Stella was eating a bowl full of meat and vegetables, replenishing everything she had wasted with the light training she had done.

  If this were the Earth from before, this would probably be the most exquisite dish she had ever tasted in her life. But it wasn’t Earth, not anymore.

  This dish probably qualified as the third best of all the cuisine that was available to her. The reason she was eating this dish at all and not another was because of the specific properties it possessed.

  Using some basically alchemy and System bought ingredients, this dish had rejuvenation properties. All part of an active effort to imitate the effects that she saw in games and novels. Done mostly because she wanted to see if it was possible at all.

  Still, this would bring her back to peak condition and allow her to be in her best shape by the time the tournament began, which was only a few hours away.

  Letting out a deep sigh of satisfaction, she began to think about her current situation.

  “Anna’s right," she began. "No matter what I do at this point, there is nothing I can do that would allow me to close the gap between me and the other close combat fighters that as at similar level to Anna or Alex.”

  She stored the empty bowl in her ring, her thoughts shifting as she did so. “I wonder that the food from here will taste like?” she asked herself, with some expectation.

  The bowl of food she had just eaten wasn’t from the tournament grounds, but from Solace. She had brought it as is and told someone to hold it for her.

  With all the time she had spent working in Solace, she became accustomed to planning her meals in such a way that they would be available to her. Even if the meal went cold, she would just heat it up with her fire magic. She couldn’t store it in her storage ring since they were low grade, and they corroded organic materials.

  Dismissing her brief thoughts about food, she returned to thinking about her situation.

  “I really should make more time to train when this is all over. Maybe go into the city with one of Anna's incursions. It should help bring me up to standard," she said, clenching her fist. "Right now, I’m mostly dependent on my mastery and knowledge of magic but other than that, I know nothing about the new level that combat is at.”

  As she let her stomach alone, actually feeling as her body began to digest what she had eaten, she began to contemplate what she had at her disposal for the upcoming tournament.

  “I can fight to some degree, but mostly against low rank beasts. Maybe even an F rank boss," she began, analyzing her limits. "But if I were to fight against someone like Alex who is all body, I would have no chance. His defenses are insane. If I have to fight against someone like Anna… I’m done with if I were to face anyone like either of them.”

  Stella was fully aware of her capabilities, but that didn’t mean she didn’t think she could win.

  “My only option for victory is to overwhelm them at a distance and keep them there. The good thing is that I have more than enough mana to make that possible.”

  A normal flame appeared on her hand. It was the size of a fist and burned bright. She could feel the heat, but unlike fire’s normally wild nature, it was tame.

  There was no desire to spread and reduce everything to cinder. It only burned within her hand, leaving her and her surroundings unharmed.

  “I can probably keep up a constant barrage for about two minutes,” she said, looking at her flame. “That’s without resorting to other spells or techniques that I’m not as confident in. Not against them, anyway.”

  Suddenly, from the very center of the fireball, a blue flame appeared. Stella noticed it and immediately turned her efforts to deactivating her spell, but it was difficult, the spell was no longer just hers.

  “Shit! Again?!”

  The blue flame began to take it over, feeding it power that didn’t come from Stella herself, and it was slowly becoming the flame, all of it. Seeing no other way, Stella closed her hand, physically disrupting the magic circuits, forcefully cancelling the spell and snuffing the flame out.

  She winced in pain. At the end, the fireball wasn’t entirely hers, so it damaged her like it would any other. With little care for what just happened, she enveloped her hand in blue flame, healing it.

  “Again,” she said, annoyed. “What is with this flame? It only listens when I tell it to heal, but otherwise it just does whatever it wants.” She looked at her hand, remembering the sensation. “I’m going to have to end the fights before they go on too long. Otherwise I have no idea what will happen.”

  This was the reason that Marcus had asked her if the blue flame that she used was safe. It acted like it had a will of its own, completely overwriting Stella’s wishes and even contradicting them at times.

  He had on more than one occasion seen her struggle to regain control of her spells. Sometimes it was deliberate, an attempt at suppressing the blue flame and others... she simply forgot.

  Letting the problem sink into the depth of her mind, along with everything else she needed more information to solve, she turned to face the door that led to the middle room, a question surfacing in her mind.

  “Wonder what each of them is doing right now.”

  ----------

  Alex was doing the exact same thing that Stella had been doing, eating. But unlike what she ate, he was eating whatever was in his storage ring, corroded or not.

  Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  He had long since learned to endure the effects of eating distorted food, which were like an extreme version of food poisoning.

  While he tended to be in Solace, acting as security, he would take a week or two off every other month and patrol the wider surroundings.

  During that time, he would subsist on nothing but monster meat. Because of that, he was capable of eating basically anything that he wanted or needed.

  The few people he had brought back from his expeditions had a hard time reconciling the wild image he gave off as he fed on the flesh of beasts, with his true demeanor.

  It was the difference between a wild beast and a polite young man that only wanted to help.

  “We really need a vacation,” he said, shaking his head as he remembered the small fight between Stella and Anna. “This is all because we haven’t had a break in a long time. And if we don’t get a rest soon, they’ll only get worse.”

  He put the remains of his meal back into his storage ring, taking out a couple of rags to clean whatever mess he had made. Monster meat wasn’t the cleanest to eat and there would always be some pieces of it left somewhere.

  “I really need to get that skill,” he muttered, cleaning his mouth. “I don’t think I can eat anymore monster parts without bringing some of it back out. A lot of people already think I like monster meat more than I like normal human food. It has to appear soon, please,” he added, pleading to something from beyond.

