At Lepochim's urging, Bath and Lisa returned to Basalith to watch the tournament. The tournament's qualifying participants had taken up most of the day assembling their teams. Now, at 3:00 pm, the tournament was about to commence.

The bracket was fairly large; over two-thousand people had reached their fifth profession, with nearly all of them having at least one combat-applicable profession at Expert. Diving two-thousand by five resulted in 400 teams; in actuality, they had 402 teams in the master bracket.

This meant that there were 9 rounds, each round cutting down the remaining teams by half. Lisa resigned herself to watching the rounds that Lepochim recommended to her--or, rather, those recommended by Lepochim's peacekeepers. Lisa wasn't surprised at all that Lepochim scarcely knew any of Basalith's humans, let alone their capabilities. The peacekeepers, on the other hand, had a fairly large betting pool set up on which teams would do well in the tournament. Based on this pool, Lisa had a pretty good idea which matches were going to be the most exciting.

"What do the kursi even have to bet?" Lisa murmured to Bath.

Bath shrugged. "No idea."

Bath, unlike Lisa, could be in all places at once, and splitting his attentions to viewing around two-hundred-or-so matches at the beginning was well within his capabilities. He had avatars on standby at each of the match locations while he waited with Lisa in a private viewing box overseeing the entire Arena.

Lepochim had assured Lisa that a squirrel relay team would be lead her to each of the most important matches. Sure enough, when the time became 3:13, a squirrel scampered into the viewing box and over to Lisa. She placed a hand on the squirrel's head in greeting, sending him warm and gentle feelings.

'Match start left C-56,' the squirrel transmitted abruptly, its mental thoughts jarringly scrambled. Lisa rose out of her seat, then followed the squirrel out with a dubious expression on her face. 'How does the squirrel intend to lead the way if I'm flying?'

'Get in my arms,' she transmitted, still somewhat unfamiliar with sending squirrel quasi-sapients mental communications. The little squirrel squeaked, then climbed over Lisa's brown peacekeeper robe to settle on her left shoulder.

When Lisa exited the box, Bath left with her, giving her an encouraging smile. She took a few steps, began to cycle her magnetic sense through her upper body, and then leapt up several feet into the air. She continued moving the magnetic sense in an infinity-shaped-loop to kept herself aloft, flying forward in the air without losing altitude.

Bath's voice called out next to her, asking, "Which area did the squirrel say?"

"C-56."

"It's to your left, the platform with the red dot." As Bath's disembodied voice dissipated, a red dot appeared on one of the hovering platforms. Lisa glided on the air to the platform, manipulating her magnetic sense to increase her altitude. Within a few seconds, she touched down on the target platform.

---

Bath thought Lepochim's insistence on the Church and Dragon "enjoying" COTD's first grand tournament comical; Lepochim thoughtfully inviting them to something pleasant seemed absolutely ludicrous. Bath would've been concerned if Lepochim didn't have an alternative motive. When Lisa and Bath arrived, Lepochim wasted no time imploring Bath to "lend a hand" and expand the Arena to twenty-six times its normal size (since he was, after all, "already here").

Bath almost refused, if only to witness Lepochim's potentially caustic reaction.

To expand the Arena, Bath formed twenty-five platforms over the city; by splitting the Arena-sized platforms (and the Arena itself) in half, they could have fifty-two concurrent matches. For the first round, this meant that they would need four separate mini-rounds to get through all two-hundred and one matches.

After Bath realized that the tournament plan assumed, from the beginning, that he would be overseeing the entire thing, Bath wasted no time in getting the combatants to their correct platforms. While he would have greatly preferred Lepochim create a tournament system that would operate without his assistance, Bath was sympathetic to the difficulties inherent in running a tournament for so many people with so little notice.

In the end, how he went about getting the tournament in gear was simple: he sent each of his avatars into the crowd, grabbed a matching pair of competitors, and levitated them up to their proper platform. By 3:15, everyone participating in round one was situated on their designated platform.

Lisa and Bath had decided beforehand that they would commence the tournament once the humans were in a sufficiently excited mindset. Soon after everyone was on their platforms, Lisa winked into the air, indicating that the competitors were mentally ready.

Seeing the signal, each of Bath's avatars rose into the air, then flew towards the center of the Arena. Bath had specifically oriented the platforms so that all competitors would be able to see him from their respective locations. When they reached the center of the Arena, the avatars overlayed and merged into one. The merged Bath gazed out with a serene expression, cape rippling lightly in a nonexistent breeze.

"Competitors in the Basalith's Grand Tournament," Bath called out, his voice resounding with powerful echoes, "I will be watching. Do your best."

With a startling shock of sunset orange and a loud thunderclap, Bath disappeared. On each platform, the avatars reappeared in the exact places they had been previously.

Now, the fifty-two expressionless avatars all spoke as one: "Begin."

---

Each match took exactly ten minutes to complete. Edgewood had already seen two of them; his team was up next. They were already on the field, waiting for the Dragon's avatar to utter the characteristic, "begin."

He was happy that his team counted an Expert tactician among its number. She'd quickly formulated algorithms of operation for each of the group's members to follow based on certain circumstances. It was all fairly simple, which only pleased Edgewood more: a simple plan was a good plan.

He was poised to run as soon as the avatar commenced the fight, his muscles bunched like springs.

