Preliminaries

Humans are social creatures. This means they usually tend to gather around in large groups. This is not just to enhance their chances of finding a lifelong partner, but also to increase their survival chances.

Based on this, humans in this world also gather in countries in the shape of the sun with eight rays. Each ray consists of several towns covered in circular walls, with a large capital city at its center. If looked at from above, it would look like an octopus spreading all its legs straight out.

The town I came from, the name I don't know, is in the middle of the "ray" pointing towards the south. It was relatively safe compared to the towns at the end of the rays.

The capital not only works as a main gathering and distribution point but also as the headquarters of the most influential people managing the whole country.

Not only that, but the capital also hosts the barracks of the hundred-thousand-strong army of the country, boasting master-level tamers with various beasts under their employ. They are the main force that protects all towns from the threat of strong demons.

After watching the squadron of knights riding various flying beasts that just flew by above, I quickly returned my attention to the bulletin board. Just searching for my name from the long list containing thousands of names was hard. It took me several minutes to only discover mine near the end of the list.

"So I'm part of the 4th block?"

All the tamers participating in the newbie tournament were divided into a total of 64 blocks. Each block's participants would fight amongst themselves until only a single tamer rises atop. Then, the 64 remaining tamers would fight in a bracket format until the final champion is determined.

The order of the preliminaries would be the 1st up to the 32nd block fighting from early morning to noon, and the 33rd to 64th block fighting from noon until late afternoon. Since I'm at the 4th block, that means my fights would be quite early.

Each block contains at least a hundred tamers, which means that there would be multiple blocks competing at the same time to maximize the space of the stadium. The only drawback to this is that the preliminaries do not give the tamers time to rest.

As soon as you win and your next opponent is already waiting, you would immediately start the next fight with all the fatigue from the previous match. If you can finish your battle quicker than your next opponent, though, you will gain a slight advantage of having rested a little.

With such rules beasts and monsters who have high stamina or high recovery rate have the edge during the prelims. A big slime has little to no stamina consumption so it would have the edge in long battles, however, it lacks the decisive damage-dealing skill to end the battle quickly. However, of course, Ember was trained to overcome such disadvantages.

We spent the whole day brushing up our strategies and decided to sleep early to prepare for the early morning battle.

---

Waking up earlier than usual, we did some basic exercises before heading to the large stadium where the tournament would be held.

Despite being early in the morning, a lot of stalls were already calling out here and there trying to attract customers. We bought some food from one of the stalls to fill our stomachs before entering the stadium through the participant's entrance.

When I entered the waiting room for the 4th block, the large room was void of people. This was understandable since the battles for the 1st and 2nd block was about to start. Scouting out their potential opponents wouldn't be a bad move anyway, so they are probably out in the stands watching the battles. Me? I prepared Ember for all situations so I don't need to scout out my enemies.

In less than an hour, people started pouring into the waiting room. Based on what I heard, the preliminaries for both blocks were already done and the management was cleaning up the stages for now. The beasts that won the match were both dragon types. Hearing this, I felt a slight headache.

'Fina said I have a high chance of winning, but she didn't tell me a dragon tamer would participate!'

I cursed in my mind before trying to calm down. Right, although it's a dragon, it should be below 3rd stage of evolution to be able to participate in the newbie contest. Dragons only exhibit large leaps in strength after their 4th or 5th stage of evolution which means that I may still have a chance to win.

After I convinced myself that I still had a chance, the referee called for all participants under the 3rd and 4th blocks. We slowly went out and were guided to the stage where we are to fight. The stage was a square of about 50 meters with an elevation of a meter or so. The surface was plain and rocky since this stage was probably made using an earth element skill of a monster or a beast on the spot.

Tamers aren't allowed inside the stage so I and my enemy only stood at opposite corners of the stage. After Ember and the opponent's beast came up the stage, the battle immediately started.

Our first opponent was a nimble-looking monkey with leaves covering critical parts of its body like armor. It was called a leaf monkey and was born with a natural affinity with a variant of earth magic, plant magic.

If we were fighting in a forest, this would be a hard-to-fight enemy. Fortunately, the stage is made of stone so the effects of plant magic would lose efficacy. That's irrelevant to Ember though.

As soon as the battle started, the leaf monkey immediately zigzagged toward Ember. Ember, on the other hand, quickly split into two bodies using [Cloning] before dashing forward using [Tackle]. With the [Tackle]'s speed boost, the leaf monkey was surprised as the slow-looking slime suddenly zoomed into its face.

After dodging at the last moment, the leaf monkey's stance was broken. Then, it was suddenly hit by the clone's [Tackle] and was sent flying a few meters. The attack was one of the strategies that I taught Ember, the divergent attack. Using the attack of the main body to surprise the enemy and making it dodge to the desired direction, where the clone was about to hit.

The leaf monkey, not knowing how it got hit, finally noticed that there were two slimes on the other side. Seeing this, it screeched in anger before charging forward once more.