Chapter 364: First up
Kien’s brother won his round. Everyone he fought collapsed in the same manner as his first two victims, but he still managed to avoid revealing anything else about his abilities. The only thing that Arwin was fairly certain of was that the man’s dagger couldn’t cut through metal any more than a normal dagger could. It had to meet flesh.
The next few rounds of the melee went on without anything of particular interest. It wasn’t that the competitors weren’t good. Many of them were incredible. If this were just for sport, they would have put on a great show.
But the Secret Eye had clearly made sure to keep the general strength of the people in the tournament approximately around the Adept tier. They hadn’t invited the true powerhouses of the kingdom — or, if they had, those guys had a more private tournament somewhere else.
Whatever the case may have been, none of the other melee rounds caught Arwin’s attention. He didn’t see anything about the winning teams that would have made them a real threat to Olive or Art’s teams. There was really only one other thing that he did take note of during the remaining fights.
Arnold.
The boy who Esmerelda had been oddly concerned about finally made his showing toward the end of the melee rounds. His team put on a pretty good showing, but it was clear that they were pushing themselves as hard as they could just to keep up.
There was no chance they would win the tournament. Arwin was confident that Olive could have handled the lot of them on her own, even if she hadn’t been given a replacement arm.
But, despite that, their team managed to scrape out a win. It almost came from thin air. There was only so far that the power of desire could take anyone. He just didn’t see the skill needed to win within them…
But it was as if the universe itself had decided they would make it through the round. Arnold stumbled into people, knocking them from the stage seemingly by accident, and blows whistled just inches past him.