Chapter 70: Main Tournament
Chapter 70: Main Tournament
This world still did not have anything like a five-day workweek, and Saturdays did not particularly end early either. Because of that, many people had to board trains in the evening after work and ride through the night to Ranchelt.
“Ohhh...”
Pansi, the champion of Masryun City, a small city at the southwestern edge of Ranchelt, arrived at Ranchelt Station in the morning and let out an exclamation at its enormous scale and the crowds.
After pushing through the crowd, he saw the massive Wawelly Building in the distance and exclaimed again.
He looked exactly like a country bumpkin. However, Pansi was a sturdy young man in his twenties with a muscular body and darkly tanned skin, so no one dared laugh at him.
But Pansi himself felt differently.
He was confident in his Fighters’ Club skills, and he had actually defeated everyone called strong in Masryun to become champion. However, seeing a gigantic city like this made him feel a little intimidated.
He wondered how strong the people selected from such a large city would be.
But soon, his competitive spirit surged. In the end, even if they were capital guys, they would still have five fingers and two eyes like everyone else. And Pansi had been playing Fighters’ Club ever since it first came out on PC.
No matter how amazing they were, Pansi was also someone considered one of the strongest in Masryun. And in fact, he had won this time and been invited here.
If they had been playing far longer, that would be one thing, but everyone had probably enjoyed the game for a similar amount of time, so Pansi was confident he would not fall behind.
First, he decided to go to the hotel prepared by Arcade Game Land so he could unpack. Following the guidebook that had come with the invitation ticket, he crossed the plaza and came out onto the main road.
Wow.
The enormously wide road and the vehicles filling it captured his gaze for a while. But he remembered the advice from a neighborhood older brother, who had told him that if he looked too much like a country bumpkin, he could get ripped off, so he forced himself to return to a calm expression and looked for a place to take a taxi.
In truth, at first, Arcade Game Land had considered renting a bus and picking up all the participants at once. However, they thought that if the participants met one another and learned each other’s faces before the matches even began, the tension might become too great, so they simply decided to give them taxi fare instead.
“Um. Please take me here.”
“Hmm? Are you here for that game tournament too, sir?”
When Pansi showed him the paper with the address written on it, the orc driver said that. Pansi was a little surprised that his purpose had been discovered unexpectedly.
“How did you know?”
“Well, a lot of them have been coming since yesterday. People saying they came to watch that, what was it? Fighters-something game tournament.”
“Yes, that’s right. Fighters’ Club.”
In truth, when Pansi saw the countless people at the station, he had felt slightly isolated within the crowd. It was a feeling born from the enormous crowd he had never seen before and his awareness that he came from somewhere else.
But after hearing the driver’s words, he realized that among all those people, there were also people interested in games like him. Perhaps it gave him a sense of kinship. In any case, he felt a little more at ease.
And since this driver had apparently taken other customers like him there before, he felt somewhat reassured.
Roughly fifty minutes later, Pansi safely arrived at the hotel.
“Have a good time while you’re here.”
“Yes. Yes.”
Pansi took out part of the transportation money Arcade Game Land had provided, paid the driver, and got out of the taxi. Then he was startled when he saw the hotel building.
It was an extremely grand hotel. Since he had been invited, he had expected something to some degree, but this felt completely like a castle for nobles. Of course, as someone from a republic, he had never personally seen a noble’s castle.
“Ohhh. This is really nice.”
The hotel room he entered under the guidance of a hotel boy was small compared to the grand size of the hotel’s exterior, but it was more than enough for one person. It was clean and gave off a subtly luxurious feeling, so he was quite satisfied.
Arcade Game Land had deliberately booked a somewhat expensive place. Since there were not that many finalists anyway, even if it was expensive, the total expenditure was not much.
And before being contestants, the finalists were also the most passionate gamers and customers. So the calculation was that giving them a good experience would earn their favor.
Pansi threw himself onto the white bedsheets and admired the softness of the bed. Then, as he lay there watching TV, he felt like there was nothing in the world to envy.
But he could not keep lying down. He needed to at least check where the venue was and what it was like.
After leaving the hotel, he took out the simple map that had come with the invitation ticket. It was drawn with the hotel as the reference point. Not long afterward, he found what seemed to be the indoor gymnasium without wandering much.
“Ohhh...”
When Pansi heard “indoor gymnasium,” he had imagined something like the small gymnasium in his hometown, but it was much larger than he expected.
A baseball stadium? No, it’s smaller than that, but at this size, I think you could play soccer here.
He would have to see the inside to know its exact size, but it seemed capable of holding at least thousands of people. To think they were holding a game tournament in a place like this. The company called Arcade Game Land really seemed far from ordinary.
Or maybe they got help from the game company?
This kind of reaction was exactly what Ras had wanted. Not merely a successful game company or arcade, but a company that seemed to have something more beyond that.
As he approached the gymnasium, he saw quite a large crowd gathered nearby. If they had come this far, they were probably all connected to the Fighters’ Club tournament. Finalists, spectators, or the tournament organizers.
