The next morning, we headed to the arena early as usual. It was early enough that there were not many headed there quite yet, and we had an escort, so people left us alone. We’d been too flashy. People kept wanting to talk to us. Ugh, I think I wanted to leave the city after the tournament, but I also wanted to collect heart stones for the gacha.

There was already a few people in the waiting room when we arrived. We looked each other over, but they were not the ones who looked like they might be a challenge. We got comfortable and opened our books. As usual, mine was just cover for using the media app. There were more interesting items there.

Today, I was reading about the history of the Silverblood Clan. Specifically what happened to end them. They had been a medium sized clan, but according to the Essar Clan, they had just disappeared, with no warning. Obviously someone was keeping the truth from them.

The documents I was reading was orders from several clan heads who had ganged up and sent their special forces to exterminate the clan. The Essar clan was included. I was looking through the documents to try to find out why they decided to attack them. Were they manipulative assholes, had the clans just decided they didn’t want them to rule, did the gods decree they needed to be purged. Unfortunately, I didn’t discover the reason before the it was time.

As before, we pulled numbered balls from the box. Unfortunately I was one of the later ones to fight. However, I still got my wish of fighting Alfred before the finals. He was going to be my second fight. Wait, huh? He was my first fight? Oh, three people were missing. That sucked, for them. Either they had been late, or someone was cheating. The interesting people from the preliminaries were there, so the missing people were small fry, so it didn’t really matter. It did mean I sat out the first round with a bye.

I’d intended to go back to reading after the drawing, but one of the interesting fighters decided to try to strike up a conversation with Alfred. Not me. The glance he gave me said I was just a youngster who was a bit strong, not worth his time. Jerk.

I wanted to blast him off the stage. I checked the chart, finding the man’s name. He’d have to make his way to the finals for me to have my fun. I don’t know if I wanted to meet him there or not. The funny thing is his whole group was on the other side of the bracket, so I would only have to fight a single one of them.

I took a seat, and pulled out my book. However, I was unable to concentrate on it. I started plotting more fun ways to fight. If I met the jerk, I’d definitely make him Slip. I could freeze his legs. No, well maybe if I did it that way. I wonder if dropping someone under the ground would count as a ring out?

As I was contemplating the various ways to make the fights a pain, the first people were called. I calmed down enough to actually concentrate on my book. Children’s emotions ran higher than adults. I’d have to get used to that so I didn’t make any major mistakes. My mind is that of an adult, but I was definitely being influenced by my immature body. I also had almost no poker face anymore.

When Alfred’s turn came, I gave him an absentminded wave, continuing to read. The jerk decided to talk to me. I really wish he hadn’t.

“You should give up little girl. You’re just going to get hurt if you don’t.”

“Eww, don’t breathe on me. Your breath is horrendous. I’ll be fine. I’m going to win.”

“Don’t be so sure, you never know what is going to happen in a fight. If you’re not careful you might even die.”

“Are you threatening me? Because it sounds like you are. Take yourself and your dog breath elsewhere.”

“Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

He left with those ominous words. I had the suspicion that it was because of that man and his friends that there were fewer fighters than there should have been. He’d likely have tried something with us if we hadn’t had friends with us.

I checked the stats of him and his friends. Ugh, assassin builds, they had poison related skills. Just in case, I checked myself, and found that I had been poisoned. I could easily cure it, but I wanted to use it as evidence for their misbehavior. No, there was no real way to prove he’d done it. He’d already cleaned up his mouth, so there was nothing left.

Hah, fine. I carefully cleansed my body of the poison, while not emitting the light healing magic usually does. The poison had barely entered my body, so it hadn’t done anything significant yet. Also, dragonkin had better resistances than humans.

Alfred came back, and I checked him over. He’d been poisoned as well, but it hadn’t progressed far yet as his body was not very affected by poisons being different from a humans, so I removed it from him like I had mine, while telling him about the assassins. I told him to be careful when he fought them, and to keep a distance from them so he wouldn’t get poisoned again. None of the rest of the participants were in any danger, but that is because they were not worth bothering with.

There were more fights, the assassin’s winning theirs, but taking their time with it, hiding their strength. Finally our turn came up.

“Give me a good fight. Don’t hold back, unless it comes to something against the rules.”

“Yes mistress.”

As we headed out, I did a last check, making sure the assassins hadn’t been able to pull anything, but we were good to go. We squared off for the third time, much to the joy of the crowd. Today he had apparently decided to forego the knives, using just his daggers. I was equipped like our last fight, sword and mace. I had a shield I could pop up whenever I needed to.

