[Chapter Size: 2700 Words.]
Third Person POV
Toussaint.
...
...
"Hey, what is he doing?" a woman murmured among the stands, staring in shock as she watched Sir Étienne simply drop his sword and shield onto the ground.
"Geralt, what is that knight doing?" Anna Henrietta raised an eyebrow and looked at the witcher near her seat, who was grimacing at that moment.
"Probably getting himself killed," was the only thing Geralt replied, as the masked knight began advancing toward the creature roaring in front of him.
Questions and bewildered looks spread throughout the crowd.
"Hey! What are you doing? Fight like a knight!" someone shouted.
"Pick up your sword!"
"Come on! Do you want to be crushed to death like that?"
"Who do you think you are to fight a monster unarmed?"
Even the knight's strange behavior sparked murmurs throughout the arena. Geralt couldn't help but frown.
"No... He's far too calm." Geralt could recognize many things in a fighter. The armor concealed that person's face and body, but he could certainly tell whether someone was trembling in fear or not.
There was no sign of instability in his stance... The knight held his position firmly. As if the monster in front of him did not bother him in the slightest. Geralt simply could not understand it.
"He's attacking!" one of the duchess's ladies-in-waiting said in horror as the Shaelmaar began rolling forward.
The creature charged like a giant ball toward the knight. Then the man placed one leg slightly forward and pulled his arm back.
"He thinks he's going to punch that?" Geralt watched attentively, another grimace appearing on his otherwise expressionless face.
He expected some magical sign; perhaps it was a sorcerer in disguise. Now that he had abandoned his sword and shield, that seemed like the most logical explanation.
But the knight simply readied his fist. It made no sense.
The screams of desperate ladies echoed through the arena as the creature was about to collide with the armored 'man'.
Then it happened.
The armored figure lunged forward and threw a punch. His fist struck the Shaelmaar's shell directly.
What everyone expected was to see the knight thrown backward or crushed.
But that didn't happen.
BOOM!
At the moment of impact, a deafening explosion erupted at the center of the arena.
Everyone immediately fell silent. The next moment, it was the monster that went flying.
The enormous and heavy body shot across the entire arena at an absurd speed, bouncing along the ground before crashing into the stone wall.
The collision was so violent that part of the structure exploded. Even the stands on that side trembled. The sound echoed throughout the arena.
Then came silence... Complete silence.
The creature fell to the ground along with several blocks of stone. There was a perfect fist mark on its shell. Blood flowed through the cracks.
It had been damaged, even beneath its shell, as it had caved in under the human's punch, and that was from a single blow.
Anna Henrietta looked at the knight standing in the center of the arena. He maintained a calm posture, as if he were observing a routine task, finally lowering his arm.
The duchess's mouth was slightly open. Even she did not know what she had just witnessed.
"What was that?" murmured a knight seated near them, stunned.
"Hey... Hey... Could he be some kind of monster or something?" a lady asked in horror.
"That can't be," a wealthy noblewoman of the city, Orianna, who was nearby, murmured softly. "The person inside the armor is human..."
The witcher kept his eyes fixed on the man. "Whatever did that... cannot be human," he said.
Anna Henrietta continued staring at the knight for a few seconds before looking at Geralt. "Should I let the fight continue?" she asked for his opinion.
"I think we'd better see how this ends. Whoever is in there, they're not in any danger from that monster anyway..." said Geralt.
As everyone sat back down, Ciri bent over for a moment. She leaned her upper body forward and placed one hand on her knee.
Some might have said she was tired. But that wasn't it; the people closest to the arena noticed what was happening.
While the audience still remained silent, trying to process what had just happened, someone murmured:
"Hey... Why is he laughing?"
"What a strange voice."
"I definitely don't think that's a man in there."
"It could be another monster in disguise!" someone suggested.
"Hey! What are you all saying?" Ciri stopped laughing at that moment. She glared through the visor at the people making those comments. Because of the armor and the alteration in her voice, her feminine, tomboyish laughter had produced an extremely strange sound.
She then stood up. On the other side of the arena, the Shaelmaar also began to move. This time, however, she did not respond with a punch; she simply opened her arms and waited.
The creature began rolling again. Even wounded, it was still full of rage. Feeling pain, it tried to crush Ciri once more.
Ciri did not move; she simply waited. Until...
Ciri grabbed the Shaelmaar's shell and instantly stopped its spinning with her strength. Her feet slid back only a few centimeters.
Nothing more.
She had stopped the creature, and she had done it alone.
"Ohh?!" The crowd's cry was immediate.
