While the ‘tin can’ was still convulsing on the ground, suddenly a shout interrupted the silence, “Beautiful!”

Emperor Osman himself acknowledged the winner and started to clap excitedly. Soon the unwilling spectators were clapping and cheering as well – they couldn't let the emperor feel as if he was the only one appreciating the result.

In fact, he wasn’t. In arena there were many masters present who understood and fully supported Nick’s earlier actions and that included most of the young participants as well. The attack and the kill was just too clean.

But the one who enjoyed it most was now counting his winnings near the gambling booth – Nazir was laughing heartily without even hiding it. Nick didn’t let him down and he expected more winnings today and tomorrow as well.

When the young duke’s body was brought away to his mourning relatives, competition went on and few more people died in succession. The eleven fights ended in around forty minutes and, as per usual, now would be time for the next round where the competitors would fight with the wooden weapons without any real life threats.

“Wait!” Suddenly emperor’s voice filled the arena once again stopping arena master who was about to announce the next part, “As I said, the sixty eight participants who will be chosen in the next round will become pillars of our empire and treated with deep respect everywhere they go. To increase this prestige, the next round will have the same rules as before – everyone will fight with their own weapons and we will have the wonderful opportunity to observe these fights!”

The faces of most participants instantly paled and many of those in the audience as well. Quite a few came here only to get this far and receive some recognition in the capital and their fights were arranged by the arena masters. But now they might not only fight against each other, but against incredibly strong opponents as well.

Puppets in the audience cheered loudly when they heard emperor’s decision, while Nick thought to himself, ‘Sure enough, he seemed to be in a bad mood this morning and found a way to went. A bit more bloodshed and killing off some corrupt aristocrats at the same time might not be a bad choice for a sick freak like him.’

Nick didn’t intend to take any opponent lightly and the next words from the emperor strengthened this resolve, “To show how highly I value the future of our empire, my trusted general Qubaisi will draw the lots for the participants himself!”

‘Hahaha!’ Nick inwardly laughed, ‘Although he is a bloodthirsty maniac, I have to recognize he has a style. Aristocrats will be elegantly paying for corruption with the lives of their heirs and arena masters won’t ever take a coin in fear they will get punished by death – this is an obvious warning. And the most hilarious fact is that if these aristocrats want to win gold by placing bets, they have to place them against their own children or the children of their friends. How viscous!’

After emperor Osman spoke, right from the audience seats in the center of arena jumped a burly middle aged man, probably the previously mentioned general Qubaisi and the pot with the lots was passed to him. Five minutes later the list of participants was formed and matches could resume.

Nick didn’t exert himself in his previous match at all and could patiently observe others fighting. There will be total of sixty four matches and they could take up to four hours, or may be even five if the fights were prolonged. But according to Nick’s expectations each fight didn’t last much longer than five or six, may be ten exchanges. Youths were using real weapons and every hit caused other party to bleed, be disabled or even die.

Once again Nick was reminded of the queen Hua’s words Zia often repeated to him – ‘Fights between experts usually last only for an instant. Every move is fatal and the one who makes the first mistake, dies.’

And these were only Qi practitioners who ended fights in five moves! Qi masters were much more deadly and their power varied greatly, for example, two months ago Nick managed to kill the two deputy elders from the Holy Order, but he would be just a fish on a chopping block in front of elder Sonor or any of the three late pirate kings. The more he watched, the more he understood that the path he was on was the correct one, of course, after madam Salma adjusted his understanding a little. The speed was everything and the techniques were only accessories in fights, important ones, but still accessories.

While analyzing others and pondering on his own theories, two hours passed and it was Nick’s turn to fight. His opponent was a simple swordsman and seemed to come from a common background. It was probably his talent and hard work that brought him this far instead of some fancy Qi techniques or bribes.

They didn’t say anything to each other and charged forward as soon as the arena master shouted ‘Start!’.

Nick’s opponent obviously watched his previous fight carefully and was weary of his speed, therefore planned to instantly immobilize him with a light feint going straight for the right leg. Unfortunately for him, Nick was able to stop as fast as he accelerated and, after the miss, viciously slashed opponents sword arm and then, while evading backhand slash, stabbed his dagger deep in opponents thigh cutting not only muscle but through some arteries as well.

While the first wound was mostly unpleasant, the second made opponent almost immobile and he was bleeding seriously as well. If this went on he would die from the blood loss in few minutes, therefore after missing two more swings he realized there was no way for him to win this fight and to the deep dissatisfaction of the crowd he gave up and was carried away by arena personnel under boos and whistles from the spectators. The youth didn’t care about them anyway and came to the capital only to take a shot on becoming an important person. May be in two years he will try again.

