At that point, Helen and Madam Rothema had arrived in Rothema’s viewing platform and were viewing the magic duel with Rien on one side, while Grandpa Thur and Karu were watching the martial duels on the other, with Kael resting up on the couch behind them.

Now, something needs to be said about this viewing platform. By all appearances, this viewing platform is a single room, only broken in half by a long red velvet curtain. The only exception is a doorway in the middle of the curtain, which leads into the hallway.

From the hallway, the doorway across from that doorway would lead to the other side. However, this is a secret among Magi: if one did not wish to use the hallway door, they could simply sweep push aside the curtain and rush to the other side that way, bypassing the hallway completely.

This was one of the magical marvels of the coliseum: to combine two rooms separated by a hallway into one large room, separated by a mere curtain. This was the brimming accomplishment of one of the other Magi, Distar, who was the expert on space and dimensional magic.

In fact, the entire building was not a mere structure of stone, but a joint marvel creation between Martial Practitioners and Magicians. It had already withstood the test of hundreds of thousands of years’ time. It even had a self-repairing function operated by magic gems. So, in theory, with an infinite supply of magic gems, it could continue to exist infinitely.

At that point, Helen was giving the others an account of what was happening on the magic side.

“They’ve started the second round! It looks like Briar is up first this time, against Lyra Harple, another Magi’s student!” Helen said past the curtain. That was another thing about the room: unless the curtain was opened, one side couldn’t hear the conversation on the other side.

In an earlier chapter, Briar had escaped to the other side of the curtain. But, what she hadn’t noticed was that the bottom corner had caught on her boot, folding open a foot-sized space at the bottom of the curtain, thus allowing her to hear into the other room.

Now, Kael sighed to himself. Things had been a bit too good to be true. He supposed it was a good thing that Briar had learned her doppler technique when she could. Otherwise, it would have been simply impossible for her to attend every match from this point on.

It was a good thing that he had economized upon his MS in the first round. Otherwise, he would be hard pressed to win the next one.

The martial duels first round was also almost over. Kael, Laura, and The Minstrel had already won their prospective duels. The current duel was between the eldest of the five Dragon Twins, and the second eldest. Laura had returned to the viewing platform by that time. Kael glanced up at her, then blinked as he noticed the food trolley packed to bursting with all different kinds of dishes.

“You are seriously going to try and eat all that?” Kael asked. Laura still hadn’t gotten the trick of transforming food into energy down. Rien looked at Laura wide-eyed. Even a child would know that they could not eat so much food. Karu looked over, interested. Not that he enjoyed watching people suffer, but there was some bit of satisfaction watching troublemakers cause their own pains.

“Hmmph! What I DON’T eat, I’m going to stuff down your scruffy throat!” Laura huffed at Kael in pretend anger.

Kael only sighed. “You’re going to be very disappointed.”

Laura ignored him and tucked into several tasty-looking dishes. But even she had to give up when her stomach was filled to capacity. The food trolley was still way more than half-filled. Laura picked up a plate and shoved it against Kael’s cheek.

“Here~ Let’s see you finish all of these for me, hmm?” Laura said, grinning wickedly. “Or will you let your sister win over you as having the swiftest digestion?”

Kael didn’t say much. He picked up a fork and speared a mouthful of meat, quickly chewing and swallowing it. Then he sat there, with his eyes closed for a minute. With a snap, his eyes opened again, the irises shrunk to near pinpoints as he practically inhaled the food. Ignoring the utensils, he simply tipped the contents of each plate down his throat in a near endless stream until he finally swept the last plate clean of any semblance of food. All that was left on the trolley was a pile of completely empty dishes.

Kael then took out a large empty glass vial, and heavily struck his stomach, spitting a dark liquid into it. He even cleansed his mouth out with water before spitting that too into the vial, several times-finally once more with a strong liquor. Then he corked the vial tightly shut and placed it away.

“What was that stuff?” Laura asked.

“Aside from various poisons, toxins, and substances that would most certainly guarantee fatal out on the stage? I do wonder where you picked this up from. Did you steal it from the food investigators on your way here?” He snorted.

Somehow, after being generated, Kael could now more easily tell poisons apart from the foods he had eaten than Briar could. It was almost as if the poisons themselves carried a negative martial spirit. At any rate, that made it easier for him to discover before it was absorbed into his body, allowing him to eject it from his mouth. He even suspected that he could eject it through his pores, if ever he really was too late in preventing himself from absorbing the malicious substances.

Laura looked sheepish as she glanced away. She hadn’t thought a bit about poison when she brought the trolley of food up.

“Wait, was it all poisoned? Was I POISONED!?” Laura’s face turned pale.

“Should we check it out then? Here. Give me your hand.” Kael said reaching out to Laura. “And don’t resist.”

“Resist what?” Laura asked as she placed her hand in Kael’s.

But Kael wasn’t listening to her. Instead, he was injecting his Martial Spirit inside to take a look around. Not being able to use mana, he couldn’t use the Mana sight that Briar could. Instead, he had to supplement by using his MS to examine the scene.

