Say what? It was that drunkard woman, in other words? You’ve got to be shitting me. Then again . . . I had only seen one of her attacks, but judging from her skill with magic and the way she moved, it kind of made sense. It had only been by coincidence, but to think I had become acquainted with someone like that.

“Is something wrong?”

“Nah, it’s nothing.”

Either way, if we ended up fighting her, we would have to be careful.

Chapter Sixteen: Nadia

Chapter Sixteen: Nadia

After all was said and done, the coliseum schedule was changed so that we would fight twice per day, due to a relative decrease in the total number of matches. We had gone on to win for several days in a row now. The day after the ambush had been a win by default, as expected. It even made me consider the idea that going out and waiting around to be ambushed might be a surprisingly good strategy.

Under normal circumstances, our competitors and their backers would be using all kinds of dirty tricks to interfere with our advancement. But I had the accessory dealer and the family of slave traders backing me. Their support also came with their extensive connections throughout the Zeltoble underground.

Speaking of the accessory dealer, I’d dangled the topic of the materials we’d gotten from Kizuna’s world in front of him and he’d pounced on it. That guy could smell a profit from a mile away. I wanted to use him to my advantage and figure out a way to mass produce the items that emulated the drop functionality of the holy weapons and their ability to summon people to the waves.

The slave traders and the accessory dealer . . . Thanks to these two entities, the usual underhanded, roundabout efforts to get in our way had been nipped in the bud. Also, the slave trader had apparently heard some kind of strange rumor going around about everyone backing off of us, because we had ties to Nadia.

We had gotten a lot more recognition and ended up being considered one of the more notable teams. We did tend to end our matches pretty much as soon as they started, after all. The guy that threw in the morning star, that had become Filo’s new toy, started rooting for us at all of our matches. He’d thrown in a different weapon just recently, too, and Filo had been flinging that one at our opponents as well.

That pretty much summed up how we had been advancing in the tournament. Most of the competitors had already been eliminated, and with only a few fight cards left, we were now in the semifinals.

“Who’s our opponent for tomorrow’s match?”

“This is the featured fight card for tomorrow. Yes sir.”