Chương 77: Book 2 Chapter 29 - House Yountal Tournament

Kiara had been so focused on her sword class during the end of the semester, that she hadn't really taken the time to get to know her new retainers as well as she would have liked. Luckily, they had integrated seamlessly with her existing guards and estate staff already. They were used to their new routines and duties, laid out by Dustin and Captain Soren, and were dutifully fulfilling their roles.

Kiara had missed the last noble party she had been invited to, instead staying home to practice her sword forms as the end-of-semester tournament approached. The next party was in a few weeks at the Norse Mansion, and Kiara was planning to attend. She found herself looking forward to the prospect of dancing some more, as well as seeing some of the friends she had made at the Marsant's ball. The next few weeks passed without incident.

Kiara started the new semester at the sword academy, still practicing terrain awareness, left handed forms, and sword mastery polish. She felt steady improvement in all three areas. The date they had set for the Yountal House Tournament arrived. Since Kiara didn't have access to any of the dueling collars that Handel used at his academy, any kind of cross-tier sparring wouldn't be possible.

She searched everywhere in Easton, and even made the trip to Portish one day, but couldn't find anyone that sold dueling collars similar to what Handel had. She had even visited Victor's shop the day she was in Portish, but he hadn't been there when she stopped by. She was, however, able to pick up some blunt sparring weapons from the local blacksmith in Easton, one for each weapon type they were planning to host a tournament for. All of her original guards were tier 1, so there wasn't an issue there.

Her new guards were all tier 2 or tier 3 though. She didn't want the new guards to feel left out, so she ended up offering the tier 2 guards a separate sword tournament, with the same prize offering of five gold. She offered Zoey and Jaden something similar, but they both turned it down, saying they would rather just watch. The rules of the tournament disallowed any kind of external magic use.

Kiara didn't really have a way to monitor internal magic use, where a mage channeled mana through their body for extra bursts of speed. It was a common technique that tier 1 and tier 2 guards used to help augment their physical movement speed. They also tended to use mana shields, but Kiara was firm on the no-external-magic rule. She wasn't entirely sure what the rules of a spar should be for any weapon type other than swordfighting, but she figured it was probably similar.

A single point for a strike on the arm, two for a strike on the leg, three for the torso, and five for the neck or head. Reset after each successful hit, and the first to five points wins. For archery, she figured they could start with a target close to the shooter, and have some kind of point system for how close you got to the center of the target. Each round, they could move the target further and further away, eliminating the lowest scoring player each time.

Before the tournaments began, the guards all gathered in the training grounds near the guardhouse. The estate staff had all taken the afternoon off to watch, and chairs had been brought out from the house to sit in. Helga had the cooks whip up some finger snacks and desserts beforehand, and everyone was lazing about, with a palpable excitement in the air. Someone had the bright idea to stretch sheets out over top where the spectators were sitting to block out the sun.

The guards mingled with the staff, eating snacks and relaxing until their matches came up. Before starting, Kiara addressed the participants.

"Welcome everyone! I've been looking forward to this day for months now, as I'm sure most of you have as well." A cheer erupted. She smiled and waited for it to die down.

"Originally, I had conferred with Captain Soren, and we decided that the winner of each tournament would receive five gold coins." Another cheer erupted, much louder than before. She had to waive her arms in the air to get everyone to settle back down.

"Yes, yes, I know you're all very excited about the prize money. I hoped it served as good motivation for the past few months. How has everyone's training gone?" Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere. More cheering followed, along with some boasting and friendly trash talking.

"Good. Well, I hope that you all continue with the learning and self-improvement in the months to come. House Yountal will continue paying for any training programs that you wish to participate in, even if we don't host a tournament like this very often." She faced the general estate staff for a moment.

"I originally only offered this to the guards, since their job includes keeping us all safe, but I have something in the works for the rest of you as well. It's still in the planning stages, so more to come on that at a later date." Whispers of excitement broke out as people wondered what she might be referring to. The truth was, she wanted to see if she could hire a private magic tutor to come in and begin teaching magic to everyone that had interest.

