Ning had gone out to help the girl's mother who was sick and had only just returned after roaming around the city.
The Pros all stayed in rooms provided by the arena inside the arena, so Ning was also staying here starting now.
He had already been given the talk about pros and matches and everything he needed to know.
Being a pro meant that one had to schedule a fight that would be advertised for people to come and watch.
As a pro, one had a specific period of time between which one could challenge someone and not get challenged by someone.
For the beast's scene, one had to fight every 2 weeks. Given that a fighter must be challenged 1 week prior to fighting, they really just had 1 whole week to choose a fighter.
Once they fought, their deadline would reset and they would once again have another week to choose a fighter.
On a good cycle, one could fight 4 times in a single month.
Challenging someone was mutually exclusive to being challenged. One had a 2 week grace period in which they couldn't be challenged at all.
After the 2 week grace period passed, they were free to be targeted. If they were, they would gain another 2 week grace period after they fought.
The structure of such challenging and getting challenged was a little more lenient for the pros that didn't fight with beasts. Due to the number of people in that group, they had more grace periods as compared to the people on the side with beasts.
Of course, there were people who had special privileges as to the requirements, but overall, everyone had rules they needed to work by.
Ning had to find someone to fight within a week, so he was mostly chill for the moment.
He was feeling tired of the most part so he went to sleep. The next morning, he woke up and went to the cafeteria to eat a hefty meal.
After that, Ning had nothing to do, so he decided to go to the arena to watch some battles and maybe bet a bit.
Just as he was about to walk out, Saphandra walked into the cafeteria. She found him and went up to him to talk.
"Hey, did you challenge anyone yet?" she asked.
"No, I have a week to do so," Ning said. "What about you?"
"I did, and you won't believe who I registered against," she said.
"Who?" Ning asked curiously.
"The strongest fighter in the arena," Saphandra said. "I decided to go straight for the top."
"Oh, what about the money?" Ning asked.
"This is how I get to earn the most, no?" Saphandra asked. "A newbie going against the best. Imagine the number of bets that would be against me. So much money at once."
"That's… actually a very good idea," Ning said. "When's the fight?"
"Like… next Monday I think?" Saphandra said.
"Tomorrow?" Ning asked with a surprised look.
"No, next one," Saphandra said. "We need to have a week in between of course."
"Right," Ning said. "I should probably get my opponent registered too next."
"Let's go right now," Saphandra said.
"Sure."
After Saphandra finished eating her meal, the two of them went to the registration area.
Ning started speaking to the staff about his registration and the staff gave a list of available opponents for him, as well as some basic information on them about their number of matches, their win-to-loss ratio, and their hair color.
Since they would be fighting with beasts, the last part didn't make much sense to learn for Ning, so he only focused on the first 2 parts.
"Hmm… this looks good. He's won 6 out of 10 matches, so he should be the favored one in the match. Considering he's fought nearly 22 times, the crowd will also recognize him," Ning said to himself.
"Please register my fight against him," Ning told the staff.
The staff quickly prepared some papers and had Ning stamp his fingerprints on them.
After taking the print, the staff quickly called another staff and asked him to deliver the challenge notice to the person Ning had just challenged.
The staff walked out to put a name on the list of challenged and added Ning vs Hartmann as a match for next Thursday.
"More than a week away huh," Ning said as he saw the day.
"Hey Ning," Saphandra called out.
"What is it?" Ning asked.
"Are these two names the same?" she pointed to two names.
"Barry and Barry. Yeah, those two names are the same," Ning said. "Not sure about the person though."
"They are the same person too," The staff told them. "Mr. Barry is fighting this Saturday. It's quite a big event for the arena. To think he would fight twice in such a small time."
"He's the big man, huh? I guess we can see what he can do soon then," Ning said.
"Yeah," Saphandra said. "I guess we will."
Once they registered, Ning and Saphandra went to the beach. While Ning went into the water for a little swim, Saphandra stayed at the beach to sharpen her language even more.
By now, she could easily understand the most basic sentences and could make specific requests and questions.
Still, there was a lot for her to learn. After that, they went to the arena to watch the matches.
The days passed just like that. Between studying the language and watching the matches in the Arena, Saturday came by.
Both Ning and Saphandra were equally surprised to see the number of people gathering to watch the main event of the day.
Barry was fighting against the 5th most winning person in the arena. Due to the closeness in the rank, the importance of the event just increased by that much.
Ning and Saphandra got seats of their own for being pros and so they sat down and waited for the match to begin.
Only after watching this match would Saphandra truly understand why this man was the strongest in the Arena.
