"Alright! Tenma, we're going to
beat
the crap out of him right now!"
After returning to the Waiting Room, Jin heard the situation from me, and once I'd finished explaining, he said that.
It was my fault for carelessly blurting out that Menace and Lina seemed to be among the targets Chaos said he'd go after.
I didn't know when Chaos had spotted my entourage—Jeanne and the three sisters—but if he'd seen them during the match, both Menace and Lina had been right there in the noble seats Primera had arranged, so there was a good chance they were included.
"Wait, hold on—if we go and do that, we'll end up as slaves! At least come up with a plan where we won't get caught first!"
Hearing my words, Jin sat back down in his chair and started strategizing. Fortunately, a break had been scheduled before the semifinals, so we had a comfortable thirty minutes.
I asked Jin, who was deep in thought about strategy, something that had been nagging at me.
"So as I suspected, Jin—you really do lose your cool the moment your party members are involved."
"Don't be ridiculous, Tenma! It's only natural! Even if one of them is Menace—so violent you can't even think of her as a woman—and the other is Lina, a clueless airhead who says baffling things and causes trouble with her constant blunders, they're still precious companions! ...Well, as for Menace, that idiot Chaos probably wouldn't want to deal with her anyway!"
Watching the ominous aura building behind Jin, who was getting increasingly worked up, I decided to push back.
"No, I think Menace is plenty beautiful. And you could say Lina's airheadedness is kind of cute, too..."
"Tenma, you really don't need to hold back around me, y'know? You've got quite the collection of gorgeous women around you, and honestly, I've always been insanely jealous of that... The only women I've got are those two."
What had started as talk of beating up Chaos had somehow derailed into guy talk, courtesy of Jin. And behind him...
"Sorry about me. Being so violent you can't even think of me as a woman..."
Menace—whose mouth was smiling but whose eyes were not, radiating a pressure so immense it could kill someone just with that stare—
"Sorry for being such a clumsy airhead who only causes trouble..."
Lina stood there with a refined noble lady's smile on her face, exuding a dark, sinister aura all around her.
"W-Why are you here...? The waiting room is supposed to be off-limits to anyone but contestants..."
The nurse who had been attending Jin answered his question.
"Umm, well... Garat woke up, and the doctor ordered us to come get Jin, but when that happened, Menace and the others said they'd come along too, and... well..."
"I mean, I'm technically a Team Battle contestant too, you know... I talked to the staff and said, 'Jin is an idiot, so we need to go or who knows what he'll do'..."
"I also pulled a few strings with my family's influence, just a little."
Thanks to that, they were apparently granted passage — under the condition they only go as far as the waiting room area.
"Well then, let's go! Tenma, hurry up!"
Jin scrambled to his feet and tried to rush out of the room, but Menace and Lina pressed down on his shoulders.
"Alright then, I'm heading off to do my warm-ups!"
Leaving Jin and the others behind, he gave the nurse a nudge on the back and headed for the waiting room exit, when—
"Tenma! Hold on a second!"
Menace, who had started tearing into Jin, stopped him.
I hadn't meant to say anything bad about Menace and the others, but being called out so suddenly made my heart skip a beat.
"Y-Yes! What is it?!"
Menace spoke to me, who had unconsciously snapped to rigid attention in formal speech.
"Sure, I think you understand this, but...
irredeemable scum
...just beat that irredeemable scum within an inch of his life without killing him, alright? Otherwise, that scum will really go after your friends. Got it? Carve an unforgettable fear into that scum's mind and body!"
"Understood!"
At Menace's gracious words, I saluted as I closed the door to the waiting room.
Right after I closed the door, I thought I heard Jin screaming, but I'd like to believe that even Menace and the others wouldn't beat him so badly that he couldn't compete.
On the way, I stopped by the medical office to check on Garat and found him in better spirits than I'd expected. When I told him that Jin was still getting disciplined and that the three of them might be late, he made a slightly sad face.
I told Jin and the others I was going to warm up, but there was actually no dedicated space set aside for that, so I decided to stretch and move around in a corridor near the arena.
Just as my body was loosening up nicely, a staff member informed me that it was almost time to start. I tidied up my appearance and stepped onto the Fighting Stage.
Chaos wasn't on the Fighting Stage yet, so I ended up waiting a bit, but it seemed the delay was simply due to the different locations we'd been in.
Sure enough, after about two or three minutes, Chaos appeared at the entrance on the opposite side. At the very least, he didn't pull a stunt like Oggo.
