Foster threw his bags onto the ground next to the bed in his room, followed by his body hitting the mattress. And to his surprise… It wasn’t just a hay-filled mattress. It was actually really damn soft. To him, this feeling that he by now considered to be natural was just divine. He pushed his feet out of his shoes, and pulled the small vial that he turned into a necklace out of his shirt.

The flower that he placed in here at the start of this trip naturally withered by now, so he just tried to gather the seeds from it with Lynol’s help. He was surprisingly pretty good at that sort of thing. The seeds fully dried and were now clattering around inside of the vial. Foster now just needed some soil and a flowerpot to start growing more of them.

He really wasn’t sure why exactly he wanted to do that, it just felt… right. Slowly, Foster sat back up, placing the vial to the side, as he instead took out Aster’s tiny mask. Maybe he should just give up hope at this point, although that was kind of annoying, and quite sad in his opinion.

Careful not to drop it, he placed the tiny mask down next to the vial, and chose to instead do a little bit of training. Lynol and Octer were pretty exhausted because they weren’t able to sleep in the carriage earlier, and Foster didn’t particularly feel like exploring this town alone, so he had a little bit of freetime to spend here in this room this evening.

And the sort of training that he wanted to do during that freetime wasn’t the technique-training that he did every single day, at least before they encountered that wolf, together with Lynol anyway, but rather some skill training. After all, when his ‘Martial Necromancy’ skill leveled up back then, Foster became able to do some new things. He opened his status and looked at the information on these two extra abilities.

—

[Block][Tier – 1]

[Description: Defend against incoming attacks by protecting your body with internal energy]

–

[Dead Sight][Tier – 1]

[Description: Through your familiarity with death, you are able to let Necromantic energies flow through your eyes to spot the death hidden within your target]

—

The Martial Skill ‘Block’, and the Spell ‘Dead Sight’. Since Foster was still pretty injured that whole time, he didn’t have the chance to try out his new martial skill, and when he tried using Dead Sight, his mana started draining so fast that he couldn’t particularly figure it out either.

But now, Foster was in great condition again! So, he jumped off the bed again, even though he just laid down on it a few minutes ago, and slid into the basic stance of the Argomna Style. And from there, Foster went into the ‘Basic Block’ position. It required him to set his feet into stable positions while slightly shifting his weight forward, all the whilst somewhat curling his body up while protecting his vital organs. It was rather straightforward, really.

Either way, now that Foster was in this position, he tried to use the ‘Block’ martial skill. He already knew what he had to do, since he played around with it at least a little bit before, but at the time it really didn’t make any sort of difference to him.

And now, Foster tried it out once more. He imagined his body as a wall of sorts, a wall that could easily withstand any sort of attack that would come for him. Foster could feel his body stiff up a bit, his muscles flexing slightly as his whole body heated up. Certainly, it was working, but he still had one more issue… He wasn’t able to test it out without having someone or someting actively attack him.

It was kind of annoying, Foster clearly wouldn’t be able to do anything about it like this. And that was exactly when he got a bit of an idea. There was a perfect place for him to test this stuff out right there… And at the same time, he should be able to figure out just how strong he really was compared to the people of this city. When Foster, Lynol and Octer were watching everyone before, while they did seem strong, they didn’t seem unbeatable by any means. With a light grin on his face, Foster stopped using the ‘Block’ martial skill. It felt like something invisible and now intangible was cracking off him, as if he was covered by some kind of super thin, hardened layer of… something, just now.

He walked over toward his bed and picked up the tiny mask. He really didn’t want it to be stolen or anything, although he didn’t particularly care about the other things he was with him. But having Aster stolen from him was a quite horrible idea.

And then, Foster walked out of his room, locking the door behind him. He walked through the hallway and down the stairs, making his way into the open hall that was the entrance of the Red Riverside Inn. And not too far away from him was already that deep hole where people were fighting each other. Unsure about where he had to go, Foster simply stepped up to the front desk. The young woman there looked at him with a smile. It was the same one that helped him check in just earlier.

“Hello there, how can I help you?” She inquired with a smile on her face, and Foster pointed over his shoulde towrad the deep hole, “Do you by chance know how I can take part in that?” He asked immediately. The employee quickly nodded her head in response.

“Of course I do, sir. You will have to return to the ground level of this street and enter the ‘Red Riverside Tournament’s building. Simply head to the main desk you will find to your right, and according to the general evaluator, you will be allowed to enter one of the first-round battle royals so that you may take part in the overall tournament. There are only three more instances of that battle-royal, so you should hurry before all the spots are taken up.” She explained immediately, “Since you are already paying for one of our services here at the Inn, you will not be required to pay the fees to enter the tournament itself.”

Foster smiled back at her, happy that she was able to tell him all of this so concisely and in a clear manner. She seemed to be really good at her job, “Perfect! Thank you, then I think I’ll head down there right away. Have a good rest of your day, then.”

He turned around and made his way to the building’s exit. He walked down the stairs to the first level above the ground, and then to the ground itself. It was kind of busy in front of the building in question, with plenty of people moving both in and out of there. Some of them were clearly just people that came to watch the fights, not seeming like fighters themselves, but there were also plenty that seemed to just return from the fight Foster saw just earlier today. There was even the guy that lost some of his teeth, walking with a bloody cloth pressed against his mouth.

“Ouch…” Foster muttered with a wry smile, but quickly walked past him and entered the building himself. And it didn’t take him long to find the front desk either, there were plenty of people queuing up in front of there. So, being the good citizen he pretended to be for most of the day, he stepped to the very end of the line.

Some of the… rougher looking fighters were messing around with each other, and were doing some dumb stuff like talking a kid down from participating in the fight, saying that she wasn’t ‘respecting the sport well enough’. Luckily Foster was actually one of the taller people there, and he had a decent build as well. And while he was on the young side compared to some of the others, he by far wasn’t the youngest. It felt nice not having to deal with thugs like that here in this world… He had to deal with people disrespecting him due to his age plenty of times when he first became an executive for the syndicate. Of course, they would only do it once, because they quickly found out that Foster wasn’t just some ‘lucky kid’.

Either way, soon enough, after about half an hour, it was Foster’s turn at the front desk. He looked at the employee with a smile, “Hello there, I would like to sign up for the tournament, please.” He said in a kind tone. The employee seemed nearly surprised, because most of the other people he was talking to all day were probably quite rude and rough.

He immediately nodded his head and looked down at the sheet of paper in front of him, “Of course, sir. I just need some basic information, for further evaluation as well as to determine the exact tournament type you are allowed to take part in. Do you know how to read and write?” He asked, and Foster quickly nodded.

“Yeah, I do.”

“Great! Then just fill your name in here, although you can just use an alias if you wish. Then over here note down your class type, and of course we don’t need anything specific, we just need to know what base class you have; Martial Artist, Swordsman, Spearman, et cetera. And then right here, please note your weapon of choice. Then down here-”

“Ah, sorry, but if I use gauntlets as weapons, does that count?” Foster asked.

“Of course, don’t worry. Anyway, down here, please cross off the general range for your attribute levels. We don’t need specific information for these either, of course.” The employee explained thoroughly, and Foster smiled as he quickly got to it.. It didn’t take long for him to fill everything out, and then handed the piece of paper back to the employee.