"Something about this Blazing Sun Tournament feels wrong."
Orum turned the thought over in his mind, brow furrowing slightly.
What had just unfolded in the arena had left him with a deep, instinctive unease, a sense of wrongness that went beyond anything the fight itself had stirred in him. It wasn't the danger of combat he was feeling. It was something more hidden, more malevolent than that.
About two and a half weeks ago, while he was still in Blackwater Town, Orum had studied under Skull Sis, a woman who had been a powerful necromancer in life, learning the training methods behind various necromancer feats.
Among them was a specialized feat called Soul-Flame Attunement.
The cultivation process was tedious and complex, requiring large quantities of special reagents that had to be applied to the eyes day and night without interruption.
Soul-Flame Attunement was one of the core feats of the necromancer's craft. It allowed the caster's perception to break through the boundary between the living and the dead, granting a special kind of sight similar to what legend called "Yin-Yang eyes."
This ability held an extremely important place in a necromancer's practice.
A necromancer who possessed this feat could see spiritual entities invisible to ordinary people with perfect clarity: wraiths, ghosts, poltergeists, wandering souls. These beings drifted in the space between the living and the dead, entirely undetectable by common folk. Even when a ghost turned malevolent and began to kill, ordinary people couldn't see it with the naked eye. They could only die in terror and despair, with no idea what had claimed them.
These spiritual bodies were completely invisible to ordinary eyes, but within a necromancer's sight they appeared as translucent blue-white light. The strength of that light depended on the soul's power and the depth of its lingering attachments.
Orum hadn't fully mastered the feat yet. There was still a long road ahead before he would gain complete Soul-Flame Attunement. Skull Sis had told him the cultivation required at least several months.
Even so, he could already faintly sense the flow and direction of soul energy drifting through the air. The perception was like an instinct, vague and unstable, but real.
"There's something that doesn't add up at all."
At that moment, Orum sat resting at the table in one of the arena's changing rooms.
The arena had prepared a dedicated rest room for each fighter who advanced to the finals. These rooms lined both sides of a corridor on the arena's ground floor, each marked with its own number. Thick stone walls separated the chambers, ensuring the fighters had ample privacy.
The decor inside was simple and functional, stripped of any unnecessary ornamentation. The walls were bare stone brick, the floor laid with rough wooden planks. The brickwork bore the deep grey, coarse-grained texture of years, giving it an austere, weathered quality.
Plain as the surroundings were, all the necessary amenities were present. In one corner sat a sturdy oak bed frame, its mattress covered with clean linen. The oak was hard enough to bear the weight of any fighter's body without complaint.
Beside the bed was a small bathing pool built from stone, large enough for one adult to soak in. Steam still rose from the water; it had clearly just been filled. Across the room stood a simple wooden table, and on it were several plates of food: roasted meat, bread, cheese, and fruit, along with a large jug of water and one of ale.
The meat gave off an enticing aroma. The bread was evidently fresh from the oven, warm and soft to the touch. The food wasn't cheap. It far exceeded what the common classes enjoyed, and it was all high-energy provisions, chosen specifically to help fighters who had just come through brutal combat recover their strength quickly.
Orum had already soaked in the pool and scrubbed himself clean, washing away the blood and arena grit that had clung to him. The warm water had swept over his skin, carrying off every trace the fight had left behind.
Most of that blood had come from Josef's bisected corpse. The hot gore had drenched Orum's leather armour and skin when the man was cut in two at the waist. Josef's blood had been thick and reeking, mixed with the smell of ruptured organs, enough to turn a stomach.
Not that it particularly mattered. The smell of blood had long since set into him, too deep to wash out.
Josef's contribution was just one more stain among many.
As he scrubbed, the blood-pink water had slowly expanded through the pool in drifting red blooms.
Now Orum wore a clean change of clothes the arena had provided, a simple fabric outfit, rough in material but freshly laundered. The cloth was ordinary, but it had been carefully washed and pressed, and it sat comfortably against his skin.
He sat on the edge of the wooden bed, brow drawn tight, sunk deep in thought, his eyes carrying a careful, watchful quality.
It was through the early-stage training in Soul-Flame Attunement that he had sensed something deeply wrong out on the arena floor.
The moment Josef was cut in two by his axe, Orum had clearly perceived an abnormal surge of soul energy. Something had been off.
