Is this really a Game?!

The king came near Reign and took him to multiple people, amongst them were leaders of powerful noble houses of the kingdom, wealthy merchants that held a great deal of power, and the top combatants of the kingdom. Of course not all of the top combatants were currently here, about half of them were with the commander, fighting against the coalition in the south of the kingdom, about 1 week ago the coalition attacked the kingdom again and the commander immediately went to fight against them, luckily the fortifications were able to hold out a long time and there was zero chance of the coalition army destroying it before he arrived.

The only people that were powerful enough to fight against the three first evolution fighters of the kingdom were two kings of two kingdoms from the coalition, a queen from another kingdom, and the saint protector of another one.

All of them were incredibly famous and there were tens of eyes on them at all times which meant that it would be almost impossible for them to personally attack the fortifications without anyone being alerted. Thanks to that the kingdom was able to relax a bit and they didn’t need to have their king and the two other first evolution combatants at the fortifications at all times.

Amongst the top combatants of the kingdom Reign only met one that he felt was his match, a man that was in his early thirties and had a long scar on the left side of his face. The man had a slim build and his face, although couldn’t be called really handsome, was masculine enough to be recognizable and somewhat unique. He had thin lips and a pair of eyes that were as sharp as an eagle’s, when Reign shook his hand he was immediately able to feel the calluses on them, it was obvious that the man had trained for a very long period of time and he definitely had a high proficiency with his weapon, perhaps even above Reigns.

His name was Lico, he was the current leader of one of the powerful noble houses in the kingdom, he managed to climb on top of the food chain and become the leader thanks to his incredible determination and effort he put in to become stronger. Politics were never his strong side and he always brought one of his two assistants with him no matter where he went, the other assistant would be left to lead the house in his absence.

He was a peculiar man that seemed different from the other nobles, that was of course thanks to his upbringing and early life. He wasn’t considered to be a talented individual when he was young and was shunned by most of the clan thanks to his two brothers being more talented and brighter at pretty much everything. Knowing that he would never be able to pass them without putting in a lot of effort, Lico spent numerous years bitterly training and fighting on the frontlines against monsters.

Even though the whole planet was relatively safe against monsters, there were still millions, probably even billions of monsters on it, the thing was that they were all currently residing in areas that were considered forbidden but they would occasionally leave them, there would also be portals that the system would create which would spawn tens of thousands of monsters and all of the kingdoms had to be wary of them.

There were small-scale portals that would only spawn a couple of hundred or a couple of thousand monsters, medium-scale portals that would summon anywhere from ten thousand monsters all the way to a hundred thousand of them, following that were large-scale portals that would summon a hundred thousand all the way to one million monsters.

There were also stories of even larger and more dangerous portals existing that would summon millions of monsters, those however were only stories here, and perhaps only in the territories of the empires could they ever be found.

The low amount of monsters that one could find in the wilderness was one of the reasons why people here were still relatively weak in this world, even though they were powerful enough to obliterate the monsters early on and force them to stay in a couple of areas in the world, that also became a bit of a problem as there were now not enough of them to kill and level-up. Each kingdom had multiple areas where people could go and find monsters, but they were mostly low-level monsters that would only serve to help them out in the beginning.

After some time the various empires found a way to become stronger and level up without killing monsters. The system had something called manuals that people could buy with S Coins, by using those manuals one could draw in mana and transform it into exp, it was somewhat similar to how cultivation worked in the novels that Reign once read before the game started.

Of course, that way of leveling up was many times slower compared to simply slaughtering a large number of monsters, there were also no rewards that one could gain by doing that. Of course, there was also another way of becoming stronger, killing other humans also rewarded them with exp, and the numerous wars happening in the world were actually somewhat helping the many players here to level up and become stronger.

Reign spent the most time chatting with Lico, the older man was also highly interested in Reign and responded in kind, it turned out that Lico was a swordsman and upon hearing that Reign was the same he was ecstatic, the only other swordsman that was as proficient as him was the commander and because he was someone that had gone through the first evolution he was much stronger than Lico. It was hard to get that person to spar against him even during peace, not to mention now when it was currently wartime and the commander was extremely busy fighting. 𝐨𝘃𝗹.

The two started talking so loudly that they even attracted the attention of the nearby guests, not only were the two talking about swords and swordsmanship but they also talked about how they preferred fighting against different kinds of opponents. Of course, each of them had different preferences and ways to do certain things and they quickly started arguing about which one was better.

Soon the arguing wasn’t only verbal as each of them also demonstrated what they would do under what kind of circumstance with a fork or a knife they found on the table. As they became louder and louder the king had to intervene and stop them.

“Ahm, I don’t mind you two talking and arguing, but I do believe our guests are slowly starting to get a bit annoyed by your constant yelling you two.”

“Huh?” Lico and Reign both looked at the king with puzzled looks before taking a look around themselves, many nobles simply looked away and tried to act calm and normal but it was obvious to Reign and Lico that they went a bit overboard with their talk.

‘Damn, I just wanted to give everyone a good impression of myself and look at what happened!’ Reign lamented to himself silently before the king suddenly spoke again.

“So how about you two simply demonstrate what you talked about to us, I believe nobody would mind seeing a quick spar between two powerful warriors.”

“Spar?” Both Lico and Reign again looked at the king with a puzzled look on their faces, to do something like this during a banquet wasn’t unheard of as similar things have happened before, but this was supposed to be a banquet created with the purpose of lifting morale and to allow people to get acquainted with Reign, having a spar here was simply a bit weird.

“Your Majesty, I’m certain both of us would love to do that, but this is after all a banquet hall, neither one of us don’t want to make a mess out of it.” Said Lico with an apologetic expression on his face.

“Mhm, I agree with him, there’s simply not enough space for us to spar, I don’t want anybody getting hurt because they were too close or anything like that.” Reign quickly added from the side as the king flashed a wide grin while looking at the two.

“Don’t worry about a thing, I have taken the liberty of creating a nice big open area outside the hall, there’s a couple of arrays which will block any attacks that may stray, you can fight to your heart’s content there, and the best part is that everybody can watch from the hall.”

‘He planned this didn’t he?’ Both Reign and Lico thought to themselves after seeing the wide grin on the king’s face. It was true, even without the two squabblings he was planning on getting Reign to fight a bit today, what better way of increasing the morale of people than to see just how powerful Reign was?

He of course also knew that the probability of the two having an argument over fighting was a chance as Lico was known to be a complete battle maniac and he always loved talking about fighting, it didn’t matter what weapon the other person used he would still gladly start up a conversation and talk about their own respective fighting styles.

Without any other rhetoric, the two simply sighed before looking at each other and making their way outside toward the fighting field that was created.