Tournament Day

After a long, passionate make-out session, the two went their separate ways for the night. Kaylus returned to his room, and after washing up, he sat down at the table in his room and gazed at the night sky.

"Today was quite an eventful day." He said to himself with a smile on his face.

"But there are some things that have me concerned." He mumbled.

Kaylus went deep into thought and began to try and analyse everything that had happened.

'Why did that training dummy attack Maya? Right, the fourth difficulty level will attack a specific individual and attempt to kill them. But didn't it require blood or hair to work?'

"Hmm…" Kaylus pondered the question for a moment.

'Right, who is to say nobody could get those things, blood might be hard to get, but hair should be simple. All they'd need to do is find her hairbrush or even look at her clothing, odds are they'd find a strand or two.'

'But this begs the question, who did this and why? Maya is the most likely suspect, but she had nothing to gain from it. If she wanted sympathy, there exist easier ways to do it.'

At that moment, Kaylus remembered the pair he and Maya happened to bump into earlier in the week.

'Right, what did those two say? That Maya was their master's woman, what was his name…'

"Nemo, that's it!" Kaylus exclaimed loudly, sinking into his chair soon after praying no one heard him.

'Right, I should stay quiet. So what would he have to gain from attacking her? Unless that wasn't his entire goal.'

Then it hit him.

'Of course, how could I have not thought of it.' he slapped his forehead.

'It's not that he wanted to scare her by making her feel threatened. He desired to injure her with the training dummy and most likely stop it before it got life-threatening and jump to action like a hero.'

'By saving Maya's life, he'd look like a hero and not only would he gain brownie points from the clan elders who already like him, according to Maya, but possibly her mother too.

'After he saves her, it would most likely be a piece of cake to frame me for what happened, especially if Maya got knocked out for a few days. If that occurred, there would be no one to defend me. Everyone knew we'd go there alone, and only the two of us technically had access to the training dummy.'

'I'd most likely get executed before Maya even had a chance to defend me.'

"Haa," Kaylus sighed.

"I think I should head to bed. There is no point in thinking about it anymore. I just need to beat that clown to a pulp tomorrow. It is a death match in the end." A sinister smile appeared on his face.

Kaylus was extremely vengeful and wouldn't let someone get away with scheming against him. An example needs to be made, and that role had fallen into Nemo's lap.

He jumped onto his bed, sinking into the soft mattress and not long after, Kaylus fell into a deep slumber.

.

.

.

The next day Kaylus woke up before the break of dawn. Seconds after he woke up, he heard somebody knocking on the door.

That surprised Kaylus, but he had nothing to fear, so he told whoever it was to come inside.

"Come in."

After he said that, the door opened swiftly, revealing Maya. She had a smile on her face and jumped straight at Kaylus, who was still in bed.

She hugged him tightly and cheerfully said, "Morning!"

"Morning, little fox. That surprised me a bit."

"What did?" She looked at him and asked.

"You, jumping into my bed like that, so early in the morning."

"Hmm? Why is that surprising?" She asked in a slightly confused.

"I mean, I doubt your mum would be happy if she found out you jumped into the bed of a man you just met," Kaylus awkwardly said while trying not to look at Maya.

"Why does it bother you what she thinks?" Maya asked.

"To be honest, when we met, she looked like she wanted to bite my head off. I don't think she liked me despite what she said."

"Mmm, well, it doesn't matter anyway." She said with a smile.

"Why is that?"

"Because you're going to win today, and I'm going to become your wife so she can't say anything at that point." She said before proceeding to kiss Kaylus.

"I'm just getting further acquainted with my future husband." She teased Kaylus.

"Hahaha, right, right. It should go without saying that I will win." Kaylus winked.

The two would spend the next hour in bed cuddling and making out. Kaylus wanted to take things further but decided it would be better to wait until after the tournament.

When the time to go came closer, Kaylus got dressed. He was wearing clothes with the same design as the ones he wore on the first night in this world. Some maids had patched up the original clothes too at Maya's request. The only exception was the large hole in the back that Kaylus requested be left alone.

He didn't know why, but he believed it was important, and decided to leave the hole alone. However, due to how important he felt it'd be in the future, he chose not to wear those clothes. Lucky for him Maya had thought of this and had identical clothing prepared for him in advance.

Having gotten dressed, Kaylus left his room with Maya, and the two made their way to the tournament arena.

After a bit of walking, they reached the stadium. The loud cheers of the crowd were borderline deafening.

"It sounds like people are very excited for today," Kaylus commented.

"Mhm," Maya agreed.

"Today is the last day of the tournament, and only the strongest of the strong are fighting."

"Strongest of the strong and me, you mean," Kaylus winked.

"But you're plenty strong." She declared with a slight frown.

"Hehe, that might be so. But they don't know that. So I doubt they are excited to see me." He chuckled.

"That's true, but most people are probably excited to see you for another reason." She said meekly.

"Oh? And what reason is that?" He asked.

"Well, for the past few days, there has been a rumour going around the clan that you and I are lovers. So I think everyone wants to see you because of that." She said, slightly red behind the ears.

"Haha, are you feeling shy? It's not like they are too far off, seeing how you'll be my wife soon." He teased her once more and gently kissed the top of her head.

At that action, Maya felt like her heart was going to explode. Her whole face flushed red, and without looking at Kaylus, she said, "I… I'm going to go ahead to my seat. I'll be cheering you on, so stay safe."

Having conveyed that, she rushed to her seat, leaving Kaylus behind, slightly bewildered.

"Was she always that shy? I thought foxes like her were supposed to be used to seducing people. The more I learn about her the less I know…" He smiled and made his way to his seat.

His seat was meters away from the arena. The arena was about twice as big as the training grounds he used.

Kaylus looked around. Hundreds of people were sitting on multi-tiered stands and cheering loudly from excitement.

Kaylus became wide-eyed as his gaze darted around. He could see people who he thought were part of Maya's clan, except for some reason, unlike Maya and her mother, those in the stands only had a single tail.

Other than them, Kaylus saw plenty of regular-looking humans. He quickly deduced that they probably were from Nemo's family or just humans that came to the Argenda clan to watch the end of the tournament.

The cheers stopped, and the arena became quiet when an old bearded man walked to the centre of the stadium.

"Welcome to the final day of our glorious tournament. This long and arduous tournament is finally coming to an end. Today, the last three participants will battle for the chance to change their lives for the better." His voice echoed.

'I wonder if I'll need to fight first. I'd assume that the Nemo guy would want to fight me asap.' Kaylus pondered, receiving his answer right after.

"This young man has shown exceptional skill, his enemies cower when they hear his name and run for the hills, the young master of the Gulliver clan, Nemo Gulliver!"

Cheers erupted as Nemo walked towards the old man, waving at the crowd with a wide smile. He was bare-handed and had no weapons. He was wearing crimson red robes with black trim around them.

The old man then continued. "And fighting against him is the dark horse of the tournament, he came out of nowhere and defeated everyone he had fought against without a scratch.

With an unknown face, name and origin he is the biggest unknown variable and the person who was thought most likely to cause an upset in the tournament. The masked swordsman!"

Cheers erupted once more as Kaylus sat surprised that he wasn't fighting first.

"How does that make sense?" He mumbled.

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A/N: Hey, sorry for the shorter chapter. I have a fever and feel like absolute crap. I wasn't going to write this chapter today but I wanted to try my best for you guys. I hope you enjoy it despite it being pretty bare bones. In the next chapters we will have some action finally and after that we will have some different kind of action if you catch my drift.

I hope you enjoyed this chapter, if you did make sure to vote with your power stones if you want to help support and motivate me.