There are two things of import to remember when attending a district tourney: Be on time, and bring snacks. I had just arrived at the arena, and though it was still early in the morning, the fighting stage and surrounding plaza was already crowded with dozens of would-be competitors. And while there would be food vendors catering to the needs of the crowds in the stands—there were already a few hundred—they tended to avoid the areas the competitors congregated in and waited for their bouts. I had never really understood this and gone hungry in more tournaments than I cared to remember. And given that I had skipped breakfast this morning, I was already hungry by the time I arrived at the arena.

Fortunately, I had long learned my lesson.

It’d be at least another fifth bell before any of the officials addressed us, so I found one of the few benches, sat down, and dug into the pastries I had brought for my breakfast. The first would be considered rather plain—the dough was folded many times over, baked, covered in honey and salt, then baked again to dry out the honey into a sticky covering. It was sweet, though the salt gave it a savouriness unexpected for a pastry without meat or nuts.

As I bit into the pastry, I thought back over the past month with Lennie. Lennie suddenly falling into my life almost made a real mess of my plans for the year, to the extent they could even be called plans and not just guidelines. Almost everything revolved around the tournaments, so I didn’t have time to start training Lennie—neither as I had with Becca nor as I had been planning to train him once I found him. Further, the camping trips were too important to skip or reschedule, and so I ultimately decided to bring him along and do what I could.

For starters, once we loaded him up with gear, it was hard enough for him to keep up given Becca and my clear physical superiority. But a ton of heavy gear was decent at least for increasing his strength and speed, and after a week of that, I got him started on wearing the ki weights while doing all that. Lennie was only middling F-rank, so he couldn’t do much when we went up against the few D-ranker beasts, but we would let him handle the F-ranked on his own, and he would put in some team effort with Becca against E-ranked.

Becca was still angry at him for a while over the pickpocketing, but I think that after the first really intense battle with a particularly strong E-ranker. During that fight, Lennie got injured when his aura broke and I had to heal him. At that point, Becca suddenly became much more caring and worried about Lennie, almost like Lennie was a younger brother. That was rather different than there interplay in my old life. But, they had just met, and I was sure that things would change over time. Right?

Though how long until either of them felt comfortable calling me friend rather than master was something I for one was avoiding thinking too hard about.

Nonetheless, it looked like Lennie was well on his way to integrating into our little group, and in just three weeks, Lennie had moved appreciably upped from his very middling F-rank. While both Lennie and Becca were going to the district tournaments in their respective districts, I doubted Lennie would even qualify, but Becca I expected to see at the City tournament. We could start more formal training after the tournament.

While things had progressed okay so far, I was now two out of two in stumbling across my old friends and thinking on the fly of how to befriend them. Or barring that, associate them with me so I can train the hell out of them.

Even as old and cynical as I was, that seemed a little unsavory to me. On the other hand, no one ever taught you how to make friends with the same person twice. That said, an old hand knows how to make friends with just about anyone, so there were plenty of techniques to be had. That said, it would be a lot better if I could avoid accidentally running into both Vince and Sam at least until winter, or preferably spring. Things were well in control, but sometimes events seems to work in mysterious ways, and just adapting to those was a bit too much by the seat of my pants at the moment.

I pulled out the second pastry—this one was patty-shaped and filled with spiced Deer meat—and had stuffed the whole thing into my mouth when a large, older man asked if he could sit next to me and I grumbled something about breakfast, as I pulled out a third pastry.

“Thanks friend. Say is that blackberry and Deer? Mind if I get that?”

“Hm? Yeah, sure Vince,” I said absently as I handed over the pastry. Anyways, for now I can just focus on the tournaments. Even if I don’t bring the rest of the gang back sometime in the next few months, I should at least start keeping tabs on them. Lennie has some good contacts in the City, so I should be able to leverage them to at least help my locate Sam and…

My brain came to a halt, as I turned my head to look at the large man who I had just handed a pastry to and who, apparently, had continued to prattle on without my listening.

“—and so, you see, I was telling my Master that the best way to a man’s heart was through his stomach, and that if he really wanted me to continue training there, he had to start getting Sal’s pastries on the—say, why are you looking at me funny?”

“Vince?!”

