The tournament almost seemed oddly celebratory.

  A peek at the guild channels my phone could access told me why.

  The fact that other boss just accepted my words and ultimately agreed to go home was seen as some kind of major victory, or something like that.

  'Was it really that big of a deal?'

  In any case, people continued to gradually show up at the Lost. It didn't seem any more than there usually were, but maybe the guild had put up a sign on the Terran side of the portal or something, because they seemed to know just what was going on.

  The one who was lost was me.

  ***

  Jadr was the senior coach of the Azure Dragons, and this sudden tournament was his idea, a way to gauge the rookies that frequented this dungeon.

  Since all appointments were still effectively canceled for the day, all that were left were regulars. In other words, people who really wanted to become adventurers.

  It wasn't hard to offer them a prize worth competing for.

  "Whoever wins, we'll give you a proper training circuit. We'll work out the details later, but I'll coach you on my days off if I have to, say... for a month or two. How about it?"

  His coaching services were worth a lot.

  No self-respecting rookie could turn that offer down, although in truth, most had already signed up without it.

  Someone asked, "What if Kid wins?"

  "Then I guess I'll coach her if she wants, haha."

  "So we have to beat the boss to get it..."

  "That's a bit unfair," another said. "How can you expect any of us to fight her seriously?"

  "Well, that's true I suppose. I guess you'll just have to think of something, hahaha. Besides, you don't have to hold back in here. Holding tournaments in these dungeons is pretty common, since none of your injuries are permanent. Just go all out!"

  Even if he was right, not many of them wanted to go all out against a child.

  Heck, there were a few younger teenagers signed up that made their older competitors a bit nervous too.

  What would their parents say if this got out?

  Though it was true that other, more successful beginner dungeons often held exhibition matches and tournaments for adventurers and would-be rookies alike.

  Aside from being a perfectly safe way to train and practice, the fact they were dungeons meant people occasionally gained Skills that way.

  "Don't we usually need to sign waivers for this?"

  "Nah. It's a beginner dungeon. All the same risks and guarantees apply. You might experience pain or temporary injuries, but you'll be fine after it's all done and time to go home. That's true whether you sign up or not, you know."

  ***

  There were actually a lot of people to go through, so they divided the tournament into four branches, each with a senior officer in charge, while Jadr walked about between them.

  Once they distilled it down to sixteen finalists, they'd reconvene, but there were about five hundred competitors. A bit more than 512, but they treated each branch as its own 128-man tournament, and just had a few unlucky people compete to even enter it.

  Jadr was a pro at setting these up.

  Normal prize tournaments would probably favor unfair matchups at the start to delay the good fights to the end, but this was a training exercise, so everyone was matched as fairly as he could manage without delaying things unnecessarily.

  This meant that Kid's branch had all the youngsters, and that she'd have to fight her way through them before even reaching the adults.

  Though if she was secretly quite good at fighting, that'd be a bit unfair to the other youngsters, the same could be said of any of them. Any one could be a prodigy, and none of them had any Skills that would let them act outside their weight class.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  A few of the dungeon regulars weren't interested in the tournament, people who'd been aiming for support skills and had no interest in combat.

  They got drafted, along with any guild juniors who weren't busy, to help run the tournament.

  Even if it was divided into four branches, each 128-man tournament could take days to conclude if they did one match at a time, so each branch did as many as they could at first, just to get through.

  To dispel people's reluctance, each branch started with an exhibition match by the guild members. They didn't fight seriously, keeping it relatively Skill-less, as much as they could.

  But they acted as if they fought seriously, scoring wounds, and in three of the four matches, even finishing with a kill that forced the loser to run back from the portal.

  "See? It's perfectly safe. Of course, if you're afraid of pain, you can drop out whenever you want."

  This wasn't hunting, where adventurers tried to minimize risk. This was a simulation of life or death combat. Something they'd also have to master if they wanted to be successful.

  Even if an adventurer stayed in their lane, only went to dungeons they were overskilled for, and took as few risks as possible, their occupation was still hazardous.

  Even the Lost had suddenly and without warning gained a boss, after all.

  ***

  Since Van and Suon were Kid's official liaisons, they ended up in charge of what was effectively the runt division of the tournament.

