hagakure cover art

“I can see your treasury. By now, all of the loot from the church raids must be long spent, most likely on the arena, with any remaining money going to repairing damages from the Wassengel battle and the loss of Welindar’s revenue. That pile of gold is going to keep getting smaller and smaller. Either Galvin is going to bankrupt the country, he’ll raise taxes, or he has a new resource to exploit. So which is it?”

Cyrilo flashed a wry smile. “All the low-rank fighters have been purged, so now the real show will begin. Besides, with this tournament going on, I barely get any customers during the day, so I might as well close up and go see what all the fuss is about.”“Man, this is so cool,” said Daniel. “I feel like I’m in ancient Rome. All we need is a few lions and some Christians to feed to them.”

She formed two more rings and used them to parry his thrust, then tried again to slash his throat. Noah conjured an illusory handgun and shot her in the arm, leaving it numb and breaking the spell. Shocked and worried by the sensation in her afflicted arm, the assailant launched a blast of explosive wind with her other hand, launching herself up and away like Bower with his fire magic. She flipped through the air, landed gracefully fifty feet away, and then hurled another ring at Noah. He shot it out of the air, shattering it like a clay pigeon, along with each subsequent ring after.