Over this past period, he had received a crash course from Skull Sis, Ronald, and Felix on the world's history, its gods, and many of its hidden truths, and he had come away knowing a great many things that would make most people's skin crawl.
In this world, where gods were real, the soul of a person who died typically rose upward and entered the divine realm of whatever deity they had worshipped in life.
If the deceased had firmly refused any faith while alive, or had given the gods only lip service without genuine belief, their fate became something far worse. These unbelievers, upon death, would have their souls forcibly escorted to the City of Judgment in Mythstranor, there to face Kelanvor, the god of the dead.
The judgment passed on unbelievers was invariably the same: the Wall of the Faithless.
Their souls would be bound to that living wall using a strange green mold as adhesive, from which there was no escape. Over time, the mold caused their souls and consciousness to dissolve into the wall's substance. Beyond that, powerful demons sometimes tore open portals from the Abyss and launched raids on the City of Judgment. During these attacks, lesser demons would dig holes in the Wall of the Faithless and steal souls away into the infinite depths of the Abyss, while devils might claim others and drag them down into the Nine Hells.
What Orum had witnessed was this: in the instant Josef's soul left his body, it did not rise and pass naturally from the material world the way a dead man's soul should. Instead, it was seized by some force and dragged elsewhere.
Orum sensed that the pulling force was coming from somewhere deep beneath the arena floor. Like a vast whirlpool, it was consuming the souls of the dead with ferocious appetite.
The pull was not natural. It was coercive, and it violated every law this world should have been operating under.
Orum could faintly see it: Josef's soul stretched thin into a narrow thread of light, then was drawn down into the darkness beneath the sand.
The whole thing lasted less than a second. But that strange and terrible sight had registered in him, and he had quietly filed it away.
The wrongness of it reminded him of certain dark rituals Skull Sis had once described, practices belonging to a particular necromantic school of thought.
"Is this arena collecting the souls of the dead?"
The thought surfaced slowly. When it did, Orum's brow locked tight.
If his perception was accurate, the Blazing Sun Tournament was not simply a fighting competition. It looked far more like a carefully orchestrated soul-harvesting ritual.
Every fighter who died in that arena, their soul was being gathered by some malevolent force operating beneath the sand.
Soul collection of this kind was extraordinarily rare in the natural order of things, and deeply evil. Only necromancers ever engaged in such work, and they did it to amplify their own power, create undead constructs, or conduct forbidden dark rituals.
But the question nagged at him. How could the Silver-Hand family, Roen City's ruling house, be secretly in league with a necromancer?
The Silver-Hands were legitimate human nobility, ennobled by royal decree. Their ancestors had been desecrated by necromantic magic, and the two sides shared a hatred that should have made any cooperation between them unthinkable.
By every reasonable logic, the Silver-Hand family should have despised necromancers with every fiber of their being. So how could necromantic magic be operating inside their own arena?
Unless something darker and far more complex lay hidden behind all of this.
"Could there be a secret arrangement between the Silver-Hand family and a necromancer that nobody knows about?"
Orum's frown deepened.
The idea sounded outlandish, even absurd. But it was the only explanation that gave sense to what he had witnessed.
If the theory was correct, then the Blazing Sun Tournament, and the costly, well-maintained arena behind it, served no true purpose as entertainment. It was a front for a meticulously planned soul-harvesting operation.
Year after year, fighters died in this place. Their souls were being absorbed by some necromantic formation hidden underground.
As that thought settled in him, Orum's eyes grew cold.
Beneath the gleaming surface of this thriving arena, something deeply sinister had been quietly running all along.
He was still sitting with that thought when a knock at the rest room door interrupted him.
"Little Orum! We've come to see you!" Felix's voice came from outside.
"Captain!"
Orum's eyes opened a fraction wider. He smoothed the gravity from his expression.
What he knew about necromantic arts was far too sensitive a topic to share casually, even with Felix. Mentioning it would bring a cascade of unwanted trouble.
He could, however, approach it from another angle: under the guise of intelligence from his "well-connected noblewoman patron," he might be able to pass some warning to Felix about the existence of a conspiracy. That was a problem for later.
Orum steadied himself and went to open the door.
The heavy door swung inward. Felix walked in first, with Raygore a step behind him.