She hadn't looked yet to see if that was even possible, or how much that would cost, so she didn't want to get anyone's hopes up, hence the lack of details on what she was referring to. She turned back to the guards.

"Now, for today's tournament, I have a question! Instead of the winner taking all five gold, would we prefer to divvy out the winnings among the top two or three competitors?" The guards immediately looked at each other, gauging how likely they were to win versus place in the top three. Conversations broke out, calmly at first, then slowly getting more energetic. Captain Soren made his way over to where Kiara was standing.

"I'm afraid, my lady, that you may have opened a can of worms with that question. Those that think they have a real shot at winning don't want to give up the chance of five gold all to themselves, while those that are less certain don't want to lose out on the chance at winning some small part of the prize."

"Hmm," Kiara nodded.

"I think you may be right." Facing the guards again, she tried to get their attention, but many of them were too embroiled in their conversations and arguments to notice. She tried for a moment, without avail, until a sudden thunderclap sounded through the courtyard. Everyone turned to the source of the noise. Zoey, who had unleashed a sharp lightning bolt into the sky, was glaring at the rest of the guards.

"Quiet down! The lady of the house is trying to speak." The guards all turned back towards Kiara with shame.

"Sorry, Lady Yountal."

"Apologies, my lady, it won't happen again." Zoey winked at Kiara. Kiara chuckled, then addressed the guards again.

"Since you all couldn't come to any kind of consensus, here's what we'll do. The winner will get three gold, second place will get two gold, and third place will get one gold. For those of you that can count, that's more than five gold total, but I'll cover the difference." Another cheer broke out, but died down rather quickly as the guards shot nervous looks at Zoey.

She was known to be cheery and friendly around the estate, but that thunderclap had startled them and they still hadn't quite recovered from the adrenaline rush of it. At any rate, it seemed they approved of Kiara's decision to hand out more gold than expected. They started with the sword tournament, since Kiara was most familiar with moderating that type of spar. They randomly selected the guards' seeds for the tournament, and luck of the draw determined who got to sit out the first round.

Each spar lasted a few minutes, and there were around twenty tier 1 guards participating. All in all, the sword tournament took a little over an hour to get through. Zoey's thunderclap had apparently been heard from quite a distance, because before the sword tournament was over, the crowd of spectators had almost doubled in size. Kiara recognized some staff from the neighboring estates, as well as their children.

Apparently, word had spread even further though, because there were plenty of faces she didn't recognize, come to watch the tournament. To speed things up for the next tournaments, Kiara had Zoey begin moderating the archery tournament while they started up the spear tournament. Since all of the guards were participating in pretty much every single event, they occasionally had to wait for someone's spar to be done in the spear tournament before they could take their turn with the bow and arrow, and vice-versa.

All in, though, both of those tournaments were finished an hour and a half later. They broke for lunch, which Helga and the cooks put together in record time, then finished with the axe and mace tournaments. They used blunt wooden maces, which were still very heavy and dangerous, but less so than a metal one, especially a metal one with spikes on it. She wanted to avoid as many serious injuries as possible. After the tier 1 tournaments were over, Kiara began moderating the tier 2 sword tournament.

The crowd had grown ever larger by this point, many of them either standing or sitting on the nearby grass. Kiara knew from personal experience that these tier 2 guards would be moving considerably faster than the tier 1 guards had, and they needed more space as a result. It took some time to move the spectators back a bit, but eventually they had a circle wide enough for the tier 2s to safely spar in without endangering themselves or the spectators.

Just to be safe, she added a rule that if they got too close to the spectators, both participants would be disqualified and lose the chance to win any prize money. That would help incentivize them to stay near the center of the sparring ring, hopefully. During the third match, an unexpected visitor showed up. Kane Vondeer, who Kiara hadn't seen since the Marsant's ball, strolled lazily towards the estate gates and toward the gathered spectators, his aura cranked up to max.