  ----------

  Anna furrowed her brow, beads of sweat forming in her forehead as she concentrated intently on a single spot before her.

  Focusing on a single cushion that was placed on the floor before her, her eyes were peeled with such intensity that it was like they were threatening to pop out of her skull.

  She was sitting cross-legged, with her sword resting on her legs. The sword vibrated slightly every so often, but right now, it was steady.

  “Damn it!” Anna exclaimed.

  Then the sword began to vibrate again, only a little and barely for a second, but it did.

  “Nope,” Anna muttered, her teeth clenched.

  Once more, her sword vibrated.

  “Damn it!” she exclaimed again. “How exactly am I supposed to stop another person’s conceptual power? Does she even know how hard that is? Of course she doesn’t. She doesn’t have a concept, she’s not even near one,” she added, a bit agitated.

  Anna was currently training her conceptual control. After her short fight with Stella, she came into the room she was currently in and sat in silence.

  Unlike the other two, she didn’t bring any meals, and she also wasn’t hungry. She had eaten just before leaving Solace and her evolved body allowed her to go without food for longer.

  So, when time began to advance and boredom began to take over, she decided to follow Stella’s suggestion.

  “Not because she suggested it, but because it was something I already train. I’m just doing today’s training,” she whispered to herself as she prepared the space.

  The basic idea of what she was doing was simple. The cushion would be her target, and she would both try to attack it as well as sense that attack and stop it. But while the basic idea was simple, its execution wasn’t.

  For one, she didn’t have as much control over her conceptual powers as she would have liked. It wasn’t through lack of trying, though. Just like she said, every day she would train her conceptual powers until a certain limit. She would never exhaust it, but she did push herself.

  Then there was the fact that unlike the others, she had no one to train against or with. She had to be both attacker and defender when it came to conceptual attacks.

  This method of training doubled her exhaustion. Though, that in and of itself was an excellent training method that pushed her to find new limits.

  “The problem is defending against conceptual attacks,” Anna muttered. “Even if I’m familiar with attacking and how attacking feels, I don’t have as clear a path when it comes to defending. The concept itself is geared toward offensive actions, and I’ve come across very little that requires that I defend with it.”

  Through repeated battles, both with wild, evolved monsters and with escaped dungeon monsters from the city, she has come across situations where she needed to defend with her concept.

  Sometimes it was as a last second reaction, and at others because there was no other way.

  The intention was always to “sharpen” something, usually the air or something she hid behind, and cut the attack. Which, obviously, was just another way to attack, only that the intention behind it changed.

  But Anna had come to learn that with conceptual powers, perception was a huge factor.

  “The level of ‘sharpness’ not only depends on how much power I pour into it, but also how much I want to do it. The size, scope and intention all affect how the attack affects the environment. What I really need to learn to do is to feel when an attack is coming,” she said, massaging her temple.

  That wasn’t to say that the concept itself was unfit to defend, it just meant that the situations where it was required to do so were few and far between.

  Still, it did give birth to the specific training she was doing and allowed her to see other areas of opportunity.

  “Maybe I’m looking at this all wrong,” she suddenly said, something within her stirring her mind. “I mean, isn’t this the perfect opportunity to train this exact thing? Where else could I find other people that have such a likelihood to also possess a concept?” She shook her head, as if disappointed. “I’d be a fool to let such a situation go.”

  ----------

  As the three did their own thing, a loud blast was heard from outside. They all rushed toward their nearest window; their sights fixed on the pagoda to their left.

  It was blurry, but at the distance that they were at, for some reason, the image became slightly clearer.

  It wasn’t only the three friends, everyone that had arrived at the tournament grounds had heard the loud blast and shifted their attention toward the direction it came from.

  With the image distorted, they focused all their other senses, trying to figure out what was going on.

  Those that had more experience than others, or had sharper senses, immediately knew what was happening.

  “Combat…” they all said, narrowing their eyes, trying to catch a glimpse of what was happening, blurry as it was.

  The pagoda’s main door swung open, three smudges emerging at high speed.

  The image then became clearer, and the leading figure was revealed to be an attendant, their clothing unmistakable, while the other two appeared to be human.

  Even with their enhanced eyesight, no one could make out the figures clearly, they were covered in what appeared to be military gear, including their face.

  The three landed in front of the first set of stairs. The attendant landed softly, revealing an appearance that wasn’t human. The other two landed more roughly, but it was a practiced and controlled fall.

  They quickly turned to face the pagoda, as if waiting for something. One of the two figures shouted something, but it was indistinguishable through the distance and small amount of chaos that they had created.

  From the pagoda’s main door, another figure came running out, slimmer and shorter than the other two.

  The figure quickly glanced around, and their gaze settled on the human pagoda. Instead of heading toward the two that were obviously waiting for them, they dashed toward the human side of the tournament grounds.

  The two who were near the attendant gestured in thanks and quickly followed after the shorter figure. The three quickly arrived at the boundary between both sides and easily crossed through, the image distorting immediately after they crossed.

  Through the blurred image, they saw an entire squad emerging from the building, rushing toward the fleeing humans, only to stop and pound at the barrier.

  While everyone was distracted by the sudden arrival of the squad, the three figures seemed to vanish into thin air.

  Stella was the last one to lose track of them, her training coming in handy once more.

  Tournament of the Strong: 2:17:24