The Mage Tournament Quarter-Finals

Robert was informed that he would have a day to rest between each round of the tournament. Knowing this, he decided to go talk to Stella and thank her for her help in the free-for-all. Each of the eight remaining contestants were given rooms in a nearby hotel. Robert liked the room, he hypothisised that it was at least as good as a three star hotel back on earth, he even got small bottles of a strong alcoholic beverage called "River of the Mind", when Robert asked about the name he was told that it was because the beverage made your head swim. While Robert didn't drink as he hated the taste of alcohol, his hoarding nature led to him keeping the bottles and carrying them around with him.

Robert headed over to Stella's room. He arrived in front of the door. He knocked thrice. A drowsy voice came from inside the room.

"Uhhh, who is it?" Stella said drowsily.

Robert was taken aback, it was six hours since dawn -approximately fourteen o'clock by earth standards- "It's me, Robert." he said.

Robert heard a shuffling sound from inside the room and was then invited in. When Robert entered the room he found that it was completely immaculate, Stella was sitting at the small desk with two seats that faced the window, she was nursing a cup of tea. She was well dressed and gave a small, welcoming smile upon seeing Robert.

"Hey there, what's new?" Stella asked, sipping her tea. She offered Robert a cup.

"Er, no thanks. I don't like tea." Robert said.

[I am disowning you...]

"If anything, I own you." Robert quipped back internally.

[...]

"So... why are you here?" Stella asked.

"I just came to thank you for the help in the tournament." Robert said.

"Is that all? We agreed to help each other out, after all, I couldn't let you suffer some crushing defeat. After all, I've already marketed you out as a skilled personage, if you were to go all weepy after your defeat then it would affect my reputation." Stella said, smiling.

"Well, if that's it." Robert said, beginning to turn away "But now that you've dedicated yourself to safeguarding my mental health, I suppose that you'll have to check in on me during my training?" Robert said questioningly. He could hear the smile in Stella's reply.

"Since you're so incompetent, I suppose that I will have to." she said with mock exasperation.

Robert returned to his quarters and practiced controlling his staff. At the beginning of the next morning, the announcer reported the first match ups.

"The duels today will be, in chronological order: Stella versus Ferrus, 'Lion's Head' Ajax versus The Elemental Knight, 'White Cleric' Scyllan versus Merl Strongstaff and Robert vs Ignatius Ignis. Let the battle begin."

Robert was watching the battles from a special box reserved for the top eight mages. First up, Stella was fighting one of the hooded men from before.

...

Stella was waiting for her battle. The gates on both her and her opponent's rooms opened and they walked into the stadium. Stella condensed an icy armour around herself, she was unaffected by the cold. She looked down at the bracelet that she had sewn the water crystal she obtained from Logan into. She drew from it so that she could create water for her to freeze. While she was thinking, Stella's opponent had thrown off his cloak, revealing his enameled, pitch black, full plate armour and his blade that cleaved through swathes of air, yet barely slowed him down -at around seven foot long-. The man charged across the arena at Stella, snapping her out of her thoughts.

Stella summoned four spears of extremely cold ice and controlled them to continually pester the knight. The spears created an intricate web of attacks that would stump even an experienced fighter but the knight simply swung his sword and shattered all four spears. At this point it became clear what was going on here. This 'Ferrus' was actually a powerful warrior that had entered the tournament on the basis of only being a level one mage. While normally this would be fine, the fact that he was clearly above twelfth level, considering the strength of his last attack, had caused many people discontent. Ferrus was cursed as a dishonourable swine, but ultimately he had acted within the rules of the tournament and was not disqualified.

Stella had realised this too and decided that she was going to cause this guy some pain, even if she couldn't beat him. In just a few seconds, Stella flooded the entire arena using her bracelet. The audience and the announcer were shocked into silence.

Ferrus continued his push forward and began to cut apart the waves of water assaulting him from all sides. For a normal human this would be impossible, but for a magical tier warrior this was something he could easily do for days. As the battle waged on, Stella made the area that the knight was in colder and colder, but his movements shattered the ice that gathered upon his armour and his stamina seemed unaffected by the extreme temperature.