Felix wore an easy smile and clapped Orum on the shoulder with visible excitement. "Orum, congratulations on making the finals! That axe stroke was something."
Raygore still wore his heavy black iron armour. He gave a silent nod, his gaze through the visor carrying quiet approval.
"How did your matches go?" Orum asked, though he had already begun to guess the answer from their faces.
Felix gave a shrug, his expression unbothered. "I got knocked out. The opponents were seasoned veterans. Too much experience. But honestly, I wasn't that invested in this tournament to begin with," he added with a grin.
"You seem remarkably cheerful about it," Orum said, frowning slightly.
"I really am, hah." Felix laughed at the observation. "There's a reason."
"Which is?"
"I'll tell you after the tournament's over. It's something genuinely worth celebrating, trust me."
Felix pressed his lips together to contain the grin, then offered a mysteriously satisfied look.
"Good news, though: Raygore made it to the professional-tier finals."
He gave Raygore a pat on the shoulder.
From beneath the helmet, Raygore's low voice emerged. "My chances in the finals aren't great."
The honesty was characteristic. Raygore had only recently advanced to professional tier, and his level and experience were still firmly at the chalcedony rank.
The fighters who had reached the professional-tier finals were mostly veterans who had spent long years honing themselves at the mithril rank, some even on the cusp of breaking through to the gold rank. In terms of the number of techniques he had available, his fluency with them, and his command of feats, Raygore was at a disadvantage.
"Just do your best," Orum said. "Making it to the finals at all is already impressive."
Felix crossed the room to the corner, where a weapon wrapped in thick purple velvet lay on the floor. "One more thing. The finals allow personal weapons and equipment." He gestured toward it.
It was the flame-steel glaive Orum had brought from Blackwater Town, stored at the Radiant Sun Inn all this time, under the care of someone Felix had assigned to watch it.
"With the flame-steel glaive, your odds just got a good deal better," Felix said with confidence.
The flame-steel glaive was forged from rare materials originating in the Hells. Its weight and hardness were several times that of refined steel, and its destructive power vastly exceeded any standard weapon. Many enchanted weapons couldn't survive a single blow from it; the sheer unstoppable force would shatter them outright.
Orum nodded, a faint, assured smile pulling at the corners of his mouth. Going into the finals with the flame-steel glaive was like adding wings to a tiger. Winning the championship would be effortless.
The three of them talked a while longer about the finals: possible opponents, tactical considerations, and which restaurant to celebrate at afterward. Felix ran through detailed assessments of several likely challengers. Raygore contributed some intelligence about the professional-tier bracket.
Eventually Felix and Raygore rose to leave.
"Get some rest. Prepare for the finals." Felix gave Orum a parting pat on the shoulder.
The door closed again. The rest room returned to quiet.
Orum was about to lie down on the bed when he noticed something at the bottom of the door. Several black envelopes had been slipped through the gap and lay caught in the edge of the rug.
When had those arrived? While Felix and Raygore were here, he hadn't noticed a thing.
He walked over and picked them up.
There were three in total, each sealed in different quality paper and wax.
Orum opened the first with a slight frown.
His pupils contracted the moment he read what was inside.
The contents were thoroughly unexpected.
It was an assassination contract.
Written in precise, clean script, the letter named a list of final-round opponents along with a specific demand: "Targets: Tony, Greice, Coby, Andy. Requirement: eliminate all four in the course of the finals. Reward: 1,000 gold coins."
Orum blinked.
What exactly was going on here?
Someone was paying him to kill people during the finals?
At the bottom of the letter, the sender's mark read: "Sow District, Beakbill Tavern."
That was one of Roen City's most notorious slum districts. Orum recalled that the Beakbill Tavern in the Sow District was Tiger Claw Gang territory. They ran a criminal operation focused primarily on smuggling and extortion.
So the Tiger Claw Gang had a grudge against certain fighters in the finals. Or someone had paid the Tiger Claw Gang to make this approach on their behalf.
He opened the second letter.
Another assassination contract, but different targets and a different sender: "Targets: Tony, Hobbit, Sol. Requirement: eliminate all three in the course of the finals. Reward: 1,500 gold coins."
The mark at the bottom read: "Workshop District, Obsidian Forge."