“Yup, that’s me! Ah, you must be a fan! And here I am taking your breakfast and not even fully introducing myself! Vincentas Edvardas Žutautas, spiritualist at your service. But most of my friends call me Vince. And, see! Just as I was saying, you gave me my favorite pastry, and now you’re my friend!”

As my brain tried to catch up to what had been happening, all I could think was that fate was screwing with me. Sighing internally, well, at least I don’t have to look for him anymore. Or, apparently, make friendly with him.

****

After I introduced myself, Vince and I sat there making small talk for about a quarter bell while I starting running through plausible ways to bring him into the fold with the rest of the team. That line of thought had not made any appreciable progress, when I started feeling the release of ki followed by a thump. After about five of those, I turned to where I felt it coming from and asked Vince about it.

“Oh, you don’t know? That how they eliminate this crowd and get it down to the sixteen participants in the tournament itself. They call it a high striker. You strike this pad with the hammer they have, and it knocks this disc in a track up in the air. Some years it doesn’t work so good, but usually they have it calibrated so that about half of the tournament participants qualify by striking the bell up top. The rest they have to measure based on those 20 markings along the side.”

“But if you’ve mastered the First Stage of Spiritualism, that would be trivial wouldn’t it?”

“Well, yes, I suppose, and that’s why professional spiritualists don’t use this. The only ones who show up to this are young people outside the Big Four with ambitions to be spiritualists. Most of the people here are F-ranked—you’ll have one or two E-ranked as well—so no one here will have become proficient at the First Stage. You can’t really do that until D-rank really. Even the lower ranks can use ki to increase strength and speed; mastering the Second Stage is about making it effortless and mindless, or at least that’s what Master says.”

“Oh, yes, that’s right,” I replied. “And actually, swinging the hammer at a stationary object is similar to the types of exercises you would do to practice enhancing your body with ki. E-ranks should all be able to make at least a single hit in a controlled environment, while for F-ranks it’ll sort out those who are just on the cusp of E-rank. Say, aren’t you E-rank? Why are you in this tournament?”

A dark shadow flitted Vince’s face and he sighed heavily. “I may not look like it with my boyish good looks, but I’m one of the oldest persons at this tournament. My progress at my dojo with Master hasn’t showed a lot in the last two years and I think I’ve plateaued. I considered going ahead and joining the City Guard, but wanted to prove myself at the tournament one last time. I made it to the City Tournament last year as an E-rank, but lost in the first round. I won’t lie; it was brutal. But a lot of my competition from last year isn’t showing up and while progress has been slow, I am still progressing. There’s at least two competitors in the other districts who clearly outclass me, and one who will be a challenge.

So, I think so long as one of these young’ins don’t show me up, I’ve got pretty good odds for 3rd or 4th place, which would be a fine way to go out in style. I doubt that I’ll be picked up by the Royal Guard or the Big Four—the win would be more a reflection of my age than my potential—but it’ll be fine. So,” he said, turning to me with a sly grin, “try not to make me look bad, friend.”

***

Most of the crowd of candidates had already gone by the time Vince and I made our way up.

“Now, Evert,” Vince said, “I know this is your first time, so just watch old Vince and do as I do, and you’ll make it in just fine.”

Hah, I thought, yeah, that’s not my problem. Looking at the competitors who had gone before me, I knew my physical strength was enough to strike the bell—hell, I could probably break the damn thing—but that would be too showy. One of the bigger rushes of ki this morning, and a moment later:

DING. “Ladies and gentlemen, we have our eighth bell entry for this district tournament, Vince Zutas!” cried the official standing next to the high striker.

“It’s Žutautas,” I mumbled, and chuckled when I heard the echo from Vince himself. I stepped up to the small table and gave my name to the seated official there, who was making records on parchment with a quill.

“Dojo?” he followed up

“None.”

“None? Who do you train with?”

“I train independently.”

“Harrumph,” he replied, “well, ‘none’ it is then. May need to follow up with you later for our records, but this will suffice for now. You know the drill: take that hammer and hit that red pad. You only get one shot, but you can take a few practice swings at that log on the side. Don’t take too long, it’s almost lunch.”

And that’s why you make sure to pack snacks. “Sure, no problem.”