Almost instantly, he was met by a wall of Laura’s own martial spirit. But Laura quickly realized what he was doing and put down her defenses. Kael didn’t loiter and went straight to the stomach area. After observing the strands emerging from the food, he withdrew his Martial Spirit and shook his head.

“Am I poisoned?” Laura asked.

“You’re rather lucky. The poison that you ingested was the least dangerous to you.” Kael said.

“So I was poisoned!?” Laura asked, shocked.

“This particular poison is meant to make a Magician unable to contact or use his own mana for a limited time.” Kael shrugged. “Since you’re not a magician, you’ll be unaffected by it aside form a mild headache.”

“How could you tell all of that?” Laura asked.

Kael frowned. “I just know, okay? Having just ingested more than enough of it earlier, I’m sure that I would at least be able to recognize it by now. It’s not something that you can’t understand until you have sensed it.”

“Wow! Briar-nii is like a doctor!” Karu exclaimed. Kael grinned and ruffled Karu’s head with a chuckle.

“Keeping the body healthy is the first step to martial arts, Karu. By the time you reach the top, I’d be surprised if you also didn’t pick up a few things pertaining to health.” Kael replied.

Eating all that food had luckily replaced the lost MS that he had used in his match earlier, but after using it to check Laura’s situation, the amount gained was cut by half. Even so, Kael still felt confident that he could at least win one more duel, if not two.

“Whew! Well, that’s a relief!” Laura sighed. “If it ends well, then all is well, right?”

Kael Frowned and turned to Laura, somewhat annoyed at her naivete. He then promptly flicked her on the forehead, hard.

“Let that be a lesson to you!” Kael spoke in a stern voice. “Never eat food of questionable origin!”

“Ouch! Hey! You ate it too!” Laura retorted, as she clasped her hands over her forehead.

“And I was also able to deal with what came with it.” Kael pointed out. “Something you would be helpless against if a more insidious poison had been ingested earlier.”

Laura sulked off to the side silently as Kael once more turned his attention back to the stage. It seemed like the battle between twins was finally coming to a close. Kael focused on the battle. Come to think of it, this was one of the first sword demonstrations that seemed reasonably well polished. Not that Kael was an expert on using swords. Of course, when it came to telling a person’s skill with a weapon, that was different.

Both twins seemed to be fighting at an even pace, but the younger one had a sheen of sweat clinging to his brow, while the older one fought effortlessly. Suddenly, the older one started forcing the other twin back towards the edge of the stage.

He was only playing with his brother. He had never even taken his sibling seriously in this match. Kael realized.

One other thing that he realized was that this swordsman was bad news for someone like Laura. As someone who specialized in hand-to-hand combat, sure, there were ways for Laura to disarm an ordinary swordsman. But a specialized style like this didn’t seem to have any loopholes that resulted from a lack of effort. Even Kael couldn’t tell who would win in such an encounter.

If it were Kael, he could somehow deal with it using his fast speed and porcu-plant needles. All he would need to do was to strike a few acupuncture spots accurately and he could definitely incapacitate the irksome lad-er…young man. Kael had forgotten that in this world, boys are considered men once they turn 13.

Then Kael had a somewhat boggling thought.

How old am I? As this seemed somewhat important, he considered his own personal dilemma.

How old could he be considered? He could honestly consider himself ‘just born’ yesterday, as it had not even been a day since he had come into existence. But, he also had a body that looked like it was 15, crafted by someone who was only 12-moreover by someone whose mental age had passed 30 years. And, on top of that, he retained all the memories of that person.

Truly a quandary. Kael frowned in thought. Then he decided not to think too much about it. Yesterday was my birthday, that much is certain. He confirmed. So, for now, I’ll just assume that I’m 15? Otherwise things would be difficult to explain…

Finally, he was brought back to reality by the thud of the younger brother landing on the ground outside the stage. The crowds cheered, and the Eldest Twin smirked as he raised a fist in triumph. The twin who had lost kept a passive expression on his face as he withdrew.

Looking at the diagram, there was only Kael, Laura, the minstrel, and the last Dragon twin left. By this time, the matches had been set: Kael against the Minstrel, and Laura against the final Dragon twin. Whichever two won in this round would be facing against each other in the next for first place!

But, at that moment, a gong rang out. Apparently, that meant that there was an hour-long break for lunch. While the martial practitioners were quite hot-blooded, this was a time-honored tradition that couldn’t be broken. Incidentally, if the bell had rung out during the middle of a match, the match would be halted until the end of the break.

I wonder if he timed it that way? Kael though as he observed the proud Dragon Twin dressed in black. But, questions like that could wait until after lunch.

Kael strode over to the curtain and poked his head over to the other side to check on Briar, his ‘younger’ sister. He could have simply checked using the image crystal that was on his side of the room-but appearing in person felt more sincere to him.

“Did she win? Or has the match been delayed?” he asked Helen.

Helen glanced back at Kael, still somewhat weirded out by the fact that there were now two Briars. Then she pointed out towards the stage.

“See for yourself.” She replied.