"There's always lots of young boys and girls trying out the tourney with dreams of winning the whole thing and making it big. Always! Most of those get weeded right out in the premmies though. That said, for those few good enough to hit the main event? Especially if they gave a good showing of themselves?

The tourney's attracted the rich and powerful, and not a few generals off the military, so any that did well enough and caught their eyes, are bound to be getting job offers soon after." - Argent Xeravis, resident of Sabaya and loyal fan of the tournament.

The second batch of nine groups had none of Cal's students on it, neither did the third. Vitali, the therian man she met back when they went to register, was part of the third group, however, so she took a look at his fight out of curiosity.

Many of the fighters in his group were notably larger than him in stature, but the smaller therian had not looked the slightest bit intimidated. Instead, he gave a confident, mocking smirk at the few who glared at him.

Cal noticed his unusual choice of weapons. Vitali used a pair of gauntlets that enveloped his arms, into which a long, thin sword and a dagger was built. It was not something she had not seen before.

Most full-blooded therian's physiology meant that they had some difficulty using finer weapons, and usually preferred cruder weapons instead. Cleavers, maces, and axes were particularly popular amongst them. The sword and dagger built into the gauntlets on the other hand, was a clear sign of someone who tried to circumvent that physiology issue.

When the gong to signal the fight started, Cal saw how Vitali practically turned into a blur, as his lithe form struck one opponent after another. One by one his opponent fell with debilitating but not life-threatening injuries, and before any of the other stages were even halfway finished, Vitali was the last one standing on his stage.

An official announced his victory, after which the therian man bowed repeatedly to the audience. A roar of applause sounded as he walked down the stage, and quite a few in the audience were chanting his name. Young females, especially.

"Huh. He seems pretty well known here. Is he famous?" Cal asked to Lazlo with a raised eyebrow.

"Markiz Alexandrov's third son? He's the favorite for the championship this year," replied Lazlo. "He joined the previous tourney at fourteen, and fought his way to the top sixteen back then. Most of the people ranked above him from that tourney aren't joining this one, so he's the current favorite."

"Talk about coincidences…" muttered Cal under her breath. "I take it the odds favored him then? Do you happen to know the odds on my students?"

"As a matter of fact, I do. Let me see… they had pretty good odds as well, probably due to your reputation, but since nobody here's ever seen the fight, it's in the middle range, I guess," answered Lazlo as he perused a sheet of paper with numbers scribbled on it. "Your students are around one for two to three odds. Your nieces are around one for seven odds. Vitali is placed at ten for eleven odds, as reference."

"And they keep these odds updated as the tournament goes, I assume?" Cal asked for confirmation.

"Yeah. By the finals the odds on the favorite that made it there was usually like a hundred for a hundred one or so. Why?"

"Look after my seat for a moment," she said to him as she stood up, and turned towards the aisle nearby. "I'll going to make a little bet."

Cal returned around the time the next batch was finishing up. Again, none of her students were amongst those fighting, so she had not missed much. When asked by Lazlo on who she had made a bet on, Cal was about to answer when she spotted Willa amongst the participants of the next batch.

"You'll see very soon," she said to him with a smirk.

Willa was only clad in a tunic and pants that ended on her knees, as Cal had told her to fight the preliminaries unarmed. Cal watched her walk confidently towards her stage, even as some of the participants on that stage murmured about her choice to go unarmed.

Then the gong sounded, and those murmurs turned into screams of fear and surprise. Willa dashed around the stage as fast as Vitali did, but where he struck with finesse and elegance, she leveraged pure, brute force.

Two fighters who stood close to each other were clotheslined by her extended arms as she rushed past them, their bodies making a full revolution before they fell to the ground. Another took a tackle from her shoulder, and was sent flying out of bounds the next moment.

A young man had daringly slashed at her with his sword, but Willa caught it in one hand. The steel blade failed to cut into her mana-reinforced hand, as she smirked, grasped the young man's other shoulder, then butted her forehead against his face. The young man dropped unconscious with a broken nose.

One punch to the gut sent a burly lion therian to his knees, as he violently vomited. A sabertooth therian swung his two-handed mace at Willa with all his strength, the other participants all too clear about the threat she represented.

What they saw next shocked them, as Willa had not stopped from striking another participant down and instead butted her head against the mace, violently. The impact was so forceful that the sabertooth therian lost control of his weapon and it bounced back to strike him on the face instead.

Before the dizzy man managed to regain his bearings, a hand grabbed his head from behind, and slammed him face-first into the compacted soil of the stage, hard enough to plant nearly half his face into the soil.

Willa felt a couple pokes on her back, and finally noticed an eagle therian who had taken to the skies, that skillfully used a bow with her legs while she flew and pelted her with arrows from above.

Since it was too far for her to jump up and catch the flying woman, Willa instead pulled out the man she had just faceplanted into the ground by his legs. Then she swung him around, once, twice, before she released him with a great heave. Her aim was good, and the thrown man struck the flying woman accurately, as they went down in a tangled mess.

The unfortunate man regained consciousness in mid-air, and found himself falling, with a panicked eagle female tangled with him. He had not gotten the chance to make sense of his situation before they landed on the ground outside the stage, causing him quite a few bruises and breaking more than a few of the eagle woman's bones.

What few participants remained on the stage with Willa looked at each other, then looked at how she was cracking her knuckles as she walked menacingly their way, and all decided to jump out of the stage themselves.