K. Dollan: All of you go to the arena with everyone else. There is something we must check with the boy. When we are done, we’ll personally escort him to the arena ourselves.

Anthon: Very well, your Majesty.

After everyone else had left and the only ones remaining were the King, Laurenz and Merlin, King Dollan spoke to Merlin:

K. Dollan: Boy, your father says he didn’t train you, yet you have enough self-confidence to accept my challenge without even blinking. Did someone else train you in secret?

Merlin: I’m self-trained.

King Dollan was surprised, if the boy really was self-trained and his martial prowess was at the level Laurenz had reported, he couldn’t even fathom what kind of strength he would achieve when he reached adulthood… But he hadn’t confirmed yet that he was indeed the boy who saved Adelle and Laurenz…

K. Dollan: Boy, a few months back, did you save a little girl and her bodyguard from getting killed by a group of assassins? And did you use two vials of “Amariena” to save her?

Merlin: Your Majesty, let’s stop playing games, ok? Given that the mentioned bodyguard is standing next to you right now, and the challenge you have designed to give me a way out from execution, I’d say that you have pretty much figured out that I’m indeed that boy.

King Dollan was surprised by Merlin’s change of attitude, his demeanor right now seemed to be the one of an adult, not that of a boy who wasn’t even 6 years old. He was calm and collected, he wasn’t allowing the situation to get to him, and he was calmly analyzing it instead.

K. Dollan: Boy, from today onwards that girl you saved will be your fiancée, you’ll marry her as soon as you come of age.

Merlin: Your Majesty, I already have two beautiful fiancées whom I love, I don’t need a third. Besides why would I want to marry a girl I don’t even know? And why are you trying to force her into me?

K. Dollan: Boy, the reason why those assassins were contracted to kill her is because she is my daughter, born from a mistress. She doesn’t know she has royal blood, though, and I’d really appreciate it if you didn’t tell her about that. That’s why I want her to marry you, that way she would be able to live a happy life, without worrying about the conspiracies in the Court. Besides, she has already fallen for you… After all, you stole her first kiss…

Merlin: That wasn’t intentional, I had to administrate her the potion or she wouldn’t have made it…

K. Dollan: Don’t tell anyone about your engagement with Adelle yet. In a couple of days her grandfather will be visiting you house and making the arrangement with your parents. Ok, now let’s go to the arena… Make sure you put on a good show, that will make anyone with ill intentions towards you or Adelle to think it twice before taking any action.

Merlin realized that he didn't have a choice in the matter, so he gave the only answer he could:

Merlin: Ok, your Majesty. I understand.

*********************************************************************

In the arena, everyone was starting to get impatient, but Merlin, Laurenz and the King finally showed up. The Pendragon family tensed up, they didn’t know what the King wanted to talk Merlin about, but given the current situation, they didn’t know what to think, and that made them extremely uneasy.

When Merlin and one of the royal guards entered the arena, the majority of the people watching couldn’t believe their eyes, they saw an armored royal guard with a sword in his hand going towards a little kid who was unarmed. Some of them had thought the King was joking when he proposed the challenge to the kid, but nobody expected that the kid would accept the challenge and actually go through with it.

The royal guard attacked first. Merlin saw the blade of the sword going towards him, so he used his “ki strengthening technique” and avoided the slash. Next, he slipped to the side of his opponent and attacked the wrist, making him lose hold of the sword, which Merlin kicked away. Then the royal guard then tried to punch him in the head, but was startled again by Merlin’s agility, who not only avoided his punch, but grabbed his fist with one hand, tapped his arm with the other, and sent him flying over his head, crashing against the ground a couple of yards from Merlin.

The audience was speechless, who could have thought that a little kid like him would defeat so easily a trained warrior like the royal guard. Even the King was astonished by Merlin’s battle prowess, he had expected him to win, but not that easily, and definitely not that fast. Among the audience, the only one who did expect that result was Laurenz, because he had already witnessed his way of fighting.

The Pendragon family reacted to the situation in very different ways: Anthon was surprised by Merlin’s ability and wondered who had trained his son without his knowledge. Emelyn understood why the girls came home so tired after their sessions of “playing” to train their fighting abilities with Merlin. Leyla was surprised that the innocent boy she loved like a little brother was that strong at fighting. Merlin’s brothers were stupefied to discover that their little brother was a stronger fighter while being unarmed than they were while wielding a sword. Lupa and Bastet were really excited, because they just witnessed their mate overpowering an opponent that he wasn’t supposed to be able to win against.