What caught my attention, however, was the audience's reaction. When I had stepped onto the Fighting Stage, it was nothing but loud cheers and applause. But when Chaos showed his face, a considerable amount of booing mixed in with the cheers.
As for the booing, Chaos seemed to actually enjoy it, egging the crowd on and deliberately making the booing louder.
"You must be jealous. Now the audience will never forget me. Even if time passes and everyone forgets about you, no one will forget me—the one who wins it all despite this adversity! I'm going to carve my name into history! Unlike a lucky nobody like you!"
Now I understood why Branca had been reluctant to fight him.
This guy
was a bona fide idiot. The kind of idiot who might actually end up in the history books for it...
It probably took a decent amount of brainpower to come up with and memorize those lines, but before worrying about that, I wanted to tell him to at least size up his opponent's abilities first.
At the very least, the moves Branca had shown in our fight were arguably the fastest and most destructive in the entire tournament. If he had fought like that from the very start, I might have been caught off guard and lost.
The Branca who had displayed such incredible movement—
this man
apparently believed I had only won because luck was on my side.
I wasn't planning to deny that entirely. Luck is always a part of any fight, and in truth, walking away with just a wrecked arm after taking Branca's trump card might have been pretty lucky.
However, I had still managed to defeat Branca—however narrowly—and here I was. Under normal circumstances, you'd think he'd be cautious facing me.
But he wasn't.
This guy
is a genuinely historic moron.
If this were all an act to play the fool, it'd be impressive, but I could tell from the vibe that wasn't the case.
Because even as the referee was about to signal the start of the match, Chaos had spent the entire time fussing over the audience, completely ignoring me.
"Semi-final, start!"
Even the referee seemed fed up with Chaos's antics—his voice carried a note of irritation.
But Chaos's attention was still fixed on the crowd.
So...
"One..."
Just like Branca's technique from earlier, I used a reinforcement spell to close the distance, lunged into Chaos's guard, and pressed my blade to his neck.
Chaos noticed me too late and frantically leaped backward, but just before he took off, I lightly pressed the sword against his neck and sliced through a single thin layer of skin.
While Chaos landed behind me and momentarily shifted his awareness to the wound on his neck, I circled around to his back and, just like before, pressed the blade to his neck.
"Two..."
Once again, I pressed the sword lightly against his neck and sliced through another thin layer of skin.
Even Chaos was on guard this time—he kept his distance and didn't let his attention stray to the wound—but I closed the gap using the same method.
When I moved in, Chaos instinctively moved to guard his neck, but this time I lightly pierced the tip of my blade into his exposed left flank.
"Three..."
Chaos was equipped with mithril armor, but no matter how good the armor was, it didn't cover the entire body without gaps. The joints and seams at the flanks and other connecting points were reinforced with durable monster hide—in Chaos's case, made from lesser dragon material.
However, even lesser dragon material couldn't stand up to the sharpness of my sword, forged from ancient dragon materials, and the blade tip sank easily into Chaos's side.
"Four..."
Next, I drove the blade into the top of the blood vessels on his right wrist.
"Five..."
This time, behind his right knee.
"Six..." "Seven..." "Eight..." "Nine..."
I made a light cut on his left ear, grazed his right Achilles tendon with the edge of my blade, slipped the tip into the gap in his abdominal armor, and carved a gash into his right cheek.
"
Ten
..."
For the final strike, I drove the tip about five millimeters into the space between his eyebrows.
The time it took to count from one to ten was roughly thirty seconds. During that span, Chaos was unable to so much as track my movements, forced to simply endure every blow.
The moment the blade pressed against his forehead, Chaos collapsed onto his backside, staring blankly in shock.
At the instant he hit the ground, he seemed to feel nothing—but as the seconds passed, he gradually became aware of the pain radiating from every stab and slash, and his face turned deathly pale.
Still, even Chaos clung to a sliver of fighting spirit and sheer stubbornness, using his own sword as a crutch to haul himself back to his feet.
"Damn... damn, DAMN DAMN DAMN DAMN IT! You little bastard! Don't you dare look down on meeeee!!!"
Chaos poured the fuel of "rage" into what little fighting spirit remained, forcing himself to rally as he bellowed.
"Stop barking like a goblin and come at me already,
former champion
."
After his roar, Chaos leaped backward to create distance. But I went beyond mere verbal taunts—I sheathed my sword, extended one arm forward where the whole audience could see it, and beckoned him over.
This display of provocation pushed Chaos completely over the edge, and he activated his magic.
"Die die die dieeee! Die, you little shit!"
The magic Chaos unleashed was a quintuple volley of fireballs. As befitting last year's champion, they boasted speed and power that surpassed what an average magic user could manage.
