Chapter 101: Martial God's Warrior Tournament Preliminaries

It was the day for the preliminaries of the Martial God’s Warrior Tournament.

We went to the dome-shaped fighting arena beside the royal palace. The preliminaries for tomorrow’s actual match were held here.

Anyone could join, regardless of country and race, as long as they were confident in their own strength. Thus, the number of participants already exceeded 1,000 people. For our class, Merdie, Ryuushin, and I would participate as planned.

By the way, the Martial God vanished.

“Daughter of the beastkin king, I’ll arrange it so that you can fight using all your power. Ah, keep my manifestation a secret, will you. I’m off!”

He left with those words.

We, and the imperial beast guard, were the only ones inside the shrine.

There was no way we would ignore the command of a god of this world, so we decided to act as if the Martial God had not manifested.

I was curious what the Martial God was planning to do, but we could only do what we could at this time.

The qualifying rounds were about to start, but there was no announcement that magic prohibition was lifted, so there was nothing we could do but to obey the ‘magic is forbidden’ rule.

The Martial God’s Warrior Tournament had qualifying rounds and actual contests.

The number of people who could proceed to the actual was around 500.

It was considerably difficult to be able to participate in the actual fighting rounds, but being able to do so would be an extreme honor, and they would also be popular with the opposite sex.

If you could become part of the best 8, then you could also build your harem, it seemed.

By the way, as long as there was consent, both men and women could have their bigamy acknowledged.

There were also strong female beastkin, so approximately 30% of the tournament participants were female beastkin.

The female beastkin who achieved the fourth rank in the past tournament apparently welcomed several male beastkin as her husbands.

“Man, there are so many people in here.”

Ryuushin got overwhelmed with the number of people.

The dome-shaped arena was considerably huge, but since around 1,000 beastkin with burly figures had gathered, it felt cramped.

With this many people, it would only be natural that the well-known Isekai Reincarnation _something _should be here, I thought.

Being the only weak-looking human among the muscular beastkin made it easy for me to overwhelmingly become _that thing’s _target.

Yeah, there would be brats who thought the reincarnated person from Isekai was a weakling in the event, and they would then try to assert dominance by picking a fight.

Those brats would then realize just how strong that reincarnated Isekai person was, and they would be dumbfounded—_that something _referred to those series of events.

Actually, I was a little bit excited.

People who looked down on me would see my power during the tournament, and they would be shocked—I was looking forward to seeing their appearance.

However, that did not happen.

In order to prevent weird guys from bothering us, Merdie, Ryuushin, and I were surrounded by the imperial beast guards who were said to be this kingdom’s strongest military power.

The king of the beastkin did not order them; instead, they volunteered, and so they looked like they were escorting us.

Those imperial beast guards wordlessly suppressed their surroundings, so the commoner beastkin kept their distance from us.

Because of that, this part of the dome arena remained conspicuously less populated.

However, some people disregarded the pressure from the imperial beast guards and approached us instead.

“Halt-sama, thank you very much for the other day. Thanks to you, I could fight once again!”

“I am the person with the right leg you regenerated. Being able to join the tournament like this; it is like a dream.”

Just like that, the soldiers we rescued the other day came toward us to express their gratitude.

“In the event that I am able to showcase my power in this tournament, if you may, please take me as Halt-_sama’s _subordinate, meow!”

The person who said that was a cat-type beastkin female soldier.

Subordinate... I was not in the position to accept subordinates, though…

By the way, cat-type beastkin were the only ones with the special ending word in their sentences in Vestier.

It was said that a transferred hero had rescued a cat-type beastkin, and in so doing, he had requested that their ending word be ‘meow’ as thanks.

The cat-type beastkin that the hero had saved was no other than the princess of this country at that time.

In her gratitude, the princess then declared that all the female cat-type beastkin should adopt ‘meow’ as their ending words.

“From that time onward, all the female cat-type beastkin would end their sentences with ‘meow’ apparently, meow.”

I was curious about the ending word, so after the female soldier left, I asked Merdie, and she told me this story.

“Heh, is that so.”

So that’s how it was. In other words, that transferred hero’s perverted influence was passed down until this generation…

Ex-transferred hero, nice! You did great! I gave thanks from the bottom of my heart toward that ancient hero.

As I thought, cat-type beastkin should have ‘meow’ as their ending word.

He really understood it well.

While I was thinking about that stuff, the Martial God’s Warrior Tournament's preliminary round commenced.

During the olden days, dozens of people would fight at the same time a battle royale during the preliminary round of the tournament. However, through the years, the number of participants increased, so the selection rules and methods gradually changed.

In the battle royale, if the strong fighters were in the same group, the number of people who could advance to the main round would also become limited, and the battles in the main round would also decrease.

The venue became exclusive for the tournament participants of the preliminary round, so there were no spectators.

It became one of the reasons why battle royales were no longer held.

This year’s preliminary round was based on how much damage one could deal to the target that was installed in the arena. You could destroy the target if you could.

Apparently, this target was the same type as the one I blasted off during the capital entry inspection.

However, the targets installed in this arena were all new, so I don’t know just how stronger this is compared to the tattered target I blew off.

We were divided into several blocks, and the beastkin gathered in the arena all took turns attacking the target.

The use of weapons was acknowledged, but the majority of the beastkin used their bare hands to attack.

Thunderous roars echoed everywhere, but no beastkin was able to completely destroy the target yet.

In the midst of that—

“Whoa, seems like that beastkin will use a sword, huh.”

Ryuusin saw a beastkin who looked like he would use a sword.

That black panther beastkin was carrying a sword that looked like a Japanese katana.

He stood in front of the target with his sword still sheathed, and then he lowered his body and crouched.

Afterward, there was a flash.

The katana was swung with lightning speed, and it cleaved the target.

The diagonally sliced target’s upper half slowly fell on top of the pedestal.

At the same time, cheers from the surrounding beastkin rose.

“Whoa, that beastkin’s strong, it seems!”

“Yeap!”

There was no blemish on the cross-section of the target that was cut into two.

It was like the work of an Iaido expert.

Besides, that Japanese katana…

This was a guess, but a hero transferred from the other world must have passed on the katana's manufacturing method and techniques.

And that black panther beastkin probably inherited this.

I thought it would be a harsh match should I face that black panther beastkin in the main battle round.

After that, the beastkin continued to attack the target, but other than the black panther beastkin, nobody else managed to destroy it.

By the way, our group of three, the beastkin soldiers, and a few other beastkin were scheduled for the last slots.

It was not because we were to attempt on a target with less strength because it was already tattered.

It was difficult to mass-produce high-strength targets, and there were only the targets prepared on the arena and a few spares, so if a strong person attacked first and destroyed the target, the exam couldn’t be conducted thereafter.

That’s why those people who had the potential to destroy the target were already arranged last to attack.

Many beastkin were already done with the challenge.

It would be our turn soon.

Merdie was the first one to be called.

Alright, show me the progress of your training!