Chapter 56: Are You Going to Run Away By Dying? (1)
The Sword of the South Tournament was a competition to determine the strongest knight in the southern region. It attracted not only the nobles with power and influence in the south, but also hundreds of others who joined for social or entertainment purposes. The participant with the highest score across three types of matches would be awarded the title of the Sword of the South and receive three major benefits.
First, if the winner wasn’t already a high noble, they would be granted that rank. Second, they would earn the right to challenge for the title of the Kingdom’s Greatest Swordsman. Third, they would gain the opportunity to meet Eslow, the Lord of the South and a Weaponmaster.
For most nobles, the primary goal of competing was to attain the rank of high noble. On top of that, the prize money was huge—one million gold for first place, five hundred thousand for second, and even one hundred thousand for third place.
Not only that, this tournament was also the largest festival in the Lillian Kingdom. Tens of thousands of people traveled from other regions to watch, and hundreds of nobles from other territories also attended. In short, it was no exaggeration to say that the entire kingdom watched this event.
Participants who ranked within the top five were able to instantly gain fame and glory. However, what the audience truly craved was something else entirely: a bloodbath. The tournament’s rules mirrored those of a gladiator arena—blood splattering everywhere, flesh tearing, and screams filling the air. The participants just happened to be nobles.
What spectators really sought was violence; people wanted an outlet to vicariously release their repressed brutality. They cheered and went crazy over nobles failing disgracefully, begging for their life, and seeing the favored candidate collapsing in defeat and despair.
In my past life, all of Sefira’s knights suffered a crushing defeat in the Sword of the South Tournament. It was during the preliminary round, no less.
The fact that Sefira, a high noble and master family, was eliminated in the preliminaries was not just something to be mocked and insulted for; it was much worse than that. Even neutral nobles turned their backs on Sefira, and the commoners who supported them became disappointed in the knights’ disgraceful and helpless defeats.
The honor and prestige of Sefira, which Besil had painstakingly maintained, were shattered overnight. The Sword of the South Tournament became a critical incident that even led to internal discord within Sefira.
Keter planned to overturn this future. He intended to turn the execution ground for Sefira into a stage to showcase their potential and use it as a stepping stone to soar higher. The additional benefits and rewards of winning, not to mention the thrill, was a bonus. However, winning or whatever else was not the priority right now. He had to be able to participate to do anything, so he needed to take care of that first.
"As Lord Keter mentioned, there technically is a way."