However...
"Not much to speak of..."
Without taking a single step from where I stood, I deflected the fireballs' trajectory with my magic-infused hand.
The deflected fireballs landed behind me, leaving minor scorch marks on the surface of the Fighting Stage before burning out.
"Wha—! Guh!"
The instant Chaos was caught off guard, my spell struck his shoulder, and the impact sent him stumbling several steps backward.
The spell I fired was Air Bullet, and I had imbued it with enough magic power to normally pierce through standard armor. However, thanks to the magic resistance inherent in his Mithril armor, its power was reduced to barely scratching the surface.
But it seemed the raw impact of the Air Bullet itself couldn't be negated.
Chaos scrambled to regain his footing, standing there dumbfounded. In response, I silently extended my left hand toward him and curled my fingers in a come-hither gesture, silently daring him to bring it on.
Face burning crimson at my provocation, Chaos unleashed another rapid volley of fireballs, just as before.
This volley was also a quintuple burst, but there was one difference from last time—without any pause after the first five, he immediately launched another quintuple volley of fireballs on top.
I deflected the first five just as before, but the second volley I shot straight through with Fire Bullet.
Bolts of flame, smaller even than the fireballs—
fire bullets—
watching them cancel out his attacks, Chaos's expression began to change.
Up until now he had been masking his fear with anger, but gradually he could no longer conceal it, and his composure deteriorated into something bordering on madness.
"D-don't you dare come any clooooser!"
As I closed in on him at a leisurely pace, Chaos began hurling fireballs at random in a desperate frenzy.
I countered every last one of them with Fire Bullets.
At first, the magic was being nullified somewhere in the middle between me and Chaos, but gradually the point of negation crept closer and closer to him, until finally the spells were vanishing right in front of his face.
The distance between me and Chaos at this point was roughly fifteen meters. That was when Chaos produced a knife from somewhere and hurled it at me.
Chaos was clearly panicking — the knife landed about a meter short of me.
It had looked like an ordinary knife, so I hadn't paid it much attention when he was holding it, but right before it struck the ground, something felt off, and I reflexively leaped backward.
My instincts proved correct — the instant the knife hit the ground, it exploded.
I avoided the direct blast, but I couldn't dodge the shockwave entirely and ended up with minor burns on my face and arms.
The knife was only about thirty centimeters long, yet the explosion had a blast radius of roughly four to five meters in diameter. If I'd taken a direct hit, I would have been seriously injured.
From parts of the Audience Seats, shouts of "No items allowed!" rang out, and the referee was about to intervene, but Chaos — having somewhat recovered his composure — pulled out another knife just like the previous one, held it above his head, and yelled so the referee could see it clearly.
"This is a knife! The rules shouldn't prohibit the use of knives!"
Seeing the referee hesitate for a split second, Chaos hurled the knife in his hand directly at me.
This time it came flying straight at me, but honestly, all I had to do was dodge, so it was easier than dealing with the fireballs from before.
I dodged the knife and simultaneously charged toward Chaos, drawing the blade at my waist.
It wasn't exactly an iai cut worth boasting about, but with a high-speed step forward and a blade drawn from its sheath at a decent velocity, I cleanly severed Chaos's arm.
The very instant I drew my blade, Chaos had just pulled out a knife. The severed arm was still firmly gripping the knife, and the moment it fell behind Chaos, the knife detonated.
"Oh well,"
"if it's come to this,"
"regenerating that arm is going to be difficult. My condolences."
Chaos's arm, having been both sliced off and caught in the explosion, was scattered in pieces, making it impossible to reattach with healing magic or any treatment of the sort.
At this point, he'd either need to have a new arm crafted or use magic to regenerate one. However, very few people were capable of performing such treatment, and even if he found one, the medical costs would be astronomical.
If you searched this entire world thoroughly, you might find someone, but at least within this country, there was said to be no one capable of such treatment.
"Agh— AAAAAGHHH!! MY ARM!! AAAAAAAAGHHH!!"
Upon confirming that his arm had been scattered in pieces, Chaos screamed, unable to bear the pain that came with the realization.
"I hate to kick a man while he's down, but the match isn't over yet!"
While Chaos was on one knee, clutching where his missing arm had been, he barely raised his face in response to my words. In that split-second opening, I drove my knee hard into his face.
My knee connected squarely with Chaos's nose, sending his body tumbling violently backward.
Chaos appeared to have lost consciousness the instant the knee struck, but before the referee could notice, I closed the distance and crushed Chaos's right knee under my full weight.
