“Then again, I can’t really recommend participating in the underground coliseum, either.”

Her parting words left me strangely uneasy . . .

Chapter Fourteen: Ring Name

Chapter Fourteen: Ring Name

Anyway, keeping in mind what that drunkard woman had told me, we completed our entry into the underground coliseum tournament.

We had several days left before the event. Right now, I was at the slave trader’s place with Filo, waiting on Raphtalia to get back. Rishia was still in the middle of gathering information and looking over some documents.

The slave trader forced our entry through for us, so to the organizers we were still just some no-name mercenaries for the time being. Although, I had a feeling the accessory dealer must have been involved, too, or our entry probably wouldn’t have gone so smoothly. I guess this was the Zeltoble underground, where anything goes, so it was probably safe to assume that this level of foul play was practically expected.

Anyway, things would be slightly different than they had been for the matches I’d seen while talking to the drunkard woman. Instead of the competition being held only at night, matches would take place day and night for several days on end . . . or so I was told. It was because this competition was one of the biggest and there were a ton of fighters participating.

We would be fighting once per day. Personally, I thought they should just sift out all the weaklings in preliminaries, but the merchants wanted to move their money with each fight, since it was a lengthy tournament. This was all according to the slave trader’s explanation. He did say the number of times we fought each day was supposed to increase in the latter half of the tournament, at least. It made no sense from a Japanese person’s perspective.

Anyway, it would make things more difficult if they figured out who we were from the very start, so Raphtalia, Filo, and I planned to wear masks and other equipment that would hide our faces and conceal what our races were.

“By the way, higher-ranking fighters will be rewarded with money and other various goods. Yes sir.”

“That may be so, but . . .”

The grand prize was indeed impressive . . . 150 gold pieces was a pretty nice chunk of change. But the amount of money changing hands in this tournament was far greater. I had ordered the slave trader to place our bet on ourselves just before the advance betting ticket sales ended. We had to make sure we won big. The whole point of participating was to be a dark horse and come out on top.

Fighters would also receive a fight purse for each match they won. Of course, that would just be chickenfeed to us.

“Understood. I’ll make it a straight bet for the overall tournament. Yes sir.”

“So there are bets for each fight, too?”

“Some people do make money that way. Yes sir.”