The parchment sat on the table in front of Jae-hyun like a personal threat.
He stared at it. It stared back.
Official Tournament Entry Form — Ironspire Adventurers' InvitationalParticipant Rank: F through CDate: Three days henceLocation: Ironspire Combat ArenaPrize: 50 Gold Coins — Grand Champion
He read it twice. Then a third time. Then he turned it over, hoping the back said "just kidding" in small print.
It didn't.
"Fifty gold," Renn said slowly, sitting up slightly. Some of the horror had drained from his face, replaced by the dangerous expression of a man doing math. "That's… actually a lot of money."
"It is," Kael agreed, reading his own form with careful eyes.
Jae-hyun looked between them. "You two are focusing on the wrong part of this document. The relevant part is the section that says combat arena. As in a place where people try to physically destroy each other. For sport."
Renn shrugged. "We do that every quest."
"Against monsters. Not people who've trained specifically to hurt other people."
"Same thing."
"It is absolutely not the same thing."
Aria set her teacup down with a soft click. "The tournament is structured. No killing. Elimination by knockout or submission only." She folded her hands neatly. "Well. Officially."
Jae-hyun's eye twitched. "What do you mean officially?"
"Sometimes people get carried away."
"Aria."
"It happens rarely."
"Aria—"
"You'll be fine," she said, in the specific tone of someone who had already decided the outcome and was simply waiting for reality to catch up.
Jae-hyun turned to Kael, who was the most reasonable of the three. "Tell her this is insane."
Kael considered this for a moment, turning his entry form over in his hands. "It's… not insane," he said carefully. "It's actually a smart move. Tournament results get recorded by the guild. A strong performance bumps your rank faster than standard quests. Visibility, reputation, connections—"
"Thank you, Kael," Aria said.
"I hate you both," Jae-hyun muttered.
Renn was already scribbling his name onto his form with the enthusiasm of someone who'd been waiting for an excuse to punch people legally. "Come on, man. Think about it. Tournament. Arena. Crowd cheering. We make a name for ourselves." He pointed his quill. "This is peak protagonist energy."
Jae-hyun stared at him. "You do remember what my stat panel looks like, right?"
Renn waved a hand. "Details."
"That's literally the whole problem, Renn."
He shoved his panel open anyway, floating it above the table for good measure.
Name: Jae-hyun Level: 3 HP: 110 Mana: 55 Strength: 12 Agility: 13 Luck: 0.1 Skill: Minor Copy (F Rank) Stored Skills: None Exp: 16/40
He gestured at it like a lawyer presenting evidence. "Luck: zero point one. Strength: twelve. A single F-Rank skill. I am, statistically speaking, the least qualified person in this building to enter a combat tournament."
Aria glanced at the panel, then back at him. "Which is exactly why you need the practice."
"Practice implies I survive the experience."
"You'll survive." A pause. "Probably."
"Probably."
Renn snorted into his coffee. Kael at least had the decency to look mildly sympathetic before going back to reading the tournament rules.
Jae-hyun slumped forward, forehead nearly hitting the table. He stared at the entry form through the gap between his arms. His name wasn't on it yet. He could still walk away. Aria could only make him feel so guilty. He was a free man. A sovereign individual. A person capable of rational self-preservation—
Aria slid a quill across the table toward him without looking up.
He picked it up.
I hate this world, he thought.
He signed his name.
For the rest of the morning, the group spread across the guild hall, each doing their own version of tournament preparation.
Kael claimed a quiet corner table and produced a small, worn notebook from his pack. He opened it to a page dense with diagrams — stances, arrow trajectories, angles of engagement. His tea sat cooling beside him, completely ignored. He was already somewhere else in his head, calculating.
Renn, predictably, found a sparring partner within ten minutes. A stocky adventurer two tables over had made the mistake of saying his footwork was sloppy. Now the two of them were in the guild's small rear courtyard, trading blows with training staves while a small crowd watched. Renn was grinning. He was always grinning. It was unsettling.
