The impact of the Four Saint Beasts' defeat was greater than Charles had imagined.
With the Demon World's gateway sealed, only those with weak yokai aura could slip through spatial cracks into the Human World.
So yokai in the Human and Spirit Worlds weren't all that strong.
Among yokai across the two realms, the Four Saint Beasts were already top-tier, and defeating them made Yusuke Urameshi's crew something of a name.
After coming home, Stella told Charles she'd even heard about Yusuke the Spirit Detective in the underworld.
Another piece of news she brought back was that the Dark Tournament was about to begin. Having taken Tarukane Genzō's seat in the Black Club, Stella received an invitation as well.
Not to compete, of course, but to form a team as a sponsor.
That's right: as a Black Club member, Stella now had the qualifications to assemble her own team to enter.
The Dark Tournament is a complicated affair. Most participants are yokai, but the organizers are human.
As the original story put it, humans came for money and profit, and yokai to vent their lust for slaughter—thus the Dark Tournament.
It began because the underworld bigwigs needed a way to resolve disputes and divide spoils.
Their solution was a tournament, with its results deciding the underworld's balance of power.
After all, being able to recruit stronger yokai is proof of strength.
And for a race whose blood runs hot with violence, a no-holds-barred tournament like this was wildly popular.
For the Spirit World, letting yokai blow off steam in such kill-or-be-killed bouts lowered the difficulty of managing them.
So the Spirit World had long turned a blind eye to the Dark Tournament.
A contest that suited all three sides kept being held to this day; with a new edition about to start, the relevant humans and yokai were buzzing.
At first Stella thought the Dark Tournament was similar to the Seven Stars Sword-Art Festival, but after hearing Charles explain the tangled interests behind it, she lost interest.
When Stella said she'd just attend as a spectator, the black-suited courier bowed and left.
Within two days, as a VIP spectator, Stella received this year's entrants list.
The messenger also mentioned there would be betting again; rumor had it that each Dark Tournament saw wagers totaling in the trillions.
Money in this world didn't mean much to Charles; what caught his eye on the roster was one team.
Its name was Team Urameshi, with Koenma as sponsor. The members were the exact five in Charles's memory.
In the original plot, because Younger Toguro met Yusuke during the Tarukane incident, he later invited him to the Dark Tournament.
Those invited who refused would be hunted by the entire underworld, so Yusuke was essentially forced to enter.
This time, because Charles intervened, Yusuke shouldn't have had the chance to draw Younger Toguro's attention. So who invited him became the question.
No need to fret; Charles soon got the answer.
The next day, even though vacation had started, Kuwabara came to Charles asking for strict training—he was joining the Dark Tournament as Yusuke's teammate.
After Genkai's trials, Kuwabara had realized Charles's long-running guidance also covered spiritual power. He knew Charles wasn't an ordinary P.E. teacher.
So there was no need to hide yokai and such from him.
From him, Charles learned what happened.
Surprisingly, it was still Younger Toguro who invited Yusuke this time, triggered by an attack from the Toguro Brothers during a bodyguard job Koenma had assigned Yusuke to escort some big shot.
Kuwabara didn't give details, but judging by how downcast Yusuke had looked for days, he'd taken quite a hit.
Charles had thought it was from his own beatdown—turned out it was Toguro.
Rather than coincidence or fate lining things up right before the Dark Tournament, Charles figured Toguro had had his eye on Yusuke for a while.
Think of the original: in the final fight of the Tarukane arc, Kuwabara's performance wasn't really worse than Yusuke's. Yet Toguro invited Yusuke.
The only explanation was that Yusuke had become Genkai's disciple, and Toguro wanted to see what kind of person inherited the Spirit Wave Fist.
It might even be that the whole affair existed for that purpose—that the planner wasn't Sakyo but Toguro.
So even without Tarukane, Toguro found another chance to cross paths with Yusuke.
Clearly, Yusuke had met some bar in Toguro's mind, so he wasn't killed on the spot but invited to the Dark Tournament.
Having sorted his thoughts, Charles couldn't help sighing—there always had to be some special tie between antagonist and protagonist.
That's why so many villains, with a chance to end the story while the hero is weak, for all sorts of reasons let him go—only to get overturned by him later.
But Younger Toguro's aim was to find someone who could beat him; deciding as he did wasn't strange.
Compared to Yusuke, though, Charles felt Toguro's true target was himself.
This time the courier was particularly eager, as if afraid Charles wouldn't come.
If Charles guessed right, should Yusuke fail to satisfy Toguro, Toguro would challenge Charles in the end.
And he'd give Charles a reason to go all out—say, turning the arena into a trap that would take everyone down.
After all, that was exactly what Sakyo did at the end of the original; like Toguro, he had self-destructive tendencies.
Charles didn't plan to dodge it, anyway. He had time to kill, and it would be a waste not to go see such an iconic spectacle.
But first, he had to handle Kuwabara's special training. He had no intention of letting a disciple who'd trained under him end up as a mere trigger for the protagonist's power-up.
Seeing Charles's expression, Kuwabara's stellar sixth sense sent a chill down his back.
…
Time flew, and the Dark Tournament's opening day arrived.
As VIPs, Charles and Stella certainly weren't going to take the cruise ship to Hell Island like Yusuke and the other contestants.
A luxury car took them to the airport, then a private helicopter to that hellish island.
For Charles, it wasn't exactly enjoyable.
Half-dead in the chopper, he saw the massive yokai aura coiling over the island—proof of just what a den of monsters it was.
At least it wouldn't be boring.
______
(≧◡≦) ♡ Support me and read 20 chapters ahead – patreon.com/Mutter
For every 50 Power Stones, one extra chapter will be released on Saturday.