As I stepped up to the high striker and picked up the hammer, I went back over my problem. I essentially had to fake a hard swing, while taking a very light one. Everyone else so far had released ki, but I was already at the Second State, and my control over it wasn’t sloppy, so no one would feel mine if I did. I figured easiest thing to do would be just to swing it as hard as I need to for a bell ring—just because I didn’t want to go all out, didn’t mean I didn’t want a clean entry into the tournament—while simultaneously just let loose a little gray ki. It was a waste, but it would be easier than trying to use the Second State poorly. Well, as I gathered a bit of ki around my arms and brought the hammer head behind me, here goes nothing. As the hammer head arced over me and came down, I released the excess gray ki, and

DING. “Ladies and gentlemen, we have our ninth bell entry qualified for this district Tournament, Evert Kaller!”

What had earlier been genuine sympathy for Vince—his last name was frequently butcher in my last life too—was replaced with annoyance. Clearly the official just couldn’t get anyone’s name right. Oh, well, I was in and that was probably the hard part.

“Ah, Evert!” Vince cried out as I neared him, “So scrawny, and yet you rung in the bell. I knew you had great ki control. Come now, let’s join our bell-ringing competitors.”

***

After the last few candidates ran through the test, we waited a fifth bell for the officials to sort through their markings and determined the other candidates. I was the last bell ringer, so the officials had to select another seven. Six of them had actually cleared the 20th marking on the high striker, though hadn’t quite hit the bell, while the seventh qualified at between the 19th and 20th marking. It took another tenth bell after the announcement for them to gather, whereupon we then had to wait through a tenth bell lecture about the structure and rules of the tournament. We would have a half bell for lunch, and when we came back, the seeding would be completed and we could begin the tournament.

With a single elimination bracket for 16, it would take 15 fights to settle it. While a fight at this ranking level would last no more than a few minutes, the organizers had a fair bit of pomp and circumstance, and would drag things out so that there would only be about eight fights per bell. That would take us into the late afternoon, especially if there was some sort of ceremony after—I couldn’t actually remember.

Vince invited me to go grab lunch, but I told him I had packed lunch, for which he praised me in my wisdom. Which was a little weird considering he had taught me that lesson in my old life. When I asked him why he didn’t pack, he shrugged and gave some excuse about not heeding one’s own wisdom and a broken water well, at which point I lost the gist of the conversation as he wandered off.

With that, I found a quiet corner to eat and think over what had happened today. And to wonder how Becca and Lennie were doing.

***

Almost a bell later, I found myself standing on the stage for the the last match of the first round.

When the seeding came out, I found that I wouldn’t meet Vince until the finals, assuming he got that far—I couldn’t remember from my past life whether he did. And while my spiritual perception showed that Vince clearly had a leg up on all the competitors, I knew that wouldn’t necessarily be determinative. That said, I didn’t recognize any of the other names on the list.

My first opponent was a scrawny redheaded man with a bad temper. His trash talk was rather vulgar and I mostly tuned it out. He was a brawler sort and came at me wearing a pair of gauntlets—though unlike my other redheaded brawler, he had neither the skill nor speed to actually spar with me. I didn’t even bring out my own weapon; I just dodged everything he threw at me and—to avoid a one hit knockout—pulled my punches. Those still did quite the number on him, and when he overextended, I threw him about three body lengths. He landed on his back and stayed there until the match was called in my favor.

I also had the last match in the quarterfinals against a short, black-haired girl with a spear. She clearly knew her way around it, and though effective against beasts, spears were never very effective in one-on-one combat against humans. That said, if I was limiting myself to melee only attacks, I had nothing with the necessary reach and would need to close the distance. When the bell rung to signal the beginning of the match, I ran—well, it was more of a jog—towards her barehanded. When she went for a spear strike, I dodged, grabbed the spear haft and pulled her towards me. She was knocked off balance towards me as I uppercutted her in the stomach, sending her sprawling backwards. A short count later, and the match was called as well.

As I walked off stage, I was met by Vince. “And another quick victory for the dark shadow entry.”

“Dark shadow?”

“Well, yes, you are mysterious and no one here seems to know you. And then you have two quick KO’s, with your fists, even though you have two weapons slung across your back.”

“These early rounds don’t merit that much attention. It’s really just the final and then the City Tournament. No need to be all flashy.”

