Then, as Aiden and Lilia separated themselves, Thorin who had been silent for a while waiting for the last fight to finally end, could finally announce that they were at the top 25 stage and that the tournament would soon be finished.
However, there was a clear problem, they were 25 which meant that someone won't have to fight during this first round.
"Now, that there are only 25 people left, I think it's time to talk about what would happen to the one person who could be considered to be the odd one," announced Thorin.
The twenty-five people who were left started to look around themselves, trying to understand what had Thorin just said.
They knew that not everyone would be able to fight in the next round as one person would be able to skip this round or something similar to that.
"Because we're 25, there will have someone who will have to fight two times to go to the next round, and the ones who will select the one who will have to participate twice will be... all of you in the crowd!" shouted Thorin as loud as he could, his voice resounding everywhere inside the arena;
The crowd who had just heard that they would have a role to play all started cheering as loudly as they possibly could.
They were happy that there were going to choose someone who was about to suffer and in almost everyone's head the choice was simple.
There was one person which almost everyone hated because of his past actions, that's why they all started chanting a name as loudly as they could.
"The Reaper! The Reaper! The Reaper!"
It resounded again and again and again, it seemed that if no one would be interfering that it would continue on forever.
Aiden hearing them shout his name, he wasn't surprised at all as he had already expected such a thing to happen when he had heard Thorin say that the crowd would be able to choose who would be fighting two times.
The crowd which had just made their choice quite clear were all smiling seeing that the person who had made tricked this whole tournament by making a deal would have to fight two times to keep his place for the step of the tournament.
"I don't know about all of you, but I think that their choice is quite obvious. What do you think Mister Reaper?" said Thorin, laughing a little as he said that.
'Was it a rule that they made on the spot?' thought Aiden, unsure whether or not this was planned since the very beginning.
Hearing the crowd approve of what Thorin had just said, Aiden now had no choice but to accept his fate.
He would have to fight two times to keep his spot.
However, there was one thing that the crowd ignored, it was that Aiden didn't care how many times he would have to fight as long as he would win this damn tournament.
Even if his path would be more difficult than the others, in his mind, it didn't matter at all.
If he needed to fight twenty times to reach the next stage, then he would be doing it.
But, he dismissed those thoughts when he heard the voice of Thorin which resounded throughout the arena.
"However, the question here is... who will our Reaper face?" asked Thorin throughout the whole of the Arena.
People in the crowd shouted many different names but Lucius's name always resounded a lot more frequently than the others.
However, this time, the crowd wouldn't be the ones deciding who Aiden would face, the founding families' heads would do that job and they had already agreed about who he would fight first and it wouldn't be Lucius.
The reason that it wouldn't be Lucius was unknown to Aiden, but the founding families' head knew it very well, it was because of Melinda.
It was in her best interest for Aiden to stay in the tournament for as long as possible which was why she supported him to the best of her abilities.
She didn't want him to fight Lucius because he was obviously the favourite which was why she decided to pick someone who could be considered the weakest in the entirety of the top 25.
But, don't be mistaken, if that person had reached the top 25 then he would surely be really strong, there was no doubt about it.
Nonetheless, in terms of strength and abilities, he was determined as the weakest that was it.
So, Melinda had tried her absolute best to make Aiden fight a guy named Paul and she had succeeded in doing so.
She had made it so that Aiden's first fight would be against the weakest person in all of the top 25, well... in her opinion.
She had watched the fights of all participants and in her opinion Paul was lucky to still be part of the tournament as he had nothing special reattached to him.
"No it won't be Lucius and I know that many would have wanted to see that fight, but maybe not for the right reasons, ahaha," said Thorin as he started laughing, as he knew that people were shouting this name because they wanted to the Reaper getting completely annihilated.
"But before you all start fighting, I'll need to announce the rewards for reaching this far in the tournament," said Thorin as he waited a little to grasp the attention of all the participants.
And it seemed that the word "reward" had caught all of their attention, well except for one person.
That person without much surprise was Lucius as he hadn't even raised his head yet, not caring about his surroundings at all or that was what it looked like as no one knew what was going on inside of his mind.
The crowd and everyone around who hadn't seen him before couldn't help but be confused about his overall actions.
But, they didn't focus on him too long as Thorin continued talking about the rewards.
"The reward for having reached the top 25 of the tournament, will be an item of your choice which will be crafted here in the Ravenwood territory by some of our best blacksmiths," announced Thorin, happy to see those looks of anticipation onto all of their faces.
He was happy that all those talented awakeners recognized that the Ravenwoods were the absolute best at crafting weapons or any sort of item as a matter of fact.
However, he quickly went on to a completely different subject as he needed to remind everyone about something.
"Also, don't forget that all the rewards that I will announce will be accumulated over the different stages that you reached, so basically you will have both a weapon and a skill of your choice. Personally, I think that those are pretty damn good rewards."
All of the participants also seemed to be agreeing with him except those from the founding families as they already had access to such things, but those from high-level families all seemed extremely happy.
Aiden was, of course, also really happy about this whole thing.
"Then, I think that I talked for a bit too long, shouldn't we start that first fight between the Reaper and Paul!" shouted Thorin announcing Aiden's opponent.
However, hearing Aiden's opponent most of the people in the crowd seemed to be unhappy as they had seen Paul fight in the last round of fights and they hadn't been impressed, to say the least.
Nonetheless, that wasn't the only fight that Aiden would have to win to reach the next stage, so it could be considered as fair for him to face the weakest opponent first.
Then, as Thorin announced Aiden's opponent, Aiden could feel himself being teleported onto the arena where he would be facing his opponent who seemed determined to end it with Aiden.
This time, Aiden wasn't being clouded by his emotions which meant that his dark aura hadn't been released yet.
However, if Aiden were to be in bad shape or if he were to be losing the fight then he probably wouldn't hesitate to use that dark aura.
But, for this fight, he decided that he would reveal one of his cards which he had hidden up his sleeve until now.
The skill which he had gotten when he had first arrived in this new world.
The skill which, in his opinion, was the strongest that he had.
A beeping sound resounded in his head as he activated it.
[Your skill <Mind of an Assassin> has been activated.]
As that voice resounded inside his mind, red energy started to be released from Aiden's body and as he looked in front of him, he could see an image of himself who was testing different paths to win this fight as quickly as possible.
He hadn't revealed this skill yet as he didn't want the others participating to know about it as Aiden didn't know if the counters of that skill.
Then, as his body's afterimage seemed to have found the right path to completely destroy his opponent. The voice of Thorin resounded inside the arena announcing the start of this fight which would determine whether or not Aiden would stay inside of the tournament.
However for all those watching, they knew that they were about to watch a one-sided beating.
Paul just wasn't on the same level as Aiden, it was as simple as that.
Complete annihilation would be coming and the crowd would all watch it. They were a bit disappointed that the Reaper would reach further in the tournament, but they couldn't do much to change it.
Visit freewe𝑏nove(l).𝐜𝐨𝗺 for the 𝑏est n𝘰vel reading experience