  Even the adults that got in were on the small and slender side, mostly kids, women, and a handful of skinny men.

  That wasn't to say they weren't serious or anything. In fact, since Kid was in that division, it had the biggest audience, which only grew as people started losing in the other brackets.

  Even though it was a spur of the moment thing with hundreds of people, scheduled to end by night fall, the Azure Dragons, in a fit of over-the-top competence befitting a big five guild, managed to include a loser's bracket.

  Though it did mean even Van could barely watch Kid fight.

  Suon was basically told to record every moment of that, rather than acting as an actual tournament officiate.

  Since Kid was the smallest contestant, her first match was up against a twelve year old boy.

  If it weren't the weekend, she'd probably have nothing but jobless adults to contend with.

  Alas, while the match was as fair as possible in terms of physical attributes, where the boy had a mild advantage, she landed a single decisive blow, and he vanished, sent back to the portal.

  'You know... this really isn't fair to these kids after all...'

  It made sense to him.

  Though he wasn't sure where Kid had learned to handle a sword, she had grown up surviving in a dungeon, striving to be as self-reliant as she could. Her everyday life was hunting, and death had never been a factor for her.

  Meanwhile, even if the kids she was up against all had dreams and aspirations of becoming adventurers, they probably wouldn't be here if they were particularly promising. A few were anyway by happenstance of their own life circumstances, but most were just ordinary kids whose time was already taken up with school, hobbies, and perhaps even friends.

  It was a bit of a forced analogy, but it was like watching pampered house cats and trophy dogs forced to compete against a wild panther cub.

  He found himself wincing with each slow but decisive victory.

  ***

  "Maybe we should have seeded her or something. She is a dungeon boss."

  "Nah. She needs training too," Jadr defended his choice. "There was no better way of knowing how she'd do, and besides, her only Skill doesn't really do anything in here."

  "Plus, she's only ten. I hate to say it, but if she wins, it's only fair. I get that the kids competing have school and families, but we can't pretend she's had more training time than anyone else competing."

  ***

  Fighting other children wasn't difficult.

  Sure, they were all bigger than me, but none of them had a warrior's mindset.

  In a life and death fight, hesitation usually meant death, and yet most of them hesitated in one way or another, so it was just a matter of taking advantage of that.

  The better ones, the ones who actually put up a fight, were still rough around the edges. I just had to wait for an opening and then take it.

  Though... should I really be showing off? It might be more trouble than it's worth if I won.

  I decided that I should probably lose to the first serious competitor.

  Hopefully, I'd find one soon.

  ***

  The tournament ran at a staggering pace.

  The closer matches still only took about ten minutes or so at the most, since it was a fairly lethal tournament, albeit with the dungeon effectively denying actual death and repairing any injuries simply by leaving through the portal.

  And since it was live combat rather than a sports match with points, there was no real way to get away with cheating.

  Even then, while there were plenty of temporary kills and injuries, it was most people's first time in live combat, so most fights ended with surrenders instead, as most beginners awkwardly avoided both getting hurt and hurting others.

  In a sense, it was less than ideal practice, but everyone understood that they weren't even rookie adventurers yet, so it still gave many their first chance to fight for real.

  And so even with a loser's bracket, the tournament quickly boiled down from five hundred competitors to only a hundred in the first couple hours, and it kept at that pace, reaching sixteen finalists sometime in the middle of the afternoon.

  The loser's bracket fed back into determining those finalists.

  Incidentally, half of the finalists from Kid's branch were from the loser's bracket, since they had the misfortune of meeting her on their way up, so the guild decided it had been worth the extra work.

  However, since there was a prize, and since there was no way to make it fair between four different tournament divisions meeting up at the very end, the finalists were simply randomized.

  To save time, it even became single elimination, which was a bit painful for those who'd avoided a loss getting that far, but they wanted each match to take center stage, and they also wanted to get done before it got dark.

  There even was a little arena set up for these matches, a raised ground in a small clearing near the portal. The ground had been raised by one of the guild member's Skills.

  It was pretty crowded with over five hundred people trying to watch, though.

  Some even climbed up in the trees to get a better look.

  ***

  Somehow, I got to the finals.

  I hadn't found anyone to lose against after all.

  What a mess...