After confirming we were ready, the fight was started. Alfred came at me, using his magic to try and control the stage, he really didn’t want me using slip. Without moving from my starting position, I slipped my magic into the ground, smirking at him.

“Slip!”

He’d jumped towards me when I started smirking, trying to avoid the effect. He avoided it, but that was because my spell was not the one he’d feared. A wall of earth shot out of the ground, right where he was headed. He rammed into it and stuck. I made the wall shoot out tentacles to surround him, binding him in one place as I dashed around the wall.

Ha, he was the perfect prey. I put my blade to his neck. So much easier than yesterday! I’d barely tapped my magic. He had focused too much on one tactic. I do admit it was one of my favorites, but he knew about it, and had come up with ways to get around it. That left him vulnerable.

I was declared the winner, so released Alfred from the prison. I had a brief conversation as we left the stage.

“I said I’d try to come up with something else to defeat you.”

“You did indeed. I fell for your misdirection. I shall endeavor to learn from this experience.”

“Please do. We’re going to have sparring amongst us so we can learn more. I intend to win at least the C-Rank division, so hopefully I won’t see you again till it’s over.”

“Good luck.”

We separated at the foot of the stage, he headed for the stand where a seat was kept for him, while I returned to the waiting room, staying far away from the cheaters. Before getting settled, I did appraise the furniture, not putting it past them to put a contact poison on our seats. They were safe. It seemed like they believed that the earlier poison was sufficient. They were in for a surprise.

The fighting continued, none of my fights were anything exciting. The D-Rank division only had a few strong people, and one was already gone. The assassins dominated the other side of the bracket, only encountering trouble when they had to face each other.

I had hoped that one of his friends would knock him out, but the finals came down to me and the jerk with the poison breath. I had asked one of the staff what the rules were regarding poison in the fight. Sadly it seemed that as long as it wasn’t a lethal poison, and an antidote had been prepared for it and provided to the staff prior to the fight, it was within the rules.

Hmm, so he’d likely end up tossing poison around. Well, it’d help train my poison resistance, and I could always heal myself. As I’d suspected, he had throwing weapons, needles, and appraisal told me they were poisoned. Well, it was unlikely they’d get through my armor, but I didn’t want to show off how good it was.

I covered myself completely, not wanting to get caught in any area poison attacks. My entire face was behind the armor, but was made to look like it was still visible. The armor would prevent anything harmful from getting through.

We squared off on the stage, and the fight began. The man had some high DEX and throwing skill. He got off a lot off needles in seconds, and they were aimed at different parts of me. That was kind of annoying. I drowned them with a flood of water, then started freezing it when it reached him. He seemed to have wind magic, blowing the water back towards me.

I just made it disappear back into my item box. Using the ice left, I started shooting needles of it at him. He dodged most of them but took a few hits here and there. Ha! First blood was mine!

Getting injured made him mad, and he tried to go around the pile of ice in the middle of the stage. He didn’t get far, as I used the infamous Slip spell. As he hit the ground, the ice piled on top of him, burying him. As he was unable to do anything, I was declared the winner.

I released him. He came over and tried to shake my hand. I backed off.

“Judge, please check his hand, he just tried to poison me.”

He tried to shake it off, but the judge, a retired B-Rank adventurer, caught him, and checked. There was indeed poison on his hand, a poison which he hadn’t given the staff an antidote for. He was immediately disqualified and arrested. I moved onto the next rank.

Sadly, I had no time to rest. Of the two blank entries I had to choose from, I wound up picking the one with a two on it. Since I had just fought, they did give me a short break.

I only had to win five fights, then I would clear the quest. I could do this. I would do this!

Break over, we were taken up to the stages. My first opponent was a woman with a staff. She was likely a mage. Well, I wasn’t going to go easy. I no longer had the room to goof off like I had in the lower rankings.

As the fight started, I shot forward, but not just me. A dozen stone bullets few out ahead of me. I aimed for the body, since a head shot had too high a chance of killing. She raised her staff, trying to cast a shield spell and ward off my blade, but I didn’t give her the time. Her weapon wound up broken, and she was hit all over. She collapsed. She was hurt, but would not be too difficult to heal.

I was declared the winner and guided to the waiting room. One fight down, four to go.

The people waiting with me were not the assholes the lower ranks were. I was actually invited into conversation! It was fun! However, I did realize that it was partly to get me to reveal my skills and trick, so I did remain careful not to say anything that’d disadvantage me.

I tried to steer the conversation to learn about the local dungeon. I got a bit of information, but they tried to steer it back to me by asking how I’d deal with different monsters. Mostly it came down to cutting it in half. They eventually gave up on digging into my skill set and actually became helpful. It was at that point I was actually enjoying myself.

