Having won the final preliminary match, and earning his way into the main tournament, Marcus hoped down out of the ring and walked towards Yrsa.
He wanted to make sure she was okay since he had hit her pretty hard.
Luckily other than some scrapes and busies she seemed to be fine and was already trying to stand up, though she did have one arm holding her stomach.
"Persistent Healing."
Putting his left hand onto Yrsa's back Marcus cast his tier four healing magic spell, and the injuries she had sustained quickly began to fade away.
"Thank you, Irene." Yrsa said with a dejected expression.
She had been hoping to prove herself in this tournament but even after rallying everyone together and revealing a secret Marcus had told in confidence, she had still lost.
It left a horribly bitter taste in her mouth, and she just wanted to get away, so she yanked away and began walking towards the exit.
Seeing this Marcus could tell how upset she was but as the victory it would be hard to console her as one of the losers.
Sighing Marcus turned towards the exit himself, but along the way he saw the first guy his iron golem had knocked out and noticed that some of the tournament staff members were taking him out on a stretcher.
The poor guy was in pretty bad shape after being swatted by Marcus' iron golem and it was possible that he might still die if he did not received treatment soon.
Of course, while the participants had been asked to do their best not to kill each other it was not against the rules to kill someone in the heat of battle.
However, Marcus still did not want to have some random guy he had nothing against dying because of him, so he ran over and cast healing spell on the guy.
It still would probably not be enough to completely heal his shattered and bent out of shape arm and leg, but at least the guy was no longer in danger of dying.
Yet something unexpected happened as Marcus healed the guy as many of the audience members began to clap and cheer for him.
Though as he looked up at the audience, he could tell he had upset a few of the more bloodthirsty individuals as they had frown on their faces.
'I guess some of these people really wanted to watch me kill these guys.'
But Marcus really did not care what the audience thought of him, so he just continued on to the exit now that everything he needed to accomplish was finished.
'There is going to be a day before the main tournament starts, I wonder what I will do until then.' Marcus thought as he exited the stadium.
But his plans soon came to light as he walked out of the stadium and he heard in his mind, 'Something smells good.'
Roxene then jumped out of his companion storage and ran over towards one of the many food carts set up for the duration of the tournament.
'I guess sampling all of the food carts is a good way to pass the time.'
Smiling Marcus walked up to the food cart Roxene had stopped in front of, though the owner was looking at her with a bit of apprehension.
Luckily though this time she did not just grab the food and go, since she knew Marcus would buy her the food anyway, and it was not as enjoyable when you had to run and eat.
'Ah is this your pet young lady.' The carts owner asked.
"Ah yes she is. Sorry, that she just ran up to your cart, she seems to always track down what smells good."
"Oh, so did you want to try one of our delicious skewers. Just for this tournament I have even used a number of rare spices to enhance the meats' quality." The cart owner said, giving his pitch and hoping to get a sale.
"Yeah, that sounds good, I would like two of everything you have." Marcus said with a resolute face.
At first the owner thought Marcus was joking but when he looked at his face, he could tell just how serious he was.
His jaw nearly dropped at this, but this would be an incredibly big sale for him, so he quickly did some math the best he could in his head before saying, "That will be fifty-seven silvers for two of every type of skewer I have."
Reaching into his magic bag Marcus pulled out a gold coin and handed it over to the man.
He really did not feel like counting out fifty-seven silvers and at this point one gold was not very much to him.
The man looked shocked that Marcus had handed him a gold coin, but he was not about to question the situation and thanked Marcus profusely before getting to work on his order.
"Here you go, two of everything. And feel free to come back again whenever you want miss."
Now holding twenty-two skewers in his hand, thanked the owner one last time before walking down the street as he began handing some of the skewers to Roxene and eating his own.
'The lamb was definitely the best no doubt about it. It was tender and juicy and the sauce on it was quite good.' Roxene telepathically said to Marcus after having tried all of the skewers
'Hm, I have to say I was partial to the goat. Something about the flavors just worked so well together and it was almost like a taste of home.'
The two of them then went on to rank all of the skewers from their favorite to least favorite, but when Marcus said the lamb was fifth on his list Roxene seemed ready to fight him over it.
Of course, the two were just messing around and after a while they began to peruse the other carts that had been set up buying and ranking their favorite ones.
'Oh, I am surprised to see her here.'
As they were continuing their tour of the finest food carts around, Marcus spotted a friend of his who he was not expecting to see.
Leading a band of guards around, was Clarisa geared up in full armor and with the two swords Marcus had made for her at her waist.
Heading on over Marcus waved his hand at Clarisa, planning to just say hello quickly since she was obviously working.
Yet as he got closer a couple of the guards ran up to him and said, "Are you in need of assistance miss."
"Oh no I was just coming to say hello to my friend Clarisa." Marcus said trying to diffuse the guard's confusion
After saying that Clarisa walked up and said, "I am surprised to see you out wandering the streets Irene, but it is good to see you."
Clarisa then turned to the guards that she was leading and said, "You guys go ahead and continue along the route I will catch up in a minute."
The guards under Clarisa' command reluctantly left her behind, though Marcus was pretty sure their reluctance was more because they want to talk to him by the way they kept looking at him.
"So, Irene what are you doing out here. I thought that you were participating in the tournament." Clarisa asked inquisitively.
"Oh yeah I already won my match, so I decided to get a bite to eat and got caught up in trying out all of the food stalls with Roxene here."
Clarisa now noticing the small half white half black wolf pup at Marcus' feet flinched a little, remembering the beating she and her friends had received.
"I see you already won, but do you not think you should watch some of the other matches. That way you can see what types of skills and fighting styles your opponents are going to have."
Hearing this Marcus felt a wave of embarrassment wash over him. Here he was leisurely going around grabbing food, when he should have been watching the other matches to scout out his competition.
'Agh, I got caught up in Roxene's pace and completely forgot to do something so obvious.'
Having realized that he had made a mistake in not watching the other matches, Marcus said to Clarisa, "Thanks for the reminder, and I guess I should get going. It was nice to see you again let us get together once this tournament is over."
After saying that Marcus began running towards the nearest stadium where the final preliminaries were being held, hoping to make it in time to watch some of the matches.
Unfortunately, when he arrived there were only two more matches to watch and one of them was a landslide like Marcus' match had been.
In that match a gruff looking man who was level forty-nine, crushed all of the other opponents with his bare hands, seemingly being some type of martial artist.
Marcus could not help but think he was pretty strong, as within just a few seconds he had knocked everyone else out of the ring with one punch.
However, the next match was much closer, as it was comprised of a group of fighters all in the mid to high thirties, but in the end the winner was a young woman who was level thirty-eight and fought with a lance.
'Hm the young woman with the lance is probably not going to be a problem for me, but that martial artist guy seems pretty tough.'
As Marcus analyzed the winners of the two fights, he had been able to witness, he soon found that everyone was exiting the stadium as the day's matches had come to an end.