Chapter 3: Recruitment Offers from Every Familia.
...
The Roman-style circular arena was unusually packed. Word that a civilian had challenged an adventurer spread through Orario with the particular velocity reserved for things that shouldn't be possible, and adventurers who had been doing perfectly productive things set them aside without much internal debate and made their way to the duelling grounds.
The more entrepreneurially-minded street vendors took one look at the gathering crowd, packed up their regular pitches, and relocated to the arena with armfuls of fruit and drink, doing brisk business before the main event had even started.
The reason this sort of spectacle drew such consistent interest was historical precedent. Over the years, more than a few exceptional recruits had announced themselves to Orario not through formal registration but through a decisive performance at these very grounds — and the Familias had learned to pay attention. Scouts had become a fixture of the crowd. Even those who arrived too late to poach a promising newcomer came away with a story worth telling at the tavern.
The arena sand was a deep, unsettling rust-red, stained by years of accumulated use. Kihara stood at one end, facing Hans across the length of the fighting ground. The air was thick with the metallic weight of old blood, undercut by the cheaper smells drifting down from the stands — stale alcohol and the specific variety of sweat that accumulated in crowds doing nothing physically demanding.
[The atmosphere in here is genuinely awful. I shouldn't have suggested this place.]
[It'll be over fast. Bear with it.]
Kihara swept his gaze around the stands. They were packed to capacity, adventurers crammed together like sardines in certain sections, arms raised and waving as bags of falis sailed into the bookmakers' hands.
[You should let me slip out of the shadow for a moment and put some money down. I could earn you a decent return.]
[You still look like you're of milk-drinking age. I'm not sure you should be handling that kind of money.]
[Do I look like I drink milk?]
[Sorry — bit my tongue. I meant doughnut-eating age.]
[You did that deliberately. Mr. Kihara-is-awful.]
Across the arena, Hans hoisted his greatsword and performed a stiff, awkward bow — the kind of chivalric gesture that had clearly been picked up secondhand from someone who also didn't know how to do it properly.
"Mr. Kihara. Return the three hundred thousand falis and four pieces of equipment worth a hundred thousand each that you stole from my men, and I'll forgive you and call off this duel."
"You said two hundred thousand back at the restaurant. We've walked about five minutes and the price has already gone up?"
"Since you insist on being difficult — don't blame me for what happens next."
Hans licked his cracked lips. His second hand closed around the sword hilt. His weight shifted forward into a pre-charge stance, body angling in. The two of them had signed a death contract before entering the arena — standard procedure, meaning the survivor inherited everything the loser carried. Hans had no intention of showing mercy, and no intention of letting Kihara walk out of here breathing.
The crowd felt the shift. The noise swelled as the moment approached, the stone walls of the arena trembling faintly with the accumulated sound.
"Hans the Braggart — show us how much you've grown!"
"Hey, handsome — don't you dare lose to him!"
Shinobu had been lodging a continuous, low-level complaint about the smell from the moment they'd entered, and Kihara decided he'd kept her waiting long enough. He abandoned any thought of dragging this out for entertainment value. Quick, clean, and they could both get some fresh air.
He reached into his dimensional storage and produced something that hadn't seen use in quite some time — a Faiz Driver. His fingers moved through the activation sequence at speed.
"Standing By!"
"Transform!"
"Complete!"
The black Kamen Rider suit assembled itself around him, and the crowd went briefly, collectively silent — a full second of stunned stillness — before erupting louder than before.
"What in the— is that a magic item?!"
"How is a civilian with no magic using it?!"
"Who cares, just fight already!!"
Kihara rolled his shoulders, planted his right foot, and moved.
To the watching crowd, he simply ceased to exist in one location and appeared in another — a straight line drawn between two points at a speed that left no middle ground to observe. He arrived in front of a wide-eyed Hans and put his right fist into the bridge of the man's nose.
Thud.
The impact landed like a hammer on a drum. Hans left the ground, described a short arc, and hit the arena wall with enough force to crater it — a deep, ragged dent opening in the stone before he slid down and crumpled at its base, leaving a smear of dark red on the pale stone above him.
"The — the winner is — Mr. Kihara!!"
The referee announced the result into what briefly seemed like absolute silence and, fearing Hans might somehow still be alive, began jogging toward the slumped body to verify.
He never made it. The arena detonated around him — a wall of sound that hit him like a physical force, staggering him mid-stride.
"KIHARA! KIHARA! KIHARA!"
A civilian taking down a Level 1 adventurer in a single strike put him in a different category from every previous prospect the arena had produced. The fact that specialised equipment had been involved didn't diminish the achievement — equipment was part of a fighter's total capability, and a Level 3 mage stripped of their staff had questionable odds against a Level 2 warrior.
The tool and the wielder were one.
Kihara let the transformation lapse and left the crowd with a single statement before walking out.
"I came to Orario to find a goddess. Until I find her, I'll take any challenge from anyone worth fighting."
He collected Hans's earthly estate — approximately ten thousand falis — on his way out of the arena.
He became the most talked-about figure in Orario for several weeks running.
The immediate speculation concerned which goddess he was looking for. The more enduring discussion was a practical one: what level of adventurer would it actually take to put him down?
The Soma Familia answered that question first — or tried to. In the interest of avenging Hans and recovering whatever remained of their Familia's reputation, they sent a Level 2 adventurer to issue a death-match challenge. The Level 2 adventurer was killed in a single exchange, the finishing technique being what Kihara cheerfully referred to as the Rider Kick.
The Ishtar Familia made their own attempt with a Level 3. Their motivations were less about revenge and more about acquisition — defeat him, then recruit him to fill a specific vacancy in their operational portfolio.
To be precise: they wanted to drag him back and put him to work as a companion for hire.
Kihara regarded a Familia whose members were commonly referred to as battle prostitutes with the polite distance the description warranted. The Amazon who came at him — bellowing enthusiastically about what she planned to do to him while drooling through the opening exchanges — left the arena with two broken legs and a loss on her record, and he left without looking back.
News that an unaffiliated fighter capable of defeating a Level 3 had appeared in Orario reached the Loki Familia promptly.
As one of the two organisations that shared the title of Orario's strongest Familia, the Loki Familia maintained a standing policy of identifying and recruiting exceptional talent early. Captain Finn wasted no time — he dispatched Tiona Hiryute, a Level 4 Amazon adventurer, to the duelling grounds with clear instructions to bring the newcomer back as a recruit.
Tiona herself was genuinely curious.
Something about Kihara's situation reminded her of the way she and her sister had arrived in Orario — two unknowns who made names for themselves through the duelling grounds before the Loki Familia came calling. The key difference was that she and Tione had been adventurers before they arrived. Kihara, apparently, was simply a person.
She located him quickly enough based on the descriptions and intelligence reports, and had just started moving toward him when a red-haired goddess with an eyepatch crossed the ground and said something to him. The two of them turned and walked off together.
Tiona stopped.
"...Well. That's that." She stared after them for a long moment. "Looks like Hephaestos got to him first. How am I supposed to explain this to the captain?"
...
Thank you for reading.