The Princess of Wrath

Chapter 2 - Part III: Knightess Diana Belmont

Once the euphoria subsided, Elfriede sat down again. With her consent, the tournament participants began to enter the arena alongside a dozen centurions who had the obligation of maintaining order.

"Lady Asura, what are the rewards this year for the winner?" Urza asked her. She was wiping the tears of pain from Jul's face after he hurt himself while eating, and he was grabbing his sister's hand for comfort.

"I believe that, aside of having a future resting place among the heroes of yore in the Crypt of Saints, the winner is going to receive a bigger monetary prize compared to last year. I think that it will be...approximately five million sen," she answered before affectionately kissing her brother's hand. "There, there, little bro. You're strong. Look, it's about to begin!"

She managed to distract her brother, making him look towards the arena and forgetting his pain as he watched the participants begin to fight each other. They were using their own weapons and armor, which meant that there was no excuse for receiving an injury, from losing a limb to losing their life. Although the fight to the death was allowed, the fighters had the right to surrender and end the contest instantly; the violation of the yield was punished depending on the severity of the damage caused to the surrendered.

Asura could not recognize any of them, most certainly because they were warriors from the annexed nations. Still it was undeniable that they had a lot of combat talent: the best one was a spearman dressed in hard-leather armor that allowed him to be quicker than his opponent, a big man inside a heavy metal and wielding a war-hammer. His movements allowed him to easily dodge a full blow that the armored man could not stop nor change its trajectory and freely cut him behind his right knee. With a torn ligament, the big man unavoidably fell to the ground and forced him to raise his arm, yelling his surrender.

"Well, that was quick," Asura mumbled as she watched the spearman celebrating by greeting the audience. "At least it was more exciting than those two gunslingers."

She was referring to a man and a woman that were in the opposite side of the arena that had shot each other and, on the ground, no one seemed to want to give up and were struggling to gather strength and stand up. Bullets used in the arena were non-lethal for the audience's safety but the force and impact were enough to seriously injure anyone, like the agonizing gunslingers that could not even reload their pistols with gunpowder.

"What w-weapon would you use in a f-fight, Asura?" Stanislaus asked her, partially covering his eyes so as not to witness the spray of blood that came from a clean wound on the neck of a knight who did not manage to raise his shield in time to stop a throwing axe attack.

"Shit, that was brutal! What did you ask me? Oh, a weapon! Mmm... A sword, perhaps."

Asura's answer came with a very fake happy grin that was hiding a little burst of anger from the memory of her former teacher and the guilty pleasure of seeing his dead body at her feet. That event had marked her very deeply and broken her self-esteem regarding the art of combat to the point that even the thought of picking up a sword scared her to death.

She should have thanked the newly incoming and exotic fighter who managed to capture her attention instantly: a skinny young man dressed with red monk rags; he was unarmed, unlike his opponent who was a swordsman, and a veteran-looking one by his old age and heavy physiognomy.

"A monk from the Hidden Isles? That can't end well..." she said as if she foreshadowed the outcome of the fight when the young monk rushed towards the swordsman and tried to hit him in the head with a bolley kick. His opponent only had to demonstrate his years of experience by drawing his sword and making a single but swift slash that ripped the inferior part of the monk's leg to the bone. Obviously the monk screamed in pain and surrendered once he hit the floor. "Well, that one was either a daredevil or a monumental fool for attacking first so recklessly."