"Begin."

His job was to run forward to the enemy's flag. If he was lucky, they wouldn't have a land-shaper and the flag would be comparatively unprotected.

'Of course they do,' he thought bitterly to himself as a massive dragonleaf structure ballooned up at the opponent's edge of the field. As he ran, a wave of raptors followed behind him, fanning out to hopefully prevent any of the opposing competitors from reaching their own flag. While Edgewood ran, his team's administrator assisted the raptors by stunning any of the opponents trying to reach their half of the field. From the back, their own land-shaper continued to embellish a thick flag-protecting tower. Their ranged fighter stood in the back, poised to shoot any who came within 1000 feet of the flag. Finally, their caretaker sat on a dragonleaf chair by the tower, prepared to offer assistance if needed.

Edgewood began a zig-zag maneuver as the opponent's ranged fighter sent out a flurry of arrows, relying on his enhanced reflexes to evade. A few arrows managed to hit him, nearly sending him staggering to the ground with their force. The opponent's administrator took advantage of the moment to come forward and strike him down with his hulking mace.

'Probably would've gotten away with it, too,' Edgewood thought grimly to himself after a contingent of three raptors ambushed the administrator from behind. They'd arrived just in time: Edgewood felt the heavy smack of the mace against the Earth--inches from his head--after the raptors set the man off-balance. He ignored the man's screams as the raptors ripped into his chest and gutted his stomach, focusing on pulling the arrows from his back.

Edgewood then rushed forward towards the land-shaper's flag tower. As he came closer, numerous roots shot up from the ground to snag his ankles and pull him down. This, of course, made it far easier for the ranged fighter to aim his arrows. He used all his willpower and concentration to listen for the rapid-fire twang of the bow, look for the flash of green beneath his feet. He couldn't believe the speed at which the roots continued to sprout up, grasping for his feet like a never-ending series of frantic hands.

Edgewood cursed as one of the dragonleaf roots tripped him, giving the ranged fighter the opportunity to send three arrows into his back. However, by this point, the administrator, an enormous dawn wolf, the ranged fighter, and the raptors had all managed to incapacitate the other team's advancing force. Edgewood hadn't even noticed, though now that he focused, he realized the shrieks originating from the back half of the field had largely subsided.

The huge wolf wasted no time in attacking the opponent's defensive side of the field, almost instantly appearing next to the ranged fighter. At the same time, the administrator went in the opposite direction, screaming out a series of numbers like a mad-woman while slamming her bloody mace into the protective flag tower. Edgewood quickly recovered after the wolf took the ranged fighter out of commission. As per the administrator's instructions, he ran back to the caretaker for healing.

While healing, Edgewood looked on with a smug expression as the administrator, wolf, and raptors worked in concert to wipe out the other side and collect the flag. The raptors used their talons to deadly effect; based on the shreds of flesh decorating the raptor's heads like fleshy crowns, Edgewood realized that the Dragon himself must have been intervening to keep the opponents alive. That was good to know.

After the force slashed through the tower, one of Edgewood's raptors, Kiko, rushed in and snatched the flag with his blood-drenched arms. He trotted back with the flag nestled proudly against his chest, handing it off respectfully to Edgewood with a low bow. Edgewood, in turn, gave the flag to the land-shaper. Now that their team had both flags, all they needed to do was wait.

The other team's caretaker healed his own wounds, then ran over to each teammate. Soon, their team was back in action. However, all they could do was rush into the pack of raptors spread out over the field's center line; over the rest of the match, they never managed to incapacitate more than a few raptors before being fully incapacitated themselves. Then, the raptors would back off, allowing them to heal. The cycle would repeat over and over again until the match's conclusion.

Edgewood was unsurprised with the raptors' performance. With them alone, he was certain they could give the competition a run for their money. In actuality, he was more surprised by the other team's tenacity in continuously charging the raptor line. Edgewood certainly wouldn't be willing to brave repeat raptor evisceration.

After the match ended, the scores for each team appeared in the air in large, block letters:

"Team 1: Edgier Than You - 1470 points. Team 2: Base Five - 120 points. Winner: Edgier Than You."

Unsurprisingly, they'd taken the win. 1000 points for capturing the flag and keeping it, 470 points for each of the 47 times they incapacitated an enemy combatant. While Edgewood himself wasn't entirely sure what defined "incapacitation," he trusted the avatar to judge fairly. Then again, thinking back to his own placement into Apprentice close combat...

"Good job, everyone," their ranged fighter, a slender, dark-haired woman, said. She went to the center of the battlefield to collect a few arrows.

The caretaker, a well-built, middle-aged, balding man nodded once, then asked, "Is it supposed to be that easy?"

The administrator shook her head, dirty-blond hair moving over her shoulders. "No; we're honestly just too OP." Most teams had one or two quasi-sapients, max. Their team, on the other hand, had twenty-one.

Edgewood nodded. "Yup." He inclined his head towards the administrator-tactician. "You think we'll make it to the final few rounds?"

She gave him an amused look. "I'd be disappointed if we didn't."

"Can we expect all the rounds to be the same?" the land-shaper asked, her pubescent form leaning over the back of a dragonleaf chair.

The administrator cocked her head to the side, then looked questioningly at her wolf companion. "...Probably?"