Beginning Of The Tournament

Adrian and the other people who were participating in the tournament stayed at the place and trained for the tournament. They had not really gotten any information about the tournament. They only knew it was about the power of the family and that the tournament took place two weeks later.

The tournament took place here in the capital. It was all going to happen in the battle arena in the middle of the city. Adrian was starting to get excited about the tournament, which is why the two weeks went by very quickly.

When the day of the tournament finally came, they were all called to the dining hall in the mansion. They had to go through the battle plan, as well as the rules of the tournaments. They had to get all these details since they had been told nothing up until now.

When everyone had arrived at the dining hall, They all looked at Sir Harlace, ready for him to tell them all the details.

"So ... You are all curious about how this tournament will play out!" He looked at them all with a small smile.

None of them said anything; they all just looked at him with expectant gazes. They had all been curious about what this tournament was about.

"Well, it is not a secret to anyone!" He slowly said, "It is a yearly competition between the noble houses, where the winner will get a big reward! The reward is usually money or land!" It was a small sentence, but it showed how much importance this tournament meant for the noble houses.

"As long as we get our gold!" The other adventurers were only doing this for gold. So this was all they could say.

"How is the tournament going to play out?" Adrian ignored those guys and asked a more valid question. Sir Harlace smiled at this; he liked Adrian more and more.

"It is all about solo fights; you will never fight as a team!" Sir Harlace answered, "Every noble house has to have ten fighters each because there are ten different houses in the capital! There will therefore be ten different battle groups!" Sir Harlace gave them an explanation. "The winners of the different groups then fight each other until there is only one guy left."

"Sounds simple enough; how did you place preciously?" Adrian asked yet again.

"We have never gotten through the group stages" Sir Harlace had an embarrassed smile on his face.

Everyone except Adrian started laughing "H- Ho- HAHAHA- How is that possible? HAHA," One of the adventurers couldn't help but ask.

"I see ... This year, I promise more than that!" Adrian said this while they were all laughing. They did not hear what he said, but Sir Harlace did. He looked at Adrian with a grateful smile. He had a lot of faith in Adrian.

"Now, everyone, it is time to go fight!" Sir Harlace looked at them all with a small smile.

***

It did not take more than a few minutes to arrive at the arena. Adrian had never seen the arena before. It was colossal. Around 50 meters tall, it was round, and there was probably space for five battle arena's in there.

Outside of the arena, there was a long line of people trying to get inside. They were probably there to see the fights. People in this world loved to see others fight more than anything; it was a violent time they lived in.

The good thing about being one of the fighters was that they could just walk in without standing in the long line of people.

As they walked into the arena, some people came to show them the quarters they would stay at. The family of Harlace had gotten themselves a small room, barely able to fit the people that had come with them.

It was one of the lower quality rooms compared to others. It was really miserable, but they had to accept that that was how it was.

Now that they had arrived, all they had to do was wait for the match to start. Each room there was in the arena had a door into the arena, and each team would go into the arena as they were called.

When they call the teams, they call from the best to the worst. Which meant that the Harlace family would probably be one of the last teams to be called out since they never made it out of the group stages.

Every fighter in this tournament has got a number, which they can all see in the arena. Adrian got number 76. His number was high, since he was on one of worst teams. The Harlace family got the numbers from 70 - 79.

It was finally time that everyone was called on stage. They only made a big deal out of the first three houses, since they are the strongest and most domineering. After that, they did not do anything special, and just called them on stage.

Adrian got excited as he walked on there. He saw a lot of people there, since 6 house had already been called up. He saw the three houses standing at the beginning of the row. There were a few people that looked quite strong, he was hoping to meet them soon.

The arena looked quite majestic, they had stand all around the fighting arena for all the spectators. in the middle of all these stands, was a building for all the VIP's to sit. The king had the seat that was closest to the arena, and the people sat behind him, in the succession as the rank they had in the kingdom.

In the arena, 10 battle stages had been placed. The arena was round, so all the battle stages had been placed in that circular formation, with a single battle stage in the middle. There was 10 stages around that single one, and the one in the middle, was for the final matches.

As all the houses had gotten on stage, the host of this tournament, which was the king, gave a small speech about how the kingdom was doing and so on. Adrian did not pay attention, since he did not really care in the end, he just wanted to have a good fight.

When the speech was finally over, he gave the word to one of his underlings, who would be the commentator for this event. He started to chant the rules, that killing was not allowed intentionally, you could not attack someone that had already given up and so on.

After the rules had been told, he asked everyone to pay attention to a big screen on the right side of the arena, where all the fighters could see what arena they were assigned for. Adrian had gotten battle stage 6, since he was 76, he was the 7th fighter in battle stage 6.

He saw 2 guys in his battle stage he was feeling threatened by. He was a big muscular man, that exuded an intense killing intent. He felt like someone that had killed many men before, but he did not look to be more than 23 years old.

The other man he recognized as a threat was a skinny man. He did not exude any killing or battle intent. One would not even see he was there, if one did not pay attention. This fact is what made Adrian put his guards up, someone like that, is probably a very skilled assassin.

No one paid attention to Adrian though, he looked like a plain 20 year old man. He was admittedly very handsome with a good figure, but many noblemen were like this, since they were pick-up artists. Everyone thought that Adrian was just another one of those guys, with a good family. If they knew that he was probably one of the strongest here, and that he was only 16 years old, they would be very shocked.

A judge had been assigned to every battle stage. The judge at battle stage 6, was a kind looking monk. This surprised Adrian, since this monk looked like a man of peace. The monk noticed Adrain's stare.

"Oh, young man, you don't think I belong?" The monk looked at Adrian, and gave him a friendly smile.

Adrian did not say anything and just looked at him. He knew that you could never judge a book by its cover.

Suddenly Adrian felt a surge of power, trying to force him to the knees. He saw that the monks kind smile, had turned into a smirk. He was teasing Adrian. This force was only hitting Adrian, trying to get him to his knees and humiliate him.

Adrian knew what the monk was doing, smiled back at him and accepted the challenged. They stood there for ten minutes, staring at each other. No one knew what was going on and Adrian had started to sweat buckets. He was about to crumble to the ground, when he suddenly heard a voice.

"That is quite enough Rufus, don't you think?" When the voice landed, the force pushing Adrian down stopped.