“Hmm. Well, there’s a difference between not being flashy, and being so nonchalant about a fight that it becomes flashy in its own way. I mean, two fights and you still look pristine. You’re standing out a wee bit I think. Everyone’s wondering what’ll happen when you do break out your weapons. Speaking of, which one is your primary weapon, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“Hmm?” I said, looking up from where I was deeply thinking of my flashiness, “Oh, it’s sword and staff.”

“Sword and staff? That doesn’t make any sense. How can you have two primary weapons?”

“Really? That’s the second time someone has commented on that as strange. Hmm…” I trailed off thinking it over. “Well, you better get going. You’re up next.”

“That I am, see you after.”

I watched Vince as he went up on stage and unslung his hammer from his back for the first match of the semifinals. I decided that I might as well actually watch this one. He was facing off against one Jeb Marshall, who had been rather good in the first two rounds compared to most of the fighters here today. Jeb was armed with a sword and board which would make for some interesting tactics against Vince. On the one hand, if Jeb blocked a full hammer swing with his shield, he may very well have his spiritual aura broken. On the other hand, if Vince went with full hammer swings and Jeb did block the blow, it would very well leave Vince open to a single cut with his sword. It left open some potentially interesting gambits, though likely Vince would choke up and rely and shorter quicker hammer strikes, while Jeb primarily deflected, or potentially chose to abandon the shield entirely for greater agility. Still, no spiritual techniques yet today; just aura and rudimentary use of ki to increase strength and speed.

That ended quickly. When the bell rung, Vince and Jeb closed in on each other slowly, with wariness on both sides. Jeb tried a few quick strikes, probing Vince’s defenses, though it didn’t seem like he was making any progress. Vince responded with some light strikes of his own, left, right, left, right, which Jeb deflected easily. But, on the third strike, Vince slide his grip almost all the way to the head of his hammer and punched it forward. Several kilos of hot water splashed towards Jeb—a spiritual technique! But when had he started that? I hadn’t sensed any ki coming off of him other than what he was using to speed up the hammer strikes. Unless…

Of course, those quick strikes had been quicker because he had choked up and the rhythm he had built. That ki he was using at that time had been building up the ki, and when he made the final movement, the spiritual technique had coalesced the gray ki into hot water.

The hot water distracted Jeb and while his aura protected him from scalding, the distraction was enough for Vince to spin around and throw his weight behind the hammer for a knockout blow. At the last moment, Jeb slipped on the water and fell, the hammer only just glancing him. Though flat on his back, Jeb was quick on the uptake, kicking at the back of Vince’s knee as he spun, and knocking him off balance. Jeb scrambled to his knee and jabbed his sword at the back of Vince’s right thigh.

Vince spun away to put some distance between them, as Jeb scrambled to his feet.

This had already become the longest match of the day, and we had just seen our first spiritual technique. The two combatants circled each other, when Jeb made three quick movements which his sword, then stomped the ground. An electrical arc ran across the water, but Vince jumped out of it, away from Jeb, and it sputtered.

With the distance between them, they were both far outside melee attack range, and Vince seemed hesitant to close the distance with the threat of an electric attack surging through the wet floor. But with that distance came the time needed for another spiritual attack. And so Vince began to swing his hammer in two long arcs, and move his feet in something resembling a waltz until, with a grunt, an arc of ice four meters wide formed and flung itself at Jeb. Jeb dove down to avoid the attack, but Vince had continued the movements and a second arc of ice at knee level crashed into Jeb a moment later, knocking out his aura and ending the match.

Vince came off the stage panting and a little frosty when he sat next to me. “Now that,” he said, “was a proper fight.”

***

I had never been good at gauging a spiritualist’s absolute ki levels, but I did have the sense that those three attacks had used up about half of Vince’s ki. He’d recover a bit—perhaps a tenth—in the half bell or so before our match, but he was significantly reduced. Perhaps the only benefit was that, now a few tens of kilograms lighter, he would be more agile, though that would only apply if he was fighting someone else.

I would have given it a bit more thought, but as it was, I had my own semifinal match to deal with. It might have been easy, but that didn’t mean I could ignore my opponent—well, probably. My opponent was a bald male a head taller than I, and probably had an extra forty kilograms of muscle mass on top of me. He was armed with a staff but, unlikely most other fighters here, clearly had a set of mail underneath his orange robes. I never did catch his name.