Aria sat at the main table with tournament parchments spread before her, making neat notes in the margins. Occasionally she'd glance up, survey the room, and write something else down. She was doing what Aria always did — thinking three moves ahead of everyone else while looking like she was simply having tea.
And Jae-hyun?
Jae-hyun was sitting very still, staring at his entry form, having a quiet personal crisis.
Tournament. Three days. Combat. In front of people.
He'd survived a wolf. A bird the size of a small house. A boar that could've flattened a cart. Cave beasts with claws like carving knives. But those were monsters — they didn't think, didn't strategize, didn't look across a fighting ring and read your weaknesses before you'd even raised your hands.
People were different.
People were worse.
He drummed his fingers slowly on the table. Okay. Think. What do I actually have going for me?
Minor Copy. That was it. One skill, F-Rank, and it only worked if his opponent actually used something worth copying. Against a trained fighter who relied on raw strength and technique — no magic, no skills — it was nearly useless.
His eyes narrowed.
Unless…
He sat up slightly.
Unless I bait them into using their skills early. Copy something fast. Use it once before the timer runs out.
It wasn't a plan so much as the skeleton of one. Thin, rickety, dependent entirely on luck — which, given his stat panel, was essentially a joke. But it was something.
He pulled out a scrap of parchment the receptionist had given him earlier and began writing. Not neatly — more like thinking out loud in ink, words scattered across the page.
What skills would F-C rank fighters have?Speed buffs? Strength boosts? Elemental?If I copy speed — I can dodge.If I copy strength — I can hit back.If I copy nothing — I'm dead in thirty seconds.
He stared at the last line.
Okay. So step one: don't copy nothing.
"Deep thoughts?"
He looked up. Aria had moved silently to the seat across from him — her parchments tucked away, a fresh cup of tea in hand. She was watching him with that calm, unreadable expression she wore like armor.
Jae-hyun blinked. "Just… figuring out how not to embarrass myself in front of an entire arena."
She tilted her head slightly. "You're worried."
"I'm strategizing," he corrected.
The corner of her mouth moved. Almost a smile. "Those aren't mutually exclusive."
He looked down at his messy notes, then back up at her. "Okay, fine. I'm both." He tapped his pen against the parchment. "Minor Copy is only useful if I can see a skill being used. In a tournament, if someone comes at me with just fists and footwork, I've got nothing to work with. No skill to grab. I'm just a guy with average stats in a torn school uniform."
Aria considered this with the focused quiet of someone who actually listened when people spoke. It was, he'd noticed, one of her more disarming qualities.
"Then don't let them dictate the fight," she said simply. "Make them react to you first."
He frowned. "How? I'm the weakest one in there."
"Being weak doesn't mean being passive." She wrapped both hands around her cup. "You survived out there — not because you were the strongest. Because you watched, you waited, and you moved at the right moment." Her eyes met his steadily. "Do the same thing in the arena."
He stared at her for a moment.
She wasn't wrong. It was basically what he'd been doing since day one — watching everyone else and finding the one crack he could squeeze through. With the wolf. With the cave beasts. With every fight where strength alone would've gotten him killed.
He exhaled slowly. "That's actually… useful advice."
"I'm occasionally useful," she said dryly.
He almost smiled. "Just occasionally?"
"Don't push it."
He looked back down at his notes, adding a new line at the bottom.
Don't be passive. Make them react first.
It still wasn't much. But the skeleton was getting slightly less rickety.
From the courtyard outside, a loud crash rang out, followed by Renn's triumphant yell and applause from the watching crowd.
Jae-hyun glanced toward the sound, then back at his entry form. His name sat at the bottom in slightly uneven letters.
Jae-hyun. F-Rank. Minor Copy.
He stared at it until something quietly stubborn settled in his chest — the same feeling that had been there since the wolf, since the first dungeon, since the moment the goddess had written him off and thrown him away like a misprint.
He folded the form and tucked it into his pocket.
Three days.
Better make them count.