Though the group did get smaller as people lost to each other. I had a few words with the people I defeated as we left the stage. The fights were also really enjoyable, if somewhat difficult. There were a few times I thought I was going to lose, but I pulled through. Sadly, I also earned a horrible nickname. The Slipping Princess. Please can I have a different one? I relied on that spell too much…

Finally, it came down to the finals. It was me versus Khernig, a dwarf with a warhammer. I really didn’t want to get hit by that. If it was a downward strike, I could probably parry it, but if he swung it horizontally, I’d be in trouble. I might be strong, but I was light enough to be blown away. I had to win this fight to clear the quest.

He was a good guy though, so I didn’t want to hurt him too much. While he was an adventurer, he was also training in blacksmithing. I admit that I want to learn about everything, so I’d asked him about it. I also got some advice of where to go to have good mithril weapons forged for Fran.

When the bell rang, I immediately started circling him and pelting him with bullets. I was using Wind bullets this time. They were decent for knock back, while not actually dealing too much damage. He took the attacks without flinching. Damn is he tanky. I kept kiting him around the arena, keeping well away from that hammer.

Since bullets were not very effective, I upped the power, casting Air Hammer rather than bullets. That got a response. Well fine. That’s what I’ll do. When I got him close to the edge, I made the stage crumble while also casting a high power air hammer. If he’d had stable ground under him, he would have been fine, but without that, he was sent off tumbling off. Ah, I love ring outs.

I learned that it was one of the easiest ways to win in the Soul Caliber games. Grab, toss, done. And so I won. I headed to the edge, leaning over to look down at him. We talked while walking around to the stairs. While he could have climbed up, his armor and short stature made it difficult.

“You good? I didn’t hit you too hard, did I?”

“Nah, lass. I be fine. I been hit harder in the smithy. That was a good move ruining my footing. Just what you’d expect from the Slippery Princess.”

“No! I hate that, forget that name. I don’t want it!”

He guffawed, clambering his way up the stairs and back onto the stage.

I quickly checked my messages. Depending on what I found would determine my next step.

---

[To mortal01
From &%#@)4^#<$

Quest Complete! Three System App access passes will be placed in your item box. They can only be used by creatures bound to you.

New quest available!

Quest: Continue the fight!
Details: The gods have enjoyed your creative and chaotic fighting methods. Continue onward into the Higher ranks!
Rewards: Points towards the gacha for every victory! Each victory doubles points won.

Bonus Quest 1: Win the B-Rank Division
Reward: Hidden

Bonus Quest 2: Win the A-Rank Division
Reward: Hidden

Fortune favors the strong!]

---

Yeah, I was going to continue. My Dwarven friend decided to take his prize and go. We had a friendly chat as we left the stage. I was given yet another badge, told to be on time, then I left.

When I was out of sight, I reconfigured my gear, becoming a black catkin wearing regular clothes again. Except for the tail. I had one, but if I let it out, I’d be revealing my wings as well. It was fine. I ran off, acting like any other young child. Finding Fran, I hugged her. We matched.

The dragonkin didn’t know who I was for a moment, then got it when Fran hugged me back. They were surprised at how good the disguise was. They didn’t realize just how good my camouflage was. Holding hands with Fran, we wandered back to the inn, chatting happily. I told Fran I got a good recommendation for where to have her claw weapons made.

At the inn, we had a delicious dinner. Afterwards, I pulled Alfred into a room and locked the door. He knew about the apps from Fran and I, so he was very happy to be given the pass to unlock it for himself. Now he would be able to do a lot more, without needing to search bookstores or ask us to pull up a temporary terminal for him.

Unlocking the door, we headed back to the main room. Ah! They’d brought in some dessert! I quickly made my way back to the group and enjoyed it. Of course, I did so while on someone’s lap. It was normal for me and Fran. I was getting so spoiled.

We played games until It was time to go to bed. I was aiming for a victory tomorrow. If I was able to make it through, I’d be able to face off with the Crimson Blood. Well, I’d already done that and I got thrashed. There was one way I might be able to win, but it felt like cheating.

I tried directing a thought to the angel, hoping it’d reach him.

(If you don’t respond, I’m going to have to assume there’s no problem with my plan.)

Not getting a response, I pulled out the stone and got comfortable on the bed. I’d only use the one today. However as I was using it, the door opened and Ierva entered. It was too late to stop it, so she got a glimpse of me holding the stone before it gave a flash of light.

I saw her rushing towards me as I fell asleep.