I looked up towards the most decorated seat within the entirety of the enormous stadium.
It was filled with nobles in expensive outfits, all brimming with gold, precious stones, and red velvets. The very top of the top brass of the town we were in, if not the entire province.
And they all looked down at me with either complete shock or utter fury.
'Right, that guy had to be one of their own,' I thought, sending a nervous glance toward the charred corpse to my side.
I gulped my saliva down.
The tournament was over. The last round ended with the death of the noble. But what now?
"I…" the voice of the announcer shook, followed by an anxious cough.
"I hereby announce the Black Wing company to be the winner of the tournament!"
Clearing his throat helped the judge, allowing him to once again fill the arena with its powerful, deep voice.
"Haaa…" I heaved a small sigh.
A tiny bit of tension left my shoulders.
Yet, as I looked around, things only made sense.
This wasn't some tiny circus on the outskirts of civilization. It was an imperial-sponsored tournament, housing guests of honor and high status from all over the place.
Punishing the unexpected victor just because he defied the odds and clung to the victory wouldn't be as easy, even for all those powerful nobles.
"You are hereby rewarded with the entire prize pool of this grand tournament!" the judge, with a resolute look on his face, filled the stadium with his mighty voice.
But only silence followed.
No cheers, no screams of joy or amusement at the spectacle I made.
No…
"YEAH!" the crowd suddenly exploded.
A wave of more than fifteen thousand commoners rose as they finally overcame their shock and screamed out in satisfaction.
My face twitched.
'Such a good opportunity…' I thought while my lips curved into a small smile. My eyes moved away from the crowd and back to the VIP lodge. 'Wouldn't it be a pity to waste it?'
I took in a deep breath.
My knowledge of this world was extremely limited. I hardly knew any details, as I had yet to assimilate all the information about my host's backstory.
But I was the author of the failed novels that served as the seed of this world. Four novels that were filled to the brim with world-building yet never really took off due to extremely grim, down-to-earth plots.
'I don't know the details yet,' I thought, slowly exhaling before taking in another, even bigger breath. 'But the general flow of things… it should generally be the same, right?'
"And?"
My lips moved on their own. My lungs squeezed to push air through the strings of my throat…
No.
It was my voice.
And it was loud enough to cut into the enthusiastic cheering of several thousand commoners.
"Excuse me?" the noble in the VIP lodge nearly lost his balance when he noticed my voice.
"Do you wish to tell me that in an event on this scale, endorsed by his majesty the Emperor, and with a noble of ninth rank as its benefactor…" I spoke out before I could even think.
In a sense, I went with the flow.
But there was hardly any other way out for me.
If I just took the reward, regardless of how big or small it would be, the nobles would kill me the second I would step out of the arena.
No.
To survive, I had to not only make a fuss but also put the nobles in a situation they weren't prepared for.
I took my breath as I raised the stakes and held the massive audience in suspension.
"The reward was a measly coin?" I finished my question, suddenly turning my voice down, as low as I could while allowing it to spread.
Rather than relying on the build-up from before, I resolved the tension by making a face of complete… disbelief.
Not anger, not anxiety, not even fury.
Just sheer disbelief.
The judge's face tensed up, a detail that somehow didn't elude me despite quite some distance separating me from the man.
My face twitched again.
In a single instance, I felt several changes take place. Or rather, I only now discovered those changes.
First, my senses sharpened, granting me far better sensibility to the surrounding world than anything I've experienced before.
Secondly, all the gears in my brain finally clicked, properly reorganizing all the content that came with my host body and its backstory.
Finally, quite sometime after awakening, I properly attuned to the dive.
"What reward do you seek, then, mercenary?" the judge asked in his powerful voice while boasting a smug smile on his face.
'It's all about controlling the crowd,' I thought.
All my anxiety vanished.
The existential threat that I saw earlier now turned into a simple math exercise that required some logic and a careful approach.
My mind did a complete reset, returning to the scene unaffected by any residual emotions or worries.
'And now, he wants to make me out as a greedy barbarian,' I thought, instantly making use of the knowledge that I've finally absorbed.
My host… No, I was a mercenary apprentice of the Karkuz Legion, one of the few remaining powerhouses of the ancient world. Yet, even in the Imperial exterior, people saw me as uneducated and bloodthirsty savage.
And this made the situation far easier to solve than I would ever hope to ask for!
"This glorious tournament is conducted not to the glory of its participant but to honor his majesty, our great emperor!" I called out while instantly standing at attention. "I deem it would only be fitting for our reward to correlate to the emperor's blessing!"
Emperor's blessing.
It was another piece of information so crucial that even a mere mercenary like my host knew about it.
Emperor's blessing.
Two simple words that held the society of the entire continent in its grasp.
"What's your rank, mercenary?" after some consideration, the judge asked.
His smile vanished, replaced by a hostile yet focused look.
"I am Theo Karkuz, younger brother of the fifth rank!" I announced in a strictly modulated and flat tone while assuming Legion's salute pose.
My imperial blessing was only provisional, limited to a plaque I received from the legion when I left the garrison town. A small piece of metal that assigned me a provisional status.
And by asking for the reward to be related to imperial blessing, I was asking for nothing else… but a promotion! A promotion that would elevate me to the sixth rank, and open the door that closed when I left Karkuz.
"Such is a huge ask, young mercenary," the judge's face tensed up.
Even with all the knowledge of the host, I knew little about this world. Contrary to the modern world, the degree of information a mercenary like me had about my surroundings was extremely limited.
Still…
Even I knew that my request was perfectly in line with what I could freely ask for. In fact, it was actually a small request when compared to what I was in a position to demand!
But as I looked up into the judge's squinted eyes, I could tell.
No matter how rightful it was, or how unjust it would be to rob me of this reward… He was sure to do so.
'Is he that corpse's father?' I thought, trying to figure the situation out.
One of the nobles in the VIP lodge stood up and walked up to the judge's side. Then, he whispered a few words.
The judge's face brightened up.
"Regretfully, it was this young man over there that fell the last opponent, not you!" the announcer shouted with glee.
'I can't believe I wrote most of the nobles in my novels like that,' I thought, suddenly realizing just what could be the reason behind the judge's strange urge to suppress me.
What I was going through right now was an ersatz, a distillate of how the nobles would act in the novels I wrote!
'A clever trick,' enlightened by the realization, I calmed down to the point of openly acknowledging the move of the nobles.
But I still had some cards left to play!
"In that case, promote my younger brother. As for my reward, I will leave it to your… public discretion." I announced with a graceful bow.
And now that the ball was on the noble's field… They couldn't cross the line.
If they offered too little, they would make themselves to be the bad guys. And after the show I gave and the support of the commoners that followed…
"Are you sure, young mercenary?" the judge asked, this time lowering its mighty voice to give it a bit more familiar feeling.
A simple trick I had no intention of falling for.
"Yes, honorable judge," I replied in the most polite way I could with the limited knowledge of my host. "I have no doubt no one will sully the emperor's name by trying to cheat me out of a just reward after my rightful victory!"