But the audience was was disappointed not because he didn’t die, but because he couldn’t kill off the hillbilly who murdered one of their own. The bastard, after winning this match, now counted as one of the emperor’s people and would become a general in the army at least and they couldn’t accept it.

Nick didn’t care what the spectators thought and returned to his spot to analyze his own performance and watch the others. This fight wasn’t hard as well, but he had to prepare for the next.

Two hours later the top sixty four were decided and the emperor congratulated them with some praise and announced an hour break for himself and went out, probably to have lunch. While the people in the audience pondered if they could go and eat as well, participants didn’t have that luxury.

Fortunately Nick had a small bag with him and pretended to ‘take’ out a water bottle to quench his thirst. Few others were doing the same, while some were watching them with envy and greed. There were participants who came over and were trying to buy the water for a sky high price, but no one was willing to sell – they were opponents and preventing their opposition of having few gulps of water could decide their own victory later.

This time the emperor didn’t make everyone wait and came back exactly an hour later. Arena personnel brought in several weapon stands with wooden items and, after emperor waved his hand as a signal to continue the event, the first match started.

The following matches were much longer compared to the earlier stages of the competition and were totally unrealistic. The participants got constantly hit on their extremities and even heads, but still continued battling until one of them got hit harder and lost consciousness. At home youths used the wooden swords to compare their skills and techniques, but in reality here, in the previously bloody arena, these duels, where they used weapons which were, in fact, just wooden sticks, looked quite laughable.

Nick also payed attention to the techniques of the participants which they finally were able to show off. He wondered how he should compete with a weapon that didn’t do any damage, but since he couldn’t figure anything out, he decided to postpone the finding the solution until it was time for the fight.

When it was finally his turn, he approached the weapon stand and saw only wooden swords, clubs and pikes on it. He randomly grabbed a wooden sword and decided to analyze his opponent first and then think of a plan. After seeing his adversary Nick got annoyed. He noticed this guy before and he was quite easy to remember because he was the only one from the sixty four who used two swords. In addition he was very skilled with them and Nick saw his name the previous evening when he was reading the information on participants.

Jamal, the youth was called, greeted Nick with a wide grin and gently swung his swords already before the match started. The audience cheered, because this windmill-like person should be Nick’s nemesis.

Indeed, right after the match started, not only Nick noticed that he couldn’t attack Jamal, he even couldn’t get close to him. After getting hit on shoulder a couple of times and rolling away in attempts to dodge few other hits, to the great pleasure of the most spectators Nick was now looking quite miserable.

‘How am I going to deal with these things? They don’t hurt that much, because they are made of wood, but it is becoming increasingly annoying!’ Nick was getting more and more upset while trying to evade without any option to attack.

‘Wait! How f*cking stupid have I become?’ He suddenly got inspiration and instantly dropped his own sword and caught the ones his opponent wielded with his bare hands. In the next moment his foot already landed on Jamal’s stupefied face and after kicking him one more time Nick could go back to have a rest while Jamal was unconscious on the arena floor. To get caught by surprise with a Qi infused foot in the face was not an attack that could be simply brushed off.

The stupefied audience fell in deep silence once again, while few spectators laughed with tears rolling down their cheeks. This was just a common sense – those were not weapons, but sticks and if you considered them as such there was no reason to be afraid!

Nick was inwardly kicking himself for not realizing it sooner. Although his palms hurt a bit from catching those swords, it was not like they were cut off. The annoying part was that all his clothes were now covered in the bloody sand and stank quite a bit.

Still, he was now in the top thirty two and may be already tomorrow he would be able to enter the castle to look for the girls.

His little stunt in an instant changed ‘the meta’ of this tournament completely. If earlier everyone tried to perform their best techniques and to show off, many people now simply ignored the opponent’s weapon hits and went in for the face hits with their fists. Of course, not everyone did so, mostly those were the youths from simple backgrounds who relied on their brute strength to get this far. Thus many fancy swordsmen were left outside the top thirty two and fights became more intense and ended sooner as well.

Still, many participants had been training with wooden swords since their childhood and could skillfully defend themselves while breaking the fingers, hands and sometimes even skulls of their opponents. The only left spear user in top sixty four even managed to poke out the eye of his opponent with a harmless looking wooden pole and kill him.

While watching these fights Nick came to conclusion that it might have been easier for him to reach top eight if everyone still used the real weapons, despite the high risk involved. He tried to think of some effective tactic for himself, but nothing came to mind. In the end he decided to ask advise from his friends who both were swordsmen and had definitely trained with wooden swords before.