But Ciri wasn't finished—quite the opposite. She began lifting the monster. Little by little, she pulled the Shaelmaar out of the defensive position it assumed while rolling.
Normally, the creature wrapped its body within its shell and charged like a living ball. Now, however, everyone could see the mysterious knight holding that gigantic and heavy monster above their head as if it weighed nothing.
The creature began struggling furiously in her arms, but it was useless.
Ciri simply spun her body and then threw it. The Shaelmaar flew across the entire arena once again.
The body flew for more than twenty meters before crashing violently into the wall. The structure exploded, stones and entire blocks were hurled in every direction.
The impact was so powerful that part of the wall collapsed. For a moment, the entire place fell into silence.
Again... but this time it did not last long.
The next moment, the entire audience erupted into cheers.
"WOOOOOW!" The collective roar echoed throughout the arena.
Whatever was inside that armor, it was a spectacle impossible to ignore.
"By the gods..." The ladies-in-waiting covered their mouths with their hands.
Some watched in horror, others in fascination. Anna Henrietta was equally stunned.
She turned her eyes to Geralt, and the witcher simply shook his head. "Whoever that person is... they're much stronger than I am."
The statement made several nobles widen their eyes. Geralt knew very well how difficult it was to face a Shaelmaar.
It was practically impossible to pierce its shell, even for him. That was why he always had to wait for the moment when the creature opened itself to attack.
But that knight... That person was simply playing around. The strength they displayed was nowhere near normal.
"Whoever is inside that armor is stronger than any witcher I've ever met." Geralt continued watching the arena. "For a monster of that size and humanoid shape, not even the higher vampires I've met have displayed this kind of physical strength."
The creature now merely groaned in pain, the damage inflicted having crushed several parts of its body.
Ciri sighed. Even she did not like seeing someone suffer like that while everyone listened to the creature's agonized roars. On the other hand, the audience seemed to be loving it.
She approached the creature, walking for the first time, as the Shaelmaar could no longer even stand up, and began dragging it toward the center of the arena.
"Deliver the final blow!" people began shouting.
"Finish it off!"
"End this!"
'If they want a spectacle, fine.' Ciri thought as she grabbed the Shaelmaar by the side of its shell.
Then she dragged it several meters, kicking up dirt and dust along the way. It seemed like just another ordinary movement.
But it wasn't. She began concentrating strength.
The next instant, she exploded into motion. Her arm shot upward violently. The creature was launched flying through the skies above the arena.
The crowd was stunned.
Inside that armor was only a young woman of twenty-one years. Her arms were not muscular, her body merely well-defined and slender.
More like that of a sorceress than a brutal warrior.
Even so, she possessed absurd strength. Over those three years, Ciri had learned to concentrate magic within her own body in the same way Madara did with chakra. It was another of the shinobi techniques that she had studied and adapted to her own magic.
And it worked. She did not possess Madara's monstrous strength, but she had become extraordinarily powerful. At that moment, she perhaps possessed a little less than half of his physical strength.
Even so, everything Ciri had shown was enough to make everyone in that arena question everything they knew about their own world.
And that was not even her specialty. Ciri's strength came primarily from magic, and that was where her true power lay.
She raised one arm toward the sky, pointing at the creature still flying, losing momentum and beginning to fall, while she opened her palm.
Most people were still focused on the creature flying through the air. They wondered if she simply intended to let it fall and die from the impact.
Or if there was something more. Those who continued watching the knight noticed it first.
A sphere of fire began to form above her palm, and flaming lines appeared around it. Streams of fire spiraled around, converging toward the central sphere.
It looked like a gigantic spell was being prepared. It was at that moment that everyone in the main box noticed the growing light coming from the center of the arena.
The lines of fire continued spinning around the blazing sphere.
Then it happened. Ciri fired. The fireball shot through the sky at an absurd speed.
It ascended at a pace that was difficult to follow.
Until it found its target.
For an instant, even the sun itself seemed to be outshone.
It all began with a brilliant streak cutting through the heavens.
Then came the explosion, and it was a colossal explosion. The flames blossomed high above like a second star emerging over Toussaint.
The flash caught everyone by surprise. Many people instinctively stepped back, others covered their eyes, and some even covered their ears.
At the center of that explosion, the Shaelmaar simply disappeared. The flames consumed it completely. The creature was instantly disintegrated.
There was no suffering for the creature, only absolute destruction. About forty meters above the arena, the monster ceased to exist.
The flames continued spreading for a few moments before slowly beginning to fade from the sky.
