you need to beat. The beasts are my means of attacking you, but in this context, they’re just weapons.” I turned to the judge. “You wouldn’t stop a dagger wielder from using multiple daggers, or a two-handed swordsman from using two swords.”
“That’s hardly the same thing!” my opponent yelled.
The judge ended up putting a hold on the battle to run it up the chain, and it took a while before he came back with a decree.
“It has been decided that for the tournament, in treating beasts as weapons, the tamer may only wield two at a time, as a weapon user only has two hands to wield two weapons.”
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I wanted to complain, because that was only a partial truth—a proper martial trainee’s whole body was a weapon, using kicks and thrown weapons and other such things—and one of the theoretical advantages of training as a tamer was to use quantity to overwhelm their opponents. Since I had brought such powerful beasts I probably did not need to use more than two at once, particularly with my own skills. Nonetheless, I made one objection.
“What about mounts?”
“Huh?”
“I mean, riding a beast, and using it as an extension of my legs. Like, say, someone using a boot knife or martial artist who kicks.”
“I don’t do tha–” the swordsman said, but I held up my hand.
“For my future fights,” I interrupted, before realizing that I was basically telling him that I was dismissing him as a threat and was sure I was moving on. The swordsman glared, now truly angry, but I did not apologize, as if the man had been confident of his own win he would not have tried to get my beast numbers limited in the first place.
I made the judge run back and ask about riding a beast, and got confirmation that it was an acceptable use case for my talents, as people were being seen riding saddled tarands around the Kingdom already. I was given permission to ride a beast in addition to the pair that I was “dual-wielding” as weapons, for three beasts total.
Pleased with that, I sent the nocturne urstrig back to the waiting area.
“You’re going to ride that?” the swordsman asked, incredulous, staring at the giant slavering mecrokotas.
“What? No.”
The alcewing crashed to the ground of the ring, causing the swordsman to take a stumbling step back. I did not have a saddle for him, but I mounted up on him bareback, and he took off again, flapping powerfully to hover just above, but within, the ring. I’m glad I practiced this in the forest after taming this guy.
“Are you kidding me?!” the swordsman screamed. “How am I supposed to fight that?!”
“It’s one mount and two offensive beasts. Those were the rules.”
“He’s not even in the arena! Doesn’t that make it my win?”
“I’m airborne, but I’m within the confines of the ring.”
We bickered back and forth as the judge ran off to get a third ruling from the higher-ups, and he returned looking harried and glared at me.
“It has been determined that the allowed mount must be grounded for this tournament,” he said, then sighed. “Can we please get on with this?” I heard him mutter to himself.
Oh well. I had the alcewing touch down in the ring, which lost me most of the benefits of using him, since I was not seated securely enough on his back to use him in a charging maneuver. “Ready.”
The swordsman, all out of complaints, readied himself, and the battle began.
Immediately, my collus came crashing down onto the swordsman from behind, knocking him forward and to the ground. Within an instant, my mecrokotas had his jaws around the man’s skull, squeezing just hard enough that the man could feel the pressure of the razor-sharp teeth digging into his scalp.
“Do you yield?” I asked patiently.
“I YIELD!” the man screamed, and the mecrokotas let go. The man stood, rubbing his head, and glared daggers at me before leaving the arena.
I shrugged, and looked at the judge, who just shook his head at the whole affair and marked down my victory.
* * *
My next match would be in the late afternoon, about an hour before dark, and would be the last for the day. I had returned to the stables, adjusting my plans on the fly with the new determinations about beast use in the tournament.
“Hey, Horsey,” I said, patting the tarand’s rump. “Let’s get you ready for battle.”
I had wanted to evolve Horsey for a long time, particularly after seeing Hella regularly parading around on her mystic tarand, Onopedra. The issue was, once I did, he would no longer fit the harness for my wagons, and I needed two tarands to pull the wagon back to Freehold. I could have evolved Horsey before leaving, and brought a third tarand, but even evolved, Horsey would only be rank D, as tarands were rank E to begin with. I already brought Rika even though I had not planned to use her in battle, and bringing a second companion was excessive.
After the previous bout, though, using Horsey made more sense. I was unsure if I could saddle the alcewing without limiting his flight in some way, and while it was something I would definitely research when this whole tournament was over, I wanted to keep the alcewing flying for battle anyway and was not allowed to ride him off the ground. I did not have an alcewing saddle for ground use in the first place, even one that restricted his flight.
Fortunately, after seeing Hella go through the fumble of not having a saddle ready for her evolved mount, I had already prepared a new, larger saddle for when I did decide to evolve a mystic tarand of my own. I retrieved it from my inventory, alongside a beast crystal, and unharnessed my steed. I would need to figure out how to pull the wagon home after the tournament, but in the worst case, I could just store it in my inventory and we could travel back a bit more slowly. I actually did keep a single-tarand wagon in my inventory as well, which I could use to at least pull the plodding mossen headpounder, which would be the main factor in slowing down the journey otherwise.
Perhaps I should consider making a slightly larger single-drawn wagon and craft a harness for a mystic tarand or the alcewing, I mused as I put away the old harness and prepared for Horsey’s evolution.
“Ready, my noble steed?” I asked, and I offered the eager beast a crystal, which he had been after for quite some time already. He gobbled it down, and I was bathed in the white light of evolution.
When it faded, I looked at the larger reindeer-like beast. His shaggy, bear-like coat had grown out slightly, tufted and becoming sleeker to the touch, shifting with the light as he moved. The mystic tarands retained their ability to change their coat color, but their natural coat was a lighter blueish-silver that was practically iridescent. The long, sweeping antlers that previously grew too long and in the way for riding instead curled back forward and outward, no longer needing any trimming for riding, although wide enough now that two could not ride side-by-side comfortably to draw a wagon together.
After securing the improved, ornate saddle I had prepared for the noble creature—materials chosen and designed to look best alongside the beast’s new colors and style—I mounted up. We rode back to the tournament area, which drew a bit of attention to myself, particularly as rumors had started to spread about the last battle.
I probably would not ride him for every battle, because against a real threat I wanted to better be able to maneuver and fight if I needed to. Against someone like Atlessoa, I would be more of a target on tarandback than a threat.
In the meantime, I may have been enjoying showing off a bit.