His right knee let out a sickening crunch, and the pain yanked Chaos back to consciousness.
Chaos was screaming from the agony, but at this rate, even a little more pain might drive him into shock and kill him, so I used a variant of healing magic to dull his sense of pain.
The moment I had crushed his foot, I felt the referee begin to move in, so I hurried to finish things off.
"So you never think of causing trouble again, I'd better castrate you first!"
Making sure Chaos could see clearly, I swung my sword in a wide up-and-down motion and plunged it into the area just below his crotch.
With a wet thud, the blade sank into the fighting stage. I pulled it free, sheathed it, and then checked on Chaos. He was foaming at the mouth and unconscious, with liquid trickling from between his legs.
I stepped away from Chaos and waited for the referee to declare victory, but the referee didn't announce it right away. Instead, he gathered the other officials for a huddle.
During their discussion, Chaos received on-site treatment and was loaded onto a stretcher by the staff, who carried him off while continuing to administer care.
I couldn't help but almost laugh when I saw the staff member handling Chaos's lower body treatment wearing the most disgusted expression imaginable.
The referee conference dragged on for a while, and just as boos began to rise from the audience seats, the officials finally dispersed and my victory was declared.
"The winner—Tenma!"
After hearing those words, I started walking back in a hurry, but behind me, the referee was explaining the details of the deliberation to the audience seats.
From what I heard on my way back, a suspicion had been raised that both Chaos and I had committed fouls during the match, so the panel of judges deliberated and concluded that there was no behavior on my part that constituted a foul.
I was wondering which of my actions might have been considered a foul when, on my way back to the Waiting Room, a staff member called out to me and led me to the judges' Waiting Room.
The reason I was called was to receive a detailed explanation of the deliberation, an apology, and to undergo a hearing.
As for the details of the deliberation, it was said that there had been suspicion that my actions ignored the referee's instructions — specifically, that when I kneed Chaos, I had ignored the referee's attempt to stop the fight, or so it appeared to one of the referees standing outside — but the referee on the Fighting Stage and the other referees denied this, so the suspicion was cleared.
Incidentally, Chaos's foul fell under the rule of "prohibited use of items other than weapons, armor, and bags," and since the "exploding knife" Chaos used was officially classified as a disposable item, it was decided that Chaos would face Disqualification and forfeiture of tournament prize eligibility.
As for the apology, they acknowledged that they should have stopped the match when Chaos used the knife and deliberated with the panel of judges at that point.
During the hearing, I was asked why I had launched such an excessive attack, so I told them the reasons: Chaos's despicable act of using the exploding knife, and the fact that he had threatened to harm my acquaintances.
Especially when describing the threats, I made it sound quite dramatic, and further added that among the acquaintances Chaos had mentioned,
a duke's daughter,
and
a viscount's daughter
were also included. When I said this, the faces of the judges immediately became grave, and guards and mages capable of interrogation magic were urgently summoned. After confirming that my words held no lies, they rushed off to Chaos's location.
Incidentally, interrogation magic doesn't reveal the exact truth — at best, it can only determine whether the person it's cast on is lying, so it's not always useful. But in this case, when Chaos denied what I had said, the magic caught his lie, and he was taken into custody.
Chaos's charges so far include "insult against nobles," "threat of criminal acts against nobles," and as a bonus, "threatening behavior toward me."
However, since there was much more to dig up on Chaos — the guards who dragged him away (they actually strapped him to a stretcher to transport him) were very motivated — his list of charges would likely continue to grow.
I was originally supposed to receive a reprimand for "excessive attack on Chaos," but instead, I ended up being thanked by the judges for preventing a crime against nobles before it could happen.
Just as I left the judges' Waiting Room, I ran into Jin, who was heading toward the Arena. Apparently, he had grown worried when I didn't return even after the match ended, so he stopped by specifically to check on me.
"Yo! You're safe, Tenma... There's no way the outcome is 'You've been Disqualified~,' right?"
"No, of course not. Quite the opposite — the judges actually thanked me for beating up Chaos."
"What's that about?"
I briefly explained to Jin, who looked thoroughly confused, what had happened earlier in the Waiting Room.
"So that means whoever loses between me and the Bandit King clinches third place..."
"That's right. But hey, Jin, wouldn't it be fine if we both went down together? That'd make things way easier on my end!"
"Don't be an idiot! If that happened, the audience would turn into a mob! Just sit tight and wash your neck or whatever!"
With that, Jin turned his back on me and headed toward the Arena.
However, at that moment, not even the faintest thought crossed my mind that those words would be the last ones Jin and I ever exchanged.