After ten minutes of this, the knight located Stella and spent the next five minutes chasing her as walls of ice covered her retreat and paved the way through the water for her. Eventually the knight caught up and slashed at Stella, while she blocked it with an ice shield, the sword still struck her and set her tumbling to the ground.

"I don't particularly enjoy injuring helpless women, please concede and end this farce." Ferrus said, in a bored voice.

Stella got up, rage filled her eyes and the world was painted red. Stella made a gesture towards the knight... and nothing happened. The next moment, Stella put her hand down and conceded the match.

...

Robert on the other hand was in awe. While it had seemed that nothing had happened to the knight outwardly, Robert saw through mana and elementals, he had seen the way that every last fire elemental had dissipated from the inside of Ferrus's armour, the man had been frozen instantly and with another mere fifteen seconds he would have perished.

Next up was the fight between the other cloaked man and the adventurer leader. The second cloaked man was another figure completely covered in armour. The man wielded a glaive and the battle was extremely short. As soon as both contestants were out, the Elemental Knight charged the adventurer leader and Ajax was assaulted by attacks from the glaive -which upon reaching Ajax, had become invisible. Ajax was originally able to defend using his magic shield, but soon the glaive turned visible again, it started to curve around the shield with every attack, moving like a snake, slowly but surely whittling Ajax down until he was sent out of the arena by his artifact.

The next match was between the leader of the priests and the mumbling mage. Once again the match began and ended within a few minutes. The mumbling mage summoned flood after flood of elemental fury, the priest began to strike through his flood of elementals with huge ballista bolts made of light, but it was stopped immediately as the mumbling mage summoned a rainbow coloured mana armour. The priest was unable to do anything but struggle futilely until he was overtaken by the flood of spells.

And then... it was Robert's turn. He entered the arena and stared at his opponent -the fire mage, Ignatius Ignis. Robert watched carefully for several seconds as Ignatius reached into his pocket... and withdrew a joint and lit it. Ignatius did all of this without acknowledging the presence of Robert or the crowd in the coliseum. Ignatius took a long draw from his joint and smiled at Robert.

"Sup, I'm Ignatius." he said.

"Uhh, Robert?" Robert introduced himself, confused by the current predicament.

"App... what the hell is going on?" Robert asked internally.

[Would you believe me if I told you that the joint he's holding is packed with magical herbs?]

"I guess." Robert internally replied.

[You're far too naive. But in all seriousness, that thing is empowering him as we speak.]

Robert looked over to Ignatius and saw him using his fire to create images of war and making explosion sound effects with his mouth.

"Yeah... he looks real dangerous... Anyway, if that's true then why are they allowed in the tournament?" Robert asked internally.

[They aren't]

"Ah..." Robert thought "Uh, judges? Isn't my opponent disqualified for using... magic herbs I guess?" Robert said.

The judges conferred and the announcer announced. "Ignatius Ignis is disqualified, Robert is the victor."

Ignatius looked up at the announcer upon hearing this, he then shrugged and walked back through his tournament gate. "Woah, bummer." he said as he walked away.

Robert was left standing there and thinking about how strange this new world is. The remaining four contestants returned to their rooms and Robert practiced his mana control.

...

Back in a small cave, three people sat. A lich wearing paladin armour, an ancient lich sitting on a shining, black throne covered in embossed runes that the lich's blood flowed through -or rather the bottom half of such a throne and the newcomer -a young man with hair that shone like copper wire and eyes filled with snakeskin patterns, The newcomer had a voice that was very similar to that of the ancient lich -Monarch, the demon had called him- to the point that the paladin hadn't even noticed the change when the newcomer had begun to tell the story from Stella's perspective.

The newcomer wore a broad smile as he introduced himself "I am The Watcher, the only omniscient being in the universe." The Watcher then turned to the ancient lich, the ancient lich glared at him and gritted his teeth "Why are you here cowardly, lying scumbag?"

"Is this really necessary?" The watcher asked, a sad look filling his eyes.

"You're omniscient," the ancient lich mocked "you already know it is."

The Watcher sat down "Just because I know exactly what will happen doesn't mean that I don't wish for it to be otherwise... Anyway, I'm here to help you give your story truthfully, truthful about things that even you don't know Robert."

"I am the Monarch, Robert is dead." the lich replied.

The story continued.

...