Seeing that the royal guard was unconscious and couldn’t continue, the King announced Merlin’s victory as well as the forgiveness of any crime he had committed up to that very moment. Then he asked Merlin if he was willing to continue to the second stage of the challenge. After Merlin answered affirmatively, King Dollan asked two other royal guards to stand in the arena to fight the boy. With the exception of Lupa and Bastet, the rest of the Pendragon family was dumbfounded by Merlin’s actions, after all, he had been lucky and won against a royal guard, so they couldn’t understand why he was taking such a risk.

The King announced the start of the fight. The two royal guards quickly try to do a pincer attack on Merlin, it was obvious that they didn’t want to end like their comrade, so they tried to restrict Merlin’s movements that way. With his options reduced, Merlin jumped sideways making the two royal guard bump into each other and took some distance from them. The royal guards recovered and went towards Merlin.

They tried to use another pincer attack on him, but he was expecting it and instead of restricting his movements, it created an opening for him to use in his attack. Merlin first focused on attacking the joints of one of the royal guards, the other one tried to sneak an attack on Merlin, but he had counted on that and while he evaded the attack, he dislocated the right elbow of the royal guard, disarming him.

The audience didn’t understand what was going on in the arena. They couldn’t understand how Merlin was being able to hold his ground while fighting two royal guards simultaneously. Not only that, he was even giving them some damage, instead of receiving it. The situation was so impossible that they were unable to comprehend it. On the other hand, the warriors and royal guards who were watching, Laurenz and King Dollan included, had paled at the sight of the fight. They were capable warriors, so just by watching someone fight, they were able to assess the mastery that person had of his techniques, even if they didn’t comprehend the techniques themselves.

The result of their assessment was obviously the same for all of them: Merlin had unfathomable strength, few warriors in the city could be his match. And the more terrifying fact was that the boy wasn’t even six years old, they didn’t dare to imagine what his strength would be once he reached adulthood. King Dollan was speechless, but a cold sweat run down his spine when he remembered one single fact the rest of the audience was oblivious of: Merlin could actually use magic, well at least there was a high chance of it being so. If he was that strong without the use of magic, how strong was he actually with the full use of his capabilities? King Dollan immediately added Merlin to the people-to-never-offend list. He thought that it was fortunate he had offered a title and a territory as the prize for the third stage of the challenge, that way Merlin would be related to the Kingdom of Sephiran and foreign powers wouldn’t snatch him away.

After dislocating the other elbow of the previous royal guard, and breaking a knee of the other one with a low-kick, Merlin was declared victor of the second stage and the King announced that, as the prize, he’d receive a thousand gold and a scholarship to the best academy of the kingdom, for him and three other people of his choosing. Then he asked Merlin whether he would participate in the third stage of the challenge, and Merlin answered once more that he would be doing it.

The audience wasn’t surprised by his answer anymore, as a matter of fact, they welcomed it and even started betting about the outcome of the third stage and the time it’d take to reach a conclusion. Merlin’s family had already calmed down, after seeing the fight of the second stage, they understood that Merlin would survive the third stage, even in the case that he might lose.

When Merlin saw the three royal guards entering the stage, he realized that this stage would be a walk in the park for him, because by the way they were interacting with each other, he could clearly see that they had some personal issues between them, so their teamwork was non-existent and during the fight instead of taking advantage of their number by using combination attacks, they would just get in the way of each other, giving Merlin plenty of openings for his attacks.

As soon as the King announced the beginning of the third stage of the challenge, the three royal guards rushed towards Merlin and they surrounded him with a triangle formation, trying to emulate the pincer attack that had given some trouble to Merlin in the second stage. Unfortunately for them, their movements weren’t well coordinated due to their inexperience working together and their lack of teamwork. So, just as Merlin had predicted, they were getting into each other’s way, killing the momentum of their companion’s attacks, making them unsuccessful, and giving Merlin lots of opportunities to attack.

Merlin wanted wrap it up quickly, so when he saw the openings in their stances he attacked, and unlike in the other fights, he put his whole power behind each hit, and the fight finished in a matter of seconds. The audience was dumbfounded, they had expected a fight of at least 5 minutes, which was the time that had taken Merlin to put an end to the fight in the second stage, so they couldn’t comprehend how this fight, that was supposed to be much harder than the previous one, had ended so quickly.

On the other hand, King Dollan, Laurenz, and the captain of the royal guards facepalmed, they had seen what the reason for the quick defeat of the royal guards had been, and so had done the rest of the veteran warriors in the audience. Now that the royal guards had lost face because of those three selfish idiots who couldn’t understand what “teamwork” meant, they would have to regain the respect of the other military forces through harsh work and making merits…

The King announced Merlin as the absolute victor of the challenge, and told Merlin to accompany him to the castle, because bestowing a nobility title and giving a territory, which were the prizes of the third stage of the challenge, could only be done in the throne’s room…

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