There seemed to be several hundred people. Somehow, street vendors had found out and come over, and people were walking around buying food from them, playing games like darts to win prizes, and enjoying themselves.
I should check inside first, then come back out and look around.
Enjoying and observing that festival-like atmosphere, Pansi approached the front of the gymnasium. From inside, noisy sounds were already leaking out, as though something was going on.
When he opened the outer door and entered, the sound grew louder. And when he opened the door inside and stepped into the gymnasium, a wide-open space appeared. Many people had already come and taken seats inside.
The first thing that caught his eye was a large screen hanging on one side of the gymnasium. It was like something hanging in a movie theater.
This was something Ras had installed after considerable thought.
They had to hold game matches, but unlike in an arcade, they could not have a match take place while countless spectators surrounded an arcade cabinet. Naturally, they needed a way to show the match screen, but the problem was that this world’s technology was still far behind.
There was no way to transmit the game screen to a large screen in real time.
At first, they tried to find a way somehow. There were methods like obtaining broadcasting station equipment to use, filming in real time and projecting it with a projector, or developing dedicated equipment to transmit the game screen.
There was even an opinion about taking apart the game machine, attaching a signal amplifier, and sending the output signal in two directions. However, that had the possibility of slowing or interrupting the game screen. In a fighting game, that was unacceptable.
Then Brams found a method. It was to use magic.
When he inquired at the Magic Technology Bureau, it turned out there was already a modern spell that transmitted images onto a large screen. When Ras learned this, he felt somewhat hollow.
In truth, magic was a method that people of this world might have thought of sooner. But this was an incident caused by Ras’s preconceptions, since he still felt some distance from magic despite learning it.
The cost was not cheap either, but it was acceptable. It was roughly six thousand del.
Magic was expensive when introduced into products that were mass-produced and sold, such as computers, but when used as a one-time measure like this, it was surprisingly reasonable.
“Everyone!”
Thanks to that, even now, Delmongu, the famous comedian serving as the host, was appearing on the screen in real time as he made people laugh with his unique humorous tone, visible to everyone inside the gymnasium.
Wow. It’s Delmongu.
The gnome comedian, whose distinctive and comical appearance was marked by white highlights and the fur on his ears dyed pink, was Pansi’s favorite entertainer.
He gave up on leaving and looked for a suitable place. He thought about taking a seat, but he would have to go out for his match soon anyway.
And instead of necessarily sitting in the seats, people were also sitting wherever they pleased on the wide empty floor below them, looking up at the screen. So he followed them and sat roughly anywhere.
The event was not made up only of Delmongu’s one-man show.
“Now, now. This time, allow me to introduce a popular singer we managed to invite with great difficulty! Daimong!”
“Waaaah!!!”
In truth, she was a little short of being a superstar, but in any case, she was a singer they could normally only see on TV. More importantly, she was a pretty woman. Her ears, standing upright on top of her head as though she were a rabbit Beastman, were impressive.
“Thank you for welcoming me!”
The audience cheered wildly, and the singer who came onto the stage returned the cheers before beginning to sing in a sweet voice to the accompaniment of the band that had taken position at some point.
Ras, who was directing event preparations behind the stage, also enjoyed this quite a bit. By this world’s standards, his tastes leaned somewhat indie, but even so, a professional singer’s live music definitely had something that seeped into the heart.
As Pansi enjoyed the event for a long while, Delmongu’s announcement reached his ears.
“Ah, ah! The main tournament matches will begin in fifteen minutes. Contestants, please come to the waiting room at the front. I repeat.”
Pansi, who had briefly forgotten that he had come here to compete, finally turned to the large clock hanging on one side of the gymnasium and realized the scheduled time was almost here.
He hurriedly stood and began walking quickly toward the stage.
Whew...
It was right nearby, and the spectators were all sitting and enjoying the performance, so there was nothing particularly blocking him. Pansi arrived without being late and took a seat in the contestants’ waiting area.
“If you look at the bracket at the front, you’ll be able to check the order of your matches. We’ll call you separately, so please wait without being too nervous.”
The person who seemed to be an event staff member explained in a fairly calm manner, unlike the contestants who were extremely nervous.
Then, as time passed, the contestants began being called one by one.
“Waaaah!!!!”
Beyond the waiting room door, cheers could be heard, and the heated atmosphere came through. Pansi was extremely curious about how the matches were going. However, the contestants’ waiting room did not have a screen showing the matches.
This was partly because installing a separate screen here would cost too much, but also because they wanted to give the contestants as little advance information as possible. After all, the contestants who fought later would inevitably gain an advantage if they obtained more information.
“Contestant Pansi!!”
At last, his name was called, and he left the waiting room with his heart tense for his first match.
It was the same venue he had already watched for quite a while while enjoying the performance, but now it felt different.
The audience’s gazes focused on him, the game machine inside the sealed transparent box, and the tension created by the opposing contestant walking beside him made his mind go blank.
However, Pansi noticed that the opposing contestant, a young man around his age named Dennis, was also extremely nervous. Perhaps because of that, Pansi was able to regain a little composure.