The screams, fear, and chaos took over the arena for the first few minutes before everyone finally began to calm down and turned their attention back to the person standing in the center of the battlefield.
The person possessed not only strength, but also magic. No one had expected to see that on this day...
"What should we do, my lady? This person is dangerous!"
"I don't think that's Lord Étienne de Vaulenne. It's an impostor!"
"Someone infiltrated the tournament!"
"Maybe it's an assassin!"
The ladies-in-waiting immediately fell into panic.
Anna Henrietta's captain of the ducal guard, Damien de la Tour, stepped forward, placing a hand on the hilt of his sword to protect his lady.
"Guards! Everyone into the arena now! Until we know who this person is and what their intentions are!" Damien shouted.
Geralt had already prepared himself to act as well.
The arena gates began to open. Several guards and knights of Toussaint quickly entered while everyone watched the mysterious figure with apprehension.
Even the audience seemed frightened, watching to see what would happen to the mysterious and powerful knight.
"What kind of magic was that?" Anna Henrietta asked the sorceress beside her.
"I... I don't know." Assire var Anahid seemed genuinely concerned. "I've never seen anything like it."
The firepower she had just witnessed surpassed any magic she knew. Even within the Lodge of Sorceresses or the other organization of sorceresses, few people would be capable of reproducing something similar. Like Triss of the Akatsuki.
She knew some of the greatest specialists in elemental magic. Even so, that raw power seemed beyond them.
Perhaps Tissaia could do something similar. But that was only a maybe. Because the person in that arena did not seem to have performed a complex spell.
She had been watching carefully ever since she saw the magic forming, caught off guard when the knight raised a hand. That spell had been charged for only a few seconds. Five at most.
It simply should not exist, and it was frightening the sorceress.
'Whoever is down there must be reported to the organization of sorceresses.' Assire var Anahid thought.
With the entire arena filled with tension, something happened that no one expected.
The very person standing in the center of the arena began crouching down again as before, and the next moment, she threw back her head and burst out laughing.
It was no longer that strange, distorted voice. It was a feminine and rebellious laugh.
Clear and amused. The laughter echoed throughout the arena.
Everyone was stunned.
She continued laughing by herself while hundreds of people stared at her. Especially the guards and knights who had just surrounded her.
After a few moments, the woman finally stopped. She realized she was the only one laughing.
"Sorry... Sorry about that. It's just that all of this is a little funny." Her voice was light and relaxed.
Then she raised her head toward the main box. The captain of the guard immediately took another step forward, positioning himself completely in front of the duchess.
But the woman in the arena was not looking at Anna Henrietta. Her gaze was fixed on someone else. Geralt.
The witcher frowned... He knew that voice. Or at least, he was beginning to recognize it.
Ciri could already see something strange in him. His normally expressionless face slowly began to pale.
A sudden realization appeared in his mind.
"No..." But before he could finish the thought, the knight raised a hand and snapped her metal fingers.
Then, using magic, she removed the armor, which began to come apart in a strange way. The metal turned to dust.
The dust vanished into the wind, revealing the ordinary clothes she wore underneath. After all, she had just spent the morning playing with her son.
And with that, a woman appeared in the middle of the arena, Ciri wearing a broad smile.
Everyone had expected anything—a monster... an assassin, probably a sorceress. But they certainly had not expected to find a woman whose beauty seemed to outshine even the duchess herself hidden inside that armor.
"CIRI!" The desperate sound of Geralt's voice echoed throughout the arena.
He simply shoved aside anyone standing in his way and leaped into the battlefield.
Ciri, who had been about to teleport to him, was surprised. For a moment, she simply watched the man running toward her.
Then she smiled and opened her arms. "It's been so long, father..." The sentence was never finished.
Geralt wrapped her in such a tight embrace that he almost lifted her off the ground. The witcher's arms held her firmly.
The entire arena watched the scene without understanding in the slightest what was happening.
It was Anna Henrietta who understood first. The duchess abruptly rose to her feet. "Princess Cirilla!" Her voice echoed through the main box.
The announcement left everyone around her completely stunned.
"Princess...?"
"Cirilla?"
"The one from Cintra?" Orianna murmured as she looked at the girl in the middle of the arena, mesmerized.
Murmurs immediately began spreading among the nearby nobles.
Geralt and Ciri paid no attention whatsoever. They continued embracing after not seeing each other for three years.
Geralt was emotional. Ciri, his daughter. "You came back..." he said softly.
Ciri felt her eyes grow watery. "I'm back." She smiled through her tears. "We're back... Father." And at that moment, she began to cry.
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