Considering Vince’s earlier comments, I decided to unsling my staff to try and minimize attracting any more attention. I was a little frustrated though and probably wouldn’t be able to draw this out as much compared to if I was handicapping myself by going barehanded.

With the ding of the bell, we slowly circled and approached each other. I decided that letting him lead for a while was probably the best move and would burn some time: any affirmative action on my part was likely to end this immediately given my mood. My opponent began with several light strikes, alternating left and right, in a form common for staff wielders. I blocked each with the standard counter, and I saw his eyes attentive on my staff. My opponent began a second series of strikes, this time for low strikes to the hips or thighs, and I in turn countered them with the standard counter. My opponent’s eyes narrowed, and I saw just a hint of frustration out of them. For a third time, my opponent began a standard series of strikes, though I recognized these as an intermediate form meant to strike the forehead, ribs, and groin. Again, I used the standard counter for each strike, but, in a fit of pique, used an advanced counter on the last strike such that he ended up with his arms and staff above his head, exposing his body, though I made no such strike. My opponent’s eyes widened considerably at that, and he took a step backwards as we stopped circling.

My opponent tried to use his spiritual perception to gauge my strength—I could sense his ki movement, which was sloppy for mere perception—though I had for months now been constantly masking myself. As he realized that he could not gauge my spirit, I felt him flare his ki. I was puzzled for a moment as to what he was doing until I reached outside my own aura and realized he was exerting his spiritual pressure to attempt to gauge my strength. I doubted he had ever killed any person or substantial beast in his life though, because the killing intent was almost nil, which was why his pressure was so insubstantial I could not feel it without trying to. Though it seemed his control was less than perfect as I sensed some tension in the crowd. With a far defter hand, I flared a fraction of my ki and focused my spiritual pressure on him for the barest moment in time. In so doing, I effectively snapped his own spiritual pressure, though at most he felt as much one does when the shadow of a Robin flits by one’s vision.

My opponent’s face devolved into absolute confusion, and his eyes fell to the floor as he appeared to be thinking things over. We had been standing more or less still for a few minutes now, and the crowd was starting to jeer. Jerking his head up, his face straightened and he looked me unblinking in the eyes for several seconds.

Suddenly, turning to the judge, my opponent spoke: “I cannot defeat Mr. Kallstrom. I forfeit.” He bowed quickly, and hurried off the stage.

The jeering from the crowd reached me at the same time that I finally realized what had happened. I didn’t know why it happened, but whoever my opponent was—I felt really bad not learning his name, as he clearly knew mine—he clearly had sharp enough instincts to realize he couldn’t defeat me. I mean, I knew that, but no one else was supposed to, and this could get complicated quickly.

As I walked off the stage, I stopped in front of Vince, who for once had a very serious expression—albeit one of confusion—on his face. As I met his eyes, he whispered, “What did you do?”

Mirroring his own confusion, I replied simply, “I don’t know.”

***

We had a significant amount of time before the finals match between Vince and I, and I spent the time in a quiet corner reviewing everything that had happened today. Clearly, while my cover in day-to-day life was sufficient to hide my strength, that simply was not enough in a combat environment—even if it was just a tournament. Somewhat more troubling, my efforts appeared to have only partially succeeded, and already I was worried about what would come next.

On closer examination, I concluded that the problem was that I wasn’t taking the district tournament—and my cover—seriously. I was really more interesting in the City Tournament, for which the notoriety would be useful next year in Dorflich. But that only worked if my victory in that tournament was one of an up-and-coming promising candidate, not some legend-in-the-making. While I had recovered a great deal of strength, it wasn’t all of it and I couldn’t act recklessly least some greater power come down hard on me. While it was hard to gauge without—you know—actually fighting someone who was a challenge, I suspected that only C rankers and a few high level D rankers could actually go toe-to-toe with me. Those were never the circles I moved around in the City in my first life, and I hadn’t bothered to look up the Who’s Who since I got back. Nonetheless, there were probably at least a few dozen, and a team of them could easily detain me. I was eager to avoid anyone jumping to that conclusion.

This was going to be a difficult fight.