That was Dwarf Gang territory. The Dwarf Gang was composed primarily of dwarven smiths and craftsmen, and they controlled most of Roen City's weapons and equipment trade, both through legitimate channels and through the smuggling of weapons and ores. Very little in that industry moved without these dwarves having a hand in it.
"This is ridiculous," Orum muttered to himself.
Two completely different criminal organizations, both commissioning him to kill people? And the targets didn't even overlap?
What did they think this tournament was?
He picked up the third letter.
The paper was the finest of the three, high-grade vellum with a faint trace of perfume rising from it.
When he opened it, the contents made him genuinely stare.
"Target: all seven remaining finalists. Requirement: eliminate every one of them. No exceptions. Reward: 3,000 gold coins."
Orum's mouth twitched.
They wanted him to kill every single opponent?
The sender's mark at the bottom read: "Red Queen District, Lily House."
That was one of Roen City's more famous upscale establishments, a house of pleasure operated by a group of beautiful and alluring succubi. Its reputation extended throughout the entire city, and its promotional posters were plastered across every major street and alleyway. The succubi in those posters wore an air of otherworldly seduction that seemed capable of pulling the soul right out of a person.
Even the brothel was sending assassination contracts.
What had the world come to?
All three letters ended with the same instruction: "If interested, please visit the designated location to discuss details."
Orum set all three letters down and sat with the feeling for a moment.
His mouth twitched again.
"Looks like the gang warfare in Roen City is a lot more intense than I imagined," he said quietly to himself.
He picked the letters back up and studied them more carefully. Tiger Claw Gang. Dwarf Gang. Lily House. Three completely different types of factions, all independently seeking him out at the same time.
This wasn't a coincidence.
These criminal organizations had clearly identified the Blazing Sun Tournament as a perfect opportunity to eliminate their enemies. They wanted to use a fighter's hand to get rid of rivals, and they had all landed on the same hand.
Arena rules permitted killing your opponent, with no legal consequences to follow. For these criminal factions, it was a gift. Pay a sufficiently capable fighter a modest sum and you could have your enemies disposed of in broad daylight, in full public view, with the crowd cheering as it happened.
No city guard investigation. No blood feud to manage afterward. Dying in the arena was an honorable death in battle. There was no one to blame.
Of the seven finalists he would be facing, a good number were likely gang members themselves, or at minimum had ties to one faction or another.
Orum thought back to the seven fighters who had surrounded him earlier in the arena. Josef's brutal, scarred face. That deep knife scar running across his throat. The way he'd spoken, that unmistakable criminal cadence: "Roen City doesn't welcome outsiders."
Said now in retrospect, it sounded less like a personal threat and more like a faction's declaration.
The six who had stood with Josef were probably gang members too.
Every name on those letters likely represented a particular faction's interests.
"Hard to say what these gangs are even fighting over," Orum said, shaking his head.
Territory, perhaps. Smuggling routes. The pleasure house trade. Something darker than any of those. Roen City was a border town, and grey-market industries thrived in places like this. Smuggling, gambling, loan-sharking, slave trading, mana crystal exchange: all the kinds of business that couldn't survive the light. The profits were enormous, and the competition was vicious. Turf wars were inevitable.
Not long ago, Orum had watched a street brawl between dwarves and half-orcs play out in front of him. It had been bloody and furious enough to qualify as a small-scale military engagement.
Whatever these gangs were fighting over, Orum had no intention of getting involved in any of it. He was a legitimate adventurer. His methods could be sharp, even brutal when the situation called for it, but he had principles.
Killing an enemy who threatened his life was self-defense. Fighting to protect the innocent was justice.
Killing for money as a gang's hired blade was something else entirely.
He had no interest in entangling himself with criminals, and even less interest in becoming an instrument of their internal conflicts.
"I'm a straightforward adventurer with clean hands. I don't do this kind of dirty work."
Orum lay back on the bed, laced his fingers behind his head, and closed his eyes.
The strange vision from the arena drifted back into his mind: souls being consumed, drawn downward into the dark. Then the three assassination contracts, each one more brazen than the last.
This city presented a prosperous face to the world. Beneath it, countless shadows and schemes seemed to be coiled at all times.
And Orum was only catching glimpses through a narrow window. If even that much revealed so many unsettling stories, what was happening in all the corners of Roen City he couldn't see? What conspiracies and crimes played out there every hour of every day?
"Staying too long in Roen City is probably not a smart idea," he thought.
The city had opportunity, and it had energy. But its waters ran deep. One wrong step and you could be pulled into some vortex of schemes you never saw coming, and getting back out again would be anything but easy.
"The goblins back near Blackwater Town are so much more straightforward, honestly," he thought. "No scheming. No plots. I really feel like going out and killing a few right now."
Back in Blackwater Town, monsters were monsters and comrades were comrades. See a goblin, kill a goblin, collect the reward and go home. Simple. Clear. No complications.
Nothing like this place, where even something as ostensibly fair as an arena tournament had layers of filth hidden beneath it.
He was still turning these things over in his mind when a deep, resonant horn call rang out from beyond the door.
The Blazing Sun Tournament finals had begun.
Under a ruthless afternoon sun.
At the Blazing Sun Arena, the half-orc referee stood at the officiating platform exactly as he had during the preliminary rounds, thick-limbed and immovable. In his hands was the horn made from a great beast's horn.
He drew a long, deep breath. His already massive chest swelled further, like a bellows filling to capacity.
Then he raised the horn to his lips and blew with everything he had.
A long, soul-shaking blast rolled across the entire arena.
The half-orc referee threw open his tusk-lined jaw and released a roar that shook the air itself.
"The finals: BEGIN!"
The roar was backed by a combat technique, amplified further by a magical enhancement device, and the sound that poured out was deafening. It felt as though the entire arena trembled with it.
The crowd, who had been waiting for what felt like an eternity and were half-wilting under the sun, surged back to life instantly. The roar that went up from thousands of voices exceeded anything the preliminary rounds had produced, a wave of sound that crashed through the afternoon heat.
Thousands of spectators, faces flushed with excitement, hurled their banners into the air and fixed their eyes on the arena floor with an almost feverish intensity. Every one of them was waiting for the crowning moment of the Blazing Sun Tournament.
Orum stepped through the corridor and into the arena, the flame-steel glaive wrapped in its thick purple velvet across his back, his expression composed and unhurried.
When he reached the center of the sand, he stopped and raised his gaze to sweep the towering spectator stands around him.
Something in the noble seating section caught his attention immediately. The atmosphere there was off.
The nobles, clothed in their splendid garments, were not cheering with the enthusiasm of the common crowd. They were murmuring among themselves, heads bent toward one another. Morgan Silver-Hand and the two figures beside him wore expressions of visible gravity.
Something was already happening.
That impression left Orum with a faint, unspecific sense of unease.
He let his gaze move on.
Whatever the nobles were plotting among themselves, it was no concern of his. He had one objective, simple and clear: defeat the opponents in front of him, claim the championship, and collect his prize money and rewards.
As for these nobles and their schemes, they would do well not to turn their attention toward Orum.
If they did, they might regret it.
It was then that his eyes were drawn to a particularly striking corner of the common spectator stands. Among the crowd's chaotic mix of faces, two figures stood out with vivid clarity.
Carolina and Ristina.
The twin sisters had dressed themselves in neat, properly tailored ladies' outfits for the occasion. Ristina wore her usual composed serenity. Carolina was beaming.
They were there for him, cheering with visible enthusiasm.
More eye-catching still were the hands they had raised above the crowd, holding up a banner they had made themselves.
It was hard to miss in the sunlight. The fabric was evidently quality material, its edges finished with intricate gold-thread trim. The words across it had been embroidered with care, each character rendered in vivid colored silk thread that caught and reflected the afternoon light:
"Ice Hawks Company's Orum, claim victory! Sweep the field and win the crown!"
He remembered now. That morning, before they had all set out, Carolina and Ristina had been busy at work on exactly this. They had sat in the room at the inn, bent over their needles and thread with careful, graceful concentration.
Seeing it now, Orum felt a quiet warmth move through him.
These two had genuinely put thought into this. When they learned he was competing in the Blazing Sun Tournament, they had taken on the extra effort without being asked, produced a banner as carefully crafted as anything he'd seen, and come here in person to support him.
Being supported like this was, he thought, not a bad feeling at all.
He raised one arm in the direction of the two women so they would know he had seen them.
The moment they registered his acknowledgment, something bright entered those ice-blue eyes of theirs, something clearer and warmer than even the sunlight. Carolina gave an excited little wave. Ristina offered a measured, graceful nod.
The spectators around them, naturally, had noticed the two women. Their pale gold hair caught the sun like something burnished, and their ice-blue eyes were as clear as gemstones. The naturally refined quality that came with their half-elven blood set them apart from the crowd effortlessly.
More than a few men let their eyes linger in undisguised admiration.
But the moment those same men read the banner in the women's hands, and understood that these two beautiful figures were connected to Orum, every stray thought died instantly.
Eyes moved away. No one dared look too long. No one dared approach at all.
It wasn't a difficult calculation. The scene from the preliminary round was still vivid in everyone's memory: one axe stroke, and Josef had been cut in two at the waist. The blood had been spectacular and terrible. That image wasn't going anywhere soon.
No sane person was going to provoke someone connected to a creature capable of that.
As for their safety, Orum felt no particular concern. He and the two women were bound by a magical contract. He could sense their location and condition at any moment. If something happened to them, he would know immediately and could be there in moments.
He drew his attention back to the arena floor.
His eyes moved across the seven other finalists who had already entered.
All seven stood roughly twenty meters away, spread in a loose arc. Their faces carried the taut look of nerves, their eyes flickering between wariness and apprehension.
It was clear these seven knew each other, or had at minimum heard of one another. The subtle spacing between them and the guarded looks they exchanged suggested they were not of the same faction.
That much had already been apparent from the assassination contracts Orum had received.
Each of them represented a different criminal interest, and in ordinary life they were probably each other's enemies.
Yet standing here now, even as they kept a wary distance from one another, the seven had taken on a subtly unified posture.
Evidently, while Orum was resting, they had reached some kind of agreement and formed a temporary alliance directed squarely at him.
The logic was clear enough. In this final, Orum was the greatest threat any of them faced, a more pressing concern than whatever rivalries they had with each other. He took precedence over old enmities.
As he was taking this in, one of the seven stepped forward and opened a dialogue.
This was a tall, powerfully built man with the proportions of a knight who had been trained right. He wore a suit of bright silver plate armour that caught the afternoon sun and threw it back in every direction, every panel polished to a mirror finish. The articulated joint plates connecting each section were precisely fitted, designed to allow full movement without sacrificing protection. Across his back was a knight's sword, its grip set with a red ruby, marking it as a weapon of considerable quality.
He stopped about five meters from Orum, his visor still closed, and regarded Orum through the gap in the faceplate.
"Good to meet you, Orum. My name is Tony. I'm a knight of near-professional standing."
The voice that came from behind the silver helm was low and steady, with the measured cadence of someone who had received formal knight training. The precise, aristocratic accent made that upbringing unmistakable.
Tony drew a slow breath and continued with the same honest directness: "Orum, everyone here, myself included, can see the situation plainly."
"Your ability is a full level above all of us combined, and your destructive power is beyond what any of us can comfortably face."
"If this turns into an all-out brawl, most of us are likely to walk away dead or crippled."
He spoke evenly, laying out his position without dramatics.
Orum understood the concern. It was not unfounded. What he had shown during the preliminary round was enough to inspire fear in anyone with sense. A single axe stroke to split Josef at the waist, the sheer brutality of it, was still burning in everyone's memory.
He glanced beyond Tony at the remaining six. In every one of those faces he saw the same thing: dread, tension, fear held barely in check.
The hot-blooded rush and mob attack he might have expected simply hadn't materialized.
That made sense. This was a competition. These people were here for money and reputation. None of them had any desire to die on the arena sand for the sake of it. Life was long, and there was more money to be made in the future. Why throw it away recklessly?
That was the defining character of Roen City's professional-class fighters, and it was entirely unlike what he had seen in Blackwater Town.
Blackwater Town's adventurers were mostly desperate individuals scraping out a living in an area where monsters ran rampant. They walked a line between life and death every day, knowing that a monster's claws or another adventurer's ambush could end them at any moment.
That environment forged a particular kind of person: daring, ruthless, willing to kill, indifferent to death. Live hard, and live now.
Roen City's professionals were different. They mostly operated under the protection of the city's powerful factions, families, and commercial interests, performing services in exchange for pay. Yes, the work could be dirty and dangerous, involving assassination, smuggling, and extortion, even outright violent conflict with rival factions. But on the whole, they lived far safer lives. They didn't need to risk their necks every day fighting monsters in the wilderness. They completed assigned tasks and collected steady income.
The life of a faction enforcer was not exactly dignified. It had all the dignity of a kept dog. But kept dogs tended to live longer.
And the truth was, many people who wanted that kind of stable, relatively secure work couldn't qualify for it. Wrong talent, wrong age, wrong background, or simply not ruthless enough. Most of those people ended up as the lowest tier of street muscle.
To put it bluntly, they were kept dogs who answered to other kept dogs.
So Tony and his six companions placed considerable value on their current positions and on their lives. They had no interest whatsoever in dying pointlessly on an arena floor.
"So the seven of us talked it over," Tony continued, his tone earnest, "and we've decided to propose a straightforward arrangement. The two strongest among us will face you in single combat, one at a time. The matches will be called at first blood. No fight to the death."
The proposal was, Orum had to admit, reasonable. It avoided a general melee, and it gave everyone involved a dignified way out.
"If we lose, we concede the match completely. Everyone raises their surrender tokens, and the championship goes to you."
"We'd like to shake hands over this one, Orum. Walk out of here as friends rather than enemies."
"And we'll help you hunt the Bone Constrictor. That's the finals' bonus challenge, after all, and you'll want the backup."
Tony added that last point with a kind of calculated practicality that was very much in the Roen City professional-class style.
The Bone Constrictor was the special element the tournament organizers had built into the finals. Beyond the fighting between contestants, a Bone Constrictor would be released into the arena to raise the stakes and the spectacle. It was a monster of considerable size and possessed a terrifying crushing ability. Even a near-professional-tier fighter couldn't afford to treat it casually.
As a general rule, the Bone Constrictor would be released roughly halfway through the final round. At that point, fighters would need to contend with each other and the creature simultaneously. The design significantly raised both the difficulty and the mortality rate of the final round, and the crowd loved it for that reason.
Tony's proposal was coherent. It reduced unnecessary casualties and left both sides with a workable outcome.
Orum listened calmly to the full offer.
His gaze moved past Tony to the six fighters hanging back, all of them visibly tense.
Their faces varied, but their eyes carried the same content: reverence edged with fear.
Predictable, and within the range of what he had expected. The bloodthirsty mob rush hadn't come.
That said, Orum had his own thoughts about the Bone Constrictor. He wasn't particularly interested in letting any of these fighters lay a hand on it. If they accidentally took the kill, he would lose a monster organ, and that was not a loss he was willing to absorb.
"Agreed," he said after a moment's consideration.
It was brief. One word.
Tony and the six behind him all exhaled at the same moment. The relief on their faces was genuine.
"Then I'll be the one to challenge you first."
Tony moved forward two steps, and his bearing shifted. He became more serious, more deliberate. His hand closed around the hilt of the knight's sword on his back, and he drew it in a smooth, practiced arc.
The blade caught the sunlight and threw it back cold and bright.
It was only now, with Tony fully composed and ready, that Orum took a closer look at the man.
He noticed a particular quality to the air around him.
The suit of bright silver plate armour Tony wore was suffused with a barely perceptible faint radiance. The light had the quality of bedrock: dense, still, and immovable. It gave the impression of something that simply could not be broken.
This was the classic trained feat of the knight's professional system: Shield Wall.
Shield Wall was one of the most fundamental and most reliably practical defensive feats in the knight's repertoire. It granted a substantial increase to the wearer's defensive capability as long as they were clad in plate armour. For as long as the armour remained largely intact, the knight maintained a powerful physical damage reduction.
But this reduction was not a simple matter of hardness and material resistance. It was closer to a concept of "flow," the principle of dispersing and redirecting the force behind every incoming strike. Combined with the already formidable protective properties of plate armour itself, this made the knight one of the most defensively capable close-combat professions available in the early stages of training.
Orum could sense that Tony's armour was of quite good quality, not the unremarkable work of a common smith. And Tony's command of Shield Wall was evidently mature. The stone-like aura around him moved in natural, fluid circulation, with no roughness or hesitation in it.
That told Orum that Tony was a seasoned and experienced near-professional knight. Among fighters at his tier, he was toward the upper end, which was clearly why he had been a frontrunner for the tournament championship.
"I look forward to the exchange," Tony said.