Chapter 422   - The odds

After Roki had finished dealing with the crowd of people in front of him, he decided to rush off onto the arena floor. He didn't know why, but something in his gut stomach was telling him that he should go check out this mysterious person. Once entering the stands, there were far fewer people than he had expected which he thought was a little strange.

Then on the opposite end of where he was standing a large black chalk board like thing looked to have a few numbers written down, and those were the odds for the next contestant. Seeing the numbers that were written down, he was quite taken aback.

'Was my instinct off this time?' Roki thought.

The odds weren't just bad, but they seemed to be extremely bad for any average contestant that would take part in an event like this. Now Roki understood why there were fewer people than usual. Even with new contestants, many would usually stay because they could watch an existing match or it was a chance for them to make some big money as well.

Roki himself had quickly changed out of the equipment he was wearing before. Not many knew what he actually looked like, underneath all his armour. He had a short grey beard that went around his mouth and short grey hair to go with it on top of his head. If others knew that he was quite the old middle aged man, they wouldn't believe how quick and fast he could move.

He decided to sit down in the area next to a wealthy looking large rounded belly man with an odd shaped hat that slanted off to the side. Living in the empire himself, he knew which ones were wealthy or not, but the dead giveaway. More than anything was the young man who was by his side, taking all his orders. A smaller scrawny looking man, still well dressed but clearly not as nice as the other.

"So I brought you the betting odds of the next contestant." The scrawny man said. "I also managed to get information of his adventurer rank and the equipment he would be using."

After having a look over at the details, the large bellied man laughed, and allowed his belly to jiggle up and down. "Ha, ha, ha, this is an easy one if I have ever seen it. We can make a killing with this fellow. Put the maximum amount available on him winning against the basic tier and the intermediate tier, then place a bet on him getting beaten by the advanced tier. That is, if he even decides to take on the advanced tier." The man said.

"What makes you think he will beat the intermediate tier?" The scrawny man asked. "It looks to me based on his adventurer rank he might struggle."

"You might be right." The large man said, "But the only reason I think he will succeed is due to his equipment. You can see it is a high tier, and that is probably why he decided to take part in the tournament in the first place. But he will quickly learn that good equipment can only take you so far."

Usually, although Roki would hate to admit it, he would have agreed with the large man. The empire was a rich place, so there were many who were able to afford high levels of equipment. They would often believe in this too much and often lose at a certain stage. But for some reason, Roki still couldn't shake the feeling, and the smile he had seen from earlier.

'This one is different.' He thought.

"Everyone, our next contestant Nes Delon, will now be trying the first stage."

The first stage was the basic tier beast, and it could really be anything. Standing in the centre of the field, Ray pulled out his black raven sword that was at the advanced tier level. Even though his gauntlets were a higher tier, he had chosen to practice his sword as much as possible and only use his fists when necessary.

The metal cage opened and a beast the same size as a lion came in. It was a strange plant looking type beast, but it clearly had a head. Around its neck it was decorated in what could only be described as petals. It was slow in movement as it had two thick legs. Its body was green in color and it seemed to have no eyes.

But that didn't matter, for when it opened its mouth a flying seed was shot out right at Ray. Choosing to do nothing, he allowed the seed to hit his chest armour and fall to the floor in place doing no viable damage. This was expected, Ray's chest piece was at the advanced tier. Two levels higher than the basic tier level. The plant thing stood no chance.

Walking over to the beast, Ray allowed the beast to continuously fire the seeds hitting his chest, then once in a while it would fire one toward his face. When this happened he would use the flat side of his sword to block it from hitting him as well.

Finally, when he was close enough, Ray threw a diagonal swing, killing the beast completely. The members of the crowd were pleased, as some of them had made some easy money. But there was a maximum bet that was able to be put on in the first stages of the event. This way the arena wasn't able to lose much.

They didn't really care about the results for these beginning stage events, this just allowed those that wanted to bet and have fun to do so. Most of the money was made on higher stages, where it was harder to tell who would win even with information.

Because Ray hadn't done much, it was hard for Roki to tell if the man he was watching was skilled. As a swordsman himself he would usually have some idea, but with the swing at the end, it was neither good nor bad. As if someone had received knight training from a young age, but would have never been called a prodigy.

The next beast was called out, and it looked like Ray would be dealing with mostly plant type beasts today. The beast that came out this time was slightly larger than the one before and even had similar skills. But just like it seemed to be a repeat of last time. Only this time, Ray didn't allow the larger seeds to hit his chest piece, and instead was striking them down as they came towards him, then when he had finally reached the intermediate tier beast he swung down his blade slicing it in half and killing it in one strike again.

This time, there were some people in the crowd that looked upset as they had expected him to lose at this stage. The large bellied man from before even had a slightly concerned look on his face. He had expected the current contestant to win; the problem was, he never expected it to go as easy as it had done.

Inside the arena, when they were getting ready for the third round, Ray was starting to understand some difficulties with no longer being able to use mana steal. Every bit of Ki he used would consume a certain amount of mana. The tough part of the event was fights were done one after another with hardly any rest time in between.

Before he could rely on mana steel to make up for whatever he used, but he would no longer be doing that. The third beast was an advanced tier beast that was a large snake looking creature, once again it was green in colour though and had the same flower pattern around its neck.

Unlike the two before it, though, it moved incredibly fast around the arena, firing the seeds out when it could. Not wanting to waste energy, Ray didn't try blocking these and started to use some of the black sash skills to dodge the attacks. Still due to how fast the attacks were Ki needed to be used when avoiding them as well, just not as much as if he was to take the attack head on.

His footwork had gotten back to what it once was, Sir K during his stay had given him a refresher course. Although he wasn't able to improve his skills, he was able for it to return to what it once was before he started to learn magic.

Slowly the two were moving around the field but the others watching, though all Ray was doing was dodging, he could never win like this. But then, there were a few that had realised what he had done. While dodging the snake's attacks, he moved in certain directions pushing the beast back towards one of the walls. Now that it was basically trapped with one more attack, instead of dodging, Ray used his blade to slice through the large seed that was the size of his head.

He leapt up to the head and used a large amount of KI to attack as he sliced back down, hitting the floor. The cut was a strong one, but it wasn't a clean one as the blade had only managed to cut through three quarters of the snake's neck and it was now rolling around on the floor spewing black blood, but a few seconds later and the beast had died.

This time unlike the time before, rather than m.o.a.ns, or a few cheerful faces. The crowd cheered. Perhaps they would have a new warrior in the arena that would be exciting for them to watch.

'Now let's see how you